What's up in the Ranch

Family Picture Around Christmas Night After Church

2009-01-24T14:46:00.001-08:00

Grace, Camo n Dad on Christmas Eve At Home

2009-01-24T14:44:00.000-08:00

Grace with Dad and Jake Christmas Day

2009-01-24T14:43:00.000-08:00

Kids At Grandma's Christmas Day

2009-01-24T14:42:00.001-08:00

Grace With One Of Her Presents

2009-01-24T14:41:00.001-08:00

Kids n Cousins At Grandmas For Christmas

2009-01-24T14:40:00.001-08:00

Kim n Her Brother Hanging Out At The Hospital

2009-01-24T14:37:00.000-08:00

The Kids Christmas Day Preparing To Open Santa Presents

2009-01-24T14:34:00.000-08:00

Grace Helping With Egg Nog

2009-01-24T14:33:00.001-08:00

Cameron and Grace Singing at Church

2008-12-11T09:39:00.000-08:00

Highlands Ranch Mansion Christmas Caroling Day

2008-12-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

Me, Cameron and Cameron's good friend Cameron H. on the hay ride.

Hay Ride

2008-12-11T09:34:00.001-08:00

Kim, M, Alli and Grace on the hay ride

Home Depot Building Easels

2008-12-11T08:22:00.000-08:00

Grace's Book (Drawings)

2008-12-11T08:14:00.001-08:00

Camo at Judo - End of Month 1

2008-12-04T10:25:00.000-08:00

Cameron did very well through his first month of Judo. He attends 3 times a weeek a bit over an hour each time. He has learned 4 techniques now. Techniques are called Waza's. He knows 3 standing and one ground. He has become pretty good at pinning his opponent. The warm-ups are great. They do push-ups, bend and thrusts, army crawls, bear walks, and leg lifts among others. The exercises definitely push the kids, they dont just do like 10 pushups they do 30 or more sometimes! The instructor is amazing with these guys! Camo just started his 2nd month now.

Grace at Grandma's Thanksgiving - She's a vicious lion

2008-12-03T12:14:00.000-08:00

ThanksGiving Picture

2008-12-03T12:11:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving

2008-11-29T10:36:00.000-08:00

We had a really good thanksgiving this year. I made some homemade cranberry sauce that was really good and Kims mom made a great turkey. We all sat around the table and in the end we are all thankful for health and family. Our kids were on the best behavior and were really a joy to be hanging out with. We went to a movie- Madagascar 2 and it was really funny! Then came home and began the ritual of setting up Christmas decorations. A co-worker sent me a very true email that really makes one think. Some of the snippets were "if you are upset at the loudness or off-key singing of ones around you-Be THANKFUL that you can hear, If you are aggravated with your kids behaviour, be THANKFUL that your kids are there with you, If you are tired of reading about the bad things in the world, be THANKFUL that you are educated enough to read, If you are feeling strapped financially and cannot go out and do the things you want, Be THANKFUL you have a roof over your head.
We do take a lot of things for granted and even in hard times we need to see we are still fortunate. HAPPY THANKSGIVING !!

Other side of track.

2008-11-29T10:35:00.001-08:00

Race Track on the table now

2008-11-29T10:34:00.000-08:00

Race Track Table - Coming together well

2008-11-19T11:10:00.001-08:00

Okay so I decided to pull out all the SCX race track stuff and build a cool platfom that I can hoist up to the ceiling in the basement when not in use. That idea did not work, so we decided to just create a table 9 1/2 feet long by 4 feet wide for the track. Kim's gonna paint it soon and we'll get the track set up soon. This should be a fun project for the family. We'll keep it updated...

What a COOL picture this is.

2008-11-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

Found this picture in my background images on my Iphone. I think it is a great pic.

The 1st Snow Day of the year!

2008-11-14T13:21:00.001-08:00

Grace was so excited, she had her boots on before any of us were even really awake!

