Ice Walls

These are some pictures of the cliffs formed by the big cut areas along Corridor G by our house. The water from melting snow and the seeps in the ground comes out along the cliffs where it freezes into these giant icicles. They are pretty cool to see.


Thanks Amy for grabbing these pictures for me.

Lexy's Zuca

Lexy's big Christmas present from Santa Clause is finally the way she wanted it. Santa didn't bring the right color, so we found someone on eBay to trade the gray frame for the PINK one that she wanted. The Zuca Bag is the figure skaters version of the dirtbike OGIO bag. All the cool kids have one. Really, the Zuca is set up perfect for the skating scene, tons of great compartments, wheels to drag it, and it's a portable seat too. Lexy has been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for the pink frame to come in. Today it did...

It's a seat.

Perfect compartment for ice skates. Lots of pouches in the door.

Wheels and an extendable handle. (The second set of wheels are to help the little girls pull the bag over a curb.)

And the WHEELS LIGHT UP...!!!

And this bag in airplane carry on compliant. She loves this bag, it should give her years of use.

Riding on the Hatfield and McCoy Trail

Isaac and I got an invitation to go riding on the Hatfield and McCoy Trail with some guys that we met a the Tyler Mountain Track. Steve and Jacob are a lot of fun to ride with. They ride on the trails a lot and know them quite well. It has been in the upper 40's and low 50's most all week, even though it's been wet, it was plenty warm enough to ride. The trails were pretty muddy and it took Isaac a bit to remember how to ride his 65, the clutch and shifting still are not quite natural for him. A few times he got frustrated about stalling the bike and not being able to get it started again. He was having trouble getting the bike into neutral. Turns out his shifting lever was loose and fell off. We got that fix the best that we could with Steve's trail tools.

Here is a picture of us on a creek crossing trail. It was tough riding. There were new fallen trees on the trail, 3' deep puddles, branches all over the trails. In the end, we had a blast and it cleaned most of the mud off the bikes.
Here is a picture of Isaac and Jacob by there bikes. We rested at this spot on the trail. It is right after two spots that Steve carried the boys bikes over trees that were too big for the 65's to get over. Isaac says that he loves creek riding now.
A few hundred yards up the trail Isaac was following behind Jacob and decided that it looked better to go to the right instead of the left where Jacob and Steve when. I was behind him and got a great view of his front wheel drop over a log and then the whole bike flip up in the air over Isaac. He endo'ed and face planted into the muddy water. I quickly laid my bike down and lifted his off of him. Then pick him up out of the water. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, that's cold!" The water was pretty cold. I got his bike off of the log and on we went.

The boys took some time to climb trees and splash in the water for a bit while we took a break.

Shortly after we got out of the creek crossing trail we headed up a hill and Isaac didn't follow. I looked back and he was having a tough time with his bike. I when back down and his shifting lever had broke off. He was stuck in 2nd gear. That make riding a bit tougher, but it taught him how to feather the clutch when the bike bogged down. I got him started down the trail behind Steve and Jacob and jumped back on my bike... 3 min later I figured out it wouldn't start because the gas was off, again. (When you lay your bike on the ground you need to turn off the gas, or it will drain out.) So, I was on the hunt, on trails that I didn't know, and it was getting dark. I followed tracks in the mud for a long time, and then started feeling like I could get out of there. I ended up beating the others to the truck by about 5 min. They took a short cut because it was easier with Isaac limping his bike. Steve was great with Isaac, very patient, safe and knew the right things to do and say. I didn't worry about them at all.

Isaac figured out where the best place to be after a hard day of riding... In a giant, hot bubble bath. Except he was making a funny face.
We are both very sore, but it was worth it. I can't wait to go riding with those guys again.

The Hut That Lexy Made

I made a very cool hut and I love to play in it very much.

Hockey In West Virginia

The kids and I went to a hockey game the other night. It was the "Backyard Brawl on Ice", West Virginia University vs. Pittsburgh. The game was at our little ice arena here is South Charleston, and it sold out 2 weeks before the game. The place was packed 45 min before game time. Lots of blue and gold.

Lexy made herself a little sign to show her support of the home team.

Most of these die hard, true and blue, bleed WVU colors, folks had no idea that they had a hockey team. It is a club team, just like we are used to in Utah. We sure miss going to the Utah State vs. byu games. Or any of them for that case.

Here is a shot of the home team warming up.Great Story:

We sat next to Bo and Amber, I work with Bo. They are big WVU fans but haven't been into hockey a lot. Amber was trying to figure out how they started the game, she didn't know what to call it. So, she says, "When is Puck Off...??" Hahaha... That became the theme for the night. She has good reasoning, "Well, in football it is kick off, in basketball it is tip off, so I figured in hockey it must be puck off." They are fun.

In the end the Mountaineers won 2-0 with both goals coming in the second period. It was a hard hitting, fast game. I was trying to figure out why they seemed faster, and it dawned on me, byu plays on Olympic size ice and this is a smaller NHL size rink. The WVU goalie had a great game too, like 34 saves.

