San Francisco

Boise schools are on Spring Break this week, and coincidentally I have a a trade show in San Francisco at the same time (well... it technically starts later this week). So we're combining the two to get in a little family vacation.

We started driving down here after school got out Friday afternoon, and drove to the wonderfully exciting Winnemucca, Nevada where we spent the night. We continued the drive on Saturday, arriving at my sister's house in Fremont, CA Saturday afternoon. Of course, as part of the trip here, we've already stopped off at two of the restaurants we miss from California: Wienerschnitzel and In 'n Out. And we've had a GREAT time staying with my sister, Susan, and her family. Three of their four kids are either married or away at school, and my sister and her husband are practically empty-nesters! It seems weird here without all four of the Grimm kids!

Today we went in to San Francisco, and took Dan with us. We went to Pier 39 and strolled/shopped around there (even rode a merry-go-round!). The photo above and to the right is taken from there. We toured a WW2-era liberty ship and submarine. We visited a wax museum. We rode a street car and a cable car. We strolled through China Town. And we even stopped at an outdoor Italian cafe and had some wonderful desserts and hot chocolate as people strolled by us on the sidewalk (people were looking at us like we were nuts - it was a little bit cold outside). That's where this photo at the left comes from. When we travel, it's all about experiencing as much as possible, so it was a busy and fun day!

Tomorrow I start working, but the family will still be playing in San Francisco. They have tickets to go on a tour of Alcatraz tomorrow afternoon - it's a bummer I won't be with them, but I'm sure they'll have more fun and frivolity tomorrow, like this goofy picture at the right. Then tomorrow night, we'll all meet up again and go see Wicked!!!

For all of the photos posted from today, please click here for Flickr, or here (set #1) and here (set #2) on Facebook.

Officer Steven at Pack Meeting

Last night our Cub Scouts had their monthly Pack Meeting, and the theme was careers. We had a Boise City Police officer come and talk about his 22 years as a policeman. He's done a lot in his career, including SWAT (a sniper in that unit) and currently a motor(cycle) officer. To the right here is Steven sitting on the police motorcycle - did he have fun with this, or what?!

A funny part of the evening was when the officer was showing us a sniper rifle. The rifle was on the ground, and Steven was sitting right in front of the business end of the .308 rifle. During Q&A, one of the cub scouts asked if the officer could show them what one of the bullets looked like. The officer said, "Sure. In fact, there's one right in the rifle." I said, "Um... Steven... can you move, please?" Everybody laughed.

Of course, it was perfectly safe, as the officer meant there was one in the rifle, but the round was not chambered and there was no way the rifle could fire. :-)

To check out all 20 of the photos from the Cub Scout Pack Meeting, including the kids all sitting around the sniper rifle, please click here.

Mark Goes on to State Competition!!!

The GT sixth grade students here in Idaho are required to participate in a "National History Day" project. The project has to cover some aspect of history, and can be creating a website, putting together a commentary, writing a research paper, doing some kind of performance, or putting together some sort of exhibit. Each participant's entry is judged at the school district level, and winners there get to go on to State competition (and Nationals after that if the entry goes on).

Mark's entry won!!! He did a video commentary on Claus von Stauffenberg, the German colonel during WW2 who tried (and failed) to kill Hitler. For his efforts, he was executed by firing squad - bummer. Claus von Stauffenberg was even the subject of a recent Tom Cruise film, Valkaryie. The State competition is next month (we think - details still pending). At stake are college scholarships of $25K, $50K, and $75K!!!

Mark's video commentary is embedded below, but can also be viewed on YouTube by clicking here. This is a pre-subission draft, and not the one that went to competition, but it's nearly final. Enjoy.

Brianna & Dani Bring Victory to Steelheads

Brianna and her friend Danielle Despres sang again to kick off the Idaho Steelheads game tonight. I think they should sing before every game, because every time they do, the Steelheads win (4-1 tonight)!!! As they played the Victoria Salmon Kings from Canada, Brianna and Dani sang both the Canadian and USA national anthems. We thought it was very nice of the 4,170 adoring fans came out to see the two of them sing.

