Spring Break Trip to IL

Well we've decided to come home to visit over Spring Break again this year. We were going to wait until June and go to California over Spring Break, but the CA trip was going to cost too much. Heather may still come in during the summer, but I will not have the vacation time.

We will probably start driving on the evening of Wednesday, March 26th and get there the evening of Thursday, March 27th. If I was brave enough to drive all the way through, we could get there Thursday morning. We will head back to CO on Saturday, April 5.

Of course I've already cooked up some turkey hunting plans. Sean's boys will have youth permits for the 29th and 30th, so we'll try to get them both a bird that weekend. Also, Isaac and myself will probably skip out from IL for a few days to hunt in AL where he can try to kill his first bird, and I'll be backup. :-) I've talked to a few others about going and sounds like a couple are in, if everything works out. If I haven't talked with you and you want to go, just let me know. Anyone will be welcome. A 3 day lic. will be $120 and a WMA permit is $16. Other expenses would be food, and depending on how many of us go, fuel and hotel.

We will be hunting Northern Alabama in the Bankhead NF. The Black Warrior WMA is within the NF and can only be hunted until noon, but the rest of the NF can be hunted all day. The terrain is steep rugged hills w/ hardwoods and pines. We (Dad, Sean, Kenneth, Sonny and myself) hunted it in 94 and there were birds everywhere. In 97 Sonny and I went back and didn't hear much of anything, but the weather was cool and rainy. It will be like any other DIY public land hunt, a hunt, not a guarantee.

Basketball Players

Isaac and Olivia had their first games on Tuesday and Thursday. They both have the same coach. She asked for my help during Isaac's games, so I pretty much sat and yelled at Isaac because I don't know the other kids names yet. Isaac (4) did really well. It took him a few times down the floor to remember what he needed to do, but out of their 34 points he scored at least 12 of them and he handled the ball really well too. His team won their game.

Olivia (4) did really well also, considering she has never played before. I did not get to go to her game because it started at 5:30, but Heather took some pictures there also. Olivias team won their game also.




We skied today at Ski Cooper. It snowed about 8" yesterday and was snowing today also, so the snow was really good. Boyd has gotten over some of his fears from earlier, so it made for a really good day on the mountain. Isaac is skiing really well and has picked it up a notch the last couple times out. I would expect within a couple years he'll be waiting on me. He can actually smoke Heather right now. Olivia is doing well and with a lesson or two could be close to Isaac. The only difficulty we had today was Olivia started feeling bad so we left and got her some antibiotics called in. We should have expected it since the other two have been sick the last few days.

Turkey season around the corner

It's not too far off to be planning now. Hopefully Isaac will pass his hunter's ed. class and we'll make a trip over to Nebraska for his first turkey. Eric's son is taking the class also, so they may come along too. Of course the whole trip will have to be centered around the two boys getting their first turkey. I'll have to make a covert scouting trip w/ bow in hand the week before we go. Their archery season opens early and I want to try and wack one with my bow.

Of course the entire trip could be out of the question if Uncle Sam doesn't feel we've paid in enough this year. I normally get a big refund, but I've restructured my witholdings so I'm a little concerned I'm gonna owe money this year. I'll set up a tax/ turkey hunt relief fund that each of you can donate to before April.

It has snowed a couple three inches each of the last couple days/nights. Not sure if we are going to try and ice fish this weekend of get out and ski. May try both. I'll try and get some good photos of either and post them here. Isaac and I skied last Saturday and it was a really nice sunshine day that would have made for some great photos of the Sawatch Range in the background but I forgot the camera.

Recent Photos

Here are several recent photos taken around Leadville. We haven't had any big snows up here lately, but none of the snow we've had is going anywhere for a while. The first picture is during a very short ice fishing trip with Heather and the kids just south of town (same pond Joe and Dad both fished while they were here). It was colder than I thought and the trip lasted long enough for me to manually auger everyone a hole to fish over and the kids to cry they were cold and ready to go home. I'll be buying an ice fishing shelter soon.


This is Mount Elbert from Leadville. Elbert is the highest peak in Colorado and is part of the Sawatch Range. There are quite a few 14,000 ft plus mountains in Colorado, but this is the highest of those. It seems like it is always snowing in that range. I think in this photo it is mostly clouds and blowing snow. While this photo is not from our house, we can see this mountain from our house.

