Today is West Virginia Day (celebrating West Virginia becoming the 35th state of the United States), and bloggers in West Virginia have been challenged by local blogger Jason Keeling to help define new stereotypes for West Virginia. I'm sure we have all heard some jokes about West Virginians marrying cousins, or our lack of intelligence, or lack of running water, our extreme poverty, or a myriad of other things, but what is West Virginia really like?



I'll start by saying that I am not a native West Virginian. I was born in Eastern Kentucky. I'll have to start another day for Kentucky bloggers to address the stereotypes for Kentucky, many that are shared with West Virginia. I have lived in West Virginia since the end of 1985, so I consider myself a West Virginian. We moved to West Virginia when I was in sixth grade, and I have lived here ever since. I did attend college out of state (I received a full ride scholarship so who can pass that up), but upon graduation I got a job here, found the love of my life, and have begun my own family.



West Virginia is a great place to raise a family. The crime rate is low. The schools are far better than our national average would have you believe. (Did I mention my scholarship was for academics?) We are patriotic. We have strong family connections. We take pride in who we are and our accomplishments.



Most of West Virginia is rural, and so our way of life here is typically more relaxed than those who live in areas of higher population. Some see this as a detriment. It's true that we don't have everything right within our reach at any time of day or night. However, I see this as a great benefit to family. You are forced to spend more time with your family. You are forced to be creative in finding things to do. You can take time to enjoy the more important things in life. You can take time to smell the gardenias.



West Virginia is a great place to work. Often times, I complain about my commute to work in the morning, but compared to many places across the USA, my drive to work is a walk in the park. There are a lot of interesting places to work, and a lot of interesting jobs to be had here in West Virginia. You could get a job doing anything from river guide to a software engineer working with cutting edge technology, and everything in between.



And who could write about West Virginia and not talk about the majestic beauty that can be seen almost everywhere across this state. West Virginia is home to some wonderful parks. We have one of the oldest rivers in the world that provides some of the best white water rafting anywhere. We have an abundance of wildlife in our state. Our mountains are by no means the largest in the world, but they do provide some great skiing in the winter, and help to promote a feeling of coziness as towns are nestled among the many valleys. We have many lakes and rivers, and ponds that provide great fishing, boating, and a host of other outdoor activities.



West Virginia has so much to offer. It amazes me that such negative stereptypes still prevail. Hopefully through this small, but concerted effort we can open everyone's eyes to this wonderful place.



Happy West Virginia Day everyone!

We've begun to do some repairs around the house. First up, we began with the privacy fence. When we bought the house about eight years ago, one of the first things we did was to redwood stain the privacy fence. Apparently, the lady who owned the house before us didn't think that a privacy fence needed to be stained to maintain it. Well, here's a newsflash for her and anyone else out there. If it is wood, you better stain it to protect it. Well, we did, and that helped a lot, but it had already suffered a lot of weathering, along with many vines and trees and whatnot that had grown up behind it, it was not in the best shape. But after some basic work on it, it shaped up alright. The only thing that we didn't do that we should have done in hind sight was to take it down completely and stain the back side of it. Hence the repairs we started today.

One of the posts had completely rotted at the bottom and so we removed that post and put it in a new one. Somehow we managed to remove the piece that was left when the top part broke off and kept the basic hole intact. That really helped to reseat the new freshly stained and pre-treated 4x4 post. We had two 8 foot panels to replace. There will be more in the near future, but we are starting with the two worst cases. Well, after all of those weathered years, the fence has sagged some, and has moved some, so fitting the new panels proved to be more of a chore than we had originally anticipated. But perserverence paid off, and the new panels are now in place.

All that we have left to do is to restain the rest of the fence. We'll get that done during the rest of this week. After that, we have some ew gutters to install around the back porch. We also need to do some repair work to the back porch as a result of not having gutters, and then we'll be on to some work inside. It's going to be one busy summer.

No, its not some expensive new toy. It's not a new car. It's nothing fancy. But it's the best Fathers' Day gift ever, if you ask me. It's the simple things that mean the most. Happy Fathers' Day everyone!