Grace was hanging around in this spot, later we realized it was where she decided to fill her gloves with snow, WHILE THEY WERE STILL ON!! She was so cold after this- Duhh!

Grace making snow angels in the 1st snow of the town.

Rob decided "Let's make FUNNEL CAKES!" so we did, and they were quite fun to make...

2008-11-14T13:19:00.000-08:00

...but we could not eat them all, cause it made so much. Next time we will cut the recipe into a 1/4th!

This is Camo's 5th Judo Class. Doing the Osoto Gari Throw (A leg sweep)

2008-11-14T13:13:00.000-08:00

That little girl is very good!

Grace in her "Judo" stance

2008-11-07T12:43:00.000-08:00

Grace is so cute here. This is her picture after she came back from Camo's Judo class!

Cameron at his 2nd Judo Class

2008-11-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

Cameron has really done well. He's got a great form, and is very serious. This is an amazing class, as the instructor is a 6th dan and even represented the Italian National Team at the Olympics in Seoul in '88. He also teaches Ju Jitsu.

Grace drew us a monkey!

2008-11-04T08:19:00.000-08:00

Grace also was a "Rainbow, Butterfly Fairy (Vampire) Princess"

2008-11-02T11:22:00.001-08:00

Uncle John and Ali (Soccer nerd)

2008-11-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

Candid Shot of Uncle John Ali and Gracie

2008-11-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

Doc Rob and Uncle John

2008-11-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

the Burgans with Uncle John

2008-11-02T11:01:00.000-08:00

Halloween costume 2 for Grace

2008-11-02T10:52:00.001-08:00

Grace's Picture This Morning

2008-11-02T10:38:00.001-08:00

Disneyworld-When the economy shuts down, we all go to...

2008-10-31T13:22:00.000-07:00

We all just got back from a great trip to Disneyworld. Kim's mom allowed us to use her time share in Orlando, and let us tag along with her while she has been there. The kids saw Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, then went on to Sea World and Gatorland. They had so much fun, Grace was an avid map reader, and Camo made sure to hit just about every ride he could, though Grace was the brave one to go on Tower of Terror.

We managed there well, the parls shuttle systems and tram are very easy and convenient. When we were not chasing lizards, we were at the pool. the weather was wonderful, a bit rainy here and there, and we were lucky that it was not too hot.

I got back a bit earlier on Saturday and enjoyed the peace the house brought, and the time for myself, but was missing the voices of the kids by the Monday. By Wednesday the house was filled with Grace yelling at Camo for something, and we were back to normal quickly.

Now we are making halloween trick or treating plans, and looking forward to a relaxing weekend.

E C O N O M Y

2008-10-31T11:17:00.000-07:00

Wow! So here we are sitting with the DOW jones just above 9,000, A huge unemployment percentage, giant deficit, foreclosures everywhere, and we are still fighting in Iraq 7 years later.

Things sure were good for a while though. A lot of people made more money than they thought possible. Stock portfolios skyrocketed when the Dow hit 14,000, people were making so much money buying up properties with the craziest of financing.

But now, homes are sitting. I read yesterday that in Southern California homes are still sitting even though they are priced at 1/3rd of their alleged values! The new trend in the mortgage industry is loan modification companies. Some lenders are now used car salesman.

I wonder what those who were persuaded to invest in the markets and take out the highest mortgage against their homes are thinking now? It never made sense to me, but the advocates of those programs sure could spin those numbers convincingly.

I feel good though. I always made every attempt to finance people with smart loans, and I can fortunately sit here in my office and know that I will not be the reason any of those people over the last 15 years of lending may now be struggling. I've always been a proponent of prepaying principal, keeping fixed rate loans, and shortening the mortgage terms. I hope all of those families that I did loans for took the advice.

I believe that our nation will begin picking itself up next summer, so if we all can just hang on for about a year we should be good.

Carving up the Pumpkins...

2008-10-31T11:06:00.001-07:00

Finally doing a BLOG thanks to advice from a good friend...

2008-10-31T10:15:00.000-07:00