Some things are getting done around the house.  The roofing stuff is mostly done save for a skylight, some gutters and chimney-area roofing but I don't know how we'll get the roofers back out.  We fixed some of the cracking on the front deck as best we could and repainted the whole thing - something we were waiting to do until the new roof got put on since the old one leaked all over the porch.  This week I'm going to start reinsulating the attic and the carpeting in the auxiliary dining room/craft room is getting ripped up and replaced with wood flooring, which will be messy and annoying for at least a week.

The shelf in the closet is really stuck a foot above the ground too.  Here's another picture of that.  I'm sure the flooring guy will have a great sense of humor about that like everyone else around here.

We drove to Gillette one day to visit some new babies.  We saw Candice's new baby at the park, and then we were godparents at Elam's baptism.  Lincoln was awful at the baptism, but good at the lunch afterwards.  It's funny how kids always make you look like bad parents no matter what you do.

In Gillette I visited a strange park full of abandoned mine equipment.

Lincoln spent some quality time at the park.  He can really work the digger now.  Sometimes he even manages to not pinch his fingers nearly off.

We drove to Red Lodge and spent the weekend with my parents there.  Even though it got really cold we managed to get a hike in inbetween storms.  We walked up to Mystic Lake, sat and had a sandwich and turned around and walked down because it was too cold to do anything else.

The hike goes through a forest and then up switchbacks up this rocky area.

Mountain butthole.

When we got to the lake it was nice.

For about 10 minutes.  And then a storm came in and started making weird wind patterns on the lake.

Near the bottom of the trail the river flows through a rock channel that makes all sorts of neat waterfalls and sluices.

The lake has a hydro-electric plant from the 1920s.  How would you like to ride the tram down those tracks?

And lastly, some pictures of the sky.  That rainstorm really swept across the land.

We've been hiking in the mountains several times too.  It's too hot to do anything down here in the valley, but in the mountains it's tolerable at least.  We've been back to Sibley Lake a few times and visited Porcupine Falls.  The hike to the falls is  short but extremely steep and at a fairly high altitude.  Lincoln had to be carried.  I was told that there are fish in the lake below the falls but I didn't catch any.

The little rainbow trout that come out of Sibley Lake (Zia took these pictures).

"Fishing" with the kids.  Lincoln falls and hurts himself a lot.

At Porcupine Falls.  There's an old miner's camp downstream from the falls.  Not much left though: just an old stove, some rusty cans, a rusty barrel.

Zia found a perfectly round pile of dirty foam spinning in a little pool.

The hike back up.  I didn't think we were going to make it.

A Lincoln-sized tree.

Will Fisher came to visit.

First he and Zia checked out the shopping in Ranchester.

Will helped with a day of watching the kids and then we went on some walks the second day.  We walked to Bucking Mule Falls, on the wrong trail (maybe it was the back road?) it turned out, but we luckily got to the falls anyway.  Bucking Mule Falls are far away, across a very deep canyon, but still nice.  The pictures don't really do it justice.  The overlook is some rocks jutting out with vertical drops of over a thousand feet on every side.

After walking to Bucking Mule, we walked down to Porcupine Falls as well.

The process of having our house reroofed is finally almost done.  It took two weeks of 5 guys up there banging around starting at 6:30 AM.  There were mishaps (like the dump trailer getting parked on the flower bed and the dump trailer breaking up a bunch of flagstones under the trellis), but overall it looks good.  One of the old skylights was replaced and a replacement for the other one is coming soon.  There were some very busy days with roofers and electricians showing up.

And here are a few more drawings.  It almost looks like I'm getting something done.  Don't be fooled though.   Oh, and the drawing a couple of weeks ago wasn't of the grasshoppers around here!  Heh.

Here's an example of a typical "float."

Jesus was there too.

Zia rode on the Community Center float.  If you know where to look you might be able to see her in this picture.  She's ducking to avoid the water.

