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...