Do we got the clearance, Clarence?

"Roger, Roger."

Well, maybe not. "Blizzard 2009" is taking shape somewhere over the US and may delay or cancel our scheduled trip to Sherwood for the Christmas. Two questions here:

1.) Why, when the dates align and you get an automatic 4 day weekend for a holiday, does the weather always have to try to ruin it for you?
2.) Why does the Weather Channel insist upon naming the blizzards with the year now?

We know it's a blizzard, we know its the year 2009, 15 years from now we're not going to say "Do you remember Blizzard 2009?". No, we're gonna say, "You remember that blizzard we had 15 years ago? Back in about 2009." I seriously think they are so bored at the Weather Channel, that they are going to start giving them actual names like hurricanes. Blizzard Bob, Blizzard Bill, you get the idea.

Maybe they could even hire former legendary Minnesota Vikings coach Denny Green to come on and explain about the 'Calcutta Clipper' as well.



So yeah, I'm hoping that things turn out well and we're able to get out of town Thursday afternoon, but we'll see. It's not like 5 years ago when I drove 450 miles to Minneapolis on icy roads to watch the Dolphins play a football game. It still amazes me to this day that Steve Thompson carried on a cell phone call as we were driving down the interstate sideways without missing a beat in the conversation.

The cargo of a 7 month old baby and the weather aren't something to be toying with.

Anyways, Merry Christmas to everyone! Hopefully the Silverado is pointed north and locked into 4WD about this time tomorrow!

Your (belated) "Bob Ross Memorial": Whiteboard pic of the month

Here at the blog, we've always tried to stay with the times, especially when it comes to the whiteboard pic. But alas, the world moves much faster than my snail pace. So even though this is a few days or weeks late, here it is! Obviously not my best work, but it'll have to do for pacifying the masses.

For those of you not from the Bismarck area, there was a mountain lion shot in the Bismarck city limits on November 27th, up by the former Home Depot location. (No, I wasn't the triggerman).

That's probably why it closed up. People are just going to quit coming around when you have mountain lions. They're just bad for business.

Flat and No Trees Has It’s Privileges

I’ve been spending the week working in northern Wisconsin and although it’s nice country, flat with no trees has it’s privileges. I’ve stood in the middle of a grass slough somewhere west of nowhere in Renville County, North Dakota and made a cell phone call with perfect clarity. I’ve driven countless miles in the same area deer hunting and had a dozen radio stations or more to listen to and I’ve always taken for granted that that’s the way it is everywhere.

Not here, not in northern Wisconsin. My daily drive takes me from Hayward to Cable, about a 17 mile drive through the forest and while Hayward does have some cell reception, it rapidly decreases the further you get from town. On my drive back the other night I spun through the channels on the radio and found one FM station that came in with regularity and the song playing was a Wilson-Phillips song. So there was my dilemma – Wilson Phillips or flip to AM and choose between a station from Iowa talking about Big 10 volleyball or a station doing 1924 replays of the Clicqout Club Eskimoes.

For those of you not down with the Clicqout Club Eskimoes, click here to find out more about them than you want to know.

I’ve reached another milestone in my life this week as well. To this point I’ve seen the worlds largest Holstien cow, largest Sandhill Crain, Walleye, concrete whale and fishing lure. Add to that list, The Worlds Largest Muskellunge!!! Located near the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame, it’s a 143 foot fiberglass tribute to the Musky. Rumor has it that around Christmas time here, Santa makes an appearance out of the mouth of the fish, which can either be very exciting or very disturbing to a young child I suppose.

Also, if there was any doubt that I was in Wisconsin (normally the Old Style Beer signs and cheese factories are a clue) I was helping out a lady in the plant dept. with some software issues and heard more than one CSR on trouble calls end their conversations with customers with “You watchin the Packer game tonight?”

Yep, I am definitely back in Wisconsin.

Look who's talking

“Hey, how’s it goin?”

“Just hangin out over here by the stairs, nothing too much going on with me. Don’t worry, I have no intentions of climbing these stairs today if that’s what you’re thinking. Yep, just haaaaaaaaaaaaangin out!”


“What!?!? I’m just stretching my legs here. Gotta keep the calves loose and stuff ya know??”


“Ok now, just a quick check over my shoulder to see if they are look…….. darn. Staring right at me.”



“FINE! I’ll come over here then! Plenty of stuff to get into here as well.”

The Watermelon Crawl

There is some truth to the saying "they grow up so fast". 2 weeks ago, Ashtyn was flirting with the idea of getting up on her hands and knees. Everyday a little more bold, working the arms, then the legs, then face planting into the carpet. By Monday of this week she finally put A and B together and came up with this.

Not too bad I thought. Then Auntie Kaylan stopped over and left her Coach purse on the floor one day and Ashtyn was all into that. Kaylan likes to think that Ashtyn is now into Coach. No Kaylan, her main focus at 6 months is eating, sleepin and messing up diapers in that order, but if you want to believe its the purse then so be it. Daddy won't be shelling out a truck payment on a purse anytime soon. Today, she'd really gotten into moving about. Evidenced by this video.
Crawling wasn't enough for her today. She decided to see how far she could pull her self up the stairs. She did make it up one stair before I grabbed her off.

Here is a pic of her pulling herself up on me.
We also had Thanksgiving at the condo. Here I am carving the turkey.