There have been a lot of thunderstorms lately.  They don't happen during the day.  They only blow through exactly as I'm falling asleep.  Last night as I was falling asleep the power went out, the generator came on and I had to get up and close everything up and go out and turn the generator off.

It's also been hot.  Sometimes the kids get to go swimming in the afternoon.  Lincoln does different kinds of jumps into the pool.  He does "volcano" jumps, "rocket" jumps and "airplane" jumps.  They all look the same.

Here are a couple of misc. Lincoln pictures from the week.  Maybe some blackmail in there, I don't know.

This weekend we drove up to a lodge on the mountain to celebrate Amber's grandma's 90th birthday.  It was also a family reunion for that side of the family.  The kids played all day in the lake and took canoe rides.  I didn't take any pictures all day until about 4 PM, when Lincoln showed me what he'd been doing all day.  He was making "Krabby Patties" from the brown rocks he was finding in the water.

Uncle Ian always falls asleep.  In this picture Lincoln isn't asleep.  He's pretending to be Ian.

Here's what back to school shopping looks like around here:

Here's Boomer!  Did you know that he has a new website?  Please visit Catstackers.com to check it out!  So far you all have been disappointing me by not submitting any pictures.

I've been doing some drawings.  I think I'll just do drawings for awhile.  I can do them faster, about one a week, so I can clear out all the ideas that I've had in my notebook for 5 years.  The first one is a redrawing of the painting I posted last week.  The second one is of a mystery subject.  See if you can figure out what it is.

So, we'll begin this blog with a Boomer photolog.   Really you can break the subjects of blogs down pretty quickly.  If you're not blogging about your kids, you're blogging about your pets.  If you're not blogging about your pets, you're blogging about your hobbies.  If you're not blogging about your hobbies, you're probably blogging about a lot of crap no one cares about. Anyway, this week Boomer did some sleeping.  In a variety of positions.

Sometimes he falls out of his box while he's sleeping.

Sometimes he loses his dignity while sleeping.

Actually, he loses his dignity every time he sleeps.

Every once in awhile he'll wake up long enough to kill something.  This time he killed a small rabbit.  He was happily dragging it between his legs like a lion to his lair (the flower bed) when we found him.

The rabbit was promptly dissected in the name of science.  The rabbit ate clover very previous to his death, by the way.

While Zia and Amber were gone Lincoln played in his pool a lot.

And Batman came to visit at least once.

And, uh, we saw this snake in the firepit.  I think it was some kind of garter snake but I don't know.

OK, enough boring stuff.  Zia and Amber had fun in Portland and Zia took 150 pictures.  Mostly of flowers she saw.  Here are some of my favorite pictures off her camera.

Back at home, here's Zia's rodeo outfit.  We managed to avoid all rodeo activity this year but Zia did get to wear her get-up to see Rodney Atkins in concert.  I know, I didn't know who he was either.  Heh.

While Zia and Amber were gone I finished a small painting.  I did it fast and eliminated a lot of the detail work I usually do.  Instead I just did flat washes.  Most people probably couldn't tell the difference I suppose.  It kills me to do it that way but it's the difference between 10 hours and 40 hours.

So, speaking of pointless, masturbatory time drains, on with the blog.

We had a nice Fourth of July.  Zia spent the week with my parents and after wearing them out, they brought her back down to us.  She takes hundreds of pictures on her camera and most of them are pretty good, but it takes time to sort through them all and she wants prints of almost everything (including the series of close-up images of her hair tiers).  Here are a few of her pictures.

My parents and I went for a hike up to the Black Mountain fire lookout, one of three fire lookouts still in existence in the Bighorns.  It was about the right length hike, even though climbing up wore us out a bit.  The road to the trailhead was pretty sketchy thanks to a month of rains.

It was cold and rainy and foggy as we walked up.  It cleared up a bit, but never entirely.

You can see the lookout on top of the granite stacks here.

