Traveling Home

I have been in Mpls most of this week. Its good to be home!

Winter Has Arrived!

Doesn't this look nice? It is so beautiful out...I took this picture around 8:00 this morning. Our cross country skiis will be unpacked this afternoon for sure! We have been patiently waiting for this...enjoy!

Poll Question

When the temp is 5 degrees with a wind chill factor of -14, what happenes when you get out of the hot tub ?

This is not a multiple guess question, please leave your responses.

(kids...you'll have use your imagination on this one)

Splish splash I was taking a bath...

Well our first part of our dream is here. We bought a 6 person hot tub and its installed outside in the back yard. Next spring and summer we will build a deck or patio for it to sit on. Nancy and I will be married for 30 years this December 16 so we thought we would treat ourselves. We don't go on vacations or treat ourselves much and we are not getting any younger...so phase 1 is complete. It really feels great! Alica is right...the more jets, the better!

Happy Thanksgiving

I look forward to this Thanksgiving. I'll get a 4 day weekend and be able to spend time with Nancy and see some of the rest of you on Friday.
Its going to be warm and we are planning to grill this year and just spend time with each other.

20 Ways To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.

2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.

3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, Ask If They Want Fries with that.

4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label It "In-Box."

5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.

6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write "For Smuggling Diamonds"

7. Finish All Your sentences with "In Accordance With The Prophecy."

8. Don't use any punctuation

9. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.

10. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

11. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is "To Go."

12. Sing Along At The Opera.

13. Go To A Poetry Recital And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme

14. Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area And Play tropical Sounds All Day.

15. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party Because You're Not In The Mood.

16. Have Your Co-workers Address You By Your Wrestling Name, Rock Bottom.

17. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream "I Won!, I Won!"

18. When Leaving The Zoo, Start Running Towards The Parking lot, Yelling "Run For Your Lives, They're Loose!!"

19. Tell Your Children Over Dinner. "Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go."

20. And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity.......

Share this with Someone To Make Them Smile. Its Called therapy.

The Right was Right

Now that the election is behind us, and the Democrats control both houses of Congress, there's no reason not to admit it: the Right was right about us all along. Here is our 25-point manifesto for the new Congress:

1. Mandatory homosexuality

2. Drug-filled condoms in schools

3. Introduce the new Destruction of Marriage Act

4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses

5. Osama Bin Laden to be Secretary of State

6. Withdraw from Iraq, apologize, reinstate Hussein

7. English language banned from all Federal buildings

8. Math classes replaced by encounter groups

9. All taxes to be tripled

10. All fortunes over $250,000 to be confiscated

11. On-demand welfare

12. Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish

13. Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems

14. Pledge of Allegiance in schools replaced with morning flag-burning

15. Stem cells allowed to be harvested from any child under the age of 8

16. Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor

17. Quarterly mandatory abortion lottery

18. God to be mocked roundly

19. Dissolve Executive Branch: reassign responsibilities to UN

20. Jane Fonda to be appointed Secretary of Appeasement

21. Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy

22. Texas returned to Mexico

23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

24. Carter added to Mount Rushmore

25. Modify USA's motto to "Land of the French and the home of the brave"

From www.rightwasright.us

Thanksgiving

Hi Everyone~
I have been thinking about coming up to Bemidji the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Thanksgiving week. I work PM and Night shift on Thurs, so I would leave on Friday around noonish. I was just wondering if people are going to be around to see. If people are around, that will help me with my decision :) Have a great week!

Today is Veterans Day

Thank a Vet! Bryce really comes to my mind today. He and 10's of thousands more, were deployed for "as long as it took" not just a year or for a few months... WWII vets were there for a long time without any idea when or if they would return. In WWII there was over 16,000,000 total US service members in uniform and of those there were over 400,000 deaths. That war lasted about 4 years (1941-45).
The Gulf War there was about 2.2 million in uniform with just 147 deaths ( about 100 combat related) and lasted less that a year.
Todays War on Terror will be an ongoing war for "as long as it takes". Since 2001 the US has lost over lost 2000 serrvice members and hundreds of thousands have served. Thank a vet of this combat...No matter what your politics are!
A Little History...
Armistice Day Becomes Veterans Day
World War I officially ended on June 28, 1919, with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The actual fighting between the Allies and Germany, however, had ended seven months earlier with the armistice, which went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. Armistice Day, as November 11 became known, officially became a holiday in the United States in 1926, and a national holiday 12 years later. On June 1, 1954, the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans.
In 1968, new legislation changed the national commemoration of Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October. It soon became apparent, however, that November 11 was a date of historic significance to many Americans. Therefore, in 1978 Congress returned the observance to its traditional date.

The Departed

Has anyone seen The Departed yet? Mandy and I went last weekend. It was a good show, although VERY violent.

