2006 Year Review

For a 'Year End Newsletter', I thought I'd just link to some of the more memorable events in 2006 that ended up in this crazy blog. Feel free to poke around a little if anything piques your interest. We are looking forward to an adventure filled 2007, and I hope you and your families are too....Happy Holidays!!

Bass fishing in the spring
Shanna catches her first salmon
Memorial Day at the Oregon Coast
Joel and Cheryl come to visit (1) (2) (3)
Fourth of July spent boating, of course (1) (2)
Sam and Shanna's first bass tournament
Mia turns six!
Mia learns to ride a big bike
Sally comes to visit in August
Cooper turns three!
Labor Day in McCall
Shanna gets fit
Sam takes a road trip in search of the Salmon (1) (2) (3)
Thanksgiving in San Diego

Family pictures

While in San Diego, we got the whole crew coordinated for some family pictures. These are not the "official" pictures because those are in Andrea's nice new Canon EOS 30D , but they will give you a little preview of things to come anyway. I'll make an album when she sends me the CD (hint hint).

Yes, that is Matt making the 'rabbit' face for the kids...

Kenrick and Mia being very normal.

We spent most of the time staying clear of the errant wave!

Somebody call a plumber

At 12:06a on the day before Thanksgiving, I walked outside to greet Steve as he arrived from San Francisco. Not only did I find a Steve, but I also found a river of water running down the street, over the curb and into the ocean. So we went searching for the source - and we found it promptly: not 10 minutes before, someone had driven their car quite carelessly over the curb, the street sign, and finally the fire hydrant. Busted that bugger right off clean. I always pictured a lot of water coming out of a hydrant that was busted off in the middle of the night before Thanksgiving, but the reality of this one far exceeded my expectations. There was a column of water shooting easily 30 ft in the air (I remember noticing that it was twice the height of the nearby light pole, however high that is). The firemen, police officers and pajama clad onlookers were just kind of standing around doing nothing. I believe they were waiting for some utility dude to turn some valve somewhere because when we brought Dad back a few minutes later, it was dwindling rapidly......yes, I woke him up, because yes, he would have been mad if I didn't.

The Full (of turkey) Report

Sally invited the whole crew to San Diego for Thanksgiving this year - of course no one even considered turning her down! Even Steve, who isn't technically family but Uncle Steve nonetheless, made an appearance.
We (the spambananagrits crew) decided to drive instead of fly for some reason that has since left my reasoning. The drive actually wasn't too bad, but it took about 10 to get to Las Vegas and then another 5 to San Diego, so needless to say it was still a lot of time in the saddle. We stopped at Bass Pro Shops on the way through Las Vegas both times to stretch our legs and shop around a bit. Highly recommended if you've never been - even for non-fisherman.
Matt and Sally's place is just a touch too small for 13 people so we rented a house on the beach for the week, which worked out just splendid. Sally stocked the fridge with a ton of groceries, so we just ate and played and ate and played until everyone was fat and sandy.
Activities for the week included eating at the beach, surf lessons, Sea World, eating on the roof balcony, nightly family photo/movie reviews, kid crafts, eating in the front yard, snorkeling, football on the TV and on the beach, and as many fruit smoothies as we could eat. Wow, no wonder I came home tired, sore, fat and sunburned.
Here is the full album. Sorry there are so many pictures, but I started with almost twice as many so consider yourself lucky....be sure to poke around a little because there are some real gems that I need to retract later when certain spamily members complain...

Never fear, we're not dead

We've simply been pre-occupied with Thanksgiving dinner......
I'll get some info together in the next couple of days. Nice to be back home too!

YouTubed

Got bored and started YouTubing around from the other day. I came across a couple of gems.

