Christmas Day-Merry Christmas

Wow!

What a day of presents, food and fun. We spent another Christmas here in Billings, and were able to send our leftover food (lots of them) to a friends house where they have a newborn and more pressing needs than cooking a Christmas feast. We heard they greatly enjoyed it! Lots of time on the phone with friends and family too.


Tomorrow we may hit some sales in the morning and then Scott has to work the evening shift (starting at 1pm). After 4 evenings for Scott, we'll have another 3 day weekend for the New Year celebration.


Merry Christmas again, and we hope you all enjoyed the holiday as much as we did.


Scott, Kelly, Nolan and Barrett Carpenter

Gifts from Santa. Playing Clue Jr. w/ Dad.

One of many gift pics today.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Happy Holidays From the "Montana" Carpenters!!

Nolan continues to heal well from his surgery to remove his tonsils and adenoids.

We had a great Christmas Eve meal with the "traditional" shredded roast beef sandwiches after both Scott and Kelly braved the local grocery store on two occasions today.

Prior to church services this evening, we also found time to take a family photo by our Christmas tree and real Michigan wreath.

After we got home from church and viewing nearby Christmas lights, we also let the boys get updated on Santa's location. The picture below is them "tracking Santa" with the NORAD web site.

Nolan and Barrett's Birthday Party

This year we decided to combine the boys birthday parties and have them in between the birthdays on Sunday, December 17th at the local ice rink. We rented the rink for 1 1/2 hours and had a great time. Many kids tried skating for the first time, so that was a great experience for them. We've even heard that a few may take up the Learn to Skate program this winter or next. Here are a few pictures from the party.



The Billings Bulls (our Junior B team) had a game immediately after the party, so Kelly arranged for the coach and a couple of players to come by the party. The boys, especially Nolan, thought this was pretty neat. In a picture soon after the one below, Barrett went right back to eating cake while Nolan gave "high fives."

We had the boys open gifts after skating, and during this both teams were walking by to warm-up on the ice. It was pretty funny because the kids got quiet and just watched all the players walk by the benches we were sitting on.

It seems everyone had a great time and the boys really enjoyed getting to skate with so many of their friends!

Happy Birthday Nolan and Barrett!!

December 19th...Nolan's Surgery

As of 130 pm, Nolan is home and doing great recovering from his tonsil and adenoid removal. He had this done this morning, and is now relaxing watching some TV and enjoying some quiet time at home before we go get Barrett from day-care.

December 18th...Kelly's Birthday

Kelly celebrated her birthday on Monday this week and had a great day. Although she taught in the morning, tutored in the afternoon and played hockey Mom in the evening, it was still a fun day. We made time for cake, ice cream and presents in the afternoon, and we all went out for dinner a few days ago since we knew it would not happen Monday.

Happy Birthday Kelly!

Church Christmas Program

I wrapped up my string of midnight shifts this morning...slept a few hours and then headed off to church for Nolan and Barrett's Church Christmas pageant. As the picture shows, Nolan was a shepherd singing Away in a Manger and Twinkle, Twinkle, Christmas Star, and Barrett was a sheep.



After church, Nolan, Barrett and I went to the local ice rink for the afternoon public skate. One of Nolan's fellow IP participants was also there so they had fun racing around the rink. In addition, we found out that other IP kids who are also in Learn To Skate this session were in the Learn To Skate Christmas Program (along with the daughter of one of Scott's co-workers), so we stuck around for an hour after public skating to watch the boys' friends participate.

Happy birthday to Brother-In-Law and Uncle Art today too!

Scott

December 7th...Nolan's Birthday

On Thursday, Nolan turned 5 years old and had a great birthday. His party will be combined with Barrett's on the 17th and will take place at our local rink. We decided to rent the rink out for part of an afternoon for the party and thought it would be nice to have it between Nolan and Barrett's birthdays for a combined party.

Some pictures from Nolan's fun time opening gifts are below.






After an excellent dinner at Outback Steakhouse (our Montana source for Texas' Blue Bell Ice Cream), we returned home for a green Mickey Mouse snowman cake. I'm not sure where the snowman came in, but this is what Nolan asked for in his birthday cake so Kelly complied. In any case, it was a delicious cake created by Kelly (as always).



It will be a busy year for Nolan, with starting school next Fall just part of the fun that awaits him!

Scott

December 2nd...Coaches Clinic

On December 2nd, I completed the first level coaches clinic for USA Hockey so that I could help out the main coaches during Nolan's IP sessions. This was a fun day of classroom time and on-ice time with some kids. The organizers arranged for some Mite kids to come help the coaches learn, and they said at lunch that Nolan and the other Dad's kids were welcome to come out and skate. So Nolan came out to help Dad learn too, and had a good time learning some new drills.

