I Warned You.....

If you read my New Year's goals post you may remember that one of my goals was to raise money to help other people by exploiting my friends. Well, I didn't forget. In fact I have a couple of thank you letters that I have been trying to show to everyone who donated to our annual New Years run. If I haven't shown them to you yet remind me the next time I see you. I have them in my truck. One is from a student who received a new pair of shoes, and the other is from the principal at Walter Douglas Elementary. They really got me thinking about trying to help someone else, but school is almost out. I did a little brainstorming (both brain cells working at maximum capacity), and talked with a few of you. This is what I came up with. Caitlin is going to a dance intensive, and summer school at the U of A where she will live on campus for an entire month. It is going to be expensive. Fortunately we (read Amy) are really good at saving money just for this sort of thing. We are also fortunate enough that we have jobs, and have not been affected to badly by the economy. That means we can afford it. I got to thinking about kids that might not be going to have such an exciting summer. I know one young boy who is a new climber who's family has not been as fortunate to survive the economic downturn. He doesn't have any plans for the summer so I figured why not send him to a week of summer climbing camp at Rocks & Ropes gym. I talked to someone close to him, and she said he would love it, and she would help. We need to raise $200 to send him to climbing camp. I have been trying to think of ways to generate the money so if you have any ideas I'd love to hear them. Several things I thought about were stunts I could perform, and you could pay to watch me humiliate myself. Maybe I could get a paddle, and sell swats. Ultimately I figured that would be a bad idea. Some of you would probably give me exactly what you have been thinking I deserve for a very long time. I also thought about auctioning off a day of climbing here locally. Maybe a day of multi pitch at the summit crags, or just cragging where I could belay slave or rope gun if you are not a climber who leads. Ultimately none of these sound like great ideas so help me out, and let me know if you have an idea. *I know I am behind on posts. I have many things that I need to catch up on, but blogger is not working well with my browser. I am trying to get it fixed, but am not sure that this post will even show up on my blog. Please excuse all of the typos and gramatical errors. I can only read parts of this post. I may have to switch to another hosting site, but I promise to get it figured out soon.

Kids and Drums

Brett's oldest daughter takes piano lessons with my mom on Thursday afternoons. Michelle brings her to her lesson, and then has the three younger kids to entertain while Rebecca has her lesson. I sometimes walk or ride the longboard down to my mom's, and get the younger kids to come play over here. I normally push all three of them back on the longboard. I forgot it this last time, and got scolded. I probably won't do that again. I enjoy having people my own age (developmentally that is) to play with, and they don't seem to mind to bad. I think it also gives Michelle a 45 minute break where she can just relax. That's the idea anyway.

If you remember, one of my goals this year was to learn to play the drums. I  found a used kit fairly cheap, and I've been teaching myself how to play from Internet videos and out of a couple of books I got used at Bookmans. The kids seem to like them too.

Tyler will surely be playing in a Metal band before to long. He has a kind of Romaine Goulon style.

If Disney had a drummer princess Meagan would be it. I think she was afraid she might hurt the drums if she hit them to hard.

Erin was slow and steady. No need to be flashy. Just keep time. It has worked for Phil Rudd forever.

To me this has been the best part of owning drums so far. Learning to play can be frustrating. Especially when my arms and legs don't do what I think I am telling them to, but watching the kids play really is fun.