Tommy V's Stuff

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Tommy V's Stuff

Soccer Time

It is Soccer time again.
Sydney and Dalton both started their Fall Season of Soccer.
They were excited to get back to the game.
Sydney played in the morning and they won 5-0
Dalton played in the afternoon and they won 3-2

Here is a series of pictures of Sydney
chasing down a ball and passing to her teammate.
It is fun to watch the girls pass the ball and play more like a team.

Sorry no pictures of Dalton this time.
Karen and I had to miss the game because of a wedding.

Posted by Tommy V at 9/9/2008 12:38 PM | View Comments (2) | Add Comment

Horsing Around

Here are a few pictures of the kids and myself having a little fun. We are trying to lasso a wooden horse. It is not as easy as it looks on TV. This was at the Holzwarth Historic Site at Never Summer Ranch in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Posted by Tommy V at 9/8/2008 9:50 AM | View Comments (2) | Add Comment

Labor Day Weekend: Part 3

Having fun in the Kayaks on Lake Granby

We couldn't ask for any place better than this to Kayak.

Posted by Tommy V at 9/4/2008 1:56 AM | View Comments (3) | Add Comment

Labor Day Weekend: Part 2

Today's post is more from our camping trip over the labor day weekend.
These pictures are of our campsite, at Stillwater, next to Lake Granby. We got very lucky to find any camping in the area over the holiday weekend. I only started looking 2 weeks before. We wanted to stay in Rocky Mountain Nation Park at the Moraine Park camp grounds but it was full. We like to stay at Moraine because it is next to a field were the elk come down in the evening to feed. I kept looking and could not find anything on the Estes Park site. So I looked at Stillwater, since we had stayed there last year and really enjoyed it, and to my surprise they had 2 spots open. Karen called our friends to see if they wanted to go and that's about it.

This is our campsite

This is our friends campsite next to us

This is our view from the campsites

Posted by Tommy V at 9/3/2008 5:00 AM | View Comments (2) | Add Comment

Labor Day Weekend: Part 1

Labor Day Weekend has come and gone. For me this is the official end of summer. The kids have been in school for a couple weeks, cool weather is coming and hanging around more often (in Colorado anyway) and college football has started. On a side note: Alabama rolled over #6 Clemson big time. ROLL TIDE. Anyway back to our weekend, we went camping, with friends. We stayed at a camp ground called Stillwater Campground, which is on Lake Granby and only about 15 minutes outside Rocky Mountain Nation Park. We had lots of fun kayaking, fishing, visiting RMNP and seeing moose, swimming, and all the other fun camping stuff.

This week I will be posting pictures from our weekend of fun. To see pictures of the moose check out my other blog (My Other Blog) I will be posting new pictures all week.

Here is a picture of our packed car. Had to bring the dog so needed more room inside.
Check back soon for more pictures.

Posted by Tommy V at 9/2/2008 2:05 PM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Our weekend of fun

He had another fun weekend of playing. We went up to our friends lake. Lots of swimming, tubing and skiing. I will add pictures tomorrow.

On the way home it was a nice warm beautiful day. About the time we hit Denver Aimee, which was about a half hour behind us, called to tell us they heard there was bad weather in Castle Rock. You could see the dark clouds in front of us. We turned on the radio just in time to hear about the first tornado that was spotted in Castle Rock. At this point Dalton had to stop for a bathroom break so we decided it was a good time to stop and rest. We sat around for about 45 minutes listening to all the tornado and hail reports. It was a little scary because the black clouds were moving closer to our area.

It sounded like the worst was over so nervously we headed home. Once we hit Castle Rock you could see all the hail still on the ground and the temperature dropped 20 degrees in a five miles. The skies were black and it was raining a little. We kept our eyes open for more tornado, we were lucky enough not to see any. Glad we missed all of this crazy weather. Oh well we made it home fine but we believe stopping was the right thing to do. Lucky no one was hurt by the four tornado's spotted on the ground.

Here are a few video from yesterdays storm:

Hail in Castle Rock

Tornado's in Parker and Castle Rock Colorado.

Posted by Tommy V at 8/25/2008 8:34 AM | View Comments (2) | Add Comment

Good Deed of the Day

I did my good deed for the day.

I went to lunch with my colleagues for one of their birthdays. Once we got done we headed out to the car and I heard a baby crying in the car next to us. We looked inside and there was a 8 month old baby in a mini van by itself. All the windows were rolled up, the driver door unlocked and the keys in the ignition. That concerned us so we decided to hang out for a minute to make sure someone came back out. After about 5 minutes we called the police and asked what to do and they said they would send over an officer asap.

