The Home of The KCPokes

It’s been a while, this much I do know. So it’s finally time for an update.

We just got back from Fayetteville, North Carolina to visit Neill before his deployment. He was scheduled to leave on April 17th, which was changed the day we got out there. It changed again while we were out there, with the current date scheduled for April 25th. Whether that remains unchanged is hard to say right now. Celeste was already out there, and Shelly beat us out there by a few hours, so was nice to have other family out there to spend time with. We did as much as we could in our couple days out there; visited a couple museums, ate until we about exploded, played some putt-putt golf, and even went to the carnival! Carnies…..mmm….small hands, smell like cabbage!

What is a trip to the carnival without bumper cars? Well it’s just not a trip, especially when you throw in some ultra competitive personalities.

If you experience a lot of buffering, pause the video for a bit and allow it to buffer before proceeding

It was Delaney’s first carnival, of any sort, so we did what we could. She was highly disappointed in not being able to ride most of the rides.

Ugh, after watching that, I think someone should fire that camera man! You could get seasick on dry land by watching that last video.

I’m still working on the other videos from the trip, but it’s a start.

In regards to updates, I’ve also uploaded new pictures to the following albums:

Ft Bragg/Fayetteville Trip
Party Pictures
Miscellaneous Family Pics
Dave and Ellie

I know its been a while, but you know how things go.

Brief update. There are new pictures available. Rather then link each album that is updated, I’ve gone to the process of reordering the albums such that the updated albums are always the first in the list. That should make it pretty easy to determine what you’ve seen and what you haven’t.

In regards to the site, I’m preparing to do a complete overhaul of the site. I hate the current site and its limitations, thus I want to move to something that is easier to use and opens up things a bit more for you all. Essentially, rather then it being our site, about us and maintained by us, we’re considering going to a site that is about all of our family and friends. Thus I’m leaning more toward a community driven site, or social network if you will. This would provide photos, blogs, and activity for everyone rather then just us. Of course any input and ideas regarding this are always welcome.

I’m trying to be better, as time permits, about updating the site with content. Of course there isn’t always a big event happening, thus content is a bit harder to come by.

Occasionally I get on a kick to edit some video together. The camcorder decided to quit last year, so at this point I’m stuck with whatever video I take with the little digital camera. The nice thing is that it is “Johnny on the spot”, always available for those times when you really weren’t expecting to shoot video. What to do with those short little videos is another question. But what if the video is just so classic that it really needs to be shared? It just so happens that I had that exact scenario and took the time last night to throw a video together….

This video was shot in the garage at the lake, or as we call it “The Man Cave”. Unfortunately Flash encoding tends to kill the quality of the video. There are two versions of the video available. My videos are all hosted on Amazon thus I cannot control, nor improve, any bandwidth issues you may experience.

The first video is a lower quality video, thus a smaller download to view. For low bandwidth people this will be your best bet.

The second video is a high quality video, thus a very large file. Warning, due to bandwidth restrictions you may experience buffering.

No animals were harmed during the making of this video.

She really is quite the tiny dancer. Hmm…maybe I should have used that for the background music.

Hope you enjoy.

Based on the title I’m sure you can guess what Neill’s big change is; Neill and Celeste got married today, 12/27. It was a small ceremony, with only immediate family. They do plan to have a formal ceremony once Neill returns from Afghanistan (he gets deployed in April), thus there will be more information in the coming year regarding the details.

We couldn’t be happier with his decision and welcome her to our family with open arms. Of course, it does raise the question as to whether she is actually prepared for our family! To be fair, we did warn her beforehand!

Click here to see all pictures from the ceremony

The holidays are upon us once again. I apologize for there not being more updates. It has been a busy couple of months, although not sure where the time has gone.

To summarize what has been going on lately…

• Neill is home. He was able to make it home for Christmas. He is currently stationed at Ft Bragg, North Carolina. He is also going through a big event, but there will be more of that in the coming weeks. For now I’ll just leave it at the fact that we are happy to have him home, and even happier to have him home for the holidays.
• Delaney is all about Christmas. She has about wore out the Christmas movies, but luckily for her I keep getting more. Trust me, its more of our sanity then hers as she’ll watch Shrek the Halls twenty times a day. Luckily she is so busy with Christmas that she forgets that she is unable to go outside and play. Winter is a killer for her as she’d just assume be outside every waking moment.
• Kayla is working at US Bank, where she’ll happily tell you that she now hates the sight of money. I’m sure, like all of us, she is ready for some well deserved time off.
• Theresa continues to work at Embarq, as a requirements manager. They are currently going through a merger, after being acquired by CenturyTel, thus never a dull moment.
• And me? Well I left Sprint back in March and am now working for a startup called Zave Networks. We are looking to revolutionalize the coupon market. It is an uphill battle, working with large legacy grocers, but we’re making good progress.

I know there is far more to detail, so I do hope to be more proactive in updating the site in the future. But to tide you over, we did attend Delaney’s Christmas Concert tonight. This is her very first concert, so you can only imagine how excited she was to go. It had been rescheduled from last week, which turned out great as Neill was able to attend as well. I do apologize for the video quality; our camcorder quit in May and we’ve never taken the time to get it fixed, thus all the videos are shot with my little Sony digital camera.

