Guess What?

It's a boy!!!!!!

Sorry it's been such a long time since our last post. We haven't done much and I don't really like posting without pictures.

Anyways, we had our ultrasound on Friday and found out we're having a boy. Not too surprising given family history but still pretty exciting. He was being quite un-cooperative during the ultrasound, and the doctor kept having Colleen turn on her side, then back again, then the side again, to see if she could get him to stretch out so she could get the shots that she needed. Anyways, here are a couple of pictures from the ultrasound.

Camping and Fishing

Hi everyone. Colleen and I went camping yesterday for the night just the two of us. It was pretty cool. I fished a lot, and Colleen mostly hung out and took about 130 pictures of herself. That's typical when she's bored. Like Ben discovered with panning for gold, I discovered with fly fishing. Trying to copy it from the movies isn't always the best. It was fun trying though. I switched to my other rod and caught a small brown trout, which is all I caught. After I released it, I waded back out into the water and cast in again, then felt something bump my leg. I looked down and there was a water snake that looked about 3 feet long that bumped into my right leg then swam between my legs and then bumped in to my other leg. It was pretty cool. After that I looked across the way and say a whole bunch of otters. I ran back to our camp and grabbed the camera. When I first saw them they were on the shore on the other side of the river, when I finally got back with the camera they were all in the water right near our camp. I got a couple of good photos. Then we sat around the campfire after dinner and played with the camera. All in all it was a pretty good time.

4th of July

Hey everyone. We had a pretty productive 4th of July. At least during the day anyways. We went up to a spot called Mores Mtn. in the afternoon with some friends to go rock climbing. Well, let me correct myself, they were going rock climbing while Colleen and I and our friends wife Kelli watched. I was going to try it, but I wussed out. It looked a little too hardcore for me considering the last time I climbed was with Jeremy at the cliffs by the ranch over 10 years ago. It was a lot of fun though, and a gorgeous view. This just above Bogus Basin, which is where Colleen and I had been for a hike the week before and posted some pictures from that. After this we went over to Mike and Lindseys house and had a bbq, with the best damn burgers I think I've ever had. We lit off some legal fireworks and then after a few more beers decided it was time to get out the bottle rockets. Apparently the Boise Police were issuing $500 fines for illegal fireworks, so we were uhhh.....very careful about lighting them off. At one point we had two bike cops ride past their house right after we had lit some off and they didn't stop, so we didn't stop either. No pictures from that, but we did get some hilarious video of our friend Brandon falling on his aqq while trying to run away from a bottle rocket that flew into the grass next to him. Maybe I'll see if I can get that from Mike and post on here. It was great. Anyways, hope everyone had a nice 4th.

This is our friend Brandon climbing. It looks a little more hardcore than it really is due the angle that Colleen took the photo, but it was still pretty flipping hardcore.

This is the view from the top. 6500 ft elevation.

You know these people.

This is me and our friend Matt.

This is Brandon again.

Here's Brandon again testing that the anchors were in the rock solid enough. They were.

Another view from the top.

If you closely about right of center you can see me.

And another view from the top.

Finally, right?

I hope people will still read this. Sorry it's been such a long time. We've been doing a lot of stuff and keeping really busy, I've just been kind of lazy. I don't really like posting without pictures, and, like Ben, we always forget our camera. The pictures below are from a little walk we went on yesterday above Boise and just below Bogus Basin, which is a ski resort about 17 miles outside of Boise. I hope people in New York are still reading this. If not then I just don't know what to say. Enjoy the photos!

Finally a nice day for a bike ride

Hey everyone,

Sorry it's been so long since our last post, but we've been pretty busy since we've come home. Finding work, hanging out with friends and family, it's been great. It's been pretty nice here since we've come back, but only on a couple days has it been truly nice for a good bike ride. Unfortunately, Don, no burger and beer this time, but it's coming soon. Our first bike ride was on Sunday and we just rode over to our friends house and helped them with some gardening for a bit. Today was truly beautiful though. We rode from our place through downtown to the greenbelt, which follows the Boise River through town and also out of town for a total of 27 miles. Only crazy people bike that far. There's 3 parks in a row along the river, Julia Davis, Ann Morrison, and Albertson's Park. Colleen and I got married in Albertson's park, so some of you have been there. Also on one side of the river is the BSU campus. We just rode around for a while then stopped and cooled off by the river for a few then rode home. Can't beat almost 75 degrees and a nice bike ride by a cool river. Here are some photos!