I would have loved this sketching series as a youth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us8xpwzszW4

This compilation of flight data is very interesting. But I will admit, this is one of those ones that you either love, or think is stupid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPv8psZsvIU

Interesting concept in custom furniture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA8CLON9BwE
For those that want the Cliff Notes, an artist draws a piece of furniture in space while a computer tracks the pen. Then the 3d model is output to some type of stereo lithography machine that generates the drawn framework as physical structure.

I voted, in spite of myself

Man it's annoying having nothing but a bunch of sleazeballs to pick from. And these electronic voting machine problems - answer me this: How is it possible that the casino industry can make billions of dollars a year off video slot machines that are deftly operated 24/7 by people that aren't smart enough to understand the odds, and we can't make a simple electronic vote box work reliably for a single day, once every two years. Give me a break.

Cartoon links to/property of Daryl Cagle's Cartoon Index

The Johnny Appleseed Solo

Mia had a Fall music program at school tonight, and she was selected to sing a solo part of the Johnny Appleseed song. She did an excellent job! We had to sit way in the back so my picture has a funny perspective. Thank goodness for that long zoom...Click on the picture to see the movie (caution...15mb)

Boise State is now 9-0

Beat Fresno state last night 45-21 on ESPN. Would have looked even better if Fresno wasn't a 1-6 team. But Shanna says to stop griping about the soft schedule and start talking BCS. So here we go - if BSU wins out, they definitely deserve to be in the Fiesta Bowl. Only San Jose State(5-2), Utah State(1-7), and Nevada(5-3) to go......soft schedule.....

I might be partial, but....

..these are the cutest pictures of any kids I've ever seen.

Nicole babysat the kids on Monday night while Shanna and I went to Iron Chef Boise. She took a bunch of pictures of them and just did a fantastic job. I think she'll do fine in her new career!

Click on the photos to go to the album.
Shoot me an email if you want any full size ones (about 4meg each)

BOI Flight Info

Roger sent me this link to a live listing of all Boise Airport flights. Ya, I know, 'when there's only one flight a day, why have a website?'....and all of those other small town jokes.
BOI Flights via www.cityofboise.org

Shanna's surprise

Shanna is gone to Sun River for a relaxing extended weekend with her girlfamily. Keeping the kids bathed and fed is about all I'm usually good for, but those vitamins must have been kicking in because I decided to surprise Shanna with a rework of the downstairs bathroom. She had been wanting to repaint for a while, and had left some swatches laying around. So I picked one (Ralph Lauren Cameroon Green) and headed to Home Depot. Once I got the paint, I couldn't just stop there so I got a new towel rack, ring, toilet paper holder and faucet. Some wall patch, spray spackle, lag screws (for the boat trailer), spray adhesive, two chocolate bars and a case of free Coke rounded out the deal. What is it about that place?
That was Friday night, and by Saturday night the house looked like a yard/clothing/magazine/dirty dish sale in full swing. I started to become a little concerned that the remodel points were going to be negated by the bomb impact. Luckily Grandma Linda came over Sunday night to clean while I finished the bathroom, and lickety split it was done up real good. Check it out. I like it a lot.

Hey Sally, Mia bit her tongue

Gross pictures by request only. I guess it's a auntie-neice thing that I don't get.

The Middle-aged Men and the Sea, Part Three

About the time I had given up hope of ever becoming a real fisherman (or at least as good as my wife) and I was planning to finally come home, Steve called and said that they would be up at Bandon by noon on Friday to participate in the foolishness. Dave wanted to go goose hunting and Steve was undeterred by my claims of less-than-spectacular results.
So I called Shanna and before I even got a chance to tell her what was going on, she suggested that I not come home until I had something in the cooler. I couldn't tell at that point if she was just being nice or simply mocking me (come to find out, she is the coolest wife ever), but I went ahead and took advantage of the momentary lapse of reason and stayed the weekend.
By Friday afternoon we were back on the river, this time with two boats and four fishers. Kreg was the only one responsible enough to go to work for the day.
So picture this:

Jason and David in one boat, and Steve and I in the other. Sounds great except that the two guys that know what they're doing are both in the same boat - and it aint me!
Steve and I manage to get organized nonetheless, and wouldn't you know it, not 15 minutes up the river I hook into a nice heavy Chinook.