As of Dec 10th, Nolan's main coaches have welcomed the Dad's who took the course to help out during IP and we've been taking advantage and having a great time with the kids. It is nice to be involved when work will allow.

Scott

Thanksgiving/Hockey Weekend In Denver

Kelly, Barrett, and Nolan enjoying the D.U. vs. Air Force hockey game at Magness Arena on the campus of D.U.

We just finished up a great trip to Denver today, after driving down there on Thanksgiving Day. After making great time (8.5 hrs) heading south last Thursday, we were able to watch a PeeWee hockey team from Montana play in a holiday weekend tournament in Centennial, Colorado (Nolan's IP Hockey coach is also the coach of this PeeWee team). Then we headed up the mountain to Evergreen where my Uncle Jack and Aunt Darlene live. It was a balmy 73 degrees in Denver for Turkey-day and just as nice in the mountains (albeit a few degrees cooler).

Friday brought some time on the playground, Thanksgiving Dinner with my cousins and their children and friends. Many of us then travelled to a new mall east of Denver to watch Marcus (my cousin Tom's son) sing Christmas carols with his Middle School choir group. We then got a dose of On The Border (none in Montana) and headed to the University of Denver for their hockey game against the Air Force Academy. A few former Billings Bulls Junior players are currently cadets at the Academy, so it was fun for us to see them play at the D-I level. D.U. won the game 2-1. Nolan's IP coach brought his PeeWee team to the game and they had arranged to go to the D.U. locker room after the game. Thanks to Jason (Nolan's coach), Nolan was able to go with the PeeWee kids and meet the D.U. players and coaches after the game!!! The D.U. goalie even noticed that Nolan didn't have anything for autographs so he gave him a program to have signed by many of the players. As we were leaving after Nolan returned from the locker room, Nolan's coach pointed out that Colorado Avalanche defenseman John-Micheal Liles was in the room with us too, so Nolan and Barrett got to meet him and get his autograph too!!

Nolan and Barrett (foreground) as John-Michael Liles autographs their program.

Saturday, we spent the morning with Jack and Dar again and greatly enjoyed and appreciated their hospitality. Around the time we could check into our hotel in Thornton (N of Denver), we headed down the mountain so the boys could play in the pool for part of the afternoon. After that, we went for our visit to Chili's (again none in Montana) for dinner. Then Kelly and Barrett dropped Nolan and I off at the D.U. arena and they went shopping at the Cherry Creek Mall and surrounding Super Target, etc., etc. Nolan and I found our seats and then moved down to where Uncle Jack and cousin Tom have Saturday season tickets. Luckily not many folks wanted to see D.U. play Robert Morris so we were able to sit right with Jack and Tom for the whole game. Nolan really enjoyed seeing another game, especially after meeting the D.U. players the night before. D.U. won this game as well. After the game, we said good-bye to Uncle Jack and Tom, and Kelly and Barrett picked us up right outside the arena as the game ended.

This morning we started our trip back to Montana and were blessed with great travelling weather. We even cut about a 1/2 hour off our time, and we were back in Billings by 4pm.

We could not be more thankful to have great family and friends in Colorado, and only wish we had more time to visit with all those we did not see on this trip.

More in a few days...but this week Kelly is back to teaching, music classes and hockey get going again, and Scott heads back to work on Wednesday.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend too!!!!!

Scott

Thanksgiving Week

What a few weeks. Lots of weather fluctuations, lots of wind here in Montana. Not nearly the grey skies which have been so prevalent in the eastern US...but interesting none the less.

Nolan continues to do well and learn a lot during his IP hockey experience. He finished session 1 and is now on to his second session. A lot of the older kids moved up to Mites after session 1, but Nolan is still very excited to continue in IP even though some of his friends moved up a level.

Barrett went to a public skate with Nolan and I a few weeks ago and was skating around quite a bit without the "bar" and having a lot of fun getting on and off the ice. I even saw him get up off the ice all by himself for the first few times. I was impressed!

Kelly and I have been fighting off some bugs the last few weeks. I had a very minor dose last week, and then Kelly was ill late last week and part of this weekend. Luckily we think we are pushing past all that now.

Hopefully our house is done being sick too, since we had sewer problems late last week too!! YUCK!!!! RotoRooter was out here twice in two days, but the 2nd time was much less messy as we discovered the problem before it spread in the basement. We added some other chemical treatment (lye, etc.) on Saturday night and so far so good. Lesson learned...don't believe Pampers when they say the kandoo wipes (for potty training) are "sewer friendly"...THEY ARE NOT!!! We are hopeful the wipes were the entire problem and the problem has been cleared (and no root damage is causing the problem). Our little old house has 3 inch drain pipes, and no outside cleanout to the 6 inch pipes in the back yard...so RotoRooter could only go in with a 3 inch blade from the inside clean out location. We are sooooo hopeful that the wipes were the only problem and we can make it to spring-time. At that point, we may have to drop $1k plus to have an outside cleanout installed.