This is the US Bank Building, which is the talles building in Boise. I only show a picture of it to comepare with the next photo.

Behind the painted wall here is what's supposed to be the tallest building in Boise, but instead I think is the shortest. Behind the wall is a pit about 30 feet deep where they had started to lay the foundation for a building but then the guy who was funding it or something ran out of money. It's been there for a very long time. They finally covered it up with this fence a few years ago, and had a really nice mural painted on it that was done by the local high schools, but then I guess they changed it and now it's kind of lame. Not near as pretty to look at as it was before.
This is the Grove. It's really neat in the late spring and summer because in the middle of the "park", there's a really big fountain that's on all the time. This is part of 8th street, and this is where they have the market on Saturdays which I'm really excited to go to again. Plus there's a really good restaurant right there and it's nice to eat there in the summer and sit outside and watch people.
This is sort of a random picture I took while we were riding. Actually, most of these are. Anyways, this is about a block or a two up from the last photo, and I mainly took it trying to get the flag in. Boise's all about food. There may not be as much diversity as New York City, but it's pretty good for Idaho. Just downtown there are over 80 different places to eat, from the hot dog stand to fine dining. Sushi, steaks, pizza, Indian, plus plenty of bars in case you want a liquid meal.
This photo here is Julia Davis Park. If you closely in the back ground, the building you can see through the trees is the Boise Art Museum, which is sometimes really lame, but sometimes they have really cool stuff come through.

Here we are. BSU is in the back ground here.
I had originally stepped into a really shallow part of the river, and sai to Colleen, "It's not cold at all." So then I cam up with the grand idea to just walk on out, and while it's only a little bit above my ankles, it was super cold once I got out further, but still nice and refreshing.
Here's Colleen, she didn't want to go in the water because she didn't want o get her shoes wet. She's kind of a ninny.
Here she is doing a balancing act.
Here's me on my sweet bike on a bridge over the river. I took a picture of Colleen on her bike, but she didn't like the picture so she said I wasn't allowed to post it.

And that's that. Hope everyone in New York is doing great, we miss you all very much. And we're looking forward to seeing the rest of my family in May and then again in July hopefully!

The most awful cross-country drive-EVER

Hi everyone,

So Colleen and made it safe and sound to Idaho Falls on Tuesday evening. Here's a state by state breakdown of our trip.

New York-We left early in the morning, around 8m. We sat and talked with Anna and Trevor for a bit, then they saw us off. The drive out of New York was pretty nice, no rain or anything, but it was cloudy.

Pennsylvania-Not much happening here, quick trip through the state to Ohio, started raining a little bit.

Ohio-Almost the entire drive through Ohio was bad. Lots of punding rain with little visibility and very high winds. We found out as we were leaving Ohio and entering Indiana that the area we had just driven through had tornado warnings for pretty much the whole area we had just been in.

Indiana-Nothing much must have happened here, since I can't even remember driving through the state. It was still a bit windy, I think, though.

Illionois-Thankfully we avoided Chicago, which when we drove through it on the way to New York it was pretty bad. But since we went a different way this time, we were able to avoid it.

Iowa-I actually really liked Iowa. We drove as far as Grinnell, IA on the first day. That's almost 1100 miles. We spent the night in a hotel and left abour 9 the next morning. The drive during the day was really nice, lots of rolling hills, and there was one spot where we could see windmills along the side of the highway. Huge things, and in my opinion, really quite beautiful looking.

Nebraska-No offense to Nebraska, but it has to be by far the worst state in the country to drive through. It's long, flat, and there's almost nothing to look at right at the end of winter. Maybe it's different in any other season, but this time, it was pretty bad.