And a nice little family photo.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

The Snake Dance

Back in the day we used to do something at the football homecoming bonfire called the snake dance, where the high schoolers all joined hands and then ran down the streets of Sherwood and thru the businesses that were open. I think it was some kind of spirt/pep rally thing to get us ‘psyched’ for the football game on Friday and also gave us a chance to run thru the only 2 businesses that were open at that time of night. The Roughrider Saloon and the P&R Bar. I tried to explain the concept of the Snake Dance once to Katie, but she didn’t get it. I’m not sure I ever understood it either, but since I’m about 50 years older than her she doesn’t understand the concept of typewriters, rotary dial telephones or the US mail system either. Friends used to hate if your phone number was something like 990-0990 cuz it took forever for the dial to come back around and if you messed up you had to start the whole process again. Whatever. If it’s something that important you need to tell me, mail me a letter and I’ll get it in 2-3 working days……

Anyways, one of the things with buying a new, used house is that the previous owners often overlook things and live with it. Sometimes for decades. One of those ‘overlooked’ things at the condo was the drain system. Overlooked might be a kind term, forgotten or ignored might be better used in this sense. Someone needed to tell them that if Drano doesn’t work the first 7 times that more drastic measures were probably in order. Off to Lowes I go again to buy a drain snake!

Snaking drains is a bit of an art form and similar to the Fish Ponds at carnivals, throw the line in and hope you pull a good prize when it comes back – not the stupid Strawberry Shortcake temporary tattoo (it took me many years before I realized that the ‘bait’ for that game was a card that said boy or girl and that they were messing with me real bad).

I grossly underestimated the level of stink I would encounter the first go around although the fact that the plastic PVC pipe threads had literally fused together should have clued me in that it hadn’t been taken off in awhile or ever. Down the snake went though, hitting the bends in the pipes but still moving until a depth of about 12 feet, at which point I gave it a couple of twirls and started to drag whatever was on the end, up…….

Let me list a few of the things I would have rather smelled than what came out of that pipe.
1.) A rotting skunk carcass
2.) Raw sewage on a 110 degree day
3.) A rotting skunk carcass in raw sewage on a 110 degree day.

Needless to say the lid of the toilet went up just in case lunch needed to make a reappearance. It didn’t, but I did run down to stick my nose over Ashtyn’s week old diaper bin for some fresh air. I didn’t eat supper that night, or for the 12 hours for that matter and a new battle plan was in order. Gas masks, rubber gloves and if I could find it, that cream that homicide detectives rub under their noses before the go into a murder scene. Lowes didn’t carry that though. Too bad Engh’s Hardware in Sherwood isn’t closer cuz I bet Timmy could have found in row three between the Tupperware and the cattle prods.

Your "Bob Ross Memorial": Whiteboard pic of the month

Here is your November themed whiteboard pic o’ the month. Yes, maybe a turkey would have been a little more appropriate, but we’ve already done that. My apologies to faithful reader Rusty as he had suggested a Caribou, that may come next month instead. So in honor of deer season and the buck that I won’t be shooting this year here is a “Whiteboard Whitetail”.

Now the question – how old do you think this buck is? I actually took this from the ND Game and Fish calendar (with some rack embellishment). Here is the actual pic from the calendar.

Most people looking at him would assume, big rack, must be 6 or 7 years old. A few key features lead me to believe he’s not quite that old. He doesn’t have that ‘racehorse’ body of a 3 ½ year old, he’s lost a little muscle tone in the front shoulders. He does have the gentle slope to his back, indicative of a 5 ½ year old, but the eyes are still fairly well rounded and the chest line is even with the belly line, not sagging. The final clue is the legs, they don’t have the ‘too long’ look of a young buck or the ‘too short’ look of an old buck. This is a 4 ½ year old buck.

The hunting shows would tell you that he’s maybe a year away from his prime. Skeet will tell you to empty your gun and possibly wreck a truck over him.

The really long blog post

My original plans were to keep a running diary of the move out of the apt to the condo, but with the amount of work involved it was impossible, so you’re going to get blasted with one big blog post, a Novella of sorts. Feel free to get up now, go to the bathroom, get a beverage and maybe a 3 course meal before you start reading……….. Done? Good, now settle in for the journey from 4540 McKenzie Dr SE, Apt 9 to 1022 Pleasant St.

I’m going to break this up into ‘chapters’ so you can follow the flow.

Closing it down

2 months ago we set the closing date to be Oct. 27th and as that day got closet I started to wish we had moved it to be earlier. Getting packed at the old place with a 5 month old baby is tough, but at noon we were signing papers. The title company was nice enough to give a NDG&T pen to sign with and let us keep, so in essence it’s the most expensive pen you’ll ever buy. A ½ hour and 75 signatures later we were walking out the bank door with keys to the new place in tow. Harsh realities time had started in that we had now 4 days to get the new place ready and the old one cleaned out.

Different shades of Gray

After looking at the condo a couple months ago, we decided that we liked their painting for the most part and only needed to paint 2 rooms. Ashtyn’s room and the downstairs living room, 4 days later I think we had painted all BUT 2 rooms. We stuck to the plan for the first day and were just painting on the two we had decided on, but then Katie started noticing things that she didn’t like with the previous owners paint jobs, like the fact that most of the places only had one coat of paint on and you could see thru to the primer in spots, so every time I’d leave to go move stuff or pick something up from Lowes and come back, the drop cloths would magically appear in another room and the ladies were hammering away at another wall! The best was when Katie told me to go read the note in the kitchen. It was a 2 foot by 4 foot note painted on the wall in tan roller paint that said ‘heart U!’ (nice little painted heart). This was her way of saying “Love you and I’m painting the kitchen now too.” “Heart U too honey!! Have fun painting the kitchen on your own!!!”

I’m glad she got the stuff painted that she wanted tho, because it’s much easier to do it before you move in as opposed to after.

Our one ‘mishap’ occurred on Thursday. As some of you know and others may not, I’m partially colorblind. Mostly with greens, browns, reds and sometimes yellows. It’s not like I see the world like an “I Love Lucy” rerun and everything is black and white, it’s just that some colors run into others. The color that we picked out for the man cave was called Dark Sage and initially we were just going to paint a couple walls, but the previous owner was also fond of colors and at times it was like you were walking thru a game of Candy Land.

“I passed through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.”