Questionable bridge to the lookout.

The outhouse has a nice view.

We had dinner at Amber's parents'.  In this picture it sort of looks like Amber is on fire.

I bought a lot of fireworks, sometimes based almost solely on the names.  Giant Octopus and Death Trap were two examples.  How can you pass up those?

Ian demonstrates how not to launch bottle rockets (he had a hood to protect him).

Lincoln was scared of the fireworks at first but slowly accepted them.  The first one is of him waving his hands around in panic.  But once he put on his special goggles (he's been taking naps with these lately), he was OK.

We bought mortar shells again this year.  The Sky Plasma ones were good like last year, but we also shot some others called Golden Dragons.  They were pretty but they didn't go up very high before exploding in gigantic bursts.  We rained fiery debris down on the house and trees for 2 hours with those - luckily nothing started on fire.  All my pictures were crap.

Sparkler mayhem (always the most dangerous part of the evening).

Amber worked yesterday but we went to the Tongue River Reservoir in Montana briefly.  It looks a lot like a reservoir.  The water was very high.  There were picnic tables underwater.

So, there you go! These blogs always come to a screeching halt.  Heh.

It's going to be 100 degree in Ranchester today.  Summer is here and we had to turn on the air conditioner (we didn't turn it on at all last year).  There are lots of mosquitos outside, and, unrelatedly, the ranchers around us were finally able to cut their hay after a month of rain.

We went and cut some wood again last weekend.  There is a slight conflict of interest, however, because we have to find a place where the kids can play and I can cut wood.  Which usually means I have to haul the wood a lot farther than would be good.  But at least the kids had fun.

Lincoln giving himself giardia, I'm sure.

Lincolm making a bridge.

And Lincoln making a "broken" bridge.

The hot weather is bringing out all the creepy crawlies.  This weekend Amber killed the first rattlesnake we've seen here (alive anyway).  It tried to attack her car but the car won.  Rattlesnakes in Wyoming are killed on sight, as they are in a lot of places.  I guess anything that can kill your children doesn't last too long.  It doesn't help that they are fat and mean and ugly.  This is a Northern Prairie Rattlesnake.  The kids were fascinated by the fact that it was still shaking its tail even though it was "dead."

Here's a little preview of next weekend.  The greatest holiday of the year!

I've been meaning to add a scan of this for months, but keep forgetting.  Here is the last painting I finished, I think in May.  Nothing great.  Trying to stay in practice I guess.

Oh, I drove Amber's grandma and Zia to Billings yesterday and on the way home an accident happened on the interstate in front of me.  I saw a big plume of dust over a little rise in the road and then came up on a trailer and an SUV that had rolled into the median.  People were jumping out of their cars and trying to get into the truck through the sunroof.  It was too hot to get out of the car so I just kept going.  I took a picture though, like a good rubbernecker.  Weird when you see something happen that will be an event that person will always remember, maybe even an event that was life-changing.

That's about it for this week.  Zia is staying with her grandma so it is a little quieter today, but I will have to try and find ways to entertain Lincoln when it's this hot.  I've been working on a lot of new letterboxes, but I'm starting to burn out a little on that, so I guess it's time to move on for the summer.

We've made two trips to Billings in the last couple of weeks.  The first was for Bobbie Jo's wedding.  The wedding was in a beautiful little valley outside of Billings ("Baker's Battlefield" - turns out Baker didn't battle anyone - he incorrectly massacred a large group of Indians on this spot and now white folk return here to do the chicken dance at weddings).  The bride and her father rode in on horses.  The guests wore ballcaps and cowboy hats and talked about their yearlings.

Scott and his girlfriend Lisa visited us from Gig Harbor.  We haven't seen Scott since we lived in Milwaukee (he went to medical school with Amber in Seattle) so it was nice to see him again.  Zia went into full-on assault-the-visitor mode.  We did some amateur rock climbing.

