Tommy V's Stuff

Airplane Fly-by

Tommy V — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:54:22 GMT

Mom and Dad came out to visit a couple weeks ago and Dalton had been waiting all week to take poppa to the top of Mount Valentine (as dad likes to call it). Well it was the perfect day to go up. It was late afternoon on Saturday clear sky and just a light chill in the air. We were standing up there admiring the beautiful 360 degree views we have of Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak, when we heard the roar of jet engines and then saw 3 fighter jets fly over. Then I remembered there was a Air Force football game and they always do a fly over of some sort. The airplanes always circle just over our house before they make their low fly by directly over head. We watched them circle for 30 minutes or so thinking they were all F15's. Then all of a sudden they broke formation and one by one they flew directly over head and very low. It was quite a show. The F15 went first, the the next one and the next one.... Dad said "I think those were the new F22". The planes headed over the football stadium and then made a 90 degree turn and went vertical. If you have never seen a fighter jet go vertical it is quit a sight. Once we got back to the house I looked at the pictures and dad was right it was a F15 and 2 F22 Raptors. I am glad we got to watch this with Poppa/Dad.

F15

F22

F22 going vertical

Happy Halloween

Tommy V — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 09:13:10 GMT

Todays post is all about Halloween. Sydney had a Halloween, Slumber Birthday Party. We had eight little girls all dressed up and ready to party. The girls came over around 5:00 so they could play and have pizza before we headed out trick or treating. We decided to have a couple friends of Dalton's come over too so he would have some one to trick or treat with. We headed out just after dark and within 5 minutes we had 13 kids all together going to every house. It was funny to watch people answer the door. It was a little shocking when 13 kids scream out trick or treat all at once. It is fun to take the kids trick or treating at this age. They can go to the houses by themselves and the parents can just hang out and chit-chat. We spent about and hour and a half trick or treating. Next we headed in the house for a little Happy Birthday cake and ice cream. Dalton was lucky enough to have a sleep over himself at someone else's house. We put the girls downstairs with movies and games to play. They spent all night and most of the next morning giggling and talking. Karen had to go down and tell them to go to sleep several times since the kept waking us up. Her last trip downstairs was 3:00 AM and the girls were still up talking. We are not sure what time they finally fell asleep but they were up again at 7:30 AM playing. We made them pancakes and sent them on there way around 10:00 AM. We warned each parent that the girls were up all night so they would know why their girls might be a little crabby. They just laughed and went on their way. All in all it was a great Halloween and Birthday Party.

First three pictures are of us carving our pumpkins

The trick or treat gang
Sydney was a hockey player and Dalton a vampire

The girls trading candies. This was really fun to watch

Sydney and her pumpkin birthday cake.

The next morning the girls painted their finger and toe nails

I hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween

Soccer Time

Tommy V — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:07:37 GMT

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.

Horsing Around

Tommy V — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:21:33 GMT

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.

Labor Day Weekend: Part 3

Tommy V — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:23:35 GMT

Having fun in the Kayaks on Lake Granby

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

Labor Day Weekend: Part 2

Tommy V — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:49:14 GMT

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

Labor Day Weekend: Part 1

Tommy V — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:51:17 GMT

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.

Our weekend of fun

Tommy V — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:29:24 GMT

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.

Good Deed of the Day

Tommy V — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:12:49 GMT

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.

First Day of School

Tommy V — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:15:54 GMT

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.

Kids Make Dinner

Tommy V — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:44:33 GMT

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

Our Trip to Minnesota - Part 7: Smores for Breakfast

Tommy V — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:05:42 GMT

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

Our Trip to Minnesota - Part 6: Stacking the Kids

Tommy V — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:23:07 GMT

More fun from Minnesota.

Greta, Sydney, Harper, Anna, Olivia, and Flannery

Theo, Dalton and Ben

Grandpa wants to see how many grandkids he can stuff in the little car.

Looks like 7

Our Trip to Minnesota - Part 5: Fun on the Swings

Tommy V — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:37:20 GMT

Check out my other blog for pictures of the wildlife from our MN trip: www.coloradodeer.com

There are the great swings at the cabin. The tire swing seems to be the favorite. James and Steve added it a couple years ago.

Dalton getting a push from Anna

Dalton and Theo having fun

Sydney and Tom goofing off

Our Trip to Minnesota - Part 4: Who can Stay on the Longest

Tommy V — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:58:24 GMT

Check out my other blog for pictures of the wildlife from our MN trip: www.coloradodeer.com

More fun in the water. The kids decided to play a again on the windsurfer to see who could stay on the longest. Dalton was always the first one off. I think he just like to fall backwards in the water.

Our Trip to Minnesota - Part 3: Swamping the Canoe

Tommy V — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:36:38 GMT

Check out my other blog for pictures of the wildlife from our MN trip: www.coloradodeer.com

Today is all about the kids having a little fun in the water.
I think the pictures will tell the story.

