Where is Monica, and who is her new friend ???

Monica and I went on a road trip and had a wonderful time. It was about 11 hours of driving, so we had plenty of time for talking, laughing, daydreaming, and just taking in the scenery. That is about all the details I can give you, because if I say anymore I may incriminate myself and get in trouble. You will have to ask her about the "mall" she was looking forward to experiencing and ended up being very disappointed. I felt pretty bad about that.

You may recall Deanna's blog about Marvin catching the house on fire. I came to his defense by saying that men seem to be always getting the bad rap. We are not remembered or praised enough for the myriad of things we do on a regular basis for those that we love. From the dazzling to the mundane, day in and day out, we do pretty darn good. Then one little "oops" and that is all anyone remembers. He was beautifying the home by getting rid of that pesky foliage on the front of the house. He was using his new weapon......"The Mighty Weed Burner". Things got a little crazy and after the smoke settled, people forgot about the loving gesture he started out with.

Our house has been besieged by pesky foliage as well, so Monica borrowed "The Mighty Weed Burner" for me to use to save our home. This shows great love and confidence on her part towards me, knowing how quickly things got out of hand at her parents' house. First of all, this contraption is connected to the propane tank of a BBQ!!! This is a serious weapon. Turn on the gas, light the end, and everything is calm, quiet, ready. When I pulled the trigger on this thing, it sounded like a jet taking off at Luke Air Force base. The happy and unsuspecting green foliage was turned into flattened, blackened, smoking piles of ash in the blink of an eye. Yes, I blinked. In fact, my eyes were squeezed shut in terror. The flame and heat shoot out so far, I can burn weeds from 8 feet away!! If I point the nozzle down and pull the trigger, my feet leave the ground and I hover to the next spot to do battle. My kids followed me around with the garden hose to keep the smoke down so none of the neighbors would call the fire department. Clearly, it was not Marvin's fault.

Hopefully, I have cleared Marvin's name. Loving husband and father. Man.

AAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I. Am. Hot. Not Dennis' green chile hot. Not "brown chicken brown cow" hot. Just plain old fashion hot. My kids like to trace the white salt residue on my clothes when the sweat dries.

"CLEARLY" a good time.......

Tell me where this giant Hobo resides, and I will buy you lunch.

Here is the crew at camp. We were making fresh-picked mint tea here.

This is a great shot of Dillon cliff-jumping. You can barely see him right under the pine tree

trunk in mid-air. I am blowing this one up. Fantastic!!!!!

You know it was a great backpacking weekend when everyone is talking about the next trip while heading home. East Cleer Creek is so much fun. Trout fishing and cliff jumping.......who could ask for more?

We had a full team this time. Susie and Micah, Allen, Brian, Jonathon, and the Rings. (Oh, and Buddy, the dog) Can you imagine if we had some more people come? Wow.

Some might complain about the rain, but not me. Monsoon season up on the Rim is simply beautiful. A good tarp and a good book is all you need. (And Monica's "Goody Bags")

Susie and Micah lost parts off their car taking it down the high-clearance road that was filled with mud bogs and rock-crawling technical areas. It reminded me of Monica and I taking our Plymouth Sundance all over Arizona's backroads in our earlier years.

You may have noticed the picture of the Giant Hobo. I threw that in here as a sort of Arizona Travels Quiz. If you can tell me the exact location of the Hobo, I will buy you lunch. If you live far away and get it right, I will get your lunch to you. Can you ship Taco Bell via U.P.S. ??

This is what it is all about...................

Lightning and thunder.........................time to go !!!!

I love catching fish, too bad i can't eat this one.

Even Grandma had to try it!

What a beautiful day !!!!! Our outing to Clear Creek was fantastic!! The weather was perfect, the creek was perfect, and the food was perfect. (Deanna spread the mayo on my sandwich with her finger----it was the best.) Micah, Denver, Dillon, and I went cliff-jumping and rope-swinging and it was really cool. Maybe a father should have other thoughts, but I do love watching my family fly through the air with arms and legs flailing, screaming like banshees, and then smacking their various body parts on the water. It is a bonding thing.

We did leave a little early due to the threat of rain, but the trip could not have been any better. Well, maybe an improvement would have been if everybody could have been there........Scott, Kim, Aimee, Dennis, Allen, Danelle, Vince, all the kids, and Marvin. I would love to see Marvin shooting down the water slide!!