Amber's mom and I took the kids fishing.  Fishing lasted about 5 minutes before the kids got bored, which is pretty much what we expected to happen.  "Why haven't we caught any fish yet?" Zia wanted to know.  "Because your line was in the tree for 10 minutes and has been in the water for 30 seconds," I explained.  We didn't catch any fish.

The weather has been pretty awful around here, as usual.  Amber was a lifeguard at the pool growing up and remembers not being able to open up the pool during the month of June at least one year.  It looks like this year is like that.  For every nice day we have, there are two cold, rainy days.  At least it is killing the grasshoppers as fast as they hatch but with the thunderstorms coming over every day sometimes it's hard to do anything outside.  I think we're going to get a stretch of 3 or 4 nice days this week but you never know.

Watching this storm come in was like watching the end of the world come.  It didn't end up being as bad as it looked though.

We've been up the mountain twice lately so that I could cut firewood.  The weather looked bad for the first trip but we went anyway (it's getting to that).  We watched the temperature fall to 32 and the rain turned to snow.  It snowed on us the whole time but we cut a load of wood.  The kids wouldn't hardly get out of the truck.  They climbed around and ate a bag of Cheetos while weren't looking.  Zia took the first picture.  She takes more pictures than I do now.  I have to constantly clear out her camera there are so many pictures.

Here is a Boomer picture for Leah.  Boomer is all cuddled up with his blanket (a bandanna) and a stuffed animal.

This is what it looks like when I stand inbetween the kids and the TV.  Lincoln is wearing his lab googles.

There have been a lot of turtles around lately.  Someone told me its because they are looking for a place to lay their eggs and the river is too high this year.  Some turtles get captured for pets.

Lincoln and Zia at the park.  Zia is very proud that she can finally do the monkey bars.

This weekend we took the 4-wheeler to Amber's uncle's ranch, borrowed two of his 4-wheelers and took the kids on a little trail ride  (Amber's uncle was injured by a bull 2 weeks ago - our second trip to Billings was to visit him).  While a tornado destroyed an arena in Billings we rode around under storm clouds.  The thunder was booming off the mountains but it didn't rain much.

Look how safe the kids are being!  They're wearing their bicycle helmets!  Heh.

There are a couple of old homesteads and other junk out there.

A moth Zia and Lincoln found.

When we got home we found that we had missed a hail storm that had destroyed half of Amber's flower beds.  Even hours later there were drifts of melting hail stones.

And finally, another Zia picture.  We drove to Gillette to visit Dennis and Davette's new baby, Elam!  The Boston Terrorists were excited to see everyone.

Oh, wait.  Here's one more Zia picture.  One of those great ones that you haven't seen until it uploads to the computer and surprises you.

We tried to visit Fort Phil Kearny but it rained.  Wyoming looks like Ireland or something right now. Visitors are impressed: "It's so green!"  And we say, "Only for one month.  Then it will turn back to brown for the other eleven."

The site of the Fetterman Massacre.  Not such a bad place to die, huh?

If you'll notice in some of those pictures that Lincoln is making weird faces.  That's his "smile."  Zia went through a similar phase at his exact age.  We have quite a few pictures of her "smiling."  Here's one of them.

That one always makes me laugh.  And so does this one.

Moving on, here is one of Zia checking to see if Lincoln has a poopy butt (he did) beside a quickly deteriorating section of the tie flume that once carried logs down the mountain.  I've heard that there are still some old sections of flume on the mountain, even some fairly well perserved inside tunnels, so hopefully we can find those someday.

Some pictures of the kids enjoying being outdoors, and playing in the river, which is full this time of year.

Lincoln cooking with Amber.

We took a walk up the canyon on Memorial Day.  We got up there kind of late, but still hours before the rest of the world woke up enough to throw beer cans in the river.  We walked the two and half miles to Sheep Creek, which is as far as I've been on this trail.  Zia complained the entire way up, but then walked the whole way home without stopping or talking.  Lincoln walked some of the way and rode some of the way.

