Savannah Georgia

I had to go down to Savannah for a training class for Odyssey of the Mind. Rochet came along for a mini-vacation. We arrived on Friday about 3 and left Saturday at 2. We took a tour of the city. It is a real beautiful old city and it is the perfect time to be there. We took a tour and learned a lot about the history which was fascinating. Here are some pictures.

Truck Follow-up

As promised but quite late I am posting pictures of our trucks. Note mines bigger than Brads.

No Pictures

No Pictures because i did not have my camera handy. For those who don't know it is Brads Birthday Monday 10/13. Yesterday I went with him to buy his first NEW truck, He had been looking for weeks and said he was ready to go get it. We went over his budget and savings and monthly payments and after considering it all We went to the Toyota Dealer. He test drove several Trucks and finally settled on a nice BLUE Toyota Tacoma. He got zero percent financing.
While we were waiting on his paper work to finish up the sales guy mentioned that he noticed I was driving an older (02) Avalanche. He said "I'm not trying to sell you anything but..." (By the way that NEVER means I'm not trying to sell you anything) He had this $36,000 Tundra that someone brought in that had only 3000 miles on it. He said it was one of the best deals he had seen in a while. The owner told him to work with someone to try to sell it. They cut off about 12K off the price and gave me more that my trade was worth.
Long Story Short, Both Brad and I left with new Trucks! I will take pictures of both when he returns from South Carolina tomorrow. Yes he is spending his Birthday on a business trip. Just like his uncle has done many a time. Stay Tuned!

Doing our part to save the economy!!!

The Big One

I went fishing again in Lower Michigan and caught some fish. Here is an 18 pounder I caught.

Another picture of Steve fighting another big one.

Chicago Trade Show

RYECO is exhibiting at a trade show in Chicago this week. It is called Label Expo. Lots of people and hopefully some new customers. Here is a pic of our booth.

Uppers in Alabama

I know two posts in one day, should be against the law. I took this picture at the lake house today and thought I should post it for the benefit of all those back in the UP who are looking for Grandpa and Grandma. Here they are at the Lake House in Alabama.

Upper Michigan

Weston is moved in and here he is with his roommate.

We took a drive up the Keweenaw and saw some great scenery.

Weston's Send-off to Tech

We had a small get together to send off Weston to Tech. We leave Wednesday morn and get him to tech on Friday. Papa Don had a cool cake made.

Crew at Lake

This past weekend we had out last Crew outing of the summer. Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

Obligatory Post

I have been forgetting my camera on all important events lately so I have no new pictures to post. We are having a busy summer and are spending lots of time at the lake house. Weston is working at RYECO for the summer and Addie is sleeping a lot and doing some babysitting. Rochet is real active helping start the Womens League and I just keep my head low.

School starts next week here for Addie and we will be taking Weston up to Michigan Tech the weekend of Aug 24th. It looks like we will be getting a visit from Grandpa and Grandma as they come down with April, Addison and Joe for Labor Day weekend.

Here is a picture of our trip to the UP last Christmas just to make the hot summer days seem not so bad...

Random things

A couple of random things;

For Fathers day I was allowed to get a big screen TV. Here is Addie posing in front of it with Shrek playing in High Def.

Weston officially got his Eagle Award at a court of Honor last weekend. Here he is in full uniform (probably for the last time).

Skiing at the Top-of-the-World

Today Weston and I went back up the mountain to get in another day of skiing. The upper lifts were open so we were able to go up to the 8600 foot level. The mountain is over 11,000 feet so there was still more mountain above us. It started to snow and was almost a complete whiteout by the time we finished. The snow was great and we skied a mile long Black Diamond run that was a blast. The picture was taken from the top of Palmer Lift at 8600 feet.

Skiing on Mt. Hood

After spending a day in the lodge waiting for the rain to stop, we woke up today to 5 inches of fresh snow. A motorcycle club came up and got caught in the snow.

It snowed all day and we saw the Mountain off and on. We could not ski the upper levels due to high winds. We did ski the lower part of the ski area.