Anyways, we were moving right along with the Sage Green paint, but we could tell that we were going to need another gallon of it in order to finish up so Katie made (another) run to Lowes to pick that up. She gave the lady the card with the name and number of the paint, they mixed it up and we were off again. I was doing touch up paint with the last of the first can while they put a second coat on and they kept remarking how it was going on streaky and darker. Of course, I was thinking it would all dry the same – same color, same results right? When I got to an outlet to go around that they had just painted up to and I was doing the touch ups, even I could tell something was wrong……. The same types of wet paint should look the same, but mine was lighter. Yep, Lowes had given up a shade darker green paint and we’d spent the last 2 ½ hours painting with different color paints.

So back to Lowes I went and this time I was determined to get a refund on the wrong can of paint as well as a new can of paint in the new color on the house. At first the lady was a little apprehensive at the new free can. I can be persuasive. Especially when I explained that Lowes just wasted 3 hours of my day painting the wall the wrong color. We got the refund and the new free can as well. Sometimes good customer service needs prodding.

The Longest Day

Friday started early for us. We were about 75% packed at the old place and 80% done at the new place. It would have been nice to have someone come in and clean the carpets at both places, but there was only a room available for cleaning here and there so I ended up borrowing a carpet cleaner to do the rooms I could. Cleaning carpets can’t be that hard right? Wrong. It’s like trying to cultivate an entire section of land with a 12 foot cultivator in one day and your pulling it by hand. It’s not fun and you don’t get to listen to Paul Harvey tell the Rest Of the Story 4 times in the same day.

I did get the upstairs bedrooms, the hall and the guest room done, which is what I wanted to get done and then headed back over to the apt to finish some packing. This is where snag 2 comes in. When Katie had called in to have the utilities transferred to the new place they explained that MDU workers don’t work on weekend so we had to have power turned off on Friday. I found this out after I walked in to check my e-mail and the computer was powered down. Any idea how many times you flip a light switch thinking it will supply light, even though in the back of your mind you know it won’t. 112 times.

Scramble time!! Food in the fridge and daylight wasn’t going to last much longer. We did get the food moved over and as much as we could, got things packed. Determined to do more that night I had the brilliant idea of bringing over the trouble lights and the carpet cleaner to work as long as I could, couple extension cord and some power from the hallway would do the trick. Did I mention that the best landlord in Mandan and maybe the world had called us at 6:45 that morning to remind us to get the carpets cleaned? Chucky wasn’t going to get one more red cent out of me than he was worth tho, so I was doing this on my own- no hire outs for carpet cleaning!!!

I’m not sure why, but it was exactly 30 seconds before the breaker flipped that I thought that the trouble lights and carpet cleaner running out of the same outlet might do that…….. Darkness. Complete darkness. Don’t think I didn’t contemplate getting a propane lantern, but the carpet cleaner wasn’t going to run off propane so I grabbed a flashlight and stubbing my toes 10 times I packed and moved as much as I could into the living room. I promised everyone that volunteered to help move that everything would be boxed and ready to go at 8:00 a.m…… I texted once to change it to 8:30, then on the way home again to change it again to 9:00.

Out from the old, into the new

5:45 comes early and without much celebration unless you’re heading to a goose blind. At the very least when everyone showed up and I wasn’t ready I could say “Yeah, been up since 5:45 and had to work without lights.” Then they would know that I put in some kind of effort anyways. A half hour of working in the dark was enough for me and I started looking at outside outlets. The nearest one was the neighbors to the west on their patio, so at the risk of scaring the bejesus out of them early in the morning and having them call the cops on me I plugged into their outside outlet. All of the things that didn’t belong in certain boxes before, all got thrown into community boxes now and by 9:00 I was as ready as I was going to get.

Of course when you’re hoping people will be late, they show up 5 minutes early. Olney was the only one that did me proud. He had went out the night before and was hit by a beer truck so it’s good that we had a lot of pillows and seat cushions for him to handle.

Folks, it went like clockwork. Everything was in the living room, trucks were backed up to the patio, loaded and left. By 11:30 we were out of the old place and sitting in the kitchen of the new place eating sausage, laughing and drinking pop. Now we get to spend the next two years trying to figure out what got put in what box.

A Parting Shot

The afternoon was spent cleaning up what was left in the apt. Katie, Kaylan and their mom had done a good job of cleaning everything in there, so I figured I better do my best to clean the carpets. After the carpet cleaner flipped the test switch on that outlet for the 3rd time, I gave up and sat there and thought to myself “I’ve already shoveled enough snow, fixed enough faucets and cleaned enough cobwebs out of the common area hallway that he gets no more of my time. I’ll be writing a letter to Chucky with a bill attached for all the shoveling which I’m sure he won’t pay, but I’ve already warned enough potential renters to the place about the dude so maybe him losing a few months rent from people not taking the place will be satisfaction enough for me.

So that sums it up. It took me 36 years, but I finally have a mortgage payment to make. Thanks to everyone that helped with the move!! I’ll try to keep the posts shorter from here on out. Stay tuned for the white board picture with a November theme. Sorry Rusty, we didn’t do the Caribou this month.

I like to move it, move it

T-Minus 7 days until we close on the Condo and I’m not sure if we’re closer or further away from our goal of being packed and ready. Things did start with a flurry and we managed to clean out most of the junk in the garage. The only things that didn’t get packed in garage was the hunting gear, because this is hunting season and we still need to hunt. We also got some stuff packed in the apartment as well, but as you know, the reason you have stuff is that you use it. So I imagine that it’ll be a Chinese Fire Drill the last week before we move in to get things packed and cleaned.

Speaking of hunting season, the opportunities have abounded like never before this year. It’s always the year that you move. In my mind I rationalize things by saying “we have 3 weeks to pack” or “we’ve gotten everything packed that we can, so I can go hunting.”

A copuple weekends ago we headed to the Sanborn ND area for some duck and goose hunting. Mornings were in the goose blinds and the afternoon was ducks in a slew. There’s two types of duck hunters.