We saw three good-sized green snakes.  Grandpa thought these might be blue racers.  They were too fast to photograph well but here's one of the smaller ones.

I don't know what these are.  They were bigger than grapes.

We didn't find many morels, but enough for dinner.

And...that's it.  Zia has one and half days left of Kindergarten and then she's off for the summer.  We have a lot planned for her but I'm not sure that will be enough!

I kind of like starting with the weather, so let's do that.  We're now in the very short monsoon season in Wyoming, where it rains almost every day - correspondingly, this is the only month of the year that Wyoming is actually green.  The thunderstorms have been coming in from weird directions, but their outcomes are the same as ever.  Here are also some methods Zia uses to waterproof her outdoor activities.

In other pointless news, Boomer improved his pet rating from a -5 to a -1 when he started catching mice last week.  He caught three on one day (and hasn't repeated this activity yet to our knowledge).  It seems unlikely that Boomer will ever achieve a positive pet ranking, but then, very few pets ever do.  When you think about how many pets have any sort of utility beyond consuming food, well, the numbers are few.  Here are also a few pictures of Lincoln steam-rolling Boomer, something that still happens every 30 seconds.

Lincoln was sick this last week - so sick he didn't even want to get out of bed.  He spent a morning in bed watching Toy Story (which has been edging out Cars as his movie of choice - he likes Buzz a lot).  There was vomiting and stuff.  You can find that on other websites.

We went to the dump for Free Dump day.  The real estate agency was there handing out water bottles.  The dump looked dump-like.  I have a fixation with the dump, as do other people.  There's just so much...stuff there.  Dump-like stuff.

This weekend we drove to Red Lodge to visit my parents.  It was still cold, about 35 degrees so being outside wasn't too great but we did go on one hike in the area burned by a 2008 forest fire.  I forgot that this area was burned up until we got there.  It was cold and windy and we only made it about a mile before the kids were tired and we had to turn around.  Zia lost her camera on the trail and it took forever to find it.  It shouldn't be too hard to find a hot pink camera in this landscape should it?

We went for a walk the next day up a waterfall.  It was only about a half mile up and a half mile down so the kids were able to do it easy.

Here are some pictures of Lincoln and Zia having a dance party at Grandma's.  Lincoln does some pretty funny kick moves.

I guess that's it.  Trying to clear stuff up before the next week starts...oh, if you're into twitter, you can find nofunland there at http://twitter.com/nofunland.

That night it snowed as well, and snowed a few more times this week.  Thursday it was so bad that Zia's school let out early at 1045 to get all the kids home safely.  May 5th and it was the first snow emergency day of the year.  Last year I think that happened on April 24th.  Next year I will remember that it's not the winter that's bad in Wyoming, it's the spring.

The good news is that the insurance company has decided to replace our entire roof.  Not because of the damage, but because they couldn't match the shingles to repair the damage.  So, hopefully that work can start in a few weeks.  You know, maybe in the middle of June when it stops snowing or whatever.

A bat has decided to live at about waist level near the back door frame.  This area is out of the wind, but is otherwise completely exposed and the bat hasn't moved in four days.  I guess he's waiting for it to warm up.  Bats are very, very strange.  If you're around our house for more than a half hour you'll probably hear "Don't touch the bat!"

It was my birthday.  I turned 33.

Zia's new "skill" is jumping off her bed and touching the fan's cord.  Lincoln's new skill is pretending to take things apart.

Today, since it's still winter and all, we decided to drive up the mountain and go sledding.  The snow was about a foot and a half deep.  The awesome part about sledding is that when you get to the bottom you have to get back to the top, with two 30+ pound dead weights (children).  Very tiring and we only did a half dozen runs or so at two different spots.

Here is Lincoln eating stuff after he stamped his face with different colors of ink.

I guess that's it.  There was something else but I forget and the kids are here trying to break things.