We came off the mountain for a couple of days in a Log Cabin. We went from 27 degrees on top of the Mountain to about 50 at our cabin.

Mt. Hood

Today we headed up toward Mt. Hood to go skiing. As we came around a corner we came upon this view of the Mountain. It had been cloudy all morning then almost instantly the clouds lifted and we got a rare cloudless view of the mountains.

In this picture we are almost at the Timberline ski lodge and if you look close you can see the chair lift going up the left side of the mountain. It was about 50 degrees when we arrived but as we went out to dinner the clouds moved back in and it started to snow. They expect it to snow all night. Tomorrow we ski.

Ski Vacation in June

We asked Weston where he wanted to go for a Family Vacation and he said Skiing! We figured since he is Graduating we would let him decide. There are only a couple places in North America Where one can ski in June. We started checking and decided to head West Young Man to Oregon's Mt. Hood. We are spending tonight in the Columbia River Gorge and tomorrow we will head up to the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. We stopped at the tallest falls in the lower 48 states today. Here is a picture of us all standing in front of Multnomah Falls.

Now that I have my camera back....

Weston graduated this week with 751 other kids from his high school. It took over an hour just to read all the names. Here is a picture of him actually receiving his diploma.

He went to a graduation Party for Brads Girlfriend and he got tossed into the Pool.

Weston's Birthday

Well today is Westons Birthday and I do not have any new pictures of him to post. Here is a picture of him working on his Eagle Project. He has actually finished everything required to get his Eagle Rank for Scouts and we are only waiting for Paper Work to come back before we can make it official. So all in a couple of weeks he passed three major milestones in life; He obtains the Rank of Eagle Scout, Graduates from High School and turns 18 Years old. Our little boy is growing up!!!

Addie's Birthday

Happy Birthday Addie!

Here is what she found on a nearby billboard.

Odyssey of the Mind

We're Going To State!!!!

I am the Coach of Addies Odyssey of the Mind team at her school. On Saturday we had our regional tournament and we came in Second which means we now go to the State tournament. The kids built a car out of PVC Pipe and had to perform 4 tasks with the car while moving it through a course on its own power. Addie was the driver for part of the course. (She is far right in the picture above) They also had to do a original performance of a skit. Here is a Video of part of the performance. Wish us luck!

Crew Campout

The Crew had another campout this past weekend at the Lake. Here are a couple of pictures of the kids. They shot about 4000 rounds of ammo with pistols and part of the main event.

Here is Brad with his Girls.

Three of the boys slept in the Boat hanging from the boat lift. There are three boys in this picture.

Spring???

Here is a quick post for Shelia. This may make the piles of snow look a little better. Spring is coming soon. These flowers have been growing besides our house for a couple of weeks now. The trees have buds too.

Crew and Fishing

It has ben a while since our last post because I lost my main computer. I am working on a provisional laptop until mine comes back from the hospital.

We have had a lot of activity in the past few weeks. Once we got over the shock of the Packers not playing in the SuperBowl we got back to normal life.

We had another Crew Outing at the lake house. Her is the gang overlooking Weiss Lake.


Here are some of the kids camping on the Island.

The crappies are bitting and here is the results of Me and Tim Queen spend a work day on the lake.

Snow and Football

We are ready for some football! Can you tell who we are rooting for?
Had a little snow in Georgia this past week. Two snow storms in 4 days. WOW!

Weston has been Accepted

Its Official! Weston has been accepted to Michigan Technological University. He will be attending there in the Fall in the Software Engineering Program. That's the good news; the bad news is that someone has to pay for it. We will be accepting donations at our Bank and Shelia will be putting together another Charity Event Fund Raiser soon.

Snowmobiling in the Keweenaw

We went up to see Michigan Tech. in the winter and spent a few days at a cabin with snowmobiles. We got a foot of snow the first day and more comming. And Weston still wants to attend school here.

Here is Rochet's new car burried in snow.