A.) The type that sets out decoys, calls and gets the ducks to come in.
B.) The type that sits in a spot that so many ducks come by that they eventually get ducks to come in. Duck hunting by attrition.

I fall into the second category. Yes, I have decoys, yes I have a duck call that I can make sounds from, but rarely does that combination result in me shooting many ducks. That’s why the slew that I picked out was perfect. The constant barrage of ducks had me twisting my head every direction for 3 straight hours, but since they were more or less buzzing my decoys at Mach 3, I spent most of that time shooting at the ducks, missing and then shooting again and hitting them in the same place.

The other problem with this is that I’m colorblind so I don’t pick out the colors on the ducks as they pass really well and since there is a limit on the numbers and types of ducks you can shoot I just break down the duck varieties into 2 categories as well.

A.) Drake Mallards
B.) Everything else, or “Teal”.

When people duck hunt with me and ducks speed past they ask, “what was that?”, I just reply, “Musta been a Teal”.

Using this theory, you shoot every duck you see until you shoot a hen Mallard (cuz you can only shoot one hen Mallard), then you have to be picky. This, to those that were nearby listening is why my first hour sounded like WWIII and the last two sounded like I’d fallen asleep in the weeds, which I actually did for a bit, but the stench of rotting slew grass keeps you from a real deep sleep.

Speaking of hunting, it’ll soon be time for a new whiteboard picture!! Faithful blog reader, Rusty, texted me a couple of ideas so since he actually showed interest in the blog I'll be doing one of his ideas.

Of course we need an update on the happenings with little one here as well! She had a bit of a cough so we took her into the walk in clinic. Thats a bit like not taking her in at all....... the doctor on duty that day took a couple minutes to do a poor job of checking her over and then told us it was viral and she had to just wait it out. Luckily Katie called the next day to our Pediatrician and she got us in the following day to do a chest x-ray and stuff. Everything was clear, but she did think there was maybe some acid reflux and possibly some infection so we got her on antibiotics and Prevacid for the acid. Within a few days we had our little one back to normal! Or close to normal. She likes to wake up every night about 4:30 now to eat and get a diaper change but if we get to bed early it's not quite as bad.

Last Sunday was a perfect fall day so we got a chance to meet up with most of the family out at Papa's Pumpkin Patch. You would think a little baby like that would get mad of getting passed around, but she likes everyone and also sat still for some photo opps. Here's some pics from the day.





Last story for this post now. So last night I put her down in her crib and 15 minutes later she was fussing, so I went back in and got her to rock in the chair for awhile. Of course I was watching baseball so I proped her up so she could watch with me. After about 20 minutes she leaned back, looked over at me and sighed like she was saying "Ok, I'm done watching", then she buried her nose in my shoulder and was out like a light. Funniest, cutest thing she's done around me so far!!

Ok, I also have more stories about our trip last weekend to Herreid for the Pheasant opener, but thats an entirely different blog, so staty tuned for that in a day or two.

Your "Bob Ross Memorial": Whiteboard pic of the month

I should have done this one last spring since thats when the grouse dance, but it'll work.

You'll notice that Dan has hung a sign by the board now warning anyone that thinks they can improve on things by pulling some shenanigans and adding to the pics. Don't mess with Dan Ruff.

On a side note from that office, Dan and Matt have had a standing $5 bet on who could throw a mini dart at a wall calendar and hit the head of a pheasant that was part of the calendar artwork. As you can see below, there were a number of misses before Dan actually hit it. It looks like it should be easy, but a 1/2" by 1/2" target at 8 feet with mini darts is pretty tough. Congrats to Dan!! The new contest has them having to hit the same target, but just the white part of the head..... 1/4" by 1/4". I'll keep you updated on the outcome of that!

The corner of Pleasant and Easy Street

27 days and counting until the close of the house. For those of you interested we'll be living on the corner of Easy St. Not a bad place to own a residence.

Things are picking up as far as plans. Yesterday on the noon hour I went over with plans of getting measurements and taking multiple pics so we could think about room colors, curtains, storage, etc. Of course I have grand ideas of being completely ready to step in on the 27th, paint and be moved into the new place and out of the old by the 31st.

This, I would guess won't be the case. I envision a mass Chinese fire drill, culminating in us getting out of the apt at 11:59 pm on the 31st and sleeping on couches the first night in the new place. Planning helps me pass the time though.

The camera of course was low on battery power so it kept shutting down on me and I only got 9 pics. Check out my artistic talent with the camera.

Nice pic idiot, we already know what the kitchen looks like.


Wow! Its the corner of a room! And since you didn't turn the light on the color looks 5 shades lighter than it really is.


Me confirming that there is a corner in this room with a ceiling above it.


Again, One wall, Check. Second wall, Check. Ceiling, Check.


Anyone notice a pattern here? I'm infatuated with room corners!!


I really like this closet for some reason and thought it needed a pic taken of it. Katie got to hear my closet story about 3 times. It's not like it was a portal closet to the 4th dimension or something. 'But look honey, we can store stationary bikes and big bouncy balls now!!!' I was worried that we wouldn't have room for my 'Sanford and Son' and 'One Day At A Time' DVD collections either - problem solved.


These last 3 you can really hear the gears turning in my head....."Yep, this big empty space is going to hold a vehicle, and these shelves are going to work really good for storage containers just like they have." Evidently the previous owners were fans of gourds and pumpkins. I'm not into those as much, but at least I know I can store them now. Of the 9 pictures I took, 1/3 of them were of the garage. That should help with Katie's planning.




I did do some good though. I did get window measurements for curtains and found out where the dumpster was. I also measured the fireplace mantle so I can get Rudy the Rooster prepared for his new home. It's all about priorities kids.

Theres no "I" in team, but there is in Conjunctivitis and they're all pink.