This is where the picture should be....BUT

After a very good fight and only minor choas as Steve tries to clear the junk off the deck and stay out of the way, the fish gave a funny wiggle and then took off in a straight line towards the bank. Was really confused until a seal popped his head up out of the water with a fish (my fish) in it's mouth. So we chased the dumb thing around with the boat, got it to let go of the fish, but then all I had hooked was the seal. Chased it some more and finally gave up and broke the line off. Aaaargh! Being the optimist that I am, I was really quite pleased that I had 1) caught a fish and 2)caught it on my own rigging. Things were looking up.

The next morning, Steve and I went out early early and started trolling.

And we trolled and we trolled and we trolled...and finally by 2p- a hookup! We had slowed down to work on the steering bracket for the motor, and right as we came to a stop, I noticed that my rod tip was bumping around. I thought I had a snag and didn't pay much attention to it. Then a few seconds later it dipped again and I knew something was going on. Ended up being a 13lb Chinook (or King). Kind of small, but it still fought real good for about 5 minutes before Steve kindly (deftly, expertly, professionally, etc) netted into the boat. Since it was a native, we had to dig out the regs to make SURE it was a Chinook and not a Coho since you can keep one and not the other. Now that's a good problem to have!!

The Middle-aged Men and the Sea, Part Two

On Monday I left the Bay Area and drove north to Bandon to do some salmon fishing in the Coquille River with Jason and Kreg. It was at this point in the journey that I realized something about the muffler has GOT to change. I got out of the car in Oregon to buy my license and when I spoke to the clerk it sounded (in my ears) like Darth Vader. You know, when you talk into a spinning fan to make that Darth Vader voice.....

Anyway, for the next three days we spent many hours trolling the Coquille in search of a salmon. It is a neat river with lots of wildlife around and not too many people. Not much to do because the boys have a little 14' camo boat that they use in the river, so you just sit back in the lawn chair and relax. Even catching no fish is a lot more fun than it seems, but you either get It or you don't, and I understand if you don't.



In non-fishing news, they also have a couple of new puppies - a yellow and a black lab. Just like having toddler twins around. Cuter than cute pie, always underfoot, waking Kreg up at night, pooping and peeing all over.... I put a couple of videos here and here if you want to see more of Tess and Sadie. Be warned that the files are huge (50&60 meg) because I'm too lazy to encode them into mpegs.

By Thursday, we had finally hooked some fish. Kreg landed two native Coho, which were promptly released. I hooked another salmon that, in a matter of 10 seconds, looped around an eye of my rod-and the motor-and Jason. The fish was racing back and forth, half out of the water while I am reeling wildly and taking nothing but drag because of my tangles. Don't need to mention that one got away. ....

Coming up in Part Three - Sam finally catches a fish worth eating...

Can this be October?

The weather this Saturday was just fantastic, for the middle of October, so we took the boat down to CJ Strike. For the first time ever, Mia cast to, hooked, and landed a bass all by herself. She worked that little bugger over with the mini-Ugly Stick until it finally gave up and she just hoisted it into the boat. Said she didn't want to lip it because 'that would be gross'.

It may be the last good weather trip of the year, as it is rainy today and supposed to get colder. Regardless of the weather, I will probably still take the boat out once a month or so until things freeze up just to keep it from drying out!

