Survival and Tracking

Back near the middle of May Dave heard about a free event that might be good to take the boys to. The Larimer County Search and Rescue had an Open House with different things to do and learn. I wasn't in the best mood to be going out that day but am so thankful and glad that we did.




While the boys got to see the medevac helicopter as well as do a couple fun activities the main thing we walked away with was tips and tools from a video and presentation by search and rescue volunteers to help us and our family in case any of us ever get lost hiking in the wilderness. Of course we pray that we will never have to use them but I am so happy we learned some great things since we do like to go to the mountains whenever we can. And we will implement them and go over them with the boys every time we go out hiking, camping or day trips to picnic!

To blog or not to blog? That is the first question. The second is...Should we take the invites away?

Well, I know for sure that after this post I will not be sending posts to anyone's email. All of my currently 10 readers who have accepted my invites to read our blog, plus a few of you who have not signed up because I sent them to your emails will be getting this sent to your email for the first and/or last time. This post is so that I can tell everyone at the same time what will happen with our blog.
I'm going to change things for a few reasons. First, I currently have only one friend who actually comes to our blog to read it and she is the only one who has checked out the actual page at all in almost the last month which I know thanks to sitemeter which she referred to me. Of course I have not even posted anything for a month and yet she consistently checks to see if I've posted anything new even though I only remember to check her blog a few times a month. You know who you are and I thank you so much for being my one follower! I do hope that changes though and that we will get more followers. If you're wondering how to be a follower all you have to do is go to our blog and on the right hand side scroll down to where there is a box titled Followers. Click on Follow and it will take you through the steps necessary to become one of our followers. I might just chuck this whole blog if I knew no one was reading it which brings me to another reason for change. I know a few more of you would actually like to read it to see what our family has been up to but haven't for different reasons. So, I thought since I have a way to keep track of who's reading our blog that I would take the invites away for awhile. If it looks like people we don't know are reading it then I will bring the invites back to protect our family from creepos living somewhere that I know I don't have friends or relatives. I hope that does not happen because I would hate to waste your time if you have to re-sign up all over again. I at least have every other protection I can without the invites set up, our blog doesn't go through the scroll on blogger and I have sitemeter too. If anyone knows of anything else I can do short of invites to further protect our blog from unwanted readers please let me know. Thank you all for your understanding! I have a number of things I want to post and I will be posting those new things in the next couple of days or so in order of which they happened, so please come check on us soon! Thanks everyone for your interest, I know we're not the most exciting people to read about but we do appreciate that you have read in the past and look forward to you reading about us in the future!



Love to you all! McCall Family :)



p.s. I am only able to email ten people so I had to leave a few of you off. If you did not get this in your email it is because I know there is a good chance you will get wind of my change from checking facebook and/or you are our follower.

another test

blah, blah, blah! ;) Just messing around to test something out.

Test

Just a quick little post to test something out with my blog.

Pics from visit with Amy and Aunt Barb and more family!

I actually took about 100 pictures within a week, which (aside from Christmas) I haven't done for quite some time. But I hadn't seen my cousin Amy and Aunt Barb for about two years and we got to do some touristy things, hence all the pics. I'm only gonna put a handfull up now since it can be time consuming scaling them down before I post them. So, these are some of my favorites from my camera. Amy, you have a few that I can't wait to get my hands on. When I size all the best ones down, I will get to emailing them to you, Aunt Barb and my Mom for sharing. As you can see, we got to go to The Royal Gorge. I hadn't done that since I was very young so it was fun to see how much matched my memory of it. In the first 3 pics are Brendan and Carter on the bridge. They did amazing that day, walked across the bridge all the way to the other side, up the hill to the lookout point and back which to me proves how much energy my boys really have, LOTS!!!!!!! The next three after the boys are before and during the aerial tram ride, us (Amy, boys and I) waiting in line and then one shot looking straight down to the Arkansas. The two after that are from the incline ride the four of us took, Mom and Aunt Barb passed on both of these. I don't blame them too much, I had reservations of my own. Great fear of some tragic accident involving contraptions like these happening when I'm inside. But we had fun with it. Amy has a pic or two of me on her camera with the same expression she has and I do have pics of the boys on these too. Like I said I have a BUNCH of pics. And the last seven pictures are from a big family get together we had with step siblings, cousins, Aunts, etc. The first one is me with my step sister Kristen's new little cutie boy Celestino (Tino), such a cutie! Next is Kristen and Auggie, Tino's mommy and daddy. Then Kristen and I. Next cousin Tish and her son Kaleb. Then Sisters, my Mom Mary, Aunt Betty and Auntie Barb. Then Papo and Carter. And my best group pic of Mom and Vic's grandkids; Brendan, Xavien and Tureis (Gabe and Sara's kids), Antonia and Celestino, (Kristen and Auggie's kids) and Carter. We had such a fun visit, after we dropped Amy off at the airport 9am sat. morning I had to keep telling Carter where she went. He kept saying, 'Where's Amy? Me want Amy!' Very heartbreaking especially because he did not want to accept that she had gone bye-bye to Ohio.



Well, hope you enjoy the pics and maybe in this next week I'll put up a few more. The next few days are going to be too busy, we are going to a Character Fort Collins Seminar all morning tomorrow. Then I have an after birth baby shower for a friend to go to. And Monday morning I have a chair massage gig with a Mother's group that is having a spa day. So needless to say, today I will be enjoying a mostly lazy day around the house! Have a good weekend everyone!

Egg decorating

Hi everyone,

We hope you had a very nice Easter! We just relaxed around the house and the boys got to watch Pinnochio which they got from the Easter Bunny along with some suckers, sixlets and a cadbury caramel egg. They were very happy with that, it doesn't take a lot to make them happy and since they are always seeming to ask for suckers lately it worked out great. They even got to have one after eating pancakes Daddy made. Figured since it was Easter and as many of you know I rarely let the boys have sweets anyway so that was a treat in itself. We did manage to get eggs decorated this year but I did not hide them, they got to have an egg hunt at preschool last Thursday. So here are just a couple pics I took of them coloring eggs. And yes those are stickers from the deco kit on their heads that I actually stuck there.

Recommendation for book lovers!

Hi all,

About 35 minutes ago I finished reading a most wonderful story that a friend recommended to me recently. The book is titled, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. To tell you very briefly, it's about two women who have come together for the purpose of the older one telling her story to the younger one, with many twists and turns and gradually along the way the younger one learns more about her own story. Now just by that you may think that you already have it figured out but trust me, you do not. I give you this description in a way meant to entice you into reading it to find out the truth. As well as being fresh from reading this wonderfully woven tale, I have the writer's language or some form of it still in my head. Which is why I had to come down to the computer so late, in order to have just a bit of play before going to sleep and possibly dreaming of the story thereby not getting very good sleep anyway. Let me know if any of you read it and what you think, I know I will be chatting with my friend soon to talk about it. When you've read such a good book you well know that the story sticks with you for awhile as I'm sure it will for me in the next few days, at least and it has been added to my list of favorite books for sure. Have a good Monday and take care! =)