But of course, after they sang, we all very much enjoyed watching a fight, and occasionally a hockey game broke out. Seriously though... tonight's game was pretty violent. One of the flights left blood on the ice - yikes! What's that you ask? Of course I got a picture of the blood-splattered ice (to the left here). During another fight, the officials literally could not get the two players separated. There were three officials tackling two players rolling around on the ice trying to get it broken up. It was crazy!

Anyway... we had a great time. I'd never been to pro (or semi-pro) hockey games until we moved here to Boise, and they're a whole lot of fun. There are a few more pictures (including more blood splatter - now this link will strangely get double the amount of normal hits that I usually get, I'm sure) that I have posted from the evening, here on Flickr.

The two videos, one of each national anthem, are also embedded below (and of course, here and here on Facebook).

NOTE: The "Oh Canada" video is not working right at all on YouTube. But the Flickr one is embedded below, until I can figure out why this video isn't uploading correctly. Sorry about that.

Silly Steven

This morning we decided to go to IHOP for breakfast - YUMMY!!! Steven was being really silly, though, and drew the drawstring to his sweatshirt hood so tight that you could only see his mouth. Then he started making really weird noises, and he's just a mouth. Very silly, Steven (video embedded from YouTube below. Also here on Flickr.

Lake Lowell

Last Saturday (February 28th), it was wintry, cold and windy, so we decided to go do some more Idaho exploring! Since moving to Boise almost three years ago, it's amazing how LITTLE we've still seen of our new home state. We didn't go too far on Saturday, just to neighboring Lake Lowell in Nampa, only about a 30-minute drive from home. The shot here is a panorama of six photos that I took standing at the water's edge. Yes... I am a geek.

They have a fun little indoors visitors center there, where it was warm and toasty. Then there's a nice half-mile trail down to the lake. Andrew, Steven and I were the only ones brave (stupid???) enough to go walk the trail in the cold wind. That's Andrew in the picture at the left, walking down the trail. Ironically... we may get to know this place A LOT better. We thought this would be a GREAT place for Andrew to do his Eagle Scout project: putting some benches along the trail. Andrew has called them, and they're interested in having him do it.

Of course, we also found a fish head down by the water's edge. How cool is THAT for two young boys (and their dad)?! I'm posting a picture here to the right, just so you can start singing in your head, "Fish heads fish heads, rolly polly fish heads..."

And finally, at the entrance to the visitors center, they had this "robot" constructed entirely of trash found on the lake. Steven thought it was cool and had to pose with it, but isn't that GROSS??!! Please don't litter; keep our land beautiful!

I've posted all the photos from our fun little family outing; for the full album (13 pics), please click here for Flickr, or here for Facebook.

Swim/Steak Anyone???

The photo here to the right was taken yesterday morning at about 7am. The temp was low 20s, and we had had a dusting of snow overnight. Soooo many shots of our pool have been taken from this angle, with friends and family diving in during summer pool parties. Anybody for a swim now??? Of course, you'd bounce off the cover more like a trampoline (hmmm... sounds like fun!)

But by afternoon it had swarmed up to the high-30s, and I felt like BBQ'ing. So for the first time this season, we uncovered the grill and I cooked some yummy steaks. In about 10 weeks, we'll be having BBQ pool parties - I can't wait! :-)

Yup... those are pineapples waiting to be fried on the BBQ, too. And of course, Andrew just had to get a picture of the steaks. This is just after we threw the steaks on the grill, but even at this state, it's cooked just about right for our carnivorous Andrew!

National Guard Postings Moved to a New Blog

Just to let everyone know, my family and I decided to move the drill postings and other NG postings to their own separate blog off of the family site to allow easier navigation of both sites like we did with Justin's missionary blog. Due to the length of my postings and the fact that some people don't care about either my postings or the general family postings we decided to break it off. The URL for my blog is http://pfcgoodale.blogspot.com/. All old posts will remain and but new posts will all be on the new blog. All prior relevant postings have been moved to the new blog as well.