The police offer showed up in about 10 minutes (he asked us where the baby was and we said he is in the car and the officer said "get him out of there!"). He took the baby out of the car right away. The baby did not look bad but you could see sweat rolling down his face and his shirt was wet. At this point it had been around 15-18 minutes since we discovered the baby. The police offer made a call on the radio and an ambulance came with sirens and lights on. Now the mom comes running out and says "I am sorry" the officer said, with a very stern voice, "who are you!!"... "I am his mom" said the scared lady... "Go stand over there and do not move!!" said the very upset officer. Next came a fire truck and three more police officers. We had quite a show going on now.

One of my coworker told the police she noticed the lady eating at the bar when we were in there. So we figured the baby was in the car for at least 30 to 40 minutes. We spend the next 45 minutes telling the police our story and answering all their questions. They arrested the mom and took her off and the ambulance took the baby away, I am guessing to the hospital. The officer told use the baby seemed to be ok but they will check him out to be safe.

We told the officer we did not know if we should take the baby out of the car or not. He told us we should and in a case like this the officers would not say a thing. He told us several times that we did the right thing and over and over again said "you are good citizens for stepping up and looking out for others."

Now my thoughts:
WHAT THE HELL WHERE YOU THINKING LADY... You leave your baby in a car, in the middle of the day in August, while you go in to eat lunch. This did not seem to be a quick lunch either since she had a book to read and this was a sushi house. If you know anything about sushi it takes a while to get once you order.

Some of the others were trying to make excuses for her and feeling sorry for her. I told them "there is no excuse for leaving a baby in the car... for any reason. Do not feel sorry for her she is getting what she deserves." She is just lucky that it was not a 90 degree August day. Doesn't she watch the news and see babies can died when they are left in a car. By the way none of these friends had kids...

I sure hope she learns a lesson from this.

BABIES CAME NOT TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.

Posted by Tommy V at 8/20/2008 1:03 PM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

First Day of School

School started Thursday August 14th. We walked to school as a family. Sydney is in 3rd grade and Dalton is in 2nd grade. The kids are growing up to fast.

Posted by Tommy V at 8/16/2008 1:46 AM | View Comments (4) | Add Comment

Kids Make Dinner

The kids really wanted to play restaurant, last night, so we let them make dinner. They went all out and made menus and everything. We started out with "tastings" which consisted of SpaghettiOs, canned peaches, and apple sauce with cinnamon. Next came the main coarse of salad. On the plate there was lettuce with Italian dressing, red peppers, tomatoes and avocado mixed together and a nice pile of real bacon bits. Even with all that food I was still hungry so I order more food and I was brought 2 White Castle sliders. Ok need to talk about my sliders... I am from Alabama and grow up eating at Krystals. When I moved to Colorado I was disappointed to find out that there were no Krystals restaurants in Colorado. So every time I go back to Alabama to visit I will always eat at Krystals, at least once. Anyway, one Sunday Karen drug me to Sams to buy food. To my surprise I saw a box of White Castle hamburgers in the frozen food section. I always heard that White Castle burgers were the same as the Krystals burgers so it was worth a try. Man am I glad I got a box of them. You just nuke them for 60 sections and you have a wonderful little burger. Now I have made Dalton a slider lover too. Oh well back to the dinner. After dinner we had a nice little dessert of ice cream with cinnamon sugar. It was such a nice dinner and fun to watch the kids in action.

Main Coarse

My Lovely Date

White Castle Slider

Ice Cream Dessert

Posted by Tommy V at 8/15/2008 4:14 PM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Our Trip to Minnesota - Part 7: Smores for Breakfast

All week we would try and plan a time, after dinner, to grill up some smores.
Something always got in the way... tubing, swimming, fishing, you know all that fun stuff. So Grandma decided the kids would be having smores for breakfast, before all the fun stuff got started. Grandpa started a fire, Grandma got all the yummy fixings together and the uncles found green sticks for roasting the marshmallows. It turned out to be a huge success for the kids and the parents. The kids loved it because they got to have chocolate, marshmallow, and gram crackers for breakfast. The parents loved it because once the kids were hyped up on sugar we got to send them off to play and not try to calm them down so they can go to bed.

This is only something that a Grandma can get away with...

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa