Jaguars 28 - Texans 42

I can't say that I completely understand the mentality of resting starters in the last game of the season but I guess that's what Del Rio decided. To me the fear of injury sets a certain tone for that first playoff game that I wouldn't want to have. But on the plus side Quinn threw 4 touchdowns, wow! He's been what you want to have in a backup this year. Nice job.

No matter who they play next week it should be a great game.

Christmas Eve

My girls on Christmas Eve. We got Jen a new DVD camcorder. Of course now we have to learn how to use it.

Raiders 11 - Jaguars 49

Clinched playoffs!!! Ranked 5th in the AFC but only because they didn't win their division. By wins they are 3rd. So the talk now is whether they will play the Steelers or the Browns in week one of the playoffs. If they win, they go to New England. What are their chances against a possibly unbeaten Patriots.

I like their chances. The Pats have a passing game. I've not been impressed with their running game by itself. They break away some good runs but it's entirely set up by the pass. That works unless the pass gets shut down. So, if the Jags can hold up and force them to run prematurely they can limit their production. The Jags have the total package this year, run, pass, defense and a mobile QB. Could make for an exciting game.

Mele Kalikimaka

Today we had a visit from some old friends. Our ex-neighbors from across the street, Steve and Krista Massarro came by. It was great to visit for a while. They moved to Hawaii a couple years ago. Their daughter, Julia, and Megan have been corresponding since they both learned to read and write. Not only is it good to see them keep their relationship alive, it's great motivation for Megan to practice writing.

It was fun to hear about their lives in Hawaii, to reconnect and to celebrate God's faithfulness over the past couple of years. What a wonderful addition to our Christmas season!

Merry Christmas 2007

"Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." Matthew 2:2

May the Lord bless you this Christmas season in your worship of the King.

Riesa – 8 months. My favorite part of the year was being born and finding out how big this world is. So far I’ve learned to crawl, eat solid food, laugh a lot and sign a few words like “more”, “all done”, and “drink”.

Noelle – 5 years. This year I learned how to read. The best things that happened were… Ashley coming over to play and my sister being born. (Ashley is a 3 year old little girl that Jen has watched since she was a baby.) My favorite things to do are… practice writing letters, playing with baby dolls and looking at my gingerbread house. My favorite experience of the year was going letterboxing. And when we went letterboxing we saw a buck and he was sharpening his antlers. We found the box right where he was sharpening his antlers. My favorite book was “The Night Before Christmas”. Next year I would like to write letters. I do ballet and sometimes I do recitals and sometimes my mom and dad and friends can come and watch.

Megan – 8 years. I hope this last year was the best for you. My favorite thing to do is… watch Pokemon, play with Pokemon cards and anything Pokemon. I also like science and one of the things I do for science is learn the names of birds and watch birds. I also like to learn about dinosaurs. My favorite books that I’m reading are Nancy Drew and the Bobsey Twins. I went on a trip to Popops and Grandma’s (Brukiewa) house last Christmas. I enjoyed being with them. This year Mema and Grandpa (Grillo) are going to stay here for Christmas. Next year I would like to read a book about fairies. My whole family does karate. We did a tournament. We did stick fighting and a kata. Kata’s are a series of moves. There are weapon katas and sparing but we didn’t do any of that. I have a new sister, she’s the cutest thing in the universe.

Gabby (the pooch) - I have designated myself as a constant guardian to the new baby. I don’t mind much when she pulls my ears and pokes my eyes. I also faithfully remind the girls to feed me and bark at any thing that comes near my territory. The highlight of the year has to be the camping trip with my family.

Jen – This year has been full of mommy activities . . . homeschooling the girls, dance class, field trips, play groups, leading a Daisy Girl Scout troop, laundry, housekeeping, dinners, gardening, giving birth, nursing… etc. Some of the things I’ve enjoyed most are: starting a journey with my family toward a black belt in Karate; teaching Noelle to read; watching Megan’s love of learning carry her into amazing discoveries: quiet moments in reading, study, prayer and contemplation (it happens). I’ve enjoyed studying the life and works of Beethoven and Mary Cassat and finding out that I love history! I have loved reading some of the classic books with the girls and Dave before bed. And then there is Riesa…what a sweet blessing. She is amazing! I am also involved in a project started by an old friend in Florida, Broose Johnson. He wrote a beautiful princess song for his daughter that I recorded that can be personalized. Check out the website to hear some of the song at aprincessafterall.com . I am often overwhelmed by all the Lord has blessed me with! I need His grace every day and He never holds it back. A particularly meaningful verse God gave me recently was Isaiah 40:11. “In His arms He will gather the lambs, and carry them in His bosom; He will gently lead the nursing ewes.”

