Summer is just around the corner

With just a few weeks left until the official kick off of summer 2010, it seemed an appropriate time to update the page. We’ve had a good spring, despite the seemingly never ending rain we’ve been saddled with. Personally, spring officially ranks third in my list of seasons; well above winter but still slightly below summer and a world away from fall. It’s one redeeming feature to me is it marks the official return of fun things, like baseball and camping and concerts. So that’s what we’ve been doing.

We had a nice Easter at Grandma LeBaige’s as per usual. The boys aren’t too old for Easter egg hunts just yet, although I have a feeling we don’t have too many more years left of them with Logan. Maybe if we stuffed the eggs with $20 bills? We also made a trip up to Higginsville to take Jim and Honey on their first official walk together at a Confederate War Memorial site. I had no idea we had Confederate War Memorial sites here in Missouri. It was kind of interesting. While it was being preserved by someone, it obviously does not garner the same level of attention a site dedicated to the winning team would have. History is written by the victors and all that I suppose.

More recently Erika and the boys and I made a trip down to Bull Shoals, AR. for our first official family camping trip of the season. We stayed at the Bull Shoals-White River state park on a primitive camp site. It’s a beautiful location, overlooking the White River just south of the Bull Shoals Lake dam. While we were there we hiked a couple trails and had a great dinner of grilled shrimp, asparagus, and corn on the cob. The second trail was probably a mistake however; it was poorly tended and severely overgrown. We all walked out covered in ticks, Jim included. It made the drive home quite interesting. I’m still avoiding getting back in the truck. Sooner or later they should just die off …

I also made the annual pilgrimage out to Liberty Memorial Park in Kansas City for Rockfest this past weekend. The concert was held earlier than usual this year and it definitely made a difference. The place was a gigantic pit of mud thanks to two weeks of rain. Normally I really enjoy Rockfest; 50,000 drunk white trash Missourians and loud music, how can you go wrong? Sadly, the cold sub 60 degree temperatures and never ending sea of mud was just too much for us. We gave up and left early. Maybe when I was younger I would have enjoyed being slathered in gook head to toe but I just wasn’t feeling it this time around.

The boys have started baseball up again, although so far the season has consisted of a handful of practices and one game. Everything else has been rained out. This rain seriously needs to stop. Both the boys are getting pretty dejected by the whole thing. Baseball is definitely not an all weather sport.

There’s a lot left to do this summer, so you’ll be hearing from me again soon. In the mean time, someone fire the weather guy; he’s cramping our style.

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Time for the quarterly blog update

Another winter has come and gone. Not without a fight I might add, as evidenced by the nearly foot of snow we received just days before spring started. It’s all gone now though, things are turning green again and we’re all ready to get out of the house and start enjoying some global warming.

Logan made his transition from the Cub Scouts to the Boy Scouts about a month ago. He has a new uniform and a new troop and seems pretty excited so far. He’s going to be doing a ton of camping this summer with them which he is looking forward to. It’s odd seeing him with the group because he is so much younger than most of the boys, but they seem to be decent enough folk and I’m sure he’ll grow into it soon enough.

Logan and Conner have both started their baseball seasons as well. Conner has the same coach he had last year, who also happens to be his Cub Scout pack leader. He’s great with kids and seems to have just the right mix of patience and “coach voice” the keep the boys in check. Logan’s coach is a young airman from the base who has never done anything like this before so I suspect it’s going to be a bit rough going at first. He seems very enthusiastic though and it’ll be interesting to see how the kids react to him. I suspect he’s going to quickly discover that coaching and playing and two VERY different things. Coincidentally, both boys have practices on the same day at the same time every week, but in different locations. That should be an interesting juggling act.

Not much has changed for me personally. I have plans to go to a couple concerts this summer, make a trip to Arkansas, and put some more time in hiking and camping than I have the last few years. I’ve even thought about buying a hand held GPS device and fooling around with Geocaching a bit. Anything to get me off the couch and out of the house. It’s time to start using some of this free time I’ve found myself with, that’s for sure.

P.S. I posted a few new pictures albums .. Conner’s 9th birthday, a few pictures from my recent trip to a Kevin Smith Q&A in Kansas City, and some shots from Conner’s Pinewood Derby.

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Life marches on

It’s been a busy fall. I moved into my new home in August. It was a long, nail biting closing process. There were many times when I didn’t think the deal was going to happen for one reason or another. But in the end everything fell into place, and here we are. I still have a ton of work to do, but it’s starting to feel like home.

Logan and Conner have adjusted to their new surroundings pretty well. They do get a bit lonely over here as there aren’t many other kids in the neighborhood, but we’re finding ways to keep each other entertained. Having Jim around helps a lot, he’s quickly becoming best friends with Logan and Conner. It’s surprising how easily people become attached to a dog and vice versa. I can hardly imagine life without him now. Jim’s heart worm treatment went well. He’ll be going back to the vet in January to see if the worms are completely gone. We’re keeping our hopes up, both for him and for my wallet (vet fees are ridiculous!).