Kids swapping the canoe

Theo's turn with the canoe

Our Trip to Minnesota - Part 2: Tubing

Tommy V — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:35:10 GMT

Check out my other blog for pictures of the wildlife from our MN trip: www.coloradodeer.com

Today I am going to talk about the kids tubing. Let me first start out by telling you a little bit about the tubes. One tube is built for 2 people (or 6 as you will soon see in the pictures), so its large and wide, which makes it hard to flip over. The other tube is the size of an old truck tube, that we use to play on, but its much more durable and is made for 1 person (or 2 as you will see soon), but the down side is it is much easier to flip over on and it did, dumping the kids in the lake. Karen, Steve and Dan took turns pulling the kids on the tubes. Some times they pulled one tube and other times they pulled both tubes at the same time. The kids had a blast and could not get enough of the tubes.

Karen pulling Sydney and Dalton

Dan pulling the Flannery and Olivia

Steve pulling both tubes and a bunch of kids

Our Trip to Minnesota - Part 1: Fishing

Tommy V — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:57:42 GMT

We spent the last week on vacation in Minnesota. We spent most of the week up at the families cabin in northern MN.   We spent the time fishing, tubing, swimming, kayaking & canoing, bird watching, relaxing and just having fun. There were 9 cousins ranging from 3 to 9 years old so there was no lack of things for the kids to do. Check out my other blog (www.coloradodeer.com) for pictures of the wildlife from MN. I got some awesome pictures of eagles and loons.

Over the next few days I will post pictures of fishing, tubing and other stuff so please come back and check out the pictures.

Today I am going to add my fishing pictures. Dalton, Ben and I went fishing everyday. Karen and Sydney fished a couple days with us. Karen did not fish any more after I "Stole her Fish." I guess I need to explain this one. Each evening Karen, Dalton, Sydney and I would go fishing in a cove where the Eagles nest. On the way home Karen would putter along slowly down a weed bed where I always catch Bass. And yes I did catch a couple Bass there again. Well the last night she fished I told her I would drive and she could fish for the Bass. So I brought her down the weed bed slowly so she could cast up next to the boat docks and other structures. We came up to a great stop and I said cast up by that dock. She threw a couple up there but never the place I was telling her. So since she was past the point, I told her I was going to cast out there a couple times. She said "you better not catch my fish." Well I thought she was joking.... man was I wrong. I threw up there in the perfect spot (the one I told her to cast to) and a bass hit it right away but I missed it. She looked over again and said "you better not catch my fish." Well I new the bass would hit again so I reeled in and threw over there again and SPLASH the bass came up and grabbed my top water lure. I said "I got it!" The kids ran over to see and help. Karen just looked over her shoulder and said "that's my fish" and kept fishing. I tried to explain that she was already past the point where I caught the fish... "that's my fish!" is all she said. Then I said "I told you to cast over there and..." That's my fish!!" I gave up at that point and just enjoyed my catch.
So who's fish is it? Tom's or Karen's

Dalton, Sydney & Tom fishing    Janice, Dalton, & Ben crappie fishing

Dalton     casting from the dock Sydney

Dalton's Rock Bass                      Smallest fish of the day

Tom & Karen showing off there sunnies

Ben catches a Large Mouth Bass             Sydney and Tom fishing from the Pontoon boat

Dalton's Large Mouth Bass

Lake Wilson Part 2

Tommy V — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:07:50 GMT

This is part two of our great weekend at the lake. This time I am featuring the kids skiing. They are getting to be really good skies. They use a training ski which is a larger ski that helps the kids stay up. It is not attached to the boat, instead it is held by someone in the boat. This is done so, if the kids fall, you can let go of the rope and not drag the kids across the lake because they forgot to let go. Dalton was doing so good on the trainer we thought it was time for him to try out real skies. I will post more on this next time.

Sydney

Not sure why she is pouting she had a great time.

Dalton asking Aimee to speed up

Karen holding rope for Dalton

Ride is over so Dalton bailed out. He must have remembered last years
nose dives when Karen would let go of the rope at the end of the ride.

Lake Wilson

Tommy V — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:08:06 GMT

We had a fun filled weekend at a friends lake. The kids call it Lake Wilson. We always have a great time hanging out with our friends the Wilson's. We spend the weekend skiing, tubing, kayaking, and even find a little time for relaxing and reading. Below are a few pictures from our weekend. I will add pictures of the kids skiing tomorrow. I also have some great pictures of Pelicans and other birds I will add to
my other blog this week.

Aimee likes to hit the water early before all the other boats mess up the
perfect water. She made it by about 5 minutes this morning.

Karen and Aimee Kayaking

Pat and Sydney trying to run over Dalton

Aimee

Pat

Karen

I forgot to mention that we always eat great food all weekend.
Pete can grill with the best of them.