Dave – The highlight of the year has to be the birth of my third daughter Riesa. We named her Riesa which means “laughter” because I laughed when I found out we were having a third girl. God has been gracious to enable me to spend lots of great time with my family this year. We’ve enjoyed Letterboxing, hiking, camping, visiting family in Steamboat and cutting down our Christmas tree this year. This year God has impressed on me just how much He is in control and what a comfort it is to know that I am His.

May Christmas bring you closer to the King as you contemplate His birth, life, death and resurrection all for you.

Jaguars 29 - Steelers 22

No writers I read predicted the Jaguars to be able to go into Heinz Field and smash the Steelers in the mouth. They handed the Steelers their first home loss of the year with Fred Taylor picking up 147 yards on the day. What a game. Weather played a big factor in the Jags kicking game as they missed 2 extra points. But what impressed me most is how they were able to be a 4th quarter team. When Leftwich was QB they seemed to get tired after 3. Here they had the lead, saw Pit come back to tie with 5 minutes remaining and they didn't lose composure on either side of the ball. If Tennessee had lost they would be in with a Wild Card spot. That's ok, they only have Oakland and Houston left so they should win out if they don't get excited and overlook either of them.

The Jags would be number 3 in the conference if they were in the North or West divisions.

Aphrodite

My buddy Lance and I got together in October 2006 to climb in Red Rock Canyon. I had not been to the canyon before. There are somewhere over a hundred new sport climbs there. Neither of us had climbed for some time so we had decided to do some 5.6-5.8 routes just to have fun and get ourselves back into it. On lead I would rate myself about a 5.8 climber.

I don't remember what route we thought we were on but we thought it was a 5.8. Here's the beta from Lance's route book with his comments:

3). The Whale: "Aphrodite" (5.10a) Mostly continuous pitch, thin moves below and past an obvious pothole. Many crimp moves and several cruxes. 90 foot route, 10 bolts. Dave leads, beautifully, nicely protected route, very tough lead out of the "cave" = pothole. Didn’t' know at the time, but this beauty was a 5.10 !! Look at exact location of trees where Megan and Noelle were! This was definitely the one! Whoa…., didn't know we could do it, huh?

Here I am approaching the pothole. Things got pretty thin exiting the pothole. Thankfully I had taken twice as many draws as the book said I'd need since we had read the wrong climb completely, I had just enough.

And here's Lance looking for his exit from the "cave". We completed the climb and both felt pretty weak afterward until we found out it was a 5.10a and not the 5.8 we had thought at the time.

I don't want to lose this...

This is from my lost blog... I'm reposting this becasue it was just too cool. The picture is the route we took on New Year's Day 2005.