We went to the Jones Reunion today. We are related to the Jones on my father-in-law's side of the family. They can be traced back to some royalty in France, I believe, through Jeremiah Jones' wife, Susanna Agee. It's always a good time. We get to socialize and reminisce. We had a big group this year too. It was nice to see lots of new faces, and get reacquainted with old ones too. There's lots of good food. We'll have some great entertainment. This year, we had the Blues Brothers. They had a great show!

We went camping this past weekend. Not typical camping though. Yes, we set up a tent, and all that, but our day was not spent a campground, but rather next door at Kings Dominion. Not everyone got to enjoy it, though. Austin's arm is still in a cast, and with the weather forecast predicting record hit, and the fact that we didn't want to re-injure it, we decided to let him stay with Grandma and Grandpa.

The weather prediction was right. It was hot! I mean HOT! Heat index of 105 to 107 for the weekend.The heat apparently kept many people away as the park was not very crowded, and the lines were not very long. Most everything was more-or-less walk on, and that made for a lot of coaster riding. We rode every coaster there, except for Volcano. By we I mean that I rode every coaster, and Hannah rode all of the ones that she was tall enough for (including Rebel Yell, and Anaconda). I was able to ride in the front of the new coaster, Dominator. It was a great ride. Kings Dominion acquired the old Batman ride from Geauga Lakes, re-themed it, and renamed it to Dominator. Very smooth ride. I highly recommend it.

We are planning on going back later this month when Austin finally has his cast removed, and are going to try to meet Elliot Sadler when he is there. Some other planned trips for the summer including Dorney Park (for the first time), Carowinds (for a second time), Kings Island (despite the fact that Austin broke his arm there), and Cedar Point. As always, we'll post lots of photos for everyone to enjoy.

Ride On!

I have uploaded quite a few more sets of photos. Included in this batch are several events from this year, including our trip to Charlotte, NC and the NASCAR SpeedPark. While we were in Charlotte, we also stopped by to see Jeff Gordon. He was out for the day, but he let me take his car for a ride.

There are some pictures from this past Memorial Day. We went to the local cemetery to visit my wife's maternal grandparents.

I uploaded photos from Hannah's and Austin birthdays this year. Hannah celebrated her eighth birthday, and Austin turned five, and will be heading to school this fall. Speaking of school, I also added photos from Hannah's end-of-school party. They visited the local bowling alley, and had planned on going to a local playground, but it was rained out.

We even went to see some Disney on Ice this year. All this, and more, and summer is just beginning. I'll be posting the rest of the stuff we have done this year, as well as everything else we do. I have some older things I want to upload as well, and will get those as time permits.

Kaboom for Windows XP has been uploaded and is available for download in the Games section.

Our ice cream maker arrived at Wal-Mart today via the site-to-store shipping. This is not your run-of-the-mill-crank-forever-until-you-have-ice-cream ice cream maker. Oh no! This is a ball that you roll around all over the place to make ice cream. So while it is no faster, it is a lot more fun, especially for the little ones. After mixing the ingredients, putting them in the metal cylinder inside of the ball, and filling the rest of the ball with ice and rock salt, the fun began. And after about a half-hour, we had homemade ice cream. And it was pretty good too!

Less than a week, and here I am posting again. Miracles never cease.

We got a croquet set this weekend, and have been playing that some. For what is touted as a simple game, it sure does have a lot of rules that can get very complicated, very fast. I found a nice variation on it though, called Poison, that seems like more fun than the traditional way where you keep points. The only downside to all of this is that I have yet to win. Kim has won every game so far. Its pretty fun though, and if you have never played, I highly recommend giving it a try. It is worth it.

I have decided to keep my blog look the same for now. I started to make some changes, but decided that I still like it for the most part, so Simpsonized it stays. At least for now. I have put the links back to my original games (for Mac only). I do have a re-vamped version of Kaboom that I have posted as well. I'll post the Windows version sometime in the near future.

Lots of new photos are going to be added in the coming days. There has been a lot going on since I last posted any photos, and so I have a lot to post.