The future of BSU football

This demo shows some of the planned changes for Bronco stadium over the next few years. Pretty stinkin cool. Hello Big Time! Now if we could just work on that soft schedule - maybe a conference change to the Mountain West or PAC-10???
BroncoStadium

The Middle-aged Men and the Sea, Part One

Last week I decided to use up some vacation time and take a little road trip, so I drove in a big triangle from from Boise to San Francisco, San Francisco to Bandon, and Bandon back to Boise.
Steve and David are working in the SF area for a few months, and they have a boat and an apartment with lots of room, so I thought it might be a good time to drop in and see what wazzup.
I ended up driving the Honda to save on gas money (spent only $125 for 1600 miles!!), but I underestimated the small jet engine sound coming out of the exhaust pipe when the cruise was set on 85, and that got seriously annoying by the end of the trip.
Once my hearing recovered and the boys got off work for the weekend, we spent a lot of time on the water trying to figure out how to catch the local salmonoids and various other fishies. The weather was just OK, with some windy days and not much sun until the afternoons. I somehow managed to still burn my face even though I have very few pictures of when the sun was out. It is pretty neat boating around with so much scenery, both natural and man-made.

One day we fished for sturgeon near an old 'ghost fleet' where they park and decommission old military ships. There are almost a hundred huge ships anchored in a very small area - it was really quite eerie in the morning fog.

Overall we had a great time trying to learn the area and catch some fish in the process. I hooked my first striped bass, which put up a great fight on medium bass tackle, even though it was only 18" long.

Another day we went out into the open ocean 5 or 6 miles, which was pretty exciting considering the size of Steve's boat. I would have inserted the picture of Dave's salmon right here, but we lost it at the boat....grrrrr....after trolling for hours and hours....aaaaahhhh!!! Now don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm saying I'd rather be working or anything silly like that.

We did manage to find plenty of bottomfish, and I thought I'd throw in this picture of a cute little jack smelt (and the fish is kinda cool too) and a really spotted ling cod to finish things up. In the future we'd like all fish pictures to contain more fish and less fisherman. Oh well, hopefully there's a Next Time.

Get a new view

Finally got the lens adapter for the camera so now I can use the wide angle lens. I was home with Cooper while he was sick when I got the package, so here he is - Superman slippers and all.

Women's Fitness Celebration

The ladies participated in the Women's Fitness Celebration on Saturday morning. There were over 12,000 women in attendance- running, jogging and walking the 5k course. Shanna and Amber ran the 5k in 28 and 30 minutes respectively, then got spoiled at the end with lots of food and attention. I was late to the action (cardinal rule #1 - be there to cheer) so I don't have any cool running pictures, but I got some at the finish. I got a kitchen pass because I had all 3 kids and we had to walk about 6k just to get there....

Smoke that, dirty rat

The Honda had some exhaust issues (much like it's owner), so I took it to Boise Muffler to see what all the commotion was about. Something to do with the resonator, which is not that expensive, but for a small additional fee I could not only replace that, but get a hi-po muffler and larger pipe from the cat back. So of course I did. Now it makes a slightly different commotion, but one that's appealing to the potential 18 year old future owner anyway. I choose a Magnaflow muffler that was (again) a little more expensive than the Flowmaster but it takes the raspy tone out of the little four banger and leaves an amazingly good tone for a 1 liter bumblebee motor.

#1 of my #1

I said I'd post the first picture I took with the new camera, so here you go - Mia at gymnastics class. And another one from the walk home. I love them both (Mia and the Canon)!

Rainy Saturday

Kind of lame weather today so Jacob thought Erik and I should go mountain biking with him. Jacob lived in Oregon so long that he forgets we don't have to wait 3 months for the rain to go away, so instead it's raining lightly and 45 degrees at 8am with J proclaiming a 'perfect day for a ride'.
I hadn't ridden for a good 9 months, so the old legs were a little slow. While grinding up the climb I kept picturing all those hamburgers and donuts I'd eaten in the last 9 months, and how much further I'd have to go to burn through all of it. I don't think I burned 9 months worth today, but I know I took a pretty good whack at it.
The rain stopped and we sweated, so in the end I think everything came out just right. (note: pics not with new camera - can't wait till Wed.)

A flood of photos on the way...

