Indiana Cousins

We just got back from a vacation to Kentucky, Tennesse, and Indiania. We stayed most of the time with Joe and Brenda Burkart just outside Bloomington, IN. The have a great family 2 boys and 2 girls. Natasha is a year older than Lexy and they had a BLAST together. Isaac and Little Joe were plaing videogames every chance they got.

Here is a picture of all of us at Spring Mill State Park. Neat place most of the buildings were built in the 1820's and 1830's then restored in the 1930's. All the kids except the baby. Left to right, Natasha, Lexy, Little Joe, Isaac and Abby. Brenda was holding the baby, Toby (Sam).

This is a picture of the kids plaing in the sand box under the Burkart's deck. They said that the chicken wire is to keep the cats out of the sand, but I think it keeps the kids in too... ;)

This is a fun picture of Lexy and Natasha. They did just about everything together. Natasha was soooo upset when we left. :(

Thanks for letting us stay and showing us a great time Burkarts...!!!

Lawrence County Derby

We went the Demolition Derby last night in Lawrence County Ohio. Ted and his family saved us some seats, perfect seats. GREAT DERBY...!!! Much better that the Washington County ones that we have been going to the last few years.

Here are a few clips... I need to add for info about them later tonight or tomorrow....

Patton's Pool and Slide

We got a sweet invite to the Patton's for a BBQ and swimming...

Here is a quick video of the great time that Isaac, Lexy and Trisha had on the slide...

Computer Repair

So, I am not sure that I have posted about this little issue that I have had for the last 2 months. My computer screen on my laptop cracked. It was a painful and trying time in my life. I have been either using the half of the screen that works, or plugging it into my TV, in order to use the computer at home. Sucks for me.

I called the week that it broke and Dell told me that my computer was still under warranty, however, this was not covered. So, I gave them my card number, paid the nearly $200, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. Then I got an email from them, "Your order has been delayed, please respond if you still want your parts." Well, yeah!! I still want my parts...!! This was about a two week cycle that when on for two months. If I called, I got India, I even got hung up on when I asked them to speak clearer because I couldn't understand him. Bad service.

Somehow late last week Amy had a break through with them. She got a FedEx tracking number, but I still wasn't convinced. Sure enough, one day late. The new screen showed up on our door step yesterday.

So, now to install it. I have put new RAM in a laptop, or changed the video card in a desktop. But this is major laptop surgery, at least in my book. No, there were not instructions with the parts. Off to search in internet I went. Found a great service to the world. On YouTube there are a bunch of videos made by On Call 25/8. They had posted a video on how to switch out the whole lid of the exact laptop that I have. Close enough. I took it from there.

Here is my computer all busted apart...

More apart...

Some how I got it back together, it powered up and I was able to upload these pictures via my repaired, self repaired, computer.

Isaac will be sooo excited when I show him (it was 12:30am when I got done)... It broke while he was using the computer to video chat with Amy while she was in Hazard, KY.

Hillbilly Hot Dogs

We made the short trek down Route 2 to Hillbilly Hot Dogs. We had a great time. We have heard that they were on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network. We watch that show, but we haven't see this one.

I have driven by a couple of times and finally decided to stop and try it. Good enough to bring the family back. Amy was quite concerned when we pulled up.
Their flagship is the 'Home Wrecker'. It's a 3 1/2 lbs monster. If you can eat it in 12min or less they'll give you the tee shirt. This bad boy is 15 inches long, the dog it's self is a full 1 lb. They must have made 5 of the while we were in there, most of them were for folks that were splitting them.

This is the store front. Plenty of items, just in case they need them later.

We ate in one of the two school buses that have been converted to dinning rooms. If you notice all the writing on the walls of roof of the bus, they have makers around for you to write your name, etc. The kids wrote theirs near the front door.

The hot dog business has served them well. The personalized license plate says, "WEENIE1"

We will be going back... Come on over and we'll take you there.

Waiting for the Fireworks to Start

The kids, Trisha, and I went downtown for the fireworks on the 4th of July. Amy had to go back to Hazard, Ky to work on the morning of the 5th... :(

We were not quite sure where they launched the fireworks from, other that on the road across from the downtown area. We fought the traffic for quite awhile and then found a spot in a 'towed and owners expense' parking lot. We were a half a block from the river. We walked down to the river and decided to go down to the sidewalk halfway down the river bank. We spread out our blankets (that Isaac packed for us, thanks buddy) and sat down to wait. The bridge looked pretty cool. Check out all the boats on the river. We waited quite a while... The kids were getting board so we started snapping pictures. Lexy didn't get the idea of funny faces... yet.

This is the face of boredom.

And the funny faces continue.

It seemed to be sooo long waiting for the fireworks... I guess you'll have to wait too...

(to be continued)

Tawny Daylily

These flowers are all over in West Virginia. They are all along the roads and railroads. I am not positive yet but I and thinking that they are called 'Tawny Daylilies'. The only hang up I have with calling them that is everything that I have read about them says that the flowers fall off at the end of each day. I don't think that these do.

These flowers close up at night and open in the day...

This bunch is just across the road from the gate to our subdivision. They are quite pretty.

Cool Old Cellar

I found another cool place. We were walking a new waterline in the Branchland, WV area and there was this cool old cellar that was built under a low overhang. There were shelves in the door where it looked like they had made racks to keep food and what not. It wasn't big enough to be used as a place to live.


I always like to see this kind of old stuff.

What'd you do...!!??!!

You should never let your upstairs cooler drain go two years without being hooked up ...

This could happen to you... What a mess to clean up...

We noticed a crack a few weeks ago... two days later crash..!!! The guys the own and manage our place cleaned it up and fix the ceiling fairly quickly. It's one of those times when it's nice to be renting and let someone else fix the hole. Haha...

---

Ok... I better explain more. We have a small heater/cooler in the loft above our garage. It's kind of a weird little thing. No buttons, it is only controlled by a remote with no words, only pictures. I finally downloaded the operator's manual and figured our how to use it.

It finally turned warm this summer and we had several nights of people staying in our loft / guest room. I guess that the installer did not hookup the condensation drain to the tube that was installed for the drain. So, the water coming off the cooler was dripping into the insulation above our closet in the master bedroom. After many days of the cooler running enough water was in the insulation that it got too heavy for the sheet rock that was all wet too and the ceiling caved in.

I hope that explains better what happened.

Pack Meeting June 2010

We had another Pack Meeting yesterday. Pack 193 earned a few awards.

Peter and Paul got a bunch of beltloops and WEBLOS pins from Mark Smith
William Frampton earned his Bobcat rank. We did a North Star ceremony and gave him a glow in the dark star to put in his room to remind him to stay on the Cub Scout Trail.

Jackson Powell earned his Wolf rank. We did the red paint on the face for valor ceremony with him. I put red craft paint stripes on his forehead, both checks, chin, and nose.

Isaac earned his Bear rank and one Gold Arrow Point. He had to face the bear in it's cave. He when out in the hall where we could all hear the bear growling. The was some yelling and more growling. Then his shoes and hat came flying into the room. Next thing you know here comes Isaac with scratches all over his arms and face carrying a bear hide. It was pretty fun.

We had a few games as always. Here they are having a bunny race. They could only hop when I said "Hop"... I put in quite a few other words to mess with them, stop, cop, mop, flop, top, bop. They all had fun with this one.
The other game we played was Fox and Chickens. All the chicken had to follow the mother hen and hold on while the fox chases them and tried to tag the last chicken who then had to follow the fox. Pretty wild game.

Thanks Trisha for taking all the pictures.

=)