Wyoming-Wyoming made me swear that I would never, ever, drive through that state unless it was sometime between May-August. Maybe not even then. We started out in Wyoming doing pretty good. Nebraska was over, so at least we had that going for us. Our goal was to make it to Evanston, which is about 10 miles or so from the Utah border. We passed Cheyenne no problem, but then we started climbing in elevation. Getting closer to Laramie, a really thick fog set in, reducing visiblity to almost nothing, so we decided to stop in Laramie for the night. About 3 hours short of our goal, but better safe than sorry. Laramie was nice, we ate dinner at an actual restaurant, instead of the car, which was really nice, then we went and got a hotel. We got up the next morning at 7, and it had snowed a few inches. Not too bad though. I checked the road report, and it said blowing snow with some slick spots, but overall seemed pretty good. We set off, and about 10 miles outside of Laramie is when it started. Really high winds blowing the powdery snow from the night before all over the place. Blinding white to the point where you could slow down to 25 or less in spots due to the fact that you couldn't see any further than about 5 feet in front of the car. It cleared up after a bit, and then it got even worse a little bit down the road. More winds blowing soft snow all over the place, only this time there was about an inch or so of snow on the highway, which we didn't encounter the first time. Slowed down drastically, and lots of hills so it was kind of treacherous. Then it cleared up for a bit. Then it got even worse a little bit down the road. More winds blowing the soft snow all over the place, snow still covering the highway, only this time on the spots where there wasn't snow on the highway, it was black ice, which is lots of fun to drive on. So we're going nice and slow, but still fast enough that we needed to pass a semi. Only about 35mph. We passed the semi just fine, then as I was changing lanes to get back into the right lane, we must have hit a patch of ice or some thing, but the u-haul trailer just real suddenly whipped to the left and started dragging us toward the median that separates the 4 lanes of the highway. We slid all over the place, ending up in the median. But, thanks to my superior driving skills, we ended up facing the direction we wanted to face, and the u-haul trailer didn't flip. Thankfully there weren't any other cars around us when this happened, or it would have really bad. In case some of you haven't driven through Wyoming before, there are very few places to exit the highway and change your pants if you need to. Good thing I didn't need to. Can't say the same for Colleen, but she managed. Just kidding, but it was pretty damn scary. So a little bit further down the raod, still the same weather and road conditions, we come upon a group of semis that were just stopped in the highway, in both lanes. So we stopped in the right lane, and a semi was stopped next to us with the very end of the trailer viewable from the drivers side window. We're stopped, waiting for traffic to move, when all of a sudden Colleen says. "Oh shoot!" Only she didn't say shoot, but you know what I mean. We were both looking in the side mirrors behind us watching as another semi is barreling down the highway directly towards us, and didn't seem like he was slowing down. Let me remind you that it was extremely low visibility, so this guy had very little time to react. He switched lanes and tried to slow down as much as he could, but it still wasn't enough. He slammed into the semi next to us, with the collision happening right next to the drivers side window, sending pices of his truck flying. All in all, it wasn't that bad, no one got hurt, and neither of the truckes were too badly damaged, but it was still pretty awesome to see it happen. When I saw awesome I mean terrifying. Then the wind died down for a bit and I realized why the semis were stopped in the road-they were putting chains on. Now, you know you probably shouldn't be driving when the semis are just stopping in the middle of the highway to put chains on. We only had 10 miles to Evanston, which was the next exit, so I put it in 4 wheel drive and drove about 25. About 5 miles down the highway, the weather cleared up and the raod was clear. It was a bit wet, but almost no snow, no more wind, and no ice. It was pretty crazy. Wyoming sucks almost as bad as Nebraska. At least something was happening in Wyoming to make it exciting.

Utah-Since the waether didn't really clear up until we were practically in Utah, I must say that's nice to see actual mountains again. No offense, Catskills people, but nothing in the US compares to the Rockies. Utah was pretty uneventful other than the landscape. We didn't stop at all.

