Answer to Amy's tag

My sister Amy issued a challenge to us to take picture of things in our yard that bring just a bit of pleasure. Well here are a few of mine. Of course there are a lot more, but these would definately come in at the top of the list. Enjoy.

This is our new mailbox. When we first moved in, the old old one was broken and looking pretty sad, so I purchased a wooden barrel and we planted some flowers in it. Kee picked out all the plants and I really like all the different colors.

This is my old beat up BBQ. It is quite old and has been through a couple of rebuilds, but it works extremely well. It was my dad's before it was mine, so I am not exactly sure how old it is, but it sure has been instrumental in making a lot of fun summer meals for us.

With the current price of gas, I have taken to riding my motorcycle to work . It is a 1971 Honda. Almost an antique. but still runs pretty good, at least it did untill last Friday when it decided to stop. I think it needs a tune up, so I will have give it a little TLC this week.

I know your all looking at this picture and wondering what in the world is it? Well, its a valve covering for the sprinkler system in my yard. I absolutely love the sprnkler system, with out it I am sure that my lawn would be just aweful looking and be a terrible shore to take care of.

One of my favorite places to spend time now is in my garden. This is a picture of my pumkin plant. As you can see, it has really taken off and now occupies a large portion of the garden. We have give it the name of Audrey, after the plant from the play/movie Little Shop of Horrors.

Here are the first two items to get harvested from our garden. A green pepper and a red onion. Don't they look delicious

This green pepper is just calling out to me to make my favorite Fajitas for dinner!!

This little red onion may have been picked a little bit premature, but it was crowding with another onion plant and I needed to "thin" them a bit. I think it will go well on a fresh BBQ burger!!

My mouth starts to water everytime I look at the rasberry bushes

And this is why, look at all those lucious fresh berrys!! Just imagine a fresh warm rasberry crisp topped with a scoop of cold ice cream. Well you are going to have to imagine it, because I ate the last of it for breakfast this morning!!

Arise Sir Knight

This years day camp was an absolute blast, and as promised I have brought you some pictures. We tried to implement the theme of knights through out the entire camp. All of the various activities that the boys were involved in had some sort of theme element involved. For example, knife saftey was to teach a good knight how to take care of his sword. The area where day camp was held, became the kingdom of Cubablot ruled by the good King Akela. Akela was away at the time fighting and an evil lord named Mordred was harassing the kingdom and trying to take over. Mordred made a few menacing appearances during camp, but in the end Akela returned and set about searching for a great champion to vanquish the evil Lord Mordred. A champion was found, but it was detrmined that he would need help in his quest to restore peace to the kingdom. He set about to recruit more knights. The champion gave a list of the skills needed to become a knight (all the skills that cub scouts had worked on all week) and it was determined that all the boys in camp qualified and were therefore knighted. With that many knights in the kingdom the cowardly Lord Mordred fled to never be seen again.

This is the good King Akela and his Kight Champion

(yes, I am the knight and yes I built the armour myself out of fun foam)

This is one of my camp rangers enjoying a quick bite to eat.

I love the court jester costume.

At the end of camp each den of boys gets to perform a skit. In this one I am supposed to be a table. At the end of the skit they leave a full glass of water sitting on my back and then pretend to forget all about me and walk away. I am then left to try and get the cup of water off my back but enevitabley I get all wet. It is good for some laughs from the boys and on a hot day I really dont mind getting a little wet.

This was the games area. You cant see everything very well, but basically it was a relay race where the boys would joust a baloon, slay a dragon and rescue a fair maiden. One of the funniest things that happened here was at the end of one of the races one of the little boys was holding the fair maiden ( a barbie doll ) and yelled "What do I do next, I don't like girls!!"

There are a lot of BSA requirements that need to be conformed to when running a cub scout activity. Every year my staff and I go through the list and make sure that we are meeting or exceeding all the requirements. These are the inspectors that checked out our camp, what they are handing me is a flag and a certificate to show the we are nationaly certified. YAY!!

We had some strange visitors at camp this year. An odd french man with a pet dragon came to entertain us a bit. Kevin is the former camp director and a good friend of mine. It is aways nice to have him stop by for a few laughs.

It takes a lot of people to run a camp. I could never do it without the help of my wonderful staff. I am not sure what I am being told here, but I am sure it was very important.

This is my assistant camp director Micheal Butz. He was and is a tremendous help, and if anyone says camp isn't hard work I just show them this picture of him getting some well derserved bits of rest.

The leaders are not the only one who get tired after a day at camp.

When it is done and over, it takes a couple of days to clean things up and put everything away. This year, part of our clean up fell on Father's Day and the girls decided to surprise us with a couple of cakes. How sweet of them.

In addition to some cakes, we had a big fajita fry and celebrated the end of camp as well as a good Father's Day for everyone involved. This is our camp medical officer Donna Hare, I guess she didn't trust my cooking.

Ahh, another camp done, I am both happy and sad. At least I can start looking forward to next year. Pirates will be the theme so I better start growing my pirate beard now.!!

And the winner is....

A few months ago I took a poll from everyone to help me decide what picture to use for the new Day Camp patch this year. The results were very mixed. Some people like one picture better than others, but preferred the colors from another picture. There really was not a clear winner. So I took all this information and prcoessed it through a very scientific process and I believe I came up with a winning patch.

Actually, I am quite pleased with the winner. The company that made it for me surpassed all my expectations and the level of detail is incredible. If you ever need to order emboidered patches I would give Prism Patches a call. Just check this beauty out.

Give a man a fish...

Sorry it has been awhile since I updated my blog, but life has been a little busy for a few weeks. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I am a day camp leader for the area and we just has our annual camp. I was pretty tied up for the couple of weeks leading up to camp getting everything ready, and then of course the week of camp, and then you have to take everything down and put it all away when you are done. I have several things planned so watch for some updates over the next couple of days, and yes, there will be some pictures of day camp.


Alex and I decided to go back and try our luck again at the paddlefishing. My boss's wife Robin, had her tag still unfilled as well, so we all car pooled together to go see what we could do. On the very last day of the season we got up 2:3o in the morning and took a little road trip. We arrived at the river precisely at 6:00 a.m. (the time when they let you start fishing). Robin was first up and she caught a 19 lbs fish in about 6 casts, so things were looking pretty good for us. I let Alex take the next turn and after about 12 casts he got tired and we needed to put some new hooks and weights on. While he was resting, I decided to give my pole a cast and hooked a 29 lbs fish on the very first cast. This of course got Alex excited and he was ready to go again. After about 6-7 more casts, Alex finally got his 23 lbs fish. It was 7:05 when we were standing in line to get our fish cleaned. There is a local company that makes caviar out of the eggs so, they have a free service and will clean any fish caught as long as they get to keep any eggs they find in the process. It a pretty sweet deal, fish and wildlife is there and checks all the fish before they are cleaned. They weigh it for you as well, so you know who gets braggin rights. When it is all done and said, you get handed back a bag full of fillets and go on your merry way.

This is what joy looks like when you take a picture

For all that work this is what you get.

Yep, it's officially smaller than dad's.

Let me show how this is done.

If you look carefully, you can see my redneck showing here.