This is Notch Mountain. It's in the 13,000 ft plus range. I drive by this everyday on my way to work.
Here are photos I took of our new puppy. I took these while Bow and myself were on one of our walks. This is the closed road around Turquoise Lake just north of town. We were walking in powder, so if you look close you can see tracks from my snow shoes. These were taken at 13 wks of age. He is now 14 weeks old.



This is a herd of cow elk that Eric and myself were trying to get a shot at. Actually, I was working my way to them with the purpose of Eric getting the shot as they moved away from me. They are on the wrong side of the Town/NF boundary for me to shoot at this point. When they crossed over they were too far for me to shoot. This is only a portion of the elk. There ended up being around 27 cows and two spikes. When Eric was done shooting there was one less cow in the herd (see last photo). This is Eric's first animal of any kind, so needless to say we were very happy.

Since Eric didn't know anything about quartering an animal, I quartered the elk while he helped. Then two guys we know showed up and helped us pack it out in one trip. The pack was't very far, maybe half a mile, but it was straight down then straight back up. We were wearing snow shoes in about four feet of snow. Eric shot the elk at about 10:30 am and we had it packed out by 5:30 pm. We had already agreed to split whatever elk we killed. I took the elk to my garage and hung the quarters then butcherd it through the week. I bought a grinder and we made a lot of burger mixed w/ beef fat and made a lot of breakfast sausage mixed w/ pork.

Christmas Photos

These are some of the photos I took on Christmas morning. Several of the photos are blurry. I just bought a new, more complicated, camera and have not figured everything out yet. Mainly that I have to open the flash up for it to work. I'll get it right eventually.

Christmas

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. We had a great one here in CO. The kids got more gifts than they needed of course, but we had a lot of fun playing with their new toys. I spent half Christmas Eve night and part of Christmas day assembling games. Of course our new puppy, Bow, has made Christmas even more eventful.

We drove to KS last friday and picked him up Saturday morning. The drive out was awful in 40 mph cross winds and snow. I was beginning to believe the storm was a hint to turn around and forget about a dog, but we made it there and back safely. We had stopped there on our way back to Colorado from our Thanksgiving visit and told the kids I knew the people and wanted to visit. The kids had played with the 7 males from the litter of 11 puppies. They thought my "friends" just happend to have a litter of puppies.

When we pulled into their drive Isaac remembered it was the house with the puppies and they were all hoping the puppies were still there to play with. Olivia said, "I bet the two with the blue and green colars are already gone." They had no clue the green colar was to mark our puppy. We went in the house and our puppy was inside waiting for us. We let the kids play with him for 10 or 15 minutes before Heather asked them if they wanted to take him home. It took us almost as long to convince them that he was our puppy and was going home with us and that he was ours when they played with him the first time. From there all the way back to Colorado was a never ending argument over who got to sit in front of the kennel that Bow was riding in.

So far he has been a good puppy. I've been using the kennel to house train him and I think he is going to catch on pretty quick. I've been reading several books on trainging pointing labs, by the way he is a pointing lab, and have started the early stages of retrieving. He loves to chase after the bumper and bring it back, but only give him a little and then put it away while he is still exited about it. We'll see how it goes, but I think the only thing that will hold him back will be my patience for training.

I have several Christmas photos of the kids to post, but haven't downloaded them to the computer yet. I'll get them up in the next couple days.

Happy New Year!

Dec. 8 and 9 th

We skied on Saturday at Ski Cooper. Ski Cooper is a much smaller area than the resort we skied last year, Beaver Creek, but it is plenty big for us and there are no crowds. It was snowing pretty hard while we were there but we still made several runs. Isaac and Olivia picked up where they left off last year, but Boyd needs a couple more times out to get back up to speed. He tired out pretty quick. Heather had a couple falls that I missed while keeping track of the kids, but I could tell she planted her head into the snow by the amount of snow wedged between her goggles and helmet. Last weekend we had around 15" of snow and from the 6th to the 9th we had from 12 to 18 additional inches of snow.

On Sunday afternoon we cut our own live Christmas Tree. Permits can be purchased from the National Forest Service for $10. The trees they allow you to cut are scarcely better than a "Charlie Brown Tree", but Heather and the kids enjoyed it. I kept waiting for a light to shine down on the perfect tree like it did for Clark W. Grizwald in Christmas Vacation, but I never saw anything more than snow. The tree was probably around 12' tall prior to me trimming the bottom off. Boyd was the only one who would help decorate it once we got it trimmed and stood up in the basement (our artificial one is in the window upstairs). Heather, Isaac and Olivia set around and watched. I guess the fun was gone once it was home.