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.

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.

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.

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!

Seeing as it’s memoial day weekend, I found myself with some free time. Erika took the boys down to Arkansas to visit some friends so I’m here all by myself. I have a lot of things I need to get taken care of anyway, so it works out okay. If I can keep my motivation level up I will have opened the pool, power washed the driveway, stained the window trim out front, and cleaned the dishwasher innards before the weekend is over. Oh, and washed the Acura. And caught up on the last couple weeks of television that I missed. The list goes on .. suffice to say if I finish half of it I’ll be satisfied.

It’s been a busy month so far. Logan and Conner have started up baseball again, and will be starting summer school in another week. My college continues to creep forward at a snails pace. More importantly however, the good weather is finally here. I love the beginning of summer, it’s the best time of the year for doing stuff outside. I really want to take the boys down to Table Rock Lake and do some camping, but it is going to have to wait a bit longer due to other commitments. I’m also planning on a trip to World of Fun, the local theme park dealio out by Kansas City. They have a big water park there as well, so hopefully we can hit both.

On a personal note, I’m making good progress on my “bands to see before they die” list. I caught Neil Young out at the Sprint Center at the end of April, and will be going to see Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction in less than a week at the Starlight Theater. Neil was so so. I love the guy but damn he is getting old. He still puts on a better show than Bob Dylan though, so I’ll give him that. On the other hand, I’ve heard great things about NIN concerts so I’m really excited about that one. And after that comes Rockfest, the largest one day festival concert in America. It always delivers.

I snuck out to St. Louis a couple weeks ago to visit some friends who were in town. It was a nice break from the usual, and I had a great time. I just wish I could have visited longer. St. Louis is an interesting city, and one of these days I’d like to explore it some more. Immediately after returning from there I had to go down to San Antonio on business for the Air Force. I’ve been there a couple times before so it wasn’t anything new, and I was there by myself which made things a bit boring. I’ve never been very fond of that city, it’s big and sprawling and just down right ugly in most places. Still, I did finally manage to make the tour of the Alamo, and the River Walk area is full of bars and restaurants so it’s always good for some mindless fun. I think I contracted the pig flu or Ebola or something while I was there though, which resulted in me spending a good amount of time lying in bed hacking up stuff I didn’t know I had in my lungs. I’m all better now though!

Oh, the albums on the left are a few pictures from the St. Louis and San Antonio trips if you’re interested.

Ok, it’s not exactly American Idol yet, but it’s a start! For the last couple of months Conner has been in the honor choir at school. He came home every day singing some new song or another. He took to it much better than I thought he would, normally if it’s not watching TV or playing video games he’s just not all that interested. The choir had their concert finally the other day. Kudos to Ridge View Elementary for having mastered the art of making their various performances just long enough to be satisfying but still short enough not to bore you to tears. There are some videos in the video section as well.

We were supposed to get a huge snow storm today, but so far all it has done is rain. I was a little bummed as I wanted to pull up some old weeds and bushes out back, but gardening can wait for another day I guess. The end goal is to completely redo the back landscaping around the pool and under the deck like I did the stuff out in front of the house, i.e. put down some weed guard, rocks, and plant some low maintenance stuff that doesn’t require continual tending to. I love looking at the spring flowers and stuff but lets face it, there’s a reason old retired people tend to have the best gardens.

So I bought Conner a model rocket set for his eighth birthday. For those of you who have never had the joy of the model rocket experience, let me enlighten you. They’re probably one of the most dangerous and frustrating toys on Earth. You spend hours setting everything up for five minutes of fun, hoping you don’t blast your hand off the entire time. In other words, pure awesome. How many other opportunities do small children have to play with explosives AND send objects hundreds of feet into the air?

I remember playing with these things when I was a kid up in Crystal Lake. We’d go out to this remote field on the outskirts of town to launch them. Invariably we never came back with as many rockets as we left with, but it was always a great time regardless. Come to think of it, rockets are one of the few toys that you really don’t get too upset about when you lose them, most likely because something amazing happened right before it left you. I remember modifying one of my rockets to accept the biggest engine I could find in the stores. Never saw that fella again, he vanished over the horizon in a blaze of glory. I also remember making my own rocket out of a toilet paper tube and some plastic bottles. As it turns out, shoving an engine in something vaguely rocket shaped is not enough to make it behave rocket like. Luckily nobody lost an eye to that one.

I wasn’t sure how well the boys would enjoy this, but they thought it was great. As soon as the thing took off they took off with it, instinctively chasing it across the field as it drifted back to Earth. We never did manage to catch one, but we got close! All told we had six successful flights, and like any good rocket the final flight was it’s last. He also vanished over the horizon in a blaze of glory, never to be seen again. It was a good day.

P.S… The top album has a few pictures in them. The bottom one is a link to the videos I took. Enjoy!

As luck would have it, I ended up with two free tickets to the Kansas City Chiefs vs the Phoenix Cardinals pre-season football game the other day. Now, I’m not much of a football fan, but Conner is playing this year so I thought it would be a good opportunity for him to see what he was getting into. I would’ve liked to have brought Logan as well, but the darn tickets are normally almost a hundred bucks a piece. Logan definitely does not have a hundred dollars worth of interest in football. So off we went, just me and the boy.

All I can say is the Chiefs are pretty sorry. I’ve had at least one person describe the Cardinals as the most irrelevant team in the NFL short of the New York Jets, and even they have Favre now. The Chiefs managed to lose 17-27. I only know that because I read it on their website the next day. Conner and I were more than a bit bored and left around half time. Highlights included Conner hoping he would end up on the Jumbotron thing, some fireworks, and me trying to convince him to pose with the cheerleaders. I completely failed on that last count. Apparently cheerleaders are icky.

I uploaded a bunch of other stuff, including some videos of various things. As usual, click on the Recently Added Albums link on the right to see them. My personal favorite is Logan receiving an outdoor shower after refusing to use the indoor one. He hasn’t tried that particular stunt since then.

This will be a short update, as it’s hard to type with splints on both hands. I took leave last week so I could do some studying for my finals and get a bit of time away from work. The finals went all right, and the time off was very relaxing. So relaxing in fact, that I decided to use some of that fancy new economic stimulus money the President was kind enough to hand out to stimulate the economy down at Lowes. I dug up all the flowers / weeds that were growing in the flower beds on the front side of the house, planted some new bushes and a pine tree, and laid down some creek rock. No more weeds! Unfortunately it seems I also over worked my delicate wrists a bit. I’ve had really bad pain in both arms since then, and a weird grinding sensation that started a few days ago. It got to the point last night that I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I made a doctor’s appointment to have it checked out. The short version is I have a pretty nice case of De Quervain’s Tenosynovitis. The Air Forces solution? Slap on some splints and give me some “anti-inflammatory medication”, i.e. motrin. I don’t think I’ve ever walked out of an Air Force clinic without motrin. They really love the stuff.

There’s not much else is going on around here. The weather is finally warm enough that I think we’ll be opening up the pool here soon. Maybe this weekend if my little girl wrists can handle it. I uploaded a few albums of pictures that we had sitting around. If you click on the link I stuck up in the sidebar on the right called “Recently Added Albums” it will take you directly to a listing of the newest stuff, so no more fishing around looking for things.

Enough typing for now. I need to get one of those Steven Colbert wrist stong bracelets to show my solidarity for the wrist challenged out there. Together there is nothing we can’t do! As long as it doesn’t involve lifting anything over about five pounds.