Mike Hatch Dreams

Funny item discovered on E-Bay, since we're of a political mind today.

Brownies

The girls have officially become Brownies! They started in October with their first troop meeting. Since then we have gone apple picking (you get a badge for that). This Wednesday they had their second meeting, complete with a bonfire, fire safety lesson and smores. And last Saturday the troop went to Home Depot for a building project. Here are the happy builders in their HD aprons:


Here's a better shot of their project. They built wooden fire trucks that are also a coin bank.


It's a pretty cool program Home Depot runs, and it's not just for Brownies. The first Saturday of the month anybody with kids can attend the session. The kids get to choose from several different projects (fire truck bank, birdhouse, picture frame, etc.) and then they build the project with help from mom/dad and a few HD volunteers. And the entire thing is free. Unless we have plans that day, we're going back in December.

Happy Halloween

I've been remiss about posting in general. But here are some photos of halloween from our house, 10 days late. :)

Emma in her costume


This was the best shot I got of Morgan. She was preparing for the cold weather almost immediately.


Putting jackets on.


Did I mention that it was cold that night?

Elections Scandals

Rememer the election of 2004? Scandals everywhere! Lawsuits in many areas, voter intimidation, etc. Why did that not happen this year? Was it because non of these things happened this year?
Clean election-dems win...
dirty election-republicans win???
Just a thought.

The first 100 hours

WASHINGTON -- Franklin Roosevelt had his first hundred days.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is thinking 100 hours, time enough, she says, to begin to "drain the swamp" after more than a decade of Republican rule.
Day One: Put new rules in place to "break the link between lobbyists and legislation."
Day Two: Enact all the recommendations made by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Time remaining until 100 hours: Raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, maybe in one step. Cut the interest rate on student loans in half. Allow the government to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for Medicare patients.
Broaden the types of stem cell research allowed with federal funds _ "I hope with a veto-proof majority," she added in an Associated Press interview Thursday.
All the days after that: "Pay as you go," meaning no increasing the deficit, whether the issue is middle class tax relief, health care or some other priority.
To do that, she said, Bush-era tax cuts would have to be rolled back for those above "a certain level." She mentioned annual incomes of $250,000 or $300,000 a year and higher, and said tax rates for those individuals might revert to those of the Clinton era. Details will have to be worked out, she emphasized.
"We believe in the marketplace," Pelosi said of Democrats, then drew a contrast with Republicans. "They have only rewarded wealth, not work."
"We must share the benefits of our wealth" beyond the privileged few, she added.

Returning Troops

With the Dems taking control of both houses we should start to see lots of this kind of pictures of returning troops from Iraq. My guess is that anytime after the 20th of January this will be a very common picture in the news. But what kind of pictures are you going to see coming out of Iraq? Will there be celebrations there as well?

Happy Days are here again!

Just what is your fair share? The more you make the more they take. Will us guys in the lower bracket see our taxes go up or down under thes new politacal leadership both on a local and national level? I know I enjoyed my taxes going down...remember the checks you got for surpluses in Minnesota? Did you send yours back to the treasurer?

Gas Prices and The Republicans

I hear a lot of people suggesting the Republicans had something to do with the falling price of fuel prior to the election. Now that the dems are clearly in charge, gas should start dropping fairly quickly. Many people said it was to keep the Republicans in power...We'll it did not work so lets just keep track of this trend. My guess is that the gas should be on a downward spiral starting about the 20th of January 2007. We'll see!

Reflecting...Remembering...Reflecting

I woke up this morning knowing that "today is the day," for a couple of things...voting & turning older. I share my b-day occasionally with our patriotic duty & right. For a couple of months now, I have been reminded of this day through emails, posters &, of course, the media. Won't it be nice to have November 7th behind us?

I have spent some time just reflecting...remembering...& reflecting again. I know that we hear people say, "where did the time go?" & I have been asking myself this question over the last half of this year.

The second half of my life is so different than the first half, not better, nor worse, only different. There are a couple of differences that I thought I'd share with all of you...& I am curious, does anyone else notice these differences?

The first difference has to do with the amount of people that are going through our doors on a daily & weekly basis. I used to think the door would fall off of its hinges due to overuse. The difference now has to do with the nest being empty...& when the nest was full, there were always kids, activity and noise around. Not bad, just different.

Another difference has to do with family get togethers and holidays...and getting our family to come together peacefully can be stressful. I heard something today that made sense to me...all families feel stress when everyone is together & there probably isn't a family alive that isn't dysfunctional to some degree. What does that mean? Does it mean that we are "normal" after all?? That is an interesting thought to me. Not different, not bad.

Reflecting, remembering...all the fun times that we had together...and hoping in the future there will be more times to reflect and remember. I guess that is what birthdays are for...to reflect & remember. Another difference, all good!

"Get out and Vote...what don't part don't you understand?"