Really?! It’s been three days since a posting was done!!! I feel like there should be some grand excuse that has prevented a posting from completion and publishing. Oh yea, there are these little plaid dressed gnomes that are loose in the house. The run around and sing and dance, but shout somewhat offensive (PG-13) remarks between songs. Normally they are easy to ignore, but they have gotten really difficult to deal with the last couple of days; and the time that is normally devoted to writing a post has been consumed by chasing them around.  

I just got home from work – completing my first full tour (3 days) back. During the second night, we had a call at 3am – which I would have thought would have been easier to deal with since that is about when Ezra wakes up every night, but for some reason still held the same difficulty as before. I suppose that it could have been the fact that I only went to bed at midnight, but that would be too easy to blame it on. 

That morning (Friday), I went straight from work to meet up with Dad. Hunter is also in town visiting (before the IAFC conference next week) and he came along on a ‘morning at the office’ of sorts. I hadn’t had the opportunity to visit his new office yet, so he invited Hunter and me along to hang out with him during the morning. We had the chance to attend some meetings on a current project and to meet some people that he deals with daily. It was a lot of fun, and extremely educational on many different levels. That evening, Ahna, Ezra and I went down to my parent’s house to have dinner and watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games. 

Admitingly, the ceremonies were very impressive to watch – and actually held my attention, unlike the previous couple of Olympics. The choreography was extraordinary and the technology was really cool to watch. On the same token, I still have a really difficult time with all of the “I Love China” talk that went into the dialogue and commentary during the ceremony. While we can understand that most of the blame for all of the atrocities in that country can rest with the government, it was still hard to watch it and not have them mention the fact that an entire province’s power was diverted to ensure that there were no problems during the ceremony. The duplicity behind the harmony kanji and the peace dove did not rest well with me, but were apparently completely overlooked by NBC. This really wasn’t a situation where you would have to look for faults to bring up the truths, the faults are always in play and the truths are on the surface…we just seem to be afraid to talk about them (evidence Bush’s speech the day before arriving in China). I suppose that might be partially due to the fact that they own our national debt…oh, and they are funding the war efforts right now.

Enough politics for now, back to the Ezra stuff. While I was at work yesterday, the ladder truck was sent down to participate in the annual Douglas County Fair and Parade. It’s the only parade each year in Castle Rock, and as such it’s highly attended. I know that there were several thousand people there – lining the streets for the two mile route 5 and 6 deep. The best part was seeing Ahna and Ezra standing on the corner near the downtown fire station and being able to have him see me in the truck. Hopefully someone got some pictures that I can find. 

Ezra’s personality continues to develop each day…and his latest thing is TV. We are struggling to keep him away from it, but he is really attracted to the light and movement. When he is sitting with us in the living room and finds the screen, we are now turning it off or turning him around…there will be plenty of TV time for him in the future. But it’s hard for us….the Olympics are on. 

I think that pretty much brings us back up to date. Here are a couple of photos of Pike’s Peak…taken from Castle Rock at sunrise on Friday morning. I happened to look south as I was on my way to meet up with Dad and saw the cool looking clouds. In both pictures (better with the one with Pike’s Peak on the left), you can see our townhouse complex on the bottom right.

More records broken yesterday: 20 consecutive days over 90 degrees, and we were one degree shy of the all-time hottest-ever recorded temperature in Denver – we reached 104 (officially; but keep in mind that the official temperature is recorded in the shade and at the airport – 20 miles from downtown).

As mentioned in the last post, Ahna spent the better part of the day at work, and I spent the better part of the day being relatively unproductive (ie: fooling around with photos). I did meet up with Ahna and Ezra for lunch, then took Ezra home with me so Ahna could have a few hours of uninterrupted work with Judy. 

In the evening two events dotted the calendar, and while we wished that we could have been able to attend both, we had already committed to going north. So, we headed up to Denver and met up with a slew of friends (Johnson, Mary, Tom, Tori, and Jennifer…then Hutch and Rich) for dinner and First Friday Art Walk. First Friday occurs every month on Santa Fe in downtown Denver (the art district); where all of the galleries open their doors and people meander in and out and all up and down the street. Ahna has been a couple of times before, but it was Ezra and my first time. Let me tell you: there were a ton of people – thousands. It’s a really fun time and a great way to get some free art exposure. As with anything, there were some good, some bad, and some favorites.

