Family schmamly

Rob and Andrea drove over the other day, which is no small feat considering that they live in Illinois. So we did what any family would do in this situation.....fish, eat and take pictures.

Is it a fish? No, just a big long weed that is a lot of fun to play with, especially since Uncle Sam can't actually find any real fish.

Anthony was really excited to drive the boat. Then he discovered how easy it is to fall asleep at the wheel.

Grandma had Carson and Wyatt over to play with the boys...and girl. Unusual situation for Mia, as she almost always has girls around and it's Coop that's left out. Here is a link to the first picture, which I couldn't use because Cooper beat me to the punch.

And of course on Sunday, you'd better take a picture or twenty while everybody is cleaned up. In front of the corn field is kind of funny. Further perpetuating the Idaho/Iowa mixup that people seem to have.
..and Shanna's side of the family too! How lucky we are to have such a nice bunch of laws and in-laws!!

Our New Coffee Table

Rick sent me this link to a new product by Microsoft called Surface, that looks like a PC-enabled coffee table that....well, just watch the video.

May catch-up

Shanna and the kids stayed very busy while I was gone in Baja, and one of the activities was a trip to Oregon to see family. They stayed a night with Aunt Julie, who is helping her husband run a ranch, and a night with Grandma Carol on the coast. Here are some pictures. I'd narrate more, but they are all in bed and the details escape me. Even though I was nodding my head and saying uh-huh uh-huh I must not have been listening.....

Cooper's been wearing his rubber boots ever since. I'm serious - it's 90 degrees outside and he wants to wear camo shorts, a bass pro shops t-shirt and black rubber boots to school. And I let him. He finally had to quit because they were chafing his shins.

Baja Info - new blog

As most of you know, Steve and I took a 3 week fishing trip to Baja last month. I didn't want to clutter up this site with a bunch of Baja junk, so I made a new blog just for the trip. It is about one-third complete right now, but has quite a bit of junk to read so you can check it out now if you'd like.

http://spudnutsbaja.blogspot.com/

Back to Bass fishin

Went out to Lake Lowell with the crew and Grandpa Scott. Had a good time catching plenty of largemouth and one big old catfish. Kids did great - Mia caught the first fish of the day, and Cooper enjoys swimming a lot better this year than last. When we were driving home, they actually wanted to go again, which is an improvement.

I'm not dead.

Shame on you for thinking I was dead all this time. Actually spent the last three weeks sitting in line at the Tijuana border.



Will post pics and a link to a new trip blog shortly!!

Good weather = Less posts #2

Later in the week it warmed up nicely, so Dad and I took Friday off and went to Lake Owyhee. Was just a beautiful day, and we caught plenty of fish...couldn't seem to find any bigger ones but the quantity made up for the quality. Probably 80 crappie and 20 bass between the two of us.

Had to go waaaay (32 miles) uplake to find the warm water, but it ended up making a big difference. There was a 15 degree difference and we caught zero fish on 3 spots in the cold and 100 fish on 3 spots in the warm.

Dad got out to stretch and take a pic at the Honeycombs area.

This is the not-so largest of the day! (objects may be closer than they appear)

Good weather = Less posts

Must have had good weather around here because I see a lack of blogging going on. Well, I'm sure we can catch up real quick here.....

Great Grandma Carol came to visit for a week, and we all really enjoyed having her around. Went for a day-camp near Anderson Ranch on Saturday....had some little snow storms blow through, but it was still very nice.

Panoramio Test

Trying out this tricky little feature discovered on the Panoramio web site......oh the wheels are turning now!!!

Smoothie Operator (I stole that from Max)

Sally and I thought we should have a little contest involving blenders while she was here, and it turned into a great, big smoothie contest with 5 teams vying for the coveted dollar store trophy.

The basic idea of the contest was to have 2 people per blender come up with a smoothie drink using whatever ingredients they wanted to bring, steal or borrow, followed by a tasting by all teams and an anonymous voting process to determine the smoothiest winner.


The criteria for judging were:
Nutritional Value (ranked 1 to 5)
ColorAppeal/Presentation (scale of 1 to 10)
Taste (scale of 1 to 10)
Texture (scale of 1 to 10)
Most points wins.