Well, a case of the Pink Eye has given me leave to update you all on the happenings at 4540 McKenzie Dr. SE Apt. 9. Soon to be a new address!! More on that later.

Several times over the last month I've been meaning to update the blog, but when I try to think of all the things that I want to say I get confused and the posts go into the edit pile. Yesterday tho, I went into the walk in clinic and walked out with eye drops to clear up my pink eye so I'm taking the day off of work today and FINALLY have the time to write. For all of you that are worried about me hanging around the little one with a reddish tint to my eyes, no worries. I haven't been handling her except when I've washed and disinfected myself for a good 5 minutes and then slight handling at that.

So, to start things off, here is Ashtyn's 3 month pic!


Don't ask me how she's able to turn her feet in like that, even I in my double jointed state can't do that.

She's grabbing at stuff now, mostly mommy's hair, but toys as well. The rolling over that she started and you saw in previously posted video has stopped a little now, it's old news for her and she's bored with it. She now prefers to lay on her back and try to get her whole foot in her mouth or come up with new sounds to make with her lips. The times she does flip to her stomach you can tell that she's warming up on the tarmac for a takeoff to crawling.

Opening weekend of Grouse and Partridge was huge for her and us as well. It was the first time I'd taken her anywhere on my own and the first time that momma hadn't been around her for more than 8 hours. She went up to Sherwood with daddy and got to hang out with Grandma and Papa for a couple days. Grandma liked it since she's still at the age where she'll let you rock her for hours without wanting to get down and run around.

We also got in a couple of goose hunts while we were up there in the mornings. Here's the spoils of our first hunt on Saturday morning. We were setup so close to town that when we got the decoys setup, Rhett walked over to the gas station and got us some coffee for the goose blinds. That was in my top 3 favorite goose hunts of all time.

Ok, so back to what I eluded to earlier in the post. Our time in the apt. is drawing to a close. After many years of consternating on the merits of home ownership and a year of living in 780 sq feet of space, it was time to make the jump to a house, or at least a condo.

It was a bit of happenstance that one night I came home and Katie mentioned that a guy had come around earlier from Century 21 giving out business cards to the complex tennants. He just so happened to be walking by the patio again when I sat down, so we flagged him over and talked for awhile. Within a week we started looking at places.

One of our rules was that we weren't going to be tied to our house, if we wanted to take a family vacation, we wanted to do it without having to worry too much about whether going to see New Salem Sue was going to stretch the budget. Don't get me wrong, the worlds largest concrete cow statue is pretty cool and it's only 30 short minutes from Bismarck, but after you see it about the only thing left to do in New Salem at that point is to stop at the Cenex to get some Gummi Worms for the ride home. Vacations were only a small part of it, like I have a feeling I'm going to shoot a Boone & Crockett buck in the next few years that will probably require a head mount, Ashtyn may find herself in dance class or basketball and momma will need an occasional professional massage. All of which we'll still be able to do.

That being said, we were less than impressed with most of the places we looked at. When your first impression of a house is, "Well, if we did this, this and this it wouldn't be too bad.", then you got troubles. One Sunday afternoon when we were looking at more houses we had no intention of buying our realtor told us about a place that just came on the market for way under what it was worth. After looking at the house and looking at the price, then looking at each other, we decided to make an offer.

The problem arose the next day when I went in to write up the offer sheet that he told us there were already 4 other offers on the place so we kind of picked a number out of a hat and made what we thought was a pretty valid offer. By noon the next day they came back and told us we were one of the top two offers, maybe the top, maybe not. "Would we like to increase our offer?" "Nooooooooooo, we wouldn't LIKE to increase it, but if we have to, we'll go this much higher." Sorry Loren, but I felt like Brian Cashman of the Yankees bidding up Mark Teixeria even though nobody else was bidding against him.

After a week of getting our chain jerked around, they let us know that we didn't get the place....... Allow me to put out a small PSA on a certain agent in Bismarck. ANDRA MILLER IS THE WORST REALTOR IN THE CITY OF BISMARCK. And if you're going to sell a place, Andra, don't put it on the market for $12.50, it creates confusion and we try to avoid confusion. Thank you. (I was joking there too, she was smart enough to list it for more than $12.50)

So after that debacle we regrouped, vowed not to deal on anymore homes that Andra Miller was the selling agent on and set our sites onto something that didn't require a second mortgage to get ready to move into.

That night we went to look at a condo that wasn't in "West Bismarck", but rather Bismarck itself, 3 bed, 2 bath, 2 living rooms (one of which will be the man cave) and about 1000 feet more living space than we have now. It was the perfect combo of location, size and price that we were looking for. We made an offer, they counter offered, I looked at it and said, "yep, lets do it."

See thats how deals are supposed to go down, people offer and the other party counter offers in a reasonable amount of time. Now if things go as well as they have we'll close on the the place Oct. 27th and move in at the end of October. I'm going over there at noon tomorrow to get some measurements so we can plan out what we need to get as far as paint and stuff.

Just a note - all those of you that have had me help you move over the years....... expect a call at some point and clear the weekend of Oct. 30th on you calendars!

Pretty exciting times for us. Ashtyn is very happy to be leaving the apartment!

Your Bob Ross Memorial: Whiteboard Pic of the Month

The masses (27 people) have spoken and their vote was for the battling Bighorn Sheep. I decided not to add too much to the background because I thought it might detract from the subject of the drawing. And I was too lazy to add a mountain scene to the background.

Framed copies are available and would make a great holiday gift and addition to any room.

Only $29.95 + SH. Act today!!! Operators are standing by.

Anyone out there???

My blog posts have begun to be about as sporadic as a Mike Redmond triple......

It's not that there haven't been enough things to write about. There's the formally evicted neighbor that made a return trip to the apartment complex the other night. Tubby, the pudgy guy who liked to rip around the parking lot, collect crappy vehicles and ate Crisco straight from the can decided it would be fun to drive between the buildings and run over a couple trees.

