Monday, January 25, 2010

Fleet of Helicopters

My first helicopter I got was at my birthday in 2008. It was a lot of fun flying it around the house. It eventually crashed and burned. Well, actually a wire inside broke in flight causing the front rotor to quit turning and with the back rotor still turning at full RPM it quickly flipped over and crashed to the floor. I could keep it flying by constantly turning, but spinning in circles was not really flying. So that one was retired and I got a new one for Christmas in 2008. It was just like the first one, except was yellow and black instead of red and white. It lasted for a little while longer. in fact almost a year. Around Thanksgiving 2009, the second one suffered the safe fate as the first when the front rotor would only turn when you were turning in circles. So I put it away and thought my helicopter flying days were over. But then I was able to obtain a new just after Christmas, in January 2010. It is a little different and should not suffer the same problem as the first two. The best part of this one, is it is armed with 2 missiles that I can shoot while flying. Now my piloting days are back on and I can shoot at things with it. So much fun.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The power of Invisibility

I have the power of invisibility. At least my kids think so. Well, Emma has doubts, but cannot figure out how I do what I do when we are playing hide and seek. Riah is convinced that I have the power to become invisible. It all comes from playing hide and seek with them. One of them will count while everyone else goes to hide. The seeker will find everyone else except me, then I will appear in the spot that the seeker was originally counting or in a spot that they are sure they looked. The last time it happened was the ultimate. I even had Brooke wondering how I did it. Here is how it went down.
Emma was counting and going to look for everyone. She ran around the house and as usual found everyone but me. She even enlisted the help of her sister that she had already found. After several minutes of running all over the house looking to no avail, Emma, Riah and Brooke ran through the living room for the 3rd or 4th time to go look in the shop and came skidding to a stop. There I was sitting in the recliner playing a game on my phone like I had been there all along. The capper was when Riah said, "I didn't even feel you when I jumped in the recliner earlier to see if you were there and invisible." To that I responed, "you didn't, you must not be able to feel me when I am invisible."
Emma is constantly begging me to tell her how I do that, but I tell her that, as a parent I am bound to secrecy until she is old enough to have kids of her own. We will have to see how long it takes her to figure it out.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Whats wrong with this picture?

What is wrong with this picture?
I took this picture on January 20, 2010.
Notice the elevation. I am out in the cascades in a spot that should have several feet of snow this time of year, not just this puny little drift here on the north slope. I should not be able to drive within several miles of this location.
The peak in the distance in the middle of this next pic is the top of Harter Mountain which is a couple hundred feet(at least) higher than where I was. Notice there is no snow there either.

Its been kind of a strange winter so far.
If I was still a wildland firefighter, I would be getting ready for a big season, unless the rain and snows start piling up now.

The fruits of all my "hard work" during Elk season

103 # of burger & 41 packages of steak

Yum!

Monday, January 11, 2010

Diary of an Elk season

Day 1 - Opening day. New years day. Not much time to sleep last night. Went out before light. Saw a herd of elk before it was light enough to shoot and before we were where we were looking. Went on to our other area. Saw 1 runner elk there. Didn't see the other herd out in the open later. Too early in the season to work too hard. Went to another area and jumped a herd of about 25 elk 3 times before they went into an area that I did not want to follow them.

Day 1 stats -
36 elk seen
0 shots taken
0 elk hanging

Day 2 - Got up early on this first Saturday of 2010 with the intention of only hunting for a few hours. We headed out to where we saw the elk the day before and they were not there. After a few hours we began to think we were going to be skunked today and not see any gawkers. But, just before heading home for the day, we drove up one more road and there they were. The only problem was, they were the wrong genetic variety. We like gawkers because they stand around gawking at you long enough to be able to shoot at them. These elk were already running about 100 mph when we saw them, and I am not sure if they stopped running before sundown! We tracked them for a long ways until they went down into a hole that we did not want to go into and decided to call it a day.

Day 2 stats -
8 elk seen
0 shots taken
0 elk hanging

Day 3 - Slept in, went to church. Did not feel like hunting today.

Day 3 stats -
0's across the board.

Day 4 - First day of work for the new year. Started planting today and arranged to have planters in areas that were near elk so we would have reason to go hunting. Unfortunately, we were kept busy enough that we did not see any elk today.

