Almost TWO YEARS!

I just realized that it has been nearly 2 years since my last post.  I guess my blog isn't as high a priority as it used to be.  I'll try to post again a bit sooner next time. ;-)

What are we up to these days?

Me:  Gaining weight and not exercising nearly as much as I should.  I'll be increasing my running and biking miles over the summer.  I'm still working at BHMI.  Ben is starting to do short bike rides with me and we may do a short bike trip this summer with Keli and Brandon providing support as needed.  Brandon, Ben and I are also playing some "Star Wars Imperial Assault".  We have completed the first two mission.  I play the Imperials and they play the Rebel Scum.  The Rebel Scum is 2:0 so far.  Drat!

Keli has been super busy with homeschooling, working at our church, cleaning houses, wedding coordinator duties at our church, cooking, cleaning, laundry, picking up after three messy guys, and a million other things.  Somehow she has still found a few spare moments to pick up quilting.  If I haven't mentioned it before, Keli is my best friend, and I'd be a mess without her.  I thank God that she is in my life.

Ben continues to develop into quite the engineer.  He can build some amazing stuff with Legos.  He also keeps taking things apart to see how they work.  Now he just needs to learn how to put them back together again.  Ben has also started taking piano lessons and he has gotten pretty darn good in a short period of time.  I also had Ben go on a bike ride with me recently and he wore clip in shoes and rode my bike.  It's crazy that he is big enough now to ride my road bike.  He was a bit nervous about being locked to the pedals though.  He made it without falling.

Brandon writes more than anyone I know. I don't know WHAT he writes, but he is constantly writing stuff in journals of all sorts.  He has started learning to play the guitar and is doing really well.  He got some Star Wars music for Christmas and has been able to play a few of those songs.  It's fun to hear him playing.  Brandon has also become a real joy to be around.  He has his moment (as we all do) but he is quick to make me smile when I'm having a bad day.  He and I play computer games together every once in a while.  

I'd post a few pictures, but when I removed all the pictures from my ipad last night, it also deleted them from EVERY iDevice we own, including my phone which I usually use to take photos of family activities.  Lovely.

This will just have to do for now:

Candy Bot 3000

Brandon decided to make his own costume for his last year of trick-or-treating.  He had the idea, I built it, and he did all the final touches.

It was a lot of fun working with him on his costume.

Here is the result.

You did what?

A week ago Saturday, Keli and Brandon left in the morning to go run some errands.  They were gone for about 4 hours.  When they returned home Keli let me know that they stopped by the Omaha Humane Society to visit a dog named Lulu (an abandoned dog that was never claimed and was now up for adoption).

This is the point where my spider senses started to tingle.  There was danger ahead.  OK.. not really danger, but I knew where this conversation was likely to go.

Turns out Lulu is a Schnauzer mix, is female, has floppy ears, and has black and silver fur.  Did I ever mention that Keli has been planning for YEARS to get another Schnauzer with floppy ears, that is female, and has black and silver fur.  She wants to name this future family member Daisy.  Well, to make a long story short....

Meet Daisy

Daisy has been a member of our family for 10 days now.  It was a good decision.  We have only had to clean a few spots on the carpet and she is getting along very well with Gracie (as long as Gracie does see Daisy eating food).  Daisy is great at fetch, is already learning to sit, has already learned not to beg for food from the table, and is sleeping in Brandon's room at night.  She has been MUCH easier to add to the family than a puppy would be (although I still want to get a Schnauzer puppy some day).  She is a great lap dog too.  I am very happy that Keli forced me to get her.  OK... she didn't force me, but Brandon was rather persuasive. ;-)

I'll try to post a picture or two of Daisy after she gets her first haircut. 

Welcome to the family Daisy.

Yup... I'm famous...

...and so humble too. 

Our company has a blog and I got a mention on the most recent article.  It talks about how I won the 2013 Corporate cup in Division A.

Oh, and there may have been a few other people on the BHMI team that helped...a little. ;-)

Game night (a new tradition)

I've been wanting to spend more time with friends from work and from church, so I recently started doing a monthly game night for some of the guys.  It's been a lot of fun and my wife and kids have joined in from time to time as well.  We didn't get to do the game night this month, because of a crazy schedule that filled up all the Friday's this month, but we will do one next month.

Anyways, it's been a lot of fun and some of the guys have brought over some super fun games to play.  Here is one that Ken brought over called Heroscape.  He has quite the collection and it took us almost as much time to pick our heroes as it did to play the game.  

Alas, the resident expert Ken did not win because he opened hostilities with me and I promptly took control of his troll and walked it into some lava (TWICE).  

