Finally... Birthday Party Pictures.

Here they are, in no particular order - pictures from Drake's Birthday Party at Grandma Cheri and Papa Tim's house:



Since it was a "Ninja Party" Grandma found a real live Ninja to come join the fun. However, I think the violent video games and television are getting to my son, because he just wanted to fight.





Atleast he was a good sport afterwords and took a picture with his cousins and Mr. Ninja.


Then we had cake.


Being the responsible parents we are, we decided to let him cut the cake himself. Actually, I do believe it was Grandma Cheri that handed him the knife. You'll notice she's nowhere to be seen in the picture. Smart move Grandma. Give the 6 year old a knife and run away.


Speaking of smart things, Mona and I got the boy his first BB gun for his birthday. Hopefully we can go out and shoot it this weekend if it warms up. No, I will not promise to take pictures and/or update the blog about it.

Edit: Missed this one in uploading pictures. Aunt Anna and Uncle Jared sent Drake the book "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" in the mail today. He loves it, thanks Aunt Anna and Uncle Jared!!

First time by himself.

Drake and I went out to my sister's Saturday the 29th to pop off a few rounds.

The first magazine (9 rounds) I helped him, the second 2 magazines he wanted to do it by himself.

He hit 2 cans out of the 18 rounds. I say not bad for his first time taking his time to aim. Kind of made me cry a bit.

This is the only picture since I didn't want to be too far away from him long enough to snap any more. Safety first.

Gun safety.

Ok, last one, I promise.

Here's Drake getting ready to go shoot guns with eye and ear-pro on.

He's safe like that.

Mona's stupid hair.

Oh yeah, here's a picture of Mona.

Her hair is long now.

It will be removed in her sleep in the near future.

Missing tooth...

As most of you already know, Drake lost his first tooth, but for those of you who haven't seen yet, here's a picture:






Ok, there's our post with a picture.

See you in January.

Reminder

I'm posting this blog post to my blog to remind myself that I need to post a new blog post on my blog.

Or did I?

The Water Park Thing....

Travis and I took the kids (Kayla and Drake) to the little water thing at Osage Park...

Here's some pictures:



After he was done with the water, Drake decided to do some break dancing.....

Criminals For Gun Control

Found these last night.

The first one contains the b* word at 0:35, just so you know.

Part 1


Part 2

[Insert Title Here]

After dinner we went to play outside. Drake kept running up the slide and Coben tried to chase him up but couldn't 'cause the slide was to slick for him. Eventually though, I put him up there and he tried to slide down.






After Drake got mad at me for taking pictures (see, I'm not the only one who doesn't like cameras in general) Coben decided to go talk to the neighbor.

The Kitchenish Project

When we bought our house, one of the first things we noticed was the lack of an outdoor light in the back yard. So, over the last couple days, I decided to remedy that problem. Being a relatively small project, it should have taken a few hours, but because I kept saying "well, if I'm doing that, then I may as well do this" over and over and it turned into a couple of days (about 9 hours total).

Keep in mind, the desired result is to mount the following to the outside of the house:


My first "well......" was to put in a 3 way switch for the kitchen fan/light, leaving one in it's original position and putting another one in the wall by the sliding glass door next to the switch for the future outside light. That's the red circle in the folowing picture. The blue oval is where I had to cut out the sheetrock to drill a hole into the attic to run wires (couldn't drill down because of the angle of the roof) and to run wires outside to the new fixture. I didn't take a before picture, but assume it's just a blank wall with nothing there at all. The second picture is of the switch when it's completed (sans coverplate).

So then I said "well.........." and decided to put in a fan control knob where the original fan/light switch was, thereby alleviating myself of any and all responsibilities of pulling the stupid chain when Mona wants the fan on and the light off. Now she will be able to do it with the flip of a switch. How smart am I? Anyway, here's the before and after (the random patch in the second photo is the result of a mishap with a hammer...):

So, then all that's left is completing the wiring in the fan mounting box and remounting the fan. None of which I have a picture of, because I was trying to hook it all up as fast as I could while Mona held the fixture over her head while standing on a step stool.

This concluded day one. It should be noted that I did in fact wire one of the 3 way switches wrong, and the light didn't turn on/off like it should, however 5 minutes this morning with a screwdriver fixed that problem.

Finally, when I got around today, came the actual outdoor light part. YAY!!!

Since I'd already run the wires with the switches yesterday, the first step is to cut a hole in the house. Well, siding anyway. Since there was no tutorial I could find on the internet, I kind of made it up as I went along. If you hear of anyone who wants to do this, let me know, I took enough pictures I think I could write up a quick one if they need one.