Here is a picture of most of the ingredients that were up for grabs. I say 'most' because some people insisted on keeping their key ingredients in a brown paper bag (Mom and Cooper).

Brian and Amy creating the Aloha Sunset.

Max and Amanda even brought team jerseys for their Raspberry Truffle entry.

Cooper and Grandma whipping up a Mello Banana Peanut Butter Frapp. Mello as in marshMello. Not much of a nutrional score on that one, I'm afraid.

Sam and the Shanna Cabana.

And Mia guarding her and Sally's Summertime Creamsicle.

Time for the tasting!!! Cooper can barely sit still he's so excited about 'THOSE TROPHIES' and Mia 'just wants to win'.

As you can see from the scorecard, Max and Amanda ran away with the prize by scoring a perfect 40 on Taste. It really actually did taste like Raspberry Truffle, even though Max swears that this was the first smoothie he ever made.... Note the '2' that Mia gave Mom and Coop for Color Appeal because 'it's brown-yuck!!' that really sunk their battleship.

All the smoothies were great - I'd gladly pay $$ for any one of them. Couldn't have been a more fun group of people to blend with either, if you know what I mean.

Silly Sally Springtime

Sally was here this weekend, so the usual mayhem ensued. Here are some pics.

Giant game of memory, first thing in the morning.

Lemonade Stand in the afternoon. They made like $40 an hour, the little varmits.

And hid some easter eggs with Jaelyn on Sunday. Inside because it was raining. Notice Jacob's big egg eyes.

Of course, the kids absolutely loved having Sally around and they look forward to June when she may be able to visit again.

Pink, Flamingo Pink

After a minor delay in posting (more to come I can assure you), I return to the blogosphere tonight with 2 weeks worth of updates. One reason for the delay is that I was in Las Vegas last week for a trade show, and then I subsequently stayed a few extra days with Steve, who happens to be working down there right now. We spent most of the time at Bass Pro Shops preparing for Baja (ie buying a lot of tackle), and the rest of the time we spent talking about dreaming about hypothesizing (sp?) about arguing about and generally discussing 'the trip'. I stayed in the Hilton Grand Vacations Club behind that Flamingo, which I didn't even know existed. It was actually a sweet spot because it was close to everything, yet had a nice kitchen, washer and dryer (in the room!), and no smelly casino in the lobby. I would recommend. Here's the view at night overlooking the pools and palm trees and a huge pink flamingo. Sorry, forgot to take a picture in the daytime.

Solo fishy weekend #2

For the second weekend in a row, I managed to catch only one fish. Shanna and I went to Brownlee on Saturday and spent a very cold morning trying to find some basses. Eventually it warmed up, but we only managed to land a single nice smallmouth. Later I found out that the fish were biting much better on the other end (20 miles further) of the reservoir, so I guess we should have just kept on driving. Had fun anyway, and got home in time to go shopping and go out for dinner. Can't complain about that!!

Shanna vs The Longest Ramp Ever. She won, eventually.

No chewing on this ice

Interesting article......if you are a total nerd.
http://www.isa.org/Content/ContentGroups/News/20071/March33/Hot_ice_in_nanoseconds.htm

Rockin A-Rock with the new Yammie

Breaking in a new trolling motor is pretty boring, so I thought I could at least add an exciting title.

I recently purchased a small trolling motor for the boat, so Dad and I went up to Arrowrock on Saturday to break it in and make sure everything was working right. Was absolutely perfect weather and there were not many other boats on the lake either. Maybe that was because the launch ramp looked like this:

Yes, that's right; The dock is completely blocking the ramp so everybody has to drive around the ramp (?) just to launch. Typical. As you can see, we also broke in the new tow vehicle (Shanna's Sequioa). It really pulls nice!! Much better than the truck, so I think she's out of luck for the entire summer.

Only caught one fish, but we didn't expect much anyway - after grilling chorizos in a quiet cove with the shirt and shoes off, it didn't need to get any better.



And I really apologize for the totally inappropriate amount white skin in the above photo. The internet just isn't safe for children these days (never was...) Until next weekend!