Day 4 stats -
skunked

Day 5 - Another day at work and no time to hunt. Got to go out in the woods but was on the wrong side of the highway, in an area that my tag was no good.

Day 5 stats -
6 elk seen
0 shots taken
0 elk hanging

Day 6 stats - Out in the woods for work again today. On the right side of the highway this time, but all we saw were runners far off. Found a herd of elk that always managed to stay downwind of me to know where I was and kept just far enough in front of me that I could not shoot. After jumping them about 12 times, they finally got tired of messing with me and left the area.

Day 6 stats -
12 elk seen
0 shots taken
0 elk hanging

Day 7 - A busy day at work unloading trees and checking on tree planters. Did not even go out in the woods looking for elk, so as a result, I didn't see any.

Day 7 stats -
Its hard to see something your not looking for.

Day 8 - Out in the woods today looking at areas that need planting. They just happen to be within the hunt area. As we are leaving the area, we look off 1 last hill and there are a bunch of elk pretending to be gawkers. We quickly set up and take 1 shot and the elk bolt. Turns out, this is the same group of runners we chased the other day. We tracked them around through the reprod where they did not even slow down, and they came out on the same trail as the last time we saw them. Then they went back down in that same hole that we do not want to be in, so we let them all live another day. The one shot was not enough, missed.

Day 8 stats -
8 elk seen
1 shot fired
0 elk hanging

Day 9 stats - Woke up early on another Saturday morning. Not real ambitious today. We decide to leave the area that we have been chasing so hard alone and try a different area today. We spend a lot of time looking through our binoculars at rocks and stumps that look like elk, that we start thinking every strange animal looking shape we see is a rock or stump. About mid morning we spied some more suspect rocks down at the bottom of a clearcut and drive right on by. On the way back, we stop for a closer look, and to our surprise, one of them rocks stood up and looked back at us. There was some more elk! Got behind a slash pile and found a good rest. Took careful aim, had a clear shot with only elk in the scope and let 2 shots fly as the whole herd stood up. Then they headed right down the hill into Fools Canyon, which is called this because only a fool would follow an elk down there. Hiked down to where they had been and we missed again. Then on the hike back to the truck I found out why. There was a small log about 10 feet in front of my rest that had 2 nicely placed bullet holes in it. Oh well, that would have been too much work anyway.

Day 9 stats -
9 elk spotted
2 shots taken
0 elk hanging

Day 10 -Another Sunday with more important things to do than chase elk around the countryside. Just stayed home.

Day 10 stats -
Nope

Day 11 - Its Monday morning and back to work. I needed to be in the office and my hunting partner had a doctors appointment, so we came to work in nice office cloths with no intention of looking for the gawkers today. At about 0830, a coworker called to tell us he just spotted some gawkers by a certain gate that they were known to hang out at. So we grabbed the rifles and headed out in the woods again, thinking they will be gone by the time we get there. But, to our surprise, at 0925 we found them gawking about just down the road from where they had been originally spotted and two of them fell over after there was 2 loud booms.

Day 11 stats -
14 gawkers found
2 shots fired
2 elk hanging

Skinning elk gets kinda messy.

Here is one of the 2 elk after skinning.

Wasn't she cute?

Now the season is over. Just waiting now for the fruits of all our effort. The freezer should be full in the next couple of days.





Friday, January 1, 2010

Highlights from 2009

Now that 2009 has come to an end, I asked everyone in our family that can speak in full sentences, what was their favorite things from the year 2009. Here are their answers.

Riah - 5 yrs old. I think it is hard for a 5 yr old to comprehend how long a year is and remember things that happened during that time period. All her answers had to do with Christmas and New years eve, until we reminded her of some of the other things that we did. Here are Riah's answers.
1-Getting a radio/CD player for Christmas
2-Watching Emma open her Art kit for Christmas
3-Having Nana visit for Christmas
4-Having friends over for New Years Eve and staying up until midnight.
5-Baby sister Leah being born. (we hinted at one of her sisters just coming in 2009 and she guess it was Sarah at first)
6-Our Sunriver vacation, mainly when I threw snowballs at her in the hot tub.