Idaho-Almost home again!

We miss everyone in New York a lot, and we're excited to see west coast people again. Hope everyone enjoyed this post.

Skiing fun and moving back to Boise

Hey everyone,

So in case you haven't heard, Colleen and I are moving back to Boise next month. We're not sure on the exact date, but we're trying to shoot for March 7. Pretty sweet, huh? This morning we were eating breakfast and getting ready to go to work, Colleen worked at the candlemakers today and I was going to our regular job when our boss called and said to take the day off. It sucks, but I went out and had some fun, kind of. I threw my pack together and made a sandwich and threw the skis I'm borrowing into the car and took Colleen to work and then I drove to Minekill State Park, which is a place I had been hiking to back in October. I had heard that they had groomed trails there, and on our property here there's only so many times you can go skiing before it all starts looking the same. I parked at the NY State Power Authority Station which is about 1 mile up the road from the park entrance. There's a trail that starts there, and I was planning on doing about 8 miles round trip. I park the car, grap my pack, put the ski boots on and grabbed the skis and walked to the trailhead. Then I discovered that the trails aren't groomed, and it didn't look like anybody had been skiing there for the past week or two. It hasn't snowed here since Friday, so I didn't even have old ski tracks to follow. I started to break the trail, made it the mile to the park entrance and past the Ranger Station, breaking trail the whole way. I got to the next trail that I was going on, that would take me the next 3 miles to a waterfall that I had hiked to before only from a different direction. I discovered this new trail started out going downhill on a pretty steep slope surrounded by trees, and I"m not quite good enough yet on the skis that I was afraid if I tried I'd end up wrapped around a tree. I took the skis off and walked down until it was flat. Put the skis back on once it got flat again, and went maybe 1/2 mile before the trail started to slope upwards, again with a really steep incline. I was tired, and I wanted to continue, so I took the skis off and strapped them to my pack, then continued on my way. I made it about another 1 1/2-2 miles on the trail that varied from flat to uphill, trudging through foot and a half deep snow before I threw in the towel before I had a heart attack. I stopped and took a rest, then threw my pack back on and went back the way I came, walking the whole way until I got back to the ranger station and the flat ground before I could ski again. I had alot of fun and got a great workout, but they shouldn't mark a trail as a ski trail unless you can actually ski on it. Jerks. Here are some pictures. If you go back to my posting from October 12th, you can get an idea of how much the mandscape changes in winter.

The above photo was taken from about the same point on the trail where I had taken one back in October when I was there.

This is a really big tree that had fallen over and about half of it was hanging over a stream about 20 feet down. It was pretty neat.


I don't know if you can see these that well, but all those little dark spots are turkeys. I took this as I was about to pull in our driveway, and there were hundreds of them in the field across the road. Well, that's all for now. Bye

Sledding Fun!

Hello everyone! Sorry it's been so long since my last post, but there really hasn't been too much to write about. It was really cold a couple weeks ago, with the wind chill it was getting as low as -20, so that kinda sucked. This past Friday was really warm, almost 40, but then yesterday and today it was really cold, in the single digits and the teens. We've been out cross country skiing a couple times. Our boss and his wife have some that they've let us borrow, and I had forgot how much fun it is. We were planning to go somewhere today but then we decided against it since the weather guy said it was going to be really cold. Next weekend I'm going to go to a neat place I've been hiking before that has groomed trails and spend the day out skiing. Our house-mates husband has an old pair of skis that he's going to let me borrow, so that's pretty cool. It wasn't too cold today though, so we went over to Joan's and went sledding. It was a lot of fun. Here are some photos.

Here's Joan getting ready.

This is Vera and Lane. They were probably laughing at Colleen.

Here I am shredding on kid-size snowboard. It took me about 7 tries just to stay on long enough to get to the jump, and after that, I always fell off.

This is Lane, we all hurt our a@@es pretty bad on the landing.

Colleen said I wasn't allowed to take pictures of her wearing the bright orange snowsuit. Yea right.

Hope everyone is doing well!