Christmas is Coming

Well I guess I need to do a better job of hiding Jake's Christmas presents. The other day Jake had snuck out into the garage and found one of his gifts. Unfortunately, I had placed the gift on top of some other things in the garage. This is what we found...

Yes, thats a new car on top of the stroller and a couple bags of charcoal

Jake had climbed up the stroller, opened the door to the car, and proceeded to work the steering wheel and honk the horn all while sporting a super grin from ear to ear. I can't believe it was stable enough not to fall to the floor.



He sure had a good time until we took him out of the car. I guess he won't be as surprised as he should be on Christmas day, but at least we know he'll like it.

Elk Hunt

On Friday after Thanksgiving my buddy Scott and I left Yuma and traveled to Pinetop, AZ, in the White Mountains for my very first elk hunt. We were able to stay at my mom's place in Pinetop and looked forward to a week of some of the world's best elk hunting in units 3A and 3C. The higher elevations had received a couple inches of freshly fallen snow, while most everything else was a muddy mess from all the rain. Scott and I had not been able to go scouting for this hunt and therefore would be shooting from the hip on where to begin looking for my first elk. Our family friend, T.T. Havins, gave us some helpful advice on a promissing area near Show Low. We headed out before sunrise the next morning and I had killed my elk by 9:00 a.m. A group of ATV riders were out for a ride and stopped to ooh and awe over the beautiful animal we had harvested. We enlisted their help hook up to the elk with there Rhino and to make the short hall down the hill and into the back of my truck. They were very helpful and significantly cut down on our time in the field. Here are a coupl of pictures.









The antler on the left was signficantly shorter than the one on the right. We were certainly confused as to why, but speculate that it must have gotten into a pretty good skirmish early on in the antler growth.

The three guys in the hats were the ones who helped us get teh elk down to the truck and load it.

Jimmy Buffett 2008

I know it has been a very long time since this blog was updated, but I just sort of ran out of steam there for awhile.

Anyway, back in October, Johnna and I spent our first weekend away from Jake and traveled to Las Vegas with six of our very best friends to see Jimmy Buffett. It was a surprise Birthday present for Johnna and we had an absolute blast. The "Block Party" started at 11:00 a.m. with live music and cold libations. When we finally made it to the concert at the MGM Grand we discovered that Johnna's seat in the arena was missing. Apparently the stadium seat was broke and had not been repaired/replaced prior to the concert. After speaking with arena staff they told us that the best they could do was give us two tickets on the floor level just to the right of the stage. We voiced our concerns about leaving our friends, but the staff said they could not move all eight of us. So, Johnna and I enjoyed our second Jimmy Buffett concert on the floor of the MGM Grand Garden Arena (first was in 2004) while the others watched from high above us. I must say that the Block Party was nearly as much fun as the concert itself. Here are a few pics from early in the day.

Mike and Joci, Johnna, and Scott

Scott, Mike, Mark, and Stacey

The Block Party Crowd (can you see us???)

There we are