If you don't remember these clowns, click here. Below is a pic of their handy work.


"Yeah, officer. Any 4 tone rusty Dodge pickup with a Christmas tree sticking out of the radiator, that would be your guy."

There's also obviously little one to write on, but I won't lump her goings on in with the goings on of the morons formarlly known as tennants.

So in the next few days, expect a new Whiteboard pic, some goings on with little one and a big announcement (hopefully) from the collective crib!!

Simon says roll over

The first time Ashtyn rolled over was at her 6 week appointment but after that she started puttin on some pounds and would get herself high centered and couldn't get over anymore. This weekend she decided that it was time to start rollin and now she does it about every time you lay her down. Then she gets mad that she's on her belly and wants back the other way, so you turn her back over and 2 seconds later, roll over again! Typical woman...... never knows what she wants!!

Mailbag

My mom commented to me that I didn’t put enough in my last post about going up to Sherwood for the weekend and what a great time we had with Grandma and Grandpa. And while we did have fun up there, this blog is more than just a family blog. The tentacles of it reach far around the world, with millions of subscribers and followers logging on every day to check the New From Da Crib. So while I like to keep the listeners up on what little one and the rest of our family is doing, I also need to “keep it real” for the rest – more fact based on fiction than anything, as long as it elicits a laugh.

Just to prove the international flavor of the blog, let me share with you some letters and e-mails that I’ve received with questions about parenthood.

Mr. The Skeet,

Everyone likes to come up to me and pretend that they are talking to me through my 6 month old child in a little babies voice. “Daddy, my feet are cold, put some socks on me!” “Daddy, I got a stinky diaper, change me.” Why what is the proper way to deal with the questions?

Thanks
Steve S.
Lincoln NE

Mr. Steve,

Thanks for your question! I’m glad to see you’re intelligent enough to know that a 6 month old doesn’t talk that well. It’s too bad that nobody has ever invented a sock that stays on a baby for more than 3 minutes. Give a smile, put the socks back on and wait 3 minutes for them to come off again. In the case of the diaper, you know that’s just the warning poop. The real one is coming in 45 seconds, offer them the opportunity to change them sometime before that second round comes.

Skeet,

Sometimes I get backed up on housework and I put my child in a bouncy chair or swing for a half hour or so, so that I can get some vacuuming done or some bottles washed. I’ve read many expert opinions that having your baby watch TV can lead to developmental problems and they won’t read before the get to kindergarten. What’s your thoughts on this?

Thanks
Shawna K,
Louisville KY

Shawna,

Thanks for your question! Would you rather your child crawl around on a filthy floor and eat from milk crusted bottles? Their course in life isn’t going to be determined by whether they can read “See Spot Run” in 1st grade as opposed to when they are 4 years old. I couldn’t read until my 3rd year of 1st grade. The 1/2 hour they stare at the scrolling screen for isn't going to scar them for life. Clean the place up and move on.

Sehr geehrter Herr,

Ich habe einen quesions auf dem Erziehen meines Kindes in einer Gesellschaft, die mehr globalized ist als jemals vorher.

Danke
Hans M.
Hamburg Deutschland

Dear Hans.

I failed German 1 and 2 in college. Thanks for playing.

Sincerely
Skeet

Skeetertini,

When are you going to marry Katie?

“Kathy”
Colorado

Dear “Kathy”,

Nice try Kaylan. When the time is right. Thanks for playing as well.

Skeet
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So as you can see, this blog reaches much further than the borders of Bismarck ND. Check back occasionally I will answer more questions from the mailbag. So stay tuned for that.

One other note, my dad sent me an e-mail to inform me that they have new neighbors across the street and they are VERY excited. Looks like there’s 5 of them that came in this shipment, along with 2 dogs. In case you’re counting that brings the dog total in the neighborhood to 19. Word on the street is that they have almost a full set of teeth between them.

The other neighbor fell out of his shooting chair passed out the other day from COPD as he calls it. COPD must stand for “Cans Of Pabst Draft”. Evidently he coughs so much that he cuts off the oxygen to his brain and passes out. Oxygen deprived brain...... this explains a lot!

Here’s a pic of the RV the new neighbors roll in and one of them out on the street the other day. And yes, someone painted that house purple. Must have been a sale on "Ugly Purple" at Menards the day they went shopping.

Unforgiven

Somewhere west of Sherwood North Dakota…..

Katie: “I have a confession……. that was the first one.”

Skeet: “First one what?”

Katie: “That was the first pop bottle I ever killed.”

Skeet: “Yeah, well you sure killed the hell out of that one today.”


For the record, I haven't pushed or prodded Katie to start hunting and shooting. She told me that she wanted to learn how to hunt. I told her it's not something you learn how to do, you're born with the knowledge and ability - they eye's forward in predator mode, canine teeth for tearing meat, etc. It's just that most people suppress it since they can go to the store and buy a steak. I could tell Katie had ice water running through her veins though when she successfully got her first confirmed kill on a charging gopher - she stared him down as he was coming at us and put him on the ground just feet away from us. Ok, so he stood there 40 feet away and let her adjust her aim 3 times before she put him down, but still, not bad for a first time with a rifle.

She actually went 3 for 5 on gophers for the day, but needed to learn the finer points of shooting and I'm not really the best one to teach. It's like, how does Picasso paint so well? How does Shakespeare write so well? They don't know, they just do. And so it is with me. Generally speaking, if something is on the business end of my gun it's gonna go in the freezer. But we took the time to stop along a prairie road and shoot up a bottle. She does really well with open sites, but has some work to do with the scoped rifles. She got really good towards the end, but just to let her know where she needs to be someday I called my shot and took the cap off the bottle at about 70 yards. She'll learn that someday - always call your shots. If you make it, you look good, if you miss you blame it on the wind.

