June 5, 2007: Astros vs. Rockies

We decided after Kelly's doctor appointment Tuesday to take advantage of a Rockies Value Game and head down to the big city and see Kelly's Astros play. Barrett and I rooted on the Rockies, while Nolan wore his Astros shirt and joined Kelly in rooting for them. The Astros prevailed 4-1 in a very good game (including a bench/bullpen clearing situation--I wouldn't really call it a fight though).

We got down to Denver real early to pick up our ticket package since it also included a parking pass, and then drove around the city a little bit. We stopped at Invesco to see the Bronco fountain and to drop by the Broncos store. The following picture is of the boys outside Invesco Field and check out the hail shaft in the background from a nearby thunderstorm!


After parking, we stopped by the Breckenridge Brewery for a little bite to eat (since our ticket package also included 4 hot dogs and 4 drinks at the stadium) before the game. The Denver chapter of Texas A&M alumni was supposed to be meeting there to distribute their tickets for the game, but we did not end up seeing any of them at the restaurant (we'll have to track them down later at another event).

We then went into Coors Field for the game and were there early enough for the boys to play on the playground in the Left Field corner (they think of everything, don't they). The playground was right behind our section so it worked out really nice as we waited for the game to start.


We were under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch at game time, but the weather was actually perfect as it was a nice warm evening (and all the storms were well east of Denver).



Here we are. Barrett did really well, but did get scared a few times about how dark it was getting. Nolan just had a blast the whole evening, especially when trash talking with me and pretending to fight after the bench clearing situation.



Above, another picture of the boys enjoying the game.



Here's Kelly and the boys toward the end of the evening.

We hit the exit to Coors Field just before 1030pm after the game and the boys did a great job walking the 1/2 mile or so to our parking area. We jumped on I25 and were back at the house at 1205am after the drive home.

We all had a great afternoon/evening enjoying being able to have this fun without taking a whole weekend to come down to Denver as we've had to do in the past! We are so thankful to have these opportunities, but we sure still miss Montana at times.

On that note, we have our second visitors from Billings coming by this Friday when the Bikles pass through town! It was great to see the Solum's last week and we really look forward to our visit with the Bikle's.

Nolan in High Demand!

Nolan had his first t-ball practice today at the park by where he will start school this fall. Ironically it was not for his team. We signed him up for YMCA t-ball in early May, and two teams have come calling! The Rangers called first, then the Padres...with the Padres first to practice on Sunday. Nolan did great practicing with the Padres, but when I returned home from work today he told me "the Padres have enough players, I'm going to play for the Rangers."

Kelly spoke to the organizer and in fact they had mistakenly put him on both rosters and he was needed on the Rangers. Amazingly, the YMCA t-ball has 14 teams and they play at a local soccer park dividing the 3 soccer fields up into 8 different little ball fields! It should be interesting when games start June 12th. The Rangers first practice will be next weekend, so practice will have to continue in our front yard.

Note: Nolan's connection to Texas continues since his Billings "house" Mite Hockey team was the Stars (in reference to Dallas) and now the Rangers (of course also in the Metroplex). Plus, a local antique store owner recently gave Nolan an old Nolan Ryan (as a Texas Ranger) Kellogg's Corn Flakes box when Kelly and my Mom were shopping for furniture for our 'heritage' room in the new house! Funny how things end up happening some times!

More to come soon...

The Tradition Continues...We found Poppies!

Hope you enjoyed this brief photo essay. The first four pictures were in our Billings backyard, beginning when Nolan was almost one and a half. Barrett joined the pictures when he was almost one and a half. The last is along a street near our church in Cheyenne.

Happy 34th Birthday to....ME!

Another great birthday today, and nice after a weekend of going through old stuff kept since I was a child. Kind of therapeutic really.

And Kelly discovered that season 5 of Scrubs was released...TODAY...so that tradition continues too! This DVD contains the great 100th episode (aka, the Wizard of Oz episode ending in IZ's rendition of "somewhere over the rainbow."

I also officially received my new wireless weather station today, so will start investigating where that can be placed around the yard.

Still no grass in our seeded back yard, but there is actual rain falling this evening so we'll see if we see some sprouts by the 14 day mark.

Back to celebrating!