As a little bonus, and just because everyone loves when the little ones get up there, here are the 2 year olds.

I received some interesting pictures, in email, the other day. The email thead was based on some pictures, captured by a deer trail cam set up just north of Axtell, Kansas. For those not in the know, I went to high school in Axtell, a place we called home for 10 years.

The pictures are real, but they were not taken near Axtell, nor Kansas/Missouri in general. See the edit at the bottom of the post for details. Still interesting pictures, regardless.

The pictures…

I did some searching and can not find anything to dispute the location of the pictures. I’m not a pessimist, normally, but many years on the internet have taught me to always question information that is not easily confirmed. For now, based on the email thread and source, I’m going to assume there pictures were captured North of Axtell. If anyone knows of any further information to either confirm their validity or discredit the source, please let me know.

Now regarding the pictures. Nature is amazing, thus I do not find these pictures to be disturbing in any facet. The cycle of life in nature, if you will. The fact that not one, but three mountain lions/cougars have set up residence in NE Kansas is somewhat amazing. There had always been talk and stories of people spotting them, but up till now I have never seen any physical proof to back the stories. The fact that the area is a farming community and there have not been any major issues with livestock missing is somewhat a mystery to me. Has the relationship become symbiotic enough that we both exist without knowledge or issue? It is an interesting thought to ponder.

[EDIT] A friend of mine received an email stating they were from Edina, Missouri, thus the mystery looms as to where they are really from. The fact that there are two emails, stating from two different places, leads me to believe they are neither from Edina nor Axtell. But until I can find out for sure, cant say for sure.

[TRUTH] Did some searching and inquiring, turns out that the pictures are actually from South Dakota. The proof is in one picture, in which you can see that one of the them are tagged with an orange ear tag. That tag color is used in South Dakota. I love the internet and people taking credit for things that aren’t theirs! For the official story, from a reputable news organization, http://journalstar.com/articles/2008/12/07/news/nebraska/doc493c5efe1ea7f576376885.txt .

Once again, another year has gone by and I still did not find the time to rewrite the entire gift registry application. No loss though, since everyone is already a member and I’ve left it as is. What that means is that it is now time to start thinking about firing that puppy back up and getting your lists made. There was an issue, recently, with email being sent from that box, which is correct now, so everything should be pretty much ready to go.

Best approach is to go through your list and remove everything. If you have something on your list that you still want to keep there, I’d remove and add it again, just to ensure that no one had it reserved still.

Being proactive now makes it easier for those shopping, such as me! Please drop me a line or shoot me a message should you have any issues regarding the registry. Same as last year, thus should be pretty straightforward.

This past weekend the three of us, Delaney, Theresa, and I, made the trip to Columbus, GA, for Neill’s ‘Turning Blue’ and Graduation ceremonies. It was an adventure, for sure, with limited sleep, to start, but was great to spend some quality time. Neill’s girlfriend, Celeste, and her family, made the trip as well. Was great for us to have someone to talk to when the two wanted to spend some time with their friends (Lester and Stephen, two of Neill’s friends from Liberty, were there as well with Lester graduating the week before, and Stephen making the trip from South Carolina) or were shopping. Funny how much shopping a bunch of “boys” do, given the opportunity.

I’ll recap a few highlights from the trip:

• Our flight from KC to Atlanta was delayed by two hours, because of weather conditions in Atlanta.
• Delaney’s booster seat didn’t come down with the regular luggage, thus meant we had to try to track it down. Luckily we happened upon it pretty quickly.
• Everything into Atlanta was delayed, thus it is probably best to have ONE person working the rental car desk. Good times.
• By the time we got to Columbus, checked into the hotel, and get ready for bed, it was 2AM. Wake up time for the next day? 5:30AM!
• Ceremonies were great. Short and sweet, with enough activities to keep everyone interested, including a 4 year old. Only complaint is why they didn’t combine the two events to be on the same day. Each was an hour at the most, thus seems we could have been with both and had another day to do whatever.
• For whatever reason we could not find a thing, even with the GPS. Mainly this is due to the use of generic terms, but we did take a tour of the main post trying to find something that apparently wasn’t even on the main post! But we found our way; no harm, no foul, although I will say my wife is a far better driver then navigator.
• I love food. There is no secret to that. Not even so much eating it as preparing it, although eating is very HIGH on my list. So trying food from different areas of the country is something I love. I enjoyed Portland, in May, because I was able to fill myself with fresh seafood. So when in Georgia, eat like Georgians. We tried a BBQ joint in Columbus. I wanted to like it. Smelt good, had a great look, and they had fried pickles. Who wouldn’t like that? One problem, the food was awful. Meat was dry, sides had no taste, and fries reminded me of the substance that Lane’s mom made on Better off Dead. I could make a killing down there by opening a BBQ restaurant.
• People from the South really are polite. Now they may not be in a hurry, when driving, but dang they are friendly and polite.
• We spent a lot of time with Rudy and Shelly, Celeste’s mom and dad, which really made the trip more enjoyable then it would have had we made it alone.

Ok, well now that you know most of the highpoints, how about the really good stuff? PICTURES!

I have a few more pictures, of general activities in Columbus, but I still need to get them uploaded to the site. Check back for updates.