Before the walk started, we had dinner at the Tequila Company on the NW corner of Santa Fe and 10th. The food was alright (don’t trust your waiter when he says that the red chili isn’t spicy) and the service was equally alright (the servers kept mixing up where everyone’s order went). There was one really significant disappointment: no changing tables in either restroom. I suppose that they thought that the sheikness of the toilet would be ruined if they put a plastic drop-down table on the wall, but their lack of baby-friendliness (we aren’t expecting a lot of a place like that, but a changing table would be nice) will force us to not return. Ah, how our view of the world has changed.

When we got downtown at 5:30, the temperature in the car read 106. When we left at 9:00, the temperature in the car read 99. It was warm. They say that the temperature was supposed to drop to 68 last night (a near 40 degree difference), but when we woke this morning at 6:30, it was already back to 73. Today is supposed to break the triple-digit barrier again. 

One more thing before the pictures: just before I started writing the post, Ezra had a blow out of large proportions. Something like we had never seen before. All up his back, through his clothes, and all over……wait for it……Ahna! She was the lucky one this time! I got the task of cleaning him up while Ahna cleaned herself up, and I think that we went through several changing pads and half a box of wipes. Hmmm, poop.

Yesterday Ezra turned 8 weeks old….I casually referred to him as 2 months old, and was promptly reminded by Ahna that 4 weeks doesn’t equal 1 month (I think we talked about this here before). We did come to the conclusion that 4 weeks does equal 1 lunar cycle, so from now on (or until I forget to do it), we will follow Native American culture and refer to ever 4-week time period as a ‘moon.’ It’s still a couple of days until he officially turns two months…

This has been a particularly tiring and interesting week. I was back at work on Tuesday and Thursday and Ahna has been busy in her doublewide trailer classroom setting up for the year each day this week – as a matter of fact, she is there today as well. She doesn’t go back until November, but she insists on not dumping all of the setup to the long-term sub – therefore, she is there a lot this week. 

The Denver area set a really dubious mark yesterday….the longest streak of consecutive days over 90 degrees in more than 130 years – I think it’s around 19 days. Thankfully we get a break and today’s high won’t be in the 90’s….it will be 102. So will tomorrow. They say that the streak might break by middle of next week, maybe….but the combination of no rain and hot temps has created a tough summer. Speaking of tough summers, anyone a Rockies fan out there?

Special Iowa Edition

Every year on July 27, it is Finnish tradition to wake up the last person to leave the house by either throwing water on them, or throwing them into a lake or the sea. 

On July 27, 1912, 28 nations and 2,500 athletes celebrated the closing ceremonies to the Olympic games being held in Stockholm, Sweden. The tug-of-war gold medalist? The host country beat England for the title (but only two teams competed, so there were good odds).

And with a deep history from the country that shares the Scandinavian skyline, Norway, Ellen Bersagel was born.

Yesterday, we gathered at Bestemor’s (reminder: Bestemor is Norwegian for Grandmother) farm in northern Iowa to celebrate her 96th birthday. We traveled from West Salem to Northwood in the morning (Ezra’s longest car drive to date: 2.5 hours) and arrived just in time for dinner – which is what they call the noon meal in these parts. We had a really good spread of food, as we always do at the farm. At the conclusion of the meal, we had some ice-cream cake to complete the culinary celebration. 

Not long after lunch, we all sat with Bestemor as she opened her gifts. It always seems to be a special day when we get to visit with Bestemor, but yesterday had some extra emotion attached to it since it was her birthday and we were able to introduce her to Ezra. It’s a pretty cool thing that Ezra has already been held by 3 of his 4 great-grandparents (and hopefully we will complete that wish soon). We hung around through supper and headed off to the hotel for the night. 

Here are pictures from the day, including a couple of the sites on the farm – which only took 5 minutes to go outside and take, bur for which I sacrificed at least 4 mosquito bites. Oh, and Isaac patiently playing catch with Ezra.