I uploaded a few videos of the house, as well as a photo album I took right after buying the place and some pictures from Logan’s 11th birthday. As usual, clicking on the “Recent Albums” link on the right side of the screen is the best way to find them.

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Another random pile of pictures

So here I am again after several months of neglecting this website, uploading a bunch of pictures at once and wondering what to say about them. It’s been a very busy summer, and we have so much going on in our lives right now it’s hard to decide where to start. So I think I’ll just type and see what happens.

Whiteman held an air show back in June. They didn’t do one last year, and with the economy in the crapper the way it has been coupled with free entrance, the turn out was .. large. It took me and the boys at least two hours to get from our house to the flight line on base where the air show was being held. We met up with Grandma and Grandpa LeBaige once we were at the show. It was fun, although I have to say I think I’ve been to enough air shows at this point that I’m losing interest. The boys were mostly bored with the whole ordeal too after an hour or so. Lesson learned for next time!

We had a nice 4th of July party with a ton of borderline legal fire works. I had no idea you could even buy explosives this powerful without a license. I wish I had taken some pictures now that I look back at it, but at the time I was too busy blowing things up and cooking food to think about it. I smoked a pork roast that that was about two hours over done. It was a bit .. chewy. I also made some red beans and rice and sweetened green beans that turned out well. We had some folks from work over and the turn our was decent. I think next year I’m going to be scaling the 4th of July plans down a bit though The clean up just isn’t worth it anymore!

Logan and Conner both went to boy scout camps with Erika in early July. I really need to go to one of these next year, they always look like a lot of fun. Personally I’d rather just take the boys camping myself but realistically we don’t have any other families up here we could really invite to go with us. And that’s half the fun of camping. Then again I seem to recall entertaining myself just fine when I was a kid no matter who was there. I’m considering a camping trip this September. Whether it happens or not depends on a few things that I’m working right now falling into place. It would certainly be a nice to just escape off into the woods for awhile.

I turned 32 in August. I suppose it’s somewhat obvious to say I’ve never felt older but it’s the truth. I’ve let my fitness routine slip and it’s starting to show. On the bright side I have quit smoking again. Chantix is a hell of a drug. You take it and you don’t want to smoke any more. There’s certainly a lot of bad press out there surrounding this medication, and I suppose there could be some merit to it. But for me all it did was make me not want to smoke. I’m going to try to refocus myself going forward and get back into some version of a better shape, before that shape becomes round. Exercise really is an amazing thing, and now that my lungs are going back to normal I’m looking forward to being able to use them properly again.

After years of harassment, the boys finally broke me down and I adopted a dog. His name is Jim. He is a mutt of some sort. I think he is at least partially Beauceron, a French herding dog. He probably also has some German Sheppard or something similar in him. He’s an amazingly well behaved dog, especially considering we found him in a shelter. He’s completely house broken, never barks, isn’t aggressive at all (even to the cats) and in general is just about the perfect temperament for us. Unfortunately he has been diagnosed with Heart Worms AND some tick born disease who’s name I can’t recall. We’re having him treated and it’s costing us a small fortunte but it’s worth it. The boys love him, I love him, and he loves us. What more could you ask for?

The long days of summer are just about over for us at this point. Logan and Conner go back to school in a week. So do I actually. We’ve got some big changes coming in other areas which I don’t really want to go into right now; suffice to say it’s a big year for the whole LeBaige clan. I’m looking forward to the future, but I’m apprehensive about it as well. Life doesn’t pull any punches, that’s for sure. More to come soon!

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Well rats

Brian the rat passed on last night. He had suffered some sort of injury near the base of his tail. We’re not sure what it was, but there was a lot of blood in his cage when we found him. He stuck around for several hours but was clearly in shock from the blood loss, and it was only a matter of time. Unfortunately I woke up this morning to Logan walking down the hall towards my bedroom crying, and knew what had happened.

Brian was the last of our rats; Sniff the rat also died a few weeks ago. As much as they were smelly, dirty animals, the rats were also wonderful pets. They’re very affectionate and gentle, and genuinely intelligent. We all really enjoyed them, particularly Brian. From a very young age it was clear Brian was the more adventurous of the two. He was never afraid of us, and always wanted to come out of his cage to play. He would gently lick your hand when you held him, and would even give you a kiss if you let him. If you stood three or four people in a row and held out your arms, he would run from one person to the next across their shoulders and down their arms. We tested him on this many times to see if he could use this technique to make it back to his cage, and he always did. There was clearly thought inside that little head of his. He bit Logan once, but as Logan says “it wasn’t his fault and he wasn’t mad at him for it”. He even had the common decency not to go to the bathroom on us while he was out, something I can’t say about Sniff.

We’ll be burying him outside later today.

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