Jurassic Park.......For REAL !!!!

From tiny to humongous, there were a bunch of different tracks!!!

I tried to get a photo to show how this was built up on the island shelf overlooking the desert

Pretty soon I will get my own professional bass show, specializing on catching bass that are only an inch or two bigger than the worm. For people watching their waistlines and such......

I had an interesting week. I went fishing with Brian Steffler below Bartlett Dam. We took two inflatable rafts out with the intention of sleeping in them while we pulled in giant Flathead catfish. Once out on the water, we realized my yacht had a leak. We spent the night together in one raft. Yes, cozy!! Not a single monster took our bait.

I am still working in Flagstaff and we got rained out one day, so we checked out some Indian ruins. It was amazing! You know how you see that landscape with the big flat rock outcrops and the desert is eroded down to expose those giant island shelves? That is where these Indians built this house. It covered the whole top, so it looked like a hovering castle in the middle of the desert. Fantastic!

I then got sent up to the Navajo National Monument to check on their gutter system. When we were working and travelling up there last year, we passed this sign that said "Dinosaur Tracks". We must have passed that sign more than twenty times, and the guys never wanted to stop!! This time I was by myself and I stopped. Now you never know what to expect. Is it going to be one or two cheesy indentions that could be tracks? No, it was awesome!! It looked like it was a watering hole that has since turned to rock. There were a hundred tracks of all different sizes. Some of them, you could see where their claws went into the mud at the end of their toes. Very cool. My brother, Cory, and I found a couple of tracks in the canyon behind our house in Snowflake. I don't think many people believed us. He would have enjoyed seeing all these tracks and how much they looked like the ones we found.

Oh, and I got some work done too...................

Working hard........Playing hard.........

One the coolest formations I have ever seen while spelunking----5 seconds before I pulled
an "Indiana Jones Ice Slide of Death"!!!

I hope any safety people do not see this photo....

I thought I would share a couple of things from my week. First, I am working up in Flagstaff. Missing out on the triple digits in Phoenix? Priceless. This is a remodel job for N.A.U., and it is not fun. The roof is a 45 degree angle, so we are on ropes all day. The school wants to spend as little money as possible, so instead of new panels, we wire brushed and painted over the rusted areas on the metal and re-installed it. (very nasty and very temporary) As you can see from the photo, we had to build a jig, fasten it to the basket, tie the panels to it, and take them up one at a time. The wind blows every afternoon which makes the whole process that much more adventurous!!

I strongly believe in the philosophy: "Work hard, Play hard", so one day after work, I took the guys to the Lava River Cave just outside of Flag. It is simply a tunnel that was created by flowing lava, but it is really cool. Literally. In the cooler months, the water that drips or seeps into the cave freezes. It is always different--you never know what it will look like. This time, a frozen waterfall was just inside the entrance as we made our way down into the cave. It was free-standing. We could put our arms completely around it!! About five seconds after I had my picture taken next to it, I started to move for the next person. I stepped on solid ice and disappeared. I slid down into the black abyss. No light. No idea how far I was going to go. No idea what was waiting at the bottom. Everybody was yelling and then shining their lights down on me. When they saw that I had escaped injury, they all were laughing. Oh well, I am used to that..........

A Better Part of Our Legacy...........

Dillon clearing the winning height-----man, he was flying!!

Gold medal grin?? What is it with kids and taking good pictures?

Our children are capable of a great many things. Hopefully, they tip the balance toward the favorable side. I love my kids and they constantly amaze me with the things they do. A couple of them, which I will not name, seem to be following after Darth Vader and the Dark Side of the Force. I try to be a loving and supportive father, but their actions sometimes take my patience to the limit.

Then they do something cool.

Does it wipe the slate clean? Not necessarily. I just wish they would do cool things more often. (My idea of cool. Not theirs)

Dillon won first place at his school's Track and Field Day in the high jump. He was then invited to the Regional Track and Field Event. We went today and he got the gold medal for fifth grade at four feet! Simply amazing.

I feel very proud of his abilities, and I like to think that I had something to do with it. But I know better. When our kids do something awesome, we might think we are leaving an incredible legacy. When they do something less than great, we have to brush the dust off and help them continue on.

But I will take gold medals any day............