These have actually been done for a while, I just haven't gotten around to posting a picture. Gone are the wood planks and now we have smooth painted walls. Very nice.

...between California and Montana. I've mentioned this before, but life and death are treated much different here.

There were many mornings in So Cal when the traffic report reported something to the effect of "You can expect a 30 minute delay on the south 405 due to an early morning fatality."

There it was an inconvenience -- unless of course it was someone you knew. Here it is much more personal.

Friday night a car went off the road, flipped and went into a pond. Two girls died and one of them was a girl that worked at the same place I do on the swing shift.

Her mother works 2 offices down from me.
The house that the other kids went to call for help was someone we know.
I know the firemen who responded.
I know the surgeon that was on duty in th ER.
I heard a conversation this morning about who was going to do her makeup for the funeral.

Even though I only ever said hi to her, the effect is widespread. It's a small community and it just hits you harder. It's going to be a tough day around here.

Yesterday on the day of her birthday party Bella decided that she needed a change so she cut her own hair. Judy saved the day and gave it some shape.



There are a lot of great photos of the kids so I have added a photo gallery here:

Online Photo Gallery

There's also a permanent link to it on the right so that you can browse it whenever you want.

For the moment it is an open gallery and I'll leave it that way as long as I can.

Bella, who is seemingly impervious to the elements, was plopping around in the front yard breaking the ice and creating little pools. She decided that she want to 'swim' in her 'pools' even though it was 34 degrees outside.

So Judy warmed up the bath, Bella changed into her swimming suit and went out to take a polar beararific dip in the ice.

My kids might be a little nutty, but at least they aren't boring.


Yeah! A pool made out of frozen water!



Hey, frozen water is ice, get me back inside!



Mommy made me a warm bath to jump into. Mommy rules!

It was actually pretty cold when the Brookmans were here, but last weekend was much nicer. Here are some photos of the weekend before last that I was supposed to put up last week.


Bella getting her award at the pinewood derby.



Anya Getting her award at the pinewood derby.



Anya, Bella and Kinsey out front in the snow.



Anya, Bella, Kinsey and Johnny getting ready to sled.



Logan "The Alphabet Boy Smith" attacks the refrigerator. He is crawling everywhere now and can even pull himself up to a standing position -- not bad for 6+ months and a month premature!

I went to the church men's retreat this weekend. Montana is a little different because the registration flier said, "Bring your sleeping bags, bibles, bows and arrows and shotguns." It was great fun. In the end it was a bunch of guys getting together to try to act like men while occasionally regressing to boyhood.

Here is a picture of Dave Murphy's car up on a snow bank. We had to lift the car to put it up there.

Unfortunately for them, their visit was at probably the single worst weather days of the year. Not so much cold, but the roads were horrible -- many crashes this week.

This morning coming to work I couldn't stop and did a red light slide through the intersection in Ronan. Fortunately everyone saw me coming and acted accordingly. I wasn't going very fast either. 15MPH? 20MPH?

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We have the DVD of Anya's dance recital, so if you want a copy, ask a grand parent and I will make copies and send them to them.

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I watched On Her Majesty's Secret Service last night. I haven't seen it since I was 9. Even though it was George Lazenby, it was still odd to see 007 cry.

Mark, Sara and kids arrived yesterday and will be here for the next few days.
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Judy opened presents last night. I made her a copy of our wedding video and put it on DVD with a case and everything...

The best part of the DVD was not the wedding pictures or the DVD formatting but rather the 'R' rating listing a litany of reasons for its R rating.

The first thing I wanted to do when we moved in to the house in Montana was to remove those ugly stickers from the glass doors separating the den/library from the entertainment room downstairs.

The first thing I did last night when I got home was to walk right into said glass door.

Split my lip in a couple of places, bloodied my nose, and I think I broke my big toe.

What an idiot.

I had an interesting conversation with someone last evening. It was with a friend of mine named Randy that I had not spoken to in 15 years. Wow. It really made my day.

We were able to reconnect only because of the internet. How cool is that? He is one the of the people that I really wish that I had kept in contact with. Who knows why we didn't but it was great to talk to him again.

Bonus: we added each other to our IM accounts so that we can chat on a regular basis. Awesome.