It was a ton of fun. We hope that they come back soon.

Lexy and My current favorite song...

Why is it W? - The Baby Grands

Isaac's Latest Film

Isaac has posted another clip on YouTube...



http://www.youtube.com/user/tbwalbeck#p/a/u/0/bSbF8svjZ8I

He is whispering so you'll need to turn up the volume to catch what he is saying.

Enjoy.

Haven't seen the kids

Well, I haven't seen the kids enough this week to tell anyone what they have done. It's been a whirl wind for me so far. I have been to 3 evening meetings this week. Below is a quick map that shows where I have been in the last few days.A - My office Triad Engineering
B - Branchland-Midkiff PSD (a waterline client)
C - Our house (I wonder what it looks like in the daylight)
D - Matewan, WV (another waterline client)
E - Cumberland, Oh (again, another waterline client)

To give you a reference to the map scale to drive from either our house (C) or my office (A) to Cumberland (E) take 2.5 hours on the interstate. It takes 1.5 hours to drive from Matewan (D) to our house (C). The meetings on Monday and Tuesday were early enough that I got home around 8:30, but last night in Cumberland the meeting didn't start until 7:30, it was quick so I got home about 10:30...

It feels good to be productive.

BTW: In the lower right corner of the map you can see Beckley where Amy's school is, it take and hour to drive there from the house.

Amy got some O.R. time...

Amy got to go visit an Operating Room for 2 days this week. She was 'shadowing' a CRNA in the hospital to see how the job goes and what was going on. It was arranged by the school and most of the other students are rotating through. She got to see several different and exciting surgeries and different ways to put people to sleep. She has a lot of mumbo jumbo medical terms for what they were doing, but I just say "put people to sleep".

Here is a quick map of where this hospital is in relation to the house. It is an hour and a half drive from the house. She was told to be there at 6am the first day. She got there at 5:30am and waited over 45min for someone to even let her in the building. The next day they told her not to be there until 7:00am. Much better for a girl that likes to sleep in... She only had to leave at 5:30am instead of 4:00am. A - Our House
B - Pleasant Valley Hospital at Point Pleasant, WV (right on the Ohio River)

It was a great experience for her, she was sooooo excited when she would come home to talk about all the thing she saw.

COSI Collage

Last weekend when we went to Columbus for a little vacation one of the things that we did was visited the kids / science museum. It's call COSI and stands for Columbus Ohio Science Institute. OK, really it stands for Center of Science and Industry. It's a neat place, people have told us the the Clay Center in Charleston, WV was inspired by COSI. We found a lot of fun things to do while we were there.

aaAAGGHHH...!!!

This snow has put a damper on life here. N0t that we can't play in it. Not that it isn't pretty. Not that we can't drive or get around in it.1

The schools won't open up...!!??!!!

This was the first week back from Christmas break and the kids have only gone to school 1 1/2 days. They went on Monday (We sent Momma Jo off to school on Tuesday) and half a day on Thursday. Both Tuesday and Wednesday started off as 2 hour delays, then they canceled all together. On Thursday the kids went to school and by 10am we got a call from the school district that the kids would be out of school 2 hours early. Later Thursday they call again canceling Friday. It's all about the buses, the steep narrow "mountain" roads are too nasty to take the buses up and the can't get them all cleaned off in time for school.

Don't get me wrong here, the kids love it, but I am sooooo behind at work.2 With Amy gone to school this week I had to stay home with the kids. We did go to my office for about 2 hours a day, but it is hard to get work done with them in the office. We did luck out and Amy's school cut loose on Wednesday night instead of Thursday. Even she got time off for the snow.

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1) Steve the care taker at our subdivision has worked his butt off keeping our roads cleaned off. I hear him plowing and salting when I go to sleep at night and again when I am getting ready for work. I know that he plows all day and all night. He keeps us mobile..

2) I should be working not blogging.

Fort Rapids

We spent the first weekend of the year in Columbus, Ohio. We left mid day on the 1st and drove up to stay at Fort Rapids. This place is great for the kids. Indoor water park, hotel, restaurants, tons of kids stuff in the lobby through out the day. It's the kid of place that you can park the car and spend the weekend. We didn't, we went to COSI too. I'll post about it later.

With all the slides, a lazy river and much more there was plenty for all of us to do. Isaac even did what I have fail to do for 17 years, he talked Amy into going down the water slides with him. He got her to go down the regular tubes slides and the giant toilet bowl slide. Lexy turned into a speedy one, bailing down the racing tubes on a mat. She ended up loving it.


Now this muvee is only of photos. I need to sort through Isaac's FlipVideo to see what video we have too. Maybe I'll have to post more about Fort Rapids later.

Isaac on the web

Isaac has his first web up on YouTube...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41_pdUNQqps

Isaac says:

it is asome that my dad put this on youtube and our blog!