We're getting more and more settled into our new home every day. We are doing very well going through a lot of old stuff we've collected over the years.

The boys are doing well and adjusting well to life in Cheyenne.

I've worked a full stretch of midnight shifts (7) and several evenings. My first opportunity to supervise a day shift will be this coming week so that should be fun. On one of my evening shifts last week, we had a confirmed tornado on the ground near I-25 to the north of Cheyenne and near Guernsey (not anywhere near the city of Cheyenne). It came from a very weak thunderstorm and only lasted a very brief time. My co-workers told me that is a typical WY tornado, but over in Nebraska we will see the more textbook type tornadoes. It was good to experience a first tornado in the forecast area so soon, and thank goodness it was out in open country.

Today (Sunday), we were eating lunch and heard the tornado siren going off. Apparently another very small funnel cloud touched down briefly and law enforcement saw it. All we could see from the house was rain shafts and no rotation, but apparently there was a brief tornado on the other side of town. No word on damage yet, if any. The storm fell apart very quickly after the warning was issued.

Later this afternoon we have a church picnic to attend, so hopefully the existing storms dissipate and we can enjoy that and meet some more folks.

For those of you who know, I've taken photos of the boys every year (after they were born, of course) by our poppies in our Billings back yard. We thought we were out of luck this year, so Saturday I took the boys to a big grove of Lilacs here in town for a photo.

As it turns out though, we saw some poppies on the way home from church today so we'll try to get over to that neighborhood today or tomorrow for an authentic "poppy pic."

Home Owners, Part Deux

We're in our house! We closed this morning and spent the day doing a bit of cleaning, screen door track repair, etc.

Reba (our dog) has now moved over to her new yard, but Rikki (the cat) will hold out in the hotel for at least another day.

The movers are set to deliver our goods May 1st (tomorrow) so we can start the unpacking.

Tuesday we will also welcome Grandma Carpenter to Cheyenne, and we are all looking forward to visiting and unpacking with her.

Hope to have more pics to post soon of a house filled with boxes!

More Pics from Cheyenne

We've had another nice week here in Wyoming. It was busy at times, but our work continues to lead up to getting rid of our "homeless" title early this week!

Above is a picture of the boys at Nolan's "kindergarten roundup" event at Bain Elementary. The staff assess the children's readiness for Kindergarten in the fall, and they gave Nolan a big "thumbs up" (just like when he did an assessment 12-18 months ago in Billings).

Lowe's had a special kids workshop Saturday morning where we built some squirrel feeders.

Listening to a bit of the NFL draft on Fox Sports Radio wasting a little time in the Hyundai before lunch after Lowe's on Saturday

After lunch Saturday, we spent some more time at the "green park" near our new house and I especially liked this picture of "B" on the playground.

Nolan at the "green park" on Saturday too! He is getting really close to being able to cross the monkey bars (or rings).

My new job is going quite well, with a WHOLE LOT of training going on right now. A much different environment exists here compared to NWS Billings...certainly not all bad...but I'm trying to overcome the bit of culture shock.

We get to do a final walk through in our house Sunday afternoon, and hope to be posting pictures of us in our new home after the April 30th closing!

Sunday in Sidney, Nebraska

We took a drive today into the Nebraska panhandle to see some of the forecast area covered by my new office.

Ended up eating lunch in Sidney, NE and then had to make a visit to Cabela's. The picture above is in the very large store there where they have a waterfall and several species on display (taxidermy of course). Definitely a fun place to stop with lots and lots of fun toys available.

Pictures from the past few days.

Above are a few shots Kelly took during their laundry adventure this week!


Nolan on Saturday at Lions Park having fun trying to figure out the labrynth.

Barrett on Saturday at Lions Park by the steam locomotive on display.

The Boys New Room

Kelly, Nolan, Barrett and our realtor went over to what will soon be our new house to make some measurements on Wednesday. Here are just a few pictures from the boys new room.

An evening in northern Colorado

On Wednesday, we took an evening trip down to Loveland, Colorado to get our fix of "On the Border" food. We also had to have some jewelry items checked out for warrantee purposes at the new mall area in Loveland, and the picture above is at the mall in a little area with some rocks and concrete animal forms the kids can climb on. And YES that is front range convection/thunderstorm in the background moving over Cheyenne while we were down in Colorado. We DID get to see a great lightning display while returning north to Wyoming though! The best news, this shopping/dining area is only about 45 minutes from our new home!