It is nice to have Thanksgiving week here and the holidays already underway. The boys are already really excited. We watched The Santa Clause last night while Kelly enjoyed a few hours out with some friends. I think Nolan is ready to take the turkeys down and get the Christmas decorations up ASAP!! I'll need to think about untangling lights sometime soon!

Hope you all have a great and safe Thanksgiving!! Enjoy your Turkey!

Scott

Halloween and the Commander-In-Chief

Happy Halloween a few days late. I'm finally off of evening shifts and wanted to share some recent fun!! As many already know, Nolan decided to be a practice putting green (from a golf course) for Halloween and Kelly made him a cool costume. Kelly also did a great job creating the tiger costume for Barrett this year!!!


By Halloween morning...the pumpkins were mighty frozen so carving them was quite an adventure before my evening shift on Halloween night. We've been quite cold here this week if you had not noticed.

Our Republican Senator Conrad Burns is fighting to be re-elected this week, and is trailing badly enough in the polls that the RNC decided to drop the serious coin to bring President Bush out here on his behalf (Thanks to the McCain-Feingold Legislation, the political parties now have to foot the bill for these campaign trips--security, AF1 fuel/maintenance/crews/etc.--not our tax dollars anymore!! WooHoo!!). President Bush was here today (Thursday), but a day earlier the newspaper said that free tickets for the rally were available so I grabbed one up (Kelly has to teach and the boys go to day-care on Thursdays). The following is one of the better pictures I was able to capture from the floor of the MetraPark Arena where I watched the speech.
Our friend Taylor Brown (through Kelly's previous work at KTVQ) even spoke before "W" arrived, and he and his wife can be seen in the background of the photo above. Kelly went up to the airport after teaching to try to get a glimpse of Air Force One, and I found her there after the speech and we watch the President depart en route to Elko, Nevada for another campaign stop.

Kelly has her first tutoring student coming over tonight for some calculus fun, and I am back to work Friday night for 4 midnight shifts (Yippeee).

Hope your Halloween was great, and that you don't get any bothersome campaign phone calls in the next week!!

Scott

Grandma and Grandpa C Visit

Hi everyone,

We had a good visit with Grandma and Grandpa from Michigan last week, and they have safely returned to Grand Rapids.

Early in their stay, Kelly and Grandma got into a home improvement project and started to rip out the carpet in our dining room to expose the hardwood floors. To our delight, the floors look great! So, we took out that piece of carpet, removed all the staples and tack strips and the picture below shows our nice "new" dining room floor!!



Kelly also took on the majority of the painting of Barrett's room, and we will eventually put some stenciled images of race cars, etc. over the nice bright white paint in his room. It really looks nice too.

Not much else going on lately. Will check back in again sometime soon.

Scott

Braggin' Rights

We had a good end of last week, with Nolan again enjoying his "IP" hockey. We were not able to stay at the rink for the Billings Bulls home opener since all 525 tickets had already sold out by Friday morning (who would've figured...?!).

I was on midnight shifts all week, but Kelly and the kids were able to enjoy our very pleasant late September weather and went to ZooMontana and some other fun stuff while I was sleeping the days away!

Saturday afternoon, we headed over to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the annual football match-up for bragging rights in the house between Texas A&M and Texas Tech. We knew we would miss the first half since I was sleeping, but we did get to see most of the second half. A&M completely dominated the second half dissolving Tech's halftime 10 point lead. A&M rushed for something like 300 yards, so that is a clue. Unfortunately for A&M after taking the lead, Tech had one more last minute drive in them and completed a long touchdown pass to win the game.

That makes 9 out of 12 years since I started graduate school at Texas Tech that they have defeated the Aggies in football!!!!! Now if they could just figure out how to beat the Longhorns more often (they have only 3 wins in 11 tries against UT...and this year may provide another L)!!!!!

Nolan and Barrett enjoyed watching all the football on the big screens at B-dubs (althought they had their Aggie shirts on), ate dinner and then we headed over to watch Senior High play Great Falls CMR (Senior won that game too!).

My stretch of midnight shifts ended today (Sunday) so now we transition into our big KOA presentation and Great Divide Workshop week here in Billings. Dick Cheney will be in Billings Monday for a political fundraiser, and the director of the National Weather Service will arrive for our events Monday afternoon. It should be a busy, but fun week interacting with some representatives of our neighboring forecast offices and other attendees. Nolan gets to skate again Monday evening.

Grandma and Grandpa Carpenter will be here in 10 days!!! Hopefully our very nice and warm October weather will continue through their visit...but we'll have to wait and see. Last year on Oct 4-5th we received about 10 inches of snow!!!!

Take care and hope you all had a great weekend and that you have a great week.