Next, I drilled a hole through the exterior of the house, mounted the bracket, and ran the wires outside.

Then, all that was left was to connect the wires, mount the light, and do a bit of caulking. The end result:
Surprisingly, this one worked right the first time. Dimmer switch and all... I was rather suprised.





And now, if there happen to still be any ladies reading this, I feel it necessary to my future health to include a picture of the dog, so I want to take this time to point out that when he helps me, he stays much cleaner than when he helps Mona. I think this may have some sort of correlation to the fact that he "works" much less when helping me.

MORE PICTURES!

I have been wanting to get Drake a wooden swingset, but the are so expensive so we found one on craigslist for $50 and decided it was worth it. All we had to do was replace a few boards.

Drake and his friend Kayla playing on the swingset.

I had also been wanting a trampoline and I think deep down Cameron wanted one too cuz his mom wouldnt let him have one when he was younger plus all the fun stories I had told him about my siblings and I had on ours when we were younger...such as jumping off the roof and a tower I believe that Drew built but im not sure. Anyways, we found one on craigslist in perfect condition for $60 so we got it.

Here is Drake jumping on the trampoline. NO towers or roofs for him, so dont give him any ideas Uncle Drew and Uncle Greg!

My little helper

This is what happens to my white fluffy puppy when he help me with the yard work.

He is getting a bath tonight!

This is what happens if you bug me enough ;)

The above picture is of our first project...a deck! We still have railing and steps to put on though.

This is our second project...to rip out this shed! Whoever built it was really lazy because it was made with cardboard,stirofoam and plywood. Cameron and I decided that we dont use it so lets destroy it, but when we were almost done we found this hiding under the floor!
Eww! A possum! This is the best picture I could take cuz I scooped Coben up and jumped on the trampoline. Cameron was still unaware at what I had seen so he is looking at me like I was crazy. When he realizes what I have seen he goes in the house and returns with the bb gun and scares the possum onto the fence where we left it cuz Cameron decided he didnt want to kill it even though I begged him to.
This is the shed all torn down. We had lots of fun destroying it except for the possum part.
Here is Cameron digging up some trees and BIG overgrown weeds. Our backyard is like a jungle, but we are slowly but surely making it look lots better.

The goings on...

So, a bunch of stuff has happened over the last few days, and I figure what better way to let everyone know that blog it. That's what these things are for, aren't they? Besides, most of you probably check this before you check your e-mail anyway... addicts.

Over the last few months, my camera (Canon S2 IS) has been acting funny and won't turn on, or when it does, will shut itself off when you push the *take a freaking picture already* button. Upon extensive Googling, I found I had 3 options:

1) Take it to a repair shop and pay more than it was actually worth to get it fixed. To what degree of fixed, nobody knows for sure.

2) Hit it "firmly" (which is sort of subjective) on a table. No kidding, several people said to do it.

3) Take it apart and try to mess with the motor and get it to work right.

Being the man I am, I opted for #3.

It didn't work. I now have a camera in about 3462624573457 pieces in front of me and no idea how to get it back together. I think some springs shot across the room too.

So needless to say, before more pictures get put up, I need a new camera.

Which brings me to goings on number two over the last weekend.

Saturday, the Machinists Union at HawkerBeechcraft voted down the contract by 90% and voted to strike by 89%. So, either I cross the picket line, or I strike. I figure since I voted to strike, I should probably do just that. Which then means no income contribution from me, and losing that much per month doesn't leave room for buying cool things like a new camera. Hopefully though, the $552,000 in interest the company pays per day on the loan for the purchase of the company and the loss of ~$10m in profits per week starts to add up rather soon and we can get the contract we deserve (without the vacation and benefits takeaways) and get back to work in a timely manner.

That said, I've recently been exploring my options for furthering my Army career. The reasons for this are
a) because the only way for me to get a promotion in the next 5 years is for the correct 3 people to retire, which likely won't happen
and
b) to get into a career field that involves less getting shot at

Since Mona and I decided that it would be better if I not pursue flight school at this time, that pretty much leaves me with trying to be a Medic. Even this could prove to be a problem, since my unit just paid who knows how much to send me to a month long school to learn the Bradley, and was planning on sending my team to this Saudi training deal in February, then we're *supposed* to deploy with them to Afghanistan in the fall of 2009. So, getting my commander to sign off on a letter letting me out of the unit may or may not be a difficult task to overcome. I guess we'll find out in the morning when I start making phone calls.

So, that's pretty much that, and perhaps I'll blog another blog later.

Mona's Birthday Present

Coben Michael Schwarz

Sooooooooooooooooo Cute!

New Blog

It's 8:30pm on the 25th of July, 2008.

I made a blog.