The Winner ended up being my son Ben (on the right in the first picture) because we wrongly assumed he would be an easy target at the end of the game.  He landed the final blow to defeat his father in the end.  Maybe we should have named him Luke. ;-)

Good times!

It's SUMMER!

I've been wondering when summer would finally show up.  Yesterday the temps went over 100ºF, so I guess that makes it official.

Now that it's summer, I'll be riding to/from work a bit more.  Today is day 3 of 3 commuting on the bike.  My butt hurts a bit, but the rides have been very enjoyable.  Lots of trees and flowers blooming and the smell of fresh cut grass sure makes the commute to/from work much more enoyable via bike than it ever has been in a car.

Anyways, I though I'd drop in and post a few pictures from the last several months.  So... let me see... how about we start way back at Christmas.  I promise to post more pictures and stuff before the end of 2013. ;-)

 Christmas Cookies

 

The tree on Christmas Eve 

 

B&B winning AWANA Quizing competition 

 

B&B Watching cartoons with their cousin on Saturday morning 

 

Game night at the Boekers (I didn't win any games that night) 

 

Brandon finding easter eggs 

 

Ben doing the same 

 

Brandon checking out his B-Day cake 

 

Exactly what you think it is 

 

Keli running the Lincoln Half Marathon 

 

Keli and B&B at the Lauritzen Gardens Lego exhibit

Hope you all have a great summer.

Should I post more than once a year?

My blog hasn't seen a lot of love lately.  Honestly, I kind of forgot that I had one.  So I thought I'd drop in and post a few pictures and give a bit of an update.

My health: Pretty good.  My last hospital stay was back in September (Pancreatitus brought on by a surgery to help prevent future occurrences of Pancreatitus...go figure).  I've been feeling good sense then and the last surgery seems to have been helpful.

Hobbies: B&B and I spent a few months this fall building a remote control truck to race.  We have raced it a couple times since we completed it (see pictures below).  Keli and I did a Triathlon this summer, so we had been running, swimming, and biking a bit leading up to that event.  Since then Keli and I have continued running and I have biked a few times.  We don't plan to do any Triathlons next summer, but we do plan to run a few races, including the Lincoln Half Marathon in May.  Other hobbies are fading away a bit due to other commitments (see "Church" below).

Church: Keli and I have been getting more involved with our church Evangelical Bible Church Omaha.  Keli took on the Wedding Coordinator duties this year.  She is coordinating one of her first weddings in just a couple weeks.  I, on the other hand, have been invited to join the Board of Elders at EBC and was affirmed into the position at the last "all church meeting".  I'm just now getting a better idea of the level of commitments and responsibilities the BOE members take on.  Let's just say that they do a LOT.  It was a huge honor to be invited to join the BOE, and I pray that I can do a great job and that I can do so with a humble and service oriented heart.

B&B: They are growing quickly and I love getting home from work each day to hang out with them AND Keli.  Ben is still a LEGO builder extraordinaire.  His building skills dwarf mine at this point.  Brandon creates Lego movies by the dozens and has a great imagination.   Both of them are doing exceptionally well racing the truck mentioned above.  Keli continues to home-school them and they are both doing really well.  It's also fun to see that they both enjoy reading even when they don't have to.  They often stay up and read a bit in bed each night and Brandon has taken a liking to poetry.

Furniture: See previous post on this blog.  We are not fans of these LoveSac's as primary furniture.  We are getting a bit tired of having to fluff up our chairs before we can use it and struggling to get a good butt indentation for comfortable seating while watching movies.  We will probably put a new (new/used that is) love-seat in once we can find a good one on Craigslist.  So we don't give LoveSac seating a recommendation for movie watching chairs for adults.  They are great for kids, but sub-optimal for adults.

Running: As I mentioned above, Keli has gotten me back into running.  At first it was in the guise of training for a triathlon, but now it is my primary form of exercise.  I'm currently increasing miles SLOWLY to get ready for a heavy training push this spring.  Hopefully this will get me ready for a decent effort at the Lincoln Half Marathon.  Related to running, I was inducted into the UNK Athletic Hall of Fame this fall.  My speech is included below, but I'll warn you that I got a bit mushy at one point.  I've also included a picture below of Keli, B&B, and myself riding in the Kearney Homecoming parade.  The boys had a lot of fun throwing candy to the kids during the parade.

Best seat in the house

And now it looks like this.

New Furniture!

My blog has been a bit lonely. So I decided to post a few picture of our new furniture.

This is one time when we WANTED the kids to jump on the furniture. It took us forever to break up the foam in the 4 new Lovesacs. They had a blast. Even mom and dad got into the spirit.

B&B's tree-less tree fort 99% complete

We still need to add the opening on the front so B&B can use a bucket and pulley to hoist stuff up, but other than that, it's pretty much done.