The Long and Short of it...

Interesting 3 days...

Our last night in Billings (Thursday night) was extremely long as both boys had a stomach bug or reaction to bad milk at the hotel or food at a local restaurant...but thankfully the overnight manager was great about helping us out with the messes. Kelly has also been fighting off a similar bug the last 24 hours.

We did get on the road a little late Friday morning, but after a short nap stop at the Kaycee, WY rest area we made it into Cheyenne in the early evening. Along the way, our Billings realtor was in contact with us for negotiations with our proposed buyer. They want us to put a new roof on the place, even after already coming down $4900 on the price of the house. Should be interesting to see how they react to our reply. More to come on this, we are sure.

We're at the LaQuinta on W. Lincolnway in Cheyenne in case anyone is passing through sometime in the next several days.

Our inspection for our new home in Cheyenne went fairly well Friday, with a gas leak at the gas water heater the main concern. The photos in the report make it look like something that the seller can get fixed pretty easily, so we are hopeful of that. We will meet with our realtor this afternoon (Saturday) to go over the report in detail and hopefully there is not anything else critical that will impede that end of our move.

The boys and I are off to Lowe's this morning for our first kids project here in Cheyenne.

Here are some pictures from the past few days...

Our living room full of boxes during Wed. loading.

Another snowy April day for moving in Billings.

Reba making sure her bone does not get loaded into the truck!

The boys saying good-bye Wednesday to Glenna (our day care provider the past 5 years).

The boys Thursday morning in the new Best Western in Billings.

Kelly, Nolan and Barrett surprised me by showing up for pizza and cake on my last day of work (Thursday) with the rest of the staff. This was the cake that Vickie ordered for the occasion.

Nolan and Barrett watching some cartoons at one of our LaQuinta rooms in Cheyenne (Saturday morning).

Happy Easter!

We hope you had a great Easter Sunday. We had a good morning of egg hunting and church before we got back to preparing our home for the arrival of the packing crew Monday morning.

We hope to be able to have our home sale progressing Monday, with just the inspection remaining mid-week if we can get all the offer paperwork arranged with the buyer and 3rd party folks.

Here are some pictures from our Easter Sunday. Click each photo to enlarge.

PCS Party

Thanks very much to Scott's coworkers and friends from the HAM Radio Community for a very enjoyable going away party at Buffalo Wild Wings on Monday, April 2nd. We thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to visit with you all before we depart.

Dora, Tally and Nolan saying good-bye.
The kids also had a great visit as you can see here.

We Found A House

April 2nd was a day we will remember for awhile...

First, we found out from Kelly's ultrasound this morning that we are definitely having another Boy in early August!

Second, after a very quick trip to Cheyenne over the weekend (including a creative route to avoid highways closed by a massive spring snowstorm) we put an offer on a home Sunday. At about 445pm Monday afternoon we heard back from our realtor that the seller accepted our offer. Basically a little below list price and stating we could close by April 30th!

Included here are a few of the pictures from the listing. We were not all that interested in this house just from the internet, but actually walking through it with a better sense of depth and height we really loved it! I'll take some new pictures when we move in that better represent the home and post them then. We need to get rid of some more of our storage type stuff but we have some time this week to work on that!






Remember you can click on the photos to see bigger versions.

We have a few folks starting to show some more interest in our Billings home too, so we are hopeful that there is some progress on this end soon too!

March 25th, 2007

Finally found some time to make another post to our little blog. First of all, happy 103rd birthday to my Grandmother in Rockford, Michigan today!!!!!!

We are still awaiting more folks to take a look at our home here in Billings and hope to hear of some offers in the near future. We are still thinking of heading to Cheyenne to check out a few homes with our realtor, but with potential for some significant weather in the late March/early April timeframe...details remain vague.

Nolan has one more hockey practice this week and Barrett is down to one more lesson in this session of Snowplow Sam 2. Both the boys are working hard and having a lot of fun on the ice and I'm sure will miss it over the summer. For starting Learn to Skate at age 3, Barrett is doing really well learning what his legs and feet can do! It's interesting for Dad and Mom to see what motor skills the kids have at the different ages.