Emma - 8 yrs old. Emma has a better grasp on time and when things happened, but we still needed to remind her of some of the things we did this year.
1-No school in summer or holidays
2-Leah being born
3-Riding lessons and Horse lovers club
4-Getting an art kit for Christmas
5-Sunriver trip - Mainly the hot tub

Brooke - I am sure she has a complete grasp on time and she did not need help remembering what happened this year.
1-Leah-Relatively easy pregnancy and delivery
2-Homeschool conference in Portland
3-Sunriver vacation
4-The week spent in Paisley with my family after dad passed away
5-Having several relationships with friends grow closer over the year
6-Making the decision together to switch to a church in Lebanon
7-Photography
8-The peacock incident - Check out my post from May 5, 2009 called Ornithophobia.

Me - I turned 40 this year so it was a lot of work to try to remember what happened this year. But here it goes.
1-Our precious 4th daughter, Leah, being born
2-Just watching my girls grow and develop their personalities
3-Celebrating 14 yrs of marriage with Brooke
4-Sunriver family vacation
5-Seattle trip to watch the Seahawks
6-The Peacock incident
7-Taking up mountain biking again and having some new friends to ride with - Biking highlights would be the Mary's peak ride and the Waldo Lake Ride
8-My Wolf Rock geocaching adventure

How did my predictions for 2009 go?

Now that 2009 is over, I need to go back over my predictions for things that would happen to our family in 2009 and see if any of them came true. So here we go. The colorful ones are the predictions I wrote in my blog last January. The other ones are the review of what happened in 2009.

10. Someone finally donates to the Harley fund and we buy a set of Hogs to go touring on. And with them come a volunteer to watch the kids! No one has ever donated to the Harley fund, so we still do not have even one. It is kind of hard to go on motorcycle trips without a motorcycle, so we did not go on any. It would be hard to do that anyway with 4 kids that cannot ride yet.

9. We somehow, without ever buying a ticket, win the biggest ever Powerball lottery. We are able to retire from work and become world travelers going on mission trips all over the world as a family.
The part about not even buying a ticket was right. And, surprise, surprise, we did not win. I did get my passport last year so I could go on mission trips if the opportunity ever came up.


8. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition comes and builds us a new house that we can fit in better with 4 kids. We have 4 kids, but we still have the same house. I think you actually have to apply and have a reason to deserve getting a new house from Extreme Makeover, for them to come, so that would probably be a good reason that they did not come.

7. We get the backyard landscaping all done and win an award for the design, and are able to pay off the mortgage with what we win. We did not even work on the back yard landscaping this year except for pulling up some of the old plants. We did have a garden and I did put up the fence finally, but since it was not done no one came and gave us an award for it.

6. Hunting seasons come and I fill all my tags on opening day and then win an all expense paid trip to Alaska to hunt Moose, where I am able to bag a world record bull. Our freezers are so full of meat that we have a BBQ for everyone on Angelee Ct every Friday night all summer.
Well, it was not as bad as last year. I actually saw animals during deer season, just not in places that I could shoot them. I took a friend elk hunting and he actually saw and shot at elk. He did not get one, but we had fun trying.

5. Tiger Woods comes to Lebanon to play at Mallard Creek and we bump into each other on the course. He shows me what I am doing wrong and how to fix it. Then the next thing you know I quit my job, join the PGA Tour, and get paid to golf.
The odds of this one actually happening were pretty remote, and then were reduced even more by the fact that Tiger woods has probably never heard of Mallard Creek Golf Course in Lebanon, OR, and that I only played golf once the entire year. Not to mention, I am really tired of hearing about Tiger Woods right now.

4. We take another wonderful family vacation to Sunriver and just enjoy being a family and hanging out it a beautiful location.
This one actually happened! We got an awesome deal on a really nice house in Sunriver and spent 6 days there. As a bonus, some friends did the same thing so we got to hang out with them while we were there.

3. Because of the new baby, we remodel the house to make a little more room and make it work better for the family.
We almost did. We took the time to look into what could be done and how much it would cost. But in the end it was not going to work, so we just refinanced to get a better interest rate and called it good.

2. The 2nd best thing that will happen in 2009 is finding out if the new baby is a boy or a girl.
This did happen. In March we found out that we would be having our 4th daughter!

1. The best thing that will happen in 2009 for the Jayne family, is my beautiful wife giving birth to our 4th child and 1st son This was surely the best thing that happened to the Jayne family in 2009. Our 4th child was not a boy, but she is still the best thing to happen this year. Now we have 4 beautiful daughters.