That night we celebrated the hunt with some nice store bought steaks and chicken on the grill. I've come to a conclusion as well - theres two types of families that now live in Sherwood. The ones that have been there for years and keep up their houses and lawns and then the rest that have moved in and have 10 vehicles that don’t work, 1 that might and at least 3 chained up dogs. In fact, in a 1 block radius of mom and dads are 17 dogs - no lying, 17 dogs!!! (The blocks in Sherwood are about a quarter of the size of larger city blocks for reference.) Dogs that bark non stop when you’re outside, dogs that bark early in the morning, dogs that bark late at night. There’s even a few dogs that bark because no other dogs are barking so they figure they better bark. I don’t blame the dogs really – I blame the idiot owners that leave them chained up and instead of giving them a toy to play with, they give them an old chair in their kennel to chew on until it’s completely ripped apart and then throw another chair in.

They’re well trained dogs too. As long as ‘heel’ means run to the other end of the yard, ‘sit’ means to bark and ‘lie down’ means to crap in your neighbors driveway. Then yes, they’re perfectly trained.

Just an observation for these people that may help them become more productive of society. Here's a quick guideline of what NOT to do every day.

1.) Wake up
2.) Drink yourself silly
3.) Spend the entire day shooting pellets guns at a paper target
4.) Pass out

I should live back in Sherwood, a person could write an entire blog on bad neighbors if they wanted to.

It was a good weekend though, Ashtyn enjoyed the garden and the grass and meeting new people like Earl and MaryLynn and Jared and Reede. She liked visiting with Grandma and Grandpa and in about a year is going to love riding on the electric tractor and 4-Wheeler with her cousins.

Your "Bob Ross Memorial": Whiteboard pic of the month

This months edition is a throwback to a few months ago and the jumping trout. Matt has Bass fever lately so we decided to go with Jumping Bass this month. I'm thinking of maybe having a little vote on what next months should be. You'll find the voting on the right side of the blog.

Kaylan suggested that she decide. She suggested an entire scene of Polars Bears and Penguins. The only problem is that Polar Bears and Penguins, although normally cold weather animals, live at opposite ends of the Earth. She then suggested 'Big Bird'. Not "A" big bird, "The" Big Bird. We don't do fictitious creatures around here. Maybe Sasquatches, possibly Nessy, outside chance of a Chupacabra, but thats as far as we go.

Vote early, vote often! New post on the weekend that was soon!

We don't talk about no hitters around here

Watching Mark Buehrle throw his perfect game last week and then continuing the same thing for the first 6 innings last night got me to thinking again. Normally a dangerous prospect for me to think, but anyways, it got me to thinking about the unwritten rules of baseball. Like stealing 3rd base when you’re up 12 runs. In my mind I still haven’t forgiven Ryan Aufforth for doing that in the semi-finals of the Saskota League tourney about 9 years ago. 2 innings and 11 runs later by a ticked off Carlyle Cardinal team we barely escaped with the victory. Of course, the game took the wind out of our sails and we ended up losing the championship game to Wawota by a few runs, denying the Sherwood Yanks another league title and an etching on the Jack Harbourne trophy.

That’s one of the unwritten rules, at least in amateur baseball in the Saskota League. The other, more well known rule is that when a pitcher has a no hitter on the line you don’t talk about it in the dugout, in the press box, the crowd, the radio, the TV, nowhere…… I know I had at least 27 no hitters that people unknowingly jinxed on the first batter of the game for me.

That’s why today I’m not going to jinx the apparent no-hitter that Ashtyn has going. I won’t say what it is she has going, but there is something that you like babies to do on a regular basis from about 10:00 at night until about 7:00 or so in the morning.

After the first few weeks of little to no rest for any of us, we wondered if things would ever change, but they have. Yeah, she has her moments, but she’s been really good and she loves to laugh at mom and dad and grandma and grandpa…… and aunts and uncles and anyone that smiles at her.

Yesterday we stopped at the store on the way home from daycare and I would walk up and down the isles with her in the cart. Everytime I saw something good I would hold it up to her and if she laughed at it we put it in the cart. Lucky Charms. Laugh. Milk. Laugh. Sardines. Laugh. Pickled Pigs feet…… no laugh. Damn, she’s go a little of her mom in her.

Next week we’ll go to Scheels. Browning Over/Under 12 gauge. Laugh. In the cart it goes!!

Oh yeah, in case you haven’t figured out what it is she does better than before at night………

The New Blog Post is Here!!! The New Blog Post is Here!!

So I got this new blog thing you should check out. It’s called “News From Da Crib”. It’s pretty cool.

Yeah, I know it’s been awhile since my last post to here, but with good cause. I haven’t had time. It’s the return of the blog tho! Ashtyn’s been in the lab with a pen and a pad thinkin of some new stuff to write on and this might end up being the longest blog post of all time today - not best, just the longest. So with that, lets take a trip into the time machine and look at the summer that has been so far……

HE GOT GAME

McQuades weekend was Ashtyn’s coming out party as she attended most of the games and slept through them like a champ. Not that she’ll remember, but it was probably her only chance to see her dad play at a mildly high level still – by the time she can comprehend things I’ll be playing in the 50 and over wood bat division. 6 games in 2 days resulted in a 4th place finish for the Starion Financial buzz-saw in spite of the play of their 2nd baseman in the first round game. I think we could have done better, but we kind of mailed it in for the 3rd and 4th place game.

BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY

4th of July weekend was chaotic, fun and over much to quickly. Ashtyn finally got to meet her cousins Rhett and Megan as well as her Great Grandma D. It was also her first chance to get to go take a stroller ride in the zoo and she slept through most of it. I also bought us a season pass so we can go whenever we want…….. this will come back to haunt me later in the post.

Here is a pic of Grandma and us.... Man, that is a sweet looking suit.



And here is a pic of Nephew Rhett sneaking his prey before the fireworks. If you can't see him, it's because he's camoflauged.