Yesterday was a brilliant, beautiful day. I climbed my first three pitch climb. It wasn't a particularly difficult climb but it was very cool. New Era in the Garden of the Gods. It’s 5.7 and really the two lower pitches can be combined to make it a two pitch climb but we made it three. It’s also VERY vertical and all trad. The day started off very nice. Crisp. We met in the parking lot and arranged our gear at 9am. By 10 we were at the approach and preparing to climb. Bill learned the hard way never to carry my water for me. The seal hadn’t done its job and leaked on his back before we even started. Lance began to lead the first pitch. He placed three pieces of pro and then wasn’t feeling the confidence. He hadn’t been climbing enough to get himself to proceed so he backed off the lead and handed it to Bill. The plan was to have Bill lead, I would follow then belay Bill up the second pitch and then Lance up to me. We would continue until we were all at the top. Bill took off and arrived at the first belay station with no problems. The sun had left the rock before we began and although it wasn’t cold, it wasn’t particularly warm either. We all had fleece. I had taken off my shell but left on my fleece. Nine pieces of pro to clean and then I joined Bill at the first anchor. There were two bolts and Bill added a third piece to make it bomber. For some reason I couldn’t look at the anchor much. I studied it to see the system he set up and so I would know what was happening there but I didn’t want to think about what I was hanging off of. I don’t know if it was the steepness, the day or the fact that I realized this was only the first of three pitches. Most of my climbing only goes to this height, about 60 feet I guess, so thinking about not rapping off from there was a little difficult for my mind to wrap around. I decided not to think about it and just do the job I needed to do. Bill proceeded to move on to the second anchor. Once Bill was secure and off belay, Lance tied in and I pulled up the slack. While I was pulling up the slack for Lance, Bill started pulling up the slack from my tie in. As I was belaying Lance up I had to watch the rope above me and untangle any kinks for Bill at the same time. I was constantly busy because Lance was moving pretty quick. Whenever Lance paused I’d try to free up as much of the upper rope as I could, then Lance would be moving again. Lance clipped into the belay anchor with me. He seemed tired, the vertical was getting to both of us. It’s a very “in your face” climb compared to what we are used to. Lots of holds and not difficult climbing but the vertical is intimidating. I think it was making us burn more juice than we needed to. As I left Lance at the first anchor the weather was getting a little chillier. The wind was intermittent. When it was still we were fairly warm when the wind blew it got pretty cold. Unfortunately a lot of time was spent sitting at the belay station waiting. The wind would blow and chill us and then, sitting there we never really got warm until we had a turn to climb again. The approach to the second belay station was intense. The whole second pitch was more vertical than the first and then the crack and face climbing turned into a smooth sheet of rock on the right and clean face on the left. The only path was a layback of about 4-5 moves to the shelf below the belay station. I’ve done laybacks lots of times and they are not hard. I could see the moves in front of me but I couldn’t make my body do what it needed to do. My feet were too low for my hands to get a good grip. My hands were cold and didn’t want to grip the way I needed them to. Finally after struggling a little I realized that I could inch myself up little by little and that’s what I did until I could reach the belay. When I got there my forearms were fried. Especially my right arm was totally shot. At least I would have time to rest while Bill and Lance climbed on. The second belay was inside a crack with a small shelf about the size of an easy chair. Above us the crack came together about 5 feet up into a roof. The route actually went up behind where I was facing so it was difficult to keep my eye on Bill’s progress. He struggled to find gear placements at first. It was a little unnerving to think about the possibilities of him falling until he got 2-3 pieces in above me. He would have landed on me, and the anchor directly. Bill blew through the third pitch pretty quick. I took that as a sign that the more difficult climbing was beneath me. I didn’t ask for confirmation, I didn’t really want to know. Once Bill called down that he was on anchor I began to pull up Lance’s slack. Lots of climbers prefer a sitting belay because it’s more comfortable but to me it’s more difficult because it’s awkward. From a standing belay I have lots of mobility and leverage, from sitting that goes away. Lance had had lots of time to cool off down there hanging from the lower belay anchor. It continued to get colder. The laybacking was extremely difficult in those conditions and Lance and I were both thinking about the logistics of him lowering off. The difficulty of that, and the danger if the rope didn’t get him to the bottom caused him to make one more effort. When I saw that I began to urge him upward. I knew the voice in his head probably shouted the same as it had been in my own. It was saying things like “just lower off, you don’t want to be here, you’re going to get hurt.” I kept telling him that he was making progress. I held him on a tight belay. From my sitting belay it was tough to hold all his weight on the rope without letting him slowly slip backward. I found I was able to do it only if I wrapped the rope around my break hand and extended it completely out so that I wasn’t using muscle as much as bone. After a lot of effort he finally grabbed the bomber hold just below the anchor. I extended the anchor with a temporary draw so that