I am really excited this week, because we bought a new digital camera! I finally bit the bullet and bought the Canon Powershot S3 that I had my eye on for the last few months. The price dropped $150 from previous, so I figured that gave me the perfect excuse to get the camera AND the .75X wide angle lens.....
I've griped to anyone that will listen how much I would like a wide angle lens to capture Idaho's broad landscapes, and then I saw Derek's excellent use of the wider angle on people too and I knew it was the next big thing. But I couldn't afford the Right SLR, and it's too big and bulky for day to day shooting anyway, so that's when I focused in (no pun intended) on the next size down. The only drawback is no support for RAW, but I guess that just gives me something to look forward to in a few more years when the new camera suddenly turns old.
It's an odd phenomenon with technology, to have this device that we just had to have and loved so dearly suddenly morph into something that is clunky, too big, battery sucks, slow, dim and not bluetooth enabled. However, this same trait keeps me gainfully employed so I'm not at all complaining. Just pointing it out as a fact of life more than anything.
Anyway, I should get it by Wed of next week, so I promise to literally post the first picture I take, even if it's my foot or something.

BSU 42, OSU 14

This clip on ESPN.com says it all.

Labor(less) Day

I had worked the last 19 days straight, so we decided to just get away for a while over the Labor Day holiday. The campsites were all booked at Ponderosa State Park, so we rented a little cabin in McCall from inIdaho.com that ended up being not so little - but it was all they had on short notice. Took the kids bikes and the boat, and just fished, sightsee'd, relaxed, ate and watched football all weekend. Wow, was it nice to take a break.

On the way up Hwy55, I kept telling the kids to watch for Roger because I knew he was on the river that day, and sure enough we saw his truck on the side of the road. So we hopped out and watched him go down "Houndstooth" until he floated off into the smoke. Speaking of smoke, just look at the picture to see how thick it was from the local forest fires. Luckily it cleared out as we headed north.

Over the weekend, we fished Little Payette Lake (beautiful and quiet, but no bass)....

....Payette Lake (busy, beautiful, no bass)....

...and Cascade Lake (Nice Bass Shanna!!).

Shannie scored this nice 3 and a half lb smallmouth on a watermelon/chartruese tube. Just about took her to the cleaners a couple of times before we finally got it in the boat. I think she just discovered a new favorite camp/fish area! Most people fish for trout at Cascade, but I'm kind of ignant of all that so we caught a bunch of smallmouth instead. The perch were thick as flies, so Mia nonchalantly hooked a couple. Coop, meanwhile, simultaneously tried to play his new GameBoy, assemble a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich, and solve two jigsaw puzzles, all with minimal success. His TFAS (Total Fishing Attention Span) is about 90 seconds so he didn't manage to hook anything but me.

Overall we had a really nice time, which I think goes without saying (so I won't).

Cooper is Tree

Well, Coop had his third birthday on Friday night. He eventually settled on a Soccer theme after considering Spider-Man, Cars, Football, Motorcycles for months on end. I don't know if it's unique to our kids or not, but they are obsessed with planning their birthday a good 6-9 months in advance. And Cooper will be glad to argue with anyone that his next birthday he'll be five......because five is when he might be big enough to get a motorcycle.
Grandma Linda brought the soccer field cake, which he thoroughly enjoyed (and we did too).

After the party we went to the Mountain View High School football game, which the kids seemed to enjoy. The girls of course watched the cheerleaders and the boys ran around causing trouble just like you'd expect them to.

Silly with Sally

Aunt Sally has been here for the last couple of days, so things have been pretty boring around the house....dance parties, hair salon pretend, dinner time games, tricycle races, you name it.






It's going to take us a month to recover from the impact (or at least re-assemble the guest room). Cooper has really enjoyed it this time because he's old enough to be goofy with the girls too. The kids just love spending time with her, and Shanna and I are thankful for the extra dynamic that only Sal can add.