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!

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.

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.

One of our original gerbils died the other day. BJ, the brown gerbil on the left, was found lying on his side in his cage. He was cold and appeared to be sleeping. I picked him up thinking he was already passed, only to realize he was still breathing. He had no noticeable injuries or signs of illness. Logan and Conner were able to says their final goodbyes to him while he was still with is. Conner was very upset; BJ was one of his favorites and held a special place in his heart. I held him in my hands for another hour or so. He twitched occasionally if stroked, but it was clear where this was going to end. Finally his tail jerked a couple of times, he stopped breathing, and that was it. He was buried out beside the house in our ever growing pet cemetery the next day. BJ is survived by his wife John (also pictured on the left), and his umpteen million children.

Conner wrote BJ a note that read as follows (exact spelling, etc remains intact):

“a loved gerbil named B.J. was was very sweet and lovable. He was fat but very strong, no one could stand his cuteness. B.J. good luck in the sky!”

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!

When Erika busts out the camera, she doesn’t mess around. I’ve uploaded the almost ridiculously large pile of pictures she took down at Disney World. It’s a daunting pile to say the least.

I was looking at the “spam” comments that this website manages to draw in. It’s an interesting mix of topics, from Viagra adds to various “adult” things to political stuff and everything in between. Of course none of it comes from humans, it’s all generated by automatic spamming machines out there somewhere. And then it gets annihilated here by my automatic spam destroying machine. Which honestly makes me wonder what the point is. I mean, do people really make any kind of money at all sending this nonsense out? Is this machine on machine warfare some sort of precursor to the coming Terminator like apocalypse? Could there be a secret world changing code hidden in it somewhere? One has to wonder. I occasionally browse through it just to see what they’ve thought up this time. And then I hit the delete all button, and it ceases to exist. I guess we’ll never know!

Things have been .. hectic around here lately. Without going into details, 2008 was a rough year, and 2009 isn’t shaping up to be much better. Hopefully it will all work out in the end, but who knows.

Yet here we are, the general election nearly upon us, and he has completely floundered. It’s obvious to anyone who has been paying even a bit of attention who has won this campaign. It’s not surprising given the political climate these days. What does surprise me is how convincingly the Obama team managed to paint McCain as a carbon copy of Bush. And I think it all started with that silly picture over there.

What happened John? Years of being at odds with the party and the administration, years of being regularly attacked by Conservative talking heads, and now you’ve successfully been painted in to Bush’s shoes right when it mattered the most. And up until just recently, you didn’t even fight it. Why not? Did the thirty some odd percent Bush approval rating not mean anything to you? Was your campaign surprised by this totally obvious choice of attack? It wouldn’t have mattered WHO won the Republican nomination, this same route would have been taken. Hell, even Ron Paul would have been subject to it, although good luck with that. Why did you just sit there and let it happen?

And then of course there’s the horrible campaign you yourself ran. You ditched the team that wanted to run a something different for the same group that has catered to Bush the last couple of elections. As if that was going to work again. You seemingly decided to ignore the impact Obama standing in front of a hundred thousand people would have in the media versus your little meetings at retirement homes with a crowd of fifty. You decided to save everyone the trouble and sat around mocking yourself while Obama was jet setting around the world getting face time with foreign dignitaries. You’ve made bad decision after bad decision; calling the economy sound at the beginning of a down turn, suspending your campaign for a reason that still doesn’t make any sense, letting your crowds virtually turn rabid with hate for their opposition, choosing a running mate in the middle of a freakin abuse of power investigation. And that’s just recently, the list goes on and on.

In short, you’re losing John, and you deserve to be. This was your last chance at this office, and you’ve blown it. So for the next four years, while we have a completely Democratically controlled federal government passing every new program and benefit they can think of, give that subject some thought. Because the rest of us sure will be.