he could rest a minute. There wasn’t room for both of us at the station until I began to move upward. The anchor consisted of two bolts, one with a spinning hangar, two pitons, one of which was angled exactly wrong for a fall. Bill had backed those four pieces up with a cam so it was pretty secure. I called up for Bill to put me on belay and then began to position myself so I could begin climbing. As I started up, Lance made himself more comfortable on the belay perch. We made a deal not to ask or tell if the third pitch was as difficult as the second. As I started up and got past the chimney portion it was clearly much easier so I passed that on to Lance for encouragement. On the second pitch I really didn’t study many of Bill’s placements. I was imagining what it would have been like to be on lead and didn’t particularly feel comfortable with it. On this third pitch the climbing was easier but Bill ranout the last placement pretty far. Something I wouldn’t have liked. But there wasn’t a place to put anything so his choices were pretty limited. Ten feet from the top was a bolt so he put in a draw and topped out. Lance was growing cold and impatient as we readied to bring him up. Once he topped out we all gathered at the top and went to the summit. On the summit we took some pictures and Lance said he wanted to offer thanks. His prayer was heartfelt and it was an honor to be there. Lance had previously decided to make this his last climb. He will probably do some top rope or sport but he’s planning to retire after some 30 years of climbing. In his prayer he thanked God for safety throughout the years including this climb. He mentioned times of peril and thanked God for the day of climbing with Bill and I. Being mentioned in that prayer was a privilege, being part of this climbing party was a privilege for me. We ate some lunch and then organized for our decent. The plan was to rap off in a two pitch rap to some belay anchors below on a different climb. Somehow standing around at the top was getting to me mentally. Lance was setting up the rappel while Bill and I packed up the gear. For some reason watching Lance go down to the rappel anchors was bothering me. He said there was a ledge there but it wasn’t visible from where I was. It just bothered me. Bill rapped first but when he got to where the anchors should have been, the bolts were there but all the hangers had been removed. I couldn’t see or hear Bill so he and Lance discussed the situation and passed their thoughts on to me. The first option was to have Bill ascend the rope (that would take about 45 minutes) and then we descend by the southern walkoff. All together that would probably take us a couple hours. The other option was to pull up one end of the rope, tie the two together and have Bill descend to where there would hopefully be another set of anchors. We decided on the second since we were running out of daylight and Bill was pretty confident the anchors would be there. When Bill found the anchors he was out of earshot so Lance just had to keep a hand on the rope to see when it went slack. As he worked into position I lowered onto the rap. I’ve rapped lots of times but for some reason my nerves were giving me fits right then. As Lance readied to rap he talked through what he was doing, probably out of habit. Then as I began to get ready for the rappel I talked out loud to nobody. “Tying klimheist… clipping in, biner locked. Threading ATC, clipping in, biner locked. Checking rap biners… coming off first anchor, coming off second anchor… On rappel” “Rappeling!” Lance mentioned that there would be some cool photo ops on the way down this rock. I don’t think I had ever done a longer rappel. On the way down I did pause for a moment to look around. I said “Holy crap!” and then continued. I watched my feet most of the way down from that point. When I arrived at the anchors Bill and Lance were, of course, tied in already. All three of us were clipped into two bolts. I looked at them enough to see what was going on but then just didn’t want to think about it anymore. We started pulling the rope. They already had the end threaded through the anchors so as we pulled it dropped right into place. Lance rapped first since he was in the best position. I went next and when I landed I had a feeling of great relief. “Terra firma! It’s good to be on the ground again.” Lance concurred. When Bill joined us we packed up and headed for the cars. It had been a day of mind over matter for me. It had been a day of body over rock. It had been a day of keeping my emotions and imagination in check. I made it and it was good. A beautiful day.

Letterboxing

We've discovered a new family activity that is quite fun on several levels. It's called "Letterboxing" (www.letterboxing.org) and it's a worldwide phenomenon. The skinny is that people hide waterproof boxes and you go find them. Some are hidden in easily accessible locations and others are more difficult. Some post clues on the web and others are entirely word of mouth.

We have a beautiful Letterboxing Log book to journal our entries, maybe we'll post some here too.

Our first attempt was located near our house on a trail that we never knew was there. It was a short hike, less than a mile, to the box. We saw a large buck just as we arrived at the box. It was fun to discover a trail so close to home and it's a great way to get our girls out for a hike since we have a destination and a discovery to make. It really sparks their creative imagination.

the new page

I've had a couple blogs in the past. I linked to them here. I stopped using the first one because the site wasn't as user-friendly. The second one was lost when I changed email addresses twice within a short period of time, lost my password and can't recover it.

Jen also has a blog that she publishes her deepest thoughts to.

This one will be used for family posts as well as my meandering thoughts. Welcome!