I had a great time last week in Missoula at a sub-regional WCM meeting and came away with a lot of creative outreach ideas which I hope to be able to share with the Cheyenne office. We were lucky enough to see Missoula during non-foggy and low-cloud conditions...and it is a nice place. I know I would not appreciate it when it is fogged in though and will gladly take the 300+ days of sunshine per year in the "front range" locations.

I also participated for the 5th (I think) time in the Billings Clinic Science Expo as a Science Fair judge Friday evening and at our NWS booth in the exhibit area on Saturday. Our office had a whopping 5 employees judging for the science fair this year and once again it was a great experience interacting with the students. We had a good time at the booth on Saturday too, but unfortunately the Van de Graaf generator fried our laptop and later in the day the belt went bad on the Van de Graaf itself!!! Not a great day for our technology and hands-on science equipment.

Will keep everyone posted as our moving plans progress.

Magic City Meltdown Tyke Tournament

Nolan had a great time at the Magic City Meltdown tournament today, playing 3 half-ice games for the Billings Stars. The Billings Amateur Hockey League put together two small tyke teams to go along with the visiting teams from Bozeman and Butte (the older Mites participated in a much bigger tournament Fri-Sun including 8 teams total).

During the second game today, against the Butte Blues, Nolan scored a goal on a tip that went off his stick, up off his shoulder pad and over the goalie!!! He made a great play with a centering pass from the corner for an assist. Finally, Nolan also made 3 or 4 great saves when he was playing Goalie (Barrett was proudest since he has shot a lot of balls at Nolan playing goalie in hallway hockey!!!). Once again Nolan worked really hard and was one of the minority out there trying to play his position and thinking with and without the puck. Barrett and Kelly cheered like crazy all day long. I was able to help coach and spent the day on the ice as the coach/ref for our team (each team has a coach on the ice).

Like the Helena tournament, they don't really keep score but the parents and players informed me that the Billings Stars had 3 wins and 0 losses today. Kelly got the photo above during the awards ceremony after the final game this evening.

March 9th: House on the market!!!

On Tuesday afternoon, our realtors put our home on the market. We've had a few people through the house already and hopefully will see many more after the Sunday newspaper and the realtor's tour next Wednesday morning. We really hope that our efforts in the kitchen, dining room, bathrooms, boys bedrooms, basement staircase, and all of Kelly's curtain creations will make the house more marketable.

If you know someone interested in a 2400 (1200 up/1200 in basement) sq. ft. 3 bedroom (+a non-egress room in the basement), 1.5 bath ranch, ask them to check it out!!!

March 9th: Happy Birthday To Scott's Dad!!!

Happy Birthday Dad from the Big Sky State!

March 4th: Nolan Lost His First Tooth

Hi,
Nolan is happy to pass along that he lost his first tooth last Sunday!

We've been telling people "he lost it in a hockey fight, and you should see the other guy." Nolan doesn't like us saying that though and proclaims, "there's no fighting in Mites!!!"

Whew!

Just taking a few minutes to rest this evening. We had a great day today moving items into our storage unit which opened up this morning.

Our friend Rod was nice enough to help me out with loading moving a part of our entertainment center and two dressers into his truck and out into our storage unit. Rod also helped me move the piano about 8 feet, which is harder than it sounds! Thanks a ton Rod!

Kelly has been continuing to go through boxes and following the moving furniture and cleaning up the mess beneath. It is amazing how some furniture has not moved in 5 years! Yikes that is a lot of dust!!

I also took over to storage the first two of many loads of boxes. Sunday will bring more of the same, but at least we are going to hit 50 degrees for this work!

All of this is in response to our realtor helping us make our house look bigger. She is a genius, because it really does look HUGE! We are just hoping and praying that all of our hard work pays off with a relatively quick sale.

I'm still fighting the same dang cold I've had for almost two weeks, but *knock on wood* I think I may be turning the corner.

We hope all of you are well. Be patient with us if you send an email. We hope that after we "stage" the house, things will settle down a little bit. We know we have to keep it clean and tidy, but at least there will be less packing and moving.

Nolan's tyke tournament in Billings is next weekend on the 10th, and I'm one of two coaches for his team. Should be a blast. Tyke teams are coming from Butte and Bozeman, and the Billings association will have two teams.