SJC

Monday Night HOCKEY!?!

The weather may have improved significantly with temperatures 30 degrees warmer than late last week, but ironically we now have ice at Centennial Arena. A day after they expected to get up and running, Nolan's IP (Initiation Program) got underway Monday night.

Above is a zoomed in picture of Nolan (through the glass so that also diminished the quality, but that really is him). He worked very hard and had a great time! They really had the kids skating A LOT, so he is definitely sleeping soundly tonight. The approx. 20 kids range from 4 years old to probably 12, as this program exists to open up hockey to a wide range of kids. The kids played a cat and mouse like "tag" game, started to learn how to "hockey stop," gliding on one skate, and did a lot of superman slides (skating and then falling forward and getting right up and continuing to skate). Once he got the idea that he was supposed to fall down, he did great on this. This was a lot of getting up off the ice, which even made Mom and Dad feel tired for him! Mom, Dad and Barrett are VERY proud of Nolan for having fun and trying his best! If we can avoid any more compressor failures at the ice rink, he'll get to skate again Friday evening...before the Bulls home opener.

I also participated in a 2 person scramble golf tournament for the church youth group Sunday at our local par-3 course. I ended up with a decent partner and we "pulled a Mickelson" with a one shot lead on 18 and double bogeyed to come in 2nd overall. However, at last check I had earned two flag prizes, including one closest to the pin (2nd of these this year in only two tournaments!) and one longest birdie putt!!! Not bad for my first time on that course this year! One of the flag prize sponsors was the hospital gift shop, so we'll see if I win a teddy bear or a Get Well Soon bouquet! Kelly and the boys will have to pick up any prize at church next week, since I'll be sleeping off a last midnight shift.

Hopefully will have more to post soon. We hope you are all well and having a nice early autumn.

How do you spell relief?

Kelly's geometry class continues to go well, and she even administered her first test to the kids this week. She also is teaching Sunday school again this session.

I'm in a stretch of evening shifts that ends Friday night, so it will be nice to have the weekend off this week, even if it will be wet. Too bad the boys and I won't be able to skate due to the loss of ice. Work is great, but very busy as we prepare to host the Director of the National Weather Service during his early October visit. He is coming out for our presentation to KOA campgrounds national headquarters as a StormReady Supporter Corporation. KOA will be the first nationwide corporation to be deemed StormReady in the country. I am proud to say that I've been involved in leading the team to work with KOA on this. I'm also involved in leading our involvement in an aviation and technology outreach event to around 11,000 school children in MT, northern WY, and western ND next May. And I've somehow turned into a producer of brochures, designing a new Billings NWS Office brochure and another for distribution with weather radios to local public schools.

Nolan and Barrett...
Barrett started Sunday School last Sunday and is still really excited about that! His teacher (and my co-worker) reported that he really likes glue and stickers!

With two ages in each Sunday School class, Nolan has graduated to being one of the "older" kids in his class and is liking that a lot too!

Barrett started his latest music class on Wednesday, "God's Children Sing," which is part of the MusikGarten program. He did great and is already enjoying this class. Nolan started his latest music class on Tuesday. Both boys enjoyed the week of nice hot weather playing with friends at Rose Park and elsewhere.

Barrett has grown enough to be able to wear the actual seat belt when in his booster in the cars.

Update on Nolan's Hockey starting: Maybe late next week if Centennial Arena can get the new compressors up and running by then.

Weather...
Thursday night finally brought rain to the Billings area and conditions are much cooler with much greater humidities for the wildfires to our southwest. This is the first instance of receiving more than 0.10" of precipitation since August 12th, MORE THAN A MONTH!!!!!!

After skies covered in smoke two days ago from an explosive Jungle Fire, it is great to see "real" clouds and rain falling instead of ash.

This storm system is so strong though, that we now already have a Winter Storm Watch in effect for parts of eastern MT and the Big Horn Mountains of north-central WY. Never a dull moment lately.

Derby/Jungle Fires

On Wednesday 9/6/06, I and 3 co-workers were able to make a trip to the Derby Mtn Fire Complex and observe a burn-out designed to stop the westward progression of the fire. The frequency of helicopter traffic from where they picked up new loads of water or retardant was incredible. The best description of the experience was like being in an episode of "MASH."

This fire and its sister-fire, the Jungle Fire continue to burn today. In fact today, the Jungle Fire really erupted and reports are that it may have moved east enough to actually reach the burned out area of the Derby Mtn complex. We have had so much smoke from the Jungle moving over the Billings area today and on east into N. Dakota. This plume of smoke is actually producing showers of ash over at least the Columbus and Billings areas and presumably everywhere in between and points farther east.

Big cool down (and hopefully precipitation event) in store for Fri/Sat/Sun so we're all hoping this is a season ending event.

SJC