Speaking of zoo’s, I’ve never experienced the 4th of July on the west side of the Missouri river and that alone will make me think loooooong and hard about where our first house might be located. If they don’t let you do something in Bismarck, chances are, they’ll let you do it in Mandan. Fireworks are nice and all, in fact I’ve written previously on the subject click here, but fireworks at 4:00 a.m. aren’t that nice and are even less nice when your kid jumps every time one explodes right outside the apartment. I imagine Mandan that night to be something like downtown Bagdad. If there’s a recession going on, either Mandan didn’t get the word or people chose to spend their next 10 years disposable income on fireworks this year.

To top things off, we had Ashtyn’s baptism the next morning at 9:00 a.m. so even though she got a little sleep, mom and dad spent the night waking up at every explosion and checking to see if she woke up as well.

MR. DRESS UP

Sunday the 5th we had Ashtyn baptized and in retrospect, probably should have waited until the 11:00 mass to do that, but because of her restless night she sacked out for the better part of the service. Right up until the priest dunked her in the water 3 times. Then you could see the look of “whoa, not bathtime yet people!” “where’s my rubber ducky?!?!” She pulled through like a champ though and then we got a chance to put on a picnic for 47 people at my brothers house. I know I flipped burgers and hot dogs for a good hour and a half straight and of course the wind always blew the grill smoke into my face no matter where I stood. I felt bad for Katie and her mom cuz it was the first time they’d ever tried to plan for a group that large, but luckily we’re Millers and will eat anything that’s put in front of us and the food was all good!



DADDY DAYCARE

Just when you think things will slow down, they speed up. We had a daycare lined up, but couldn’t bring her in until mid-July, so I took the week after the 4th off to do some daddy daycare. For those of you waiting to hear of the disasters that ensued, I’m sorry to report that things went smoothly. The mornings started off with us watching the Outdoor Channel and ended with mom coming home at 7:00 and finding us still watching the Outdoor Channel. Kidding. We learned plenty about what shooter bucks are, but we also took some walks, went to the mall and sat around having staring contests as well. You can't beat a 2 month old in a stare down in case you were ever thinking of trying.

Wednesday of that week was the big day, her 2 month checkup and her first real round of shots. We were nervous all morning and we talked at length how it might sting a little, but we’d feel all better in no time. Our little talk did no good and she howled pretty loud after the shots were done. 5 minutes after mom picked her up though, she was smiling again and never got the fevers or swelling so that was cool.

Thursday afternoon was a biggie as well. It was our first day of daycare! Mom kept inquiring if she could just quit her job and stay home 24/7 with her, but unless I win the lottery this week, we don’t see that happening. It’ll be good for her though to get out and be around other kids and start interacting with them. Her daycare lady, Tracy is really nice and of course Ashtyn takes 3 naps and 3 bottles right on schedule for her. Now I just wish we could get her to do that for us.

ZOOLANDER

As I mentioned before, we had bought a zoo pass so that we could go there whenever we wanted, so of course I’m going to make sure we go there at least 7.8 times in the next year to make sure that we get our money’s worth.

I’ve gotten a lot more confident since our daddy daycare week about being able to take her out to places and since mommy had to work the weekend and it was 75 with no wind on Saturday, we loaded up the Wagon Queen Family Truckster and headed out for a zoo stroll that morning.

There are certain sounds you don’t like to hear coming from the stroller and the big one is the sound of regurgitated liquid from you baby. Yep, 10 steps into the zoo, Ashtyn puked. I went right into action tho – assess the situation, locate the bathrooms, pretend like nothing is wrong and hurry to clean the puke.

Babies aren’t like adults. When adults puke it’s like “Whoa, am I sick? Should I go to the doctor?” or in Auntie Kaylan’s case, “Yeah, I didn’t really need that last shot at the bar”. Babies take it all in stride tho. She sat nice and still, laughed a little, squirmed a little and within 10 minutes we had a new outfit on and a stroller full of pukey clothes and blankets.

Question: How can a baby that only ate 6 ounces of milk, puke out 12 ounces?

I thought for a moment of turning the stroller towards the pickup, but I wasn’t going to let a little mishap ruin the day for us, so we went over to the Aviary in the shade and hung out until she got hungry then munched down on some more milk. We didn’t overdo it this time though. Eventually she started to nod off so it was time to do what we came there for. Dad wants to check out the Elk, Deer, Speed Goats, Swamp Donkey’s and Ditch Parrots and get some pics of them. This is a North Dakota zoo and I’m sure I’m by no means the only guy that’s ever walked by the deer pen and field scored the Whitetail buck there. I’m gonna say he’ll score about 134 this year once he rubs his velvet off.





You know there’s going to be a return trip around mid September for us to do a final scoring for the year……

Mobile Baby

This coming weekend we head down to Herreid for our friends Arnie and Dena’s wedding. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of pass the baby going on and she’ll get completely out of her routine, but it should be a good time. The weekend after that we plan on headin up to Sherwood to see Grandma and Papa Miller and also to let Katie try shooting some guns. Katie wants to start hunting, which is fine with me, cuz that just means more Pheasant in the freezer every fall!

I’m thinking of letting her start off with something small, like my Weatherby .300 Win Mag. If that goes good, we’ll go in and get her fitted for a .416 Rigby or .500 Nitro Express. Kidding. The shockwave from the .300 might scare her away from ever hunting. We’ll start off with Ol’ Reliable, my bolt action .22 with iron sites. The gun has counted coup on many a gopher and if you miss with that, it’s your eye’s that are off, not the sites.

Ok, so thats things in a nutshell. Couple random pics for you here to close things out.

WHAT YOU TALKIN BOUT WILLIS!?!?


Hangin with mommy and Special K (aka Auntie Kaylan)!


Lotion time after bath with daddy!


Ashtyn says, "Thanks for coming by the blog, ya'll come back now, ya here??"