Well I made this trip with one of my coworkers and he spent most of the time complaining about the weather. He still got to go down to Des Moines and play poker though so I think that made up for it a little. The first two nights he had the car so I stayed at my hotel and worked/played on my computer. Added stull to my blog and explored twitter some more. Finally Wednesday night I got to go skiing and believe me I had low expectations…its Iowa and Iowa is flat right? Well I was pleseantly surprised. Seven oaks recreation area is where I went. The place had like 7 runs mind you short ones but fun none the less. The snow was perfect…they don’t seem to run the piston bully over their black diamond trails. This means that they were both pure natural dry sweet powder!! That was a lot of fun the natural powder, back east so often our powder is wet and sticky. The second night of skiing I decided to teach myself how to jump. They have a well maintained terrain park with a large jump about half way down the slope. This was the first time I ever really tried to jump on purpose. Between this large jump and a two other smaller ramps at the bottom I learned how to jump. Now I am not doing anything fancy but I can successfully jump now at a decent speed and I am quite proud of myself. On top of it all I only busted twice while jumping. Well now it is 3am and I am all packed had a few minutes before I needed to pick up Rick to head to the Des Moines airport so I decided to knock out a quick blog entry. All in all my trip to Iowa was not too bad in fact I had a lot. Of fun. Skiing in Iowa isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be in fact in some ways it was better than back east! Hope you enjoyed this and talk to u later. Below are a few pictures of the slope for your enjoyement.

Well after getting my new Android phone I find myself using Facebook more and in a moment of boredom at the Detroit Airport I finally too the twitter plunge ( @swjpilot ) as you can see on the sidebar of my blog here.  I joined foursquare and I am “checking in” at places I go to.  Adding comments and tips for other Foursquare users and enjoying what they wrote also.  Twitter seems interesting I have been tweeting a good bit on this trip to Iowa.  Iowa along with a large part of the country seems to be enveloped in a blizzard.  This is my first blizzard and I think it is a lot of fun.  It is cold as heck here, as I tweeted earlier the bank sign said it was 2 degrees.  the snow has not stopped falling since I arrived on Sunday.  The drifts of Snow are quite high completely enveloping some street signs.  I am planning on going skiing at a place called Seven Oaks in Boone, IA later this week.  I don’t really know how big the slope could possibly be since things here seem to be pretty flat but I will see and let everyone know how that turns out.  Well I believe I am going to go for now…. Have a great evening everyone…

Well it has certainly been a long time since I have blogged….I doubt any one still checks this thing to see if it has even been updated…I guess I will get some comments if people still read this.
Ok so on to the post…. I recently converted to an Android based smartphone after many years as a Windows Mobile user and let me tell you this is an awesome phone!! I have the Droid by Motorola and the commercials are right Droid does! There has been very very little that I can do on my PC that I can’t do on this phone. The way gps is Integrated into so many applications is so incredibly convenient. For instance I can pull up movie listings at the closest theater to me without ever having to find a zip code or for that matter even knowing what city I am in…LOL… I also get automated weather alerts based on my gps location as well as a 5 day forcast on my home screen tied to my current location. There are so many things this phone does…in fact this very blog entry is being posted from my phone…cool huh… anyways I will quit rambling on for now… but in closing if you are looking at all for a new smart phone…I say go Android all the way.

Well… everyonce in a while I get around to posting on this blog thingy… but finding the time to keep up with it is quite hard.  Tonight though was a great experience i wanted to share.  We went to Bryson City, NC to ride The Polar Express this train ride is being offered by Great Smoky Mountains Railroad we took a magical trainride to The North Pole.  It all started early we ate dinner in Bryson City and then walked around the downtown a little until the cold over took us.  (it was about 20 degrees and the sun was still up)  We picked up our tickets a little after 5 PM and proceeded into Smoky Mountain Trains to look around.  Kaitlyn and Karlee both enjoyed looking at all the model trains set up in the elaborate tunnel/track systems.  it was now about 20 minutes until our our boarding time of 6:15 PM so we moved on to the restroom porting of the preboarding making sure all munchkins had gone etc etc….(the pipes for the restrooms on the train had frozen so none of the trains restrooms were operational)…  We then got in line to board our train car (Cherokee).  We waited here a while it was probably not as long as it seemed but it was now into the low teens as the sun had gone down and I could not feel my toes.  The munchkins were getting fussy and the train was late!  The train finally arrived and they gout us on board.  The “chefs” were ddresses juat like the book and the train was decorated just liek the book.  We found out seats and took our jackets off as the train was very roasty toasty warm!  Kaitlyn was quite excited and thrilled, Karlee was asleep.  As we began to move leaving the station Kaitlyn’s eyes grew very wide and off we were to the North Pole.  The chefs went up and down the aisles serving Hot Chocolate and Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Santas (Just like in the book). We sang Christmas Carols and they read the book over the intercom system.  It was a magical experience Kaitlyn and Karlee both totally enjoyed themselves. (Karlee woke up as soon as the train started moving).  We pulled into The North Pole after about 40 minutes on the train it was all light up, decorated in lights from top to bottom.  We saw where Santa and Mrs. Clause got married, where they make Hot Chocolate, the Candy Cane factory and the Workshop among all the other buildings of The North Pole.  Then after Santa got onto the train we started home.  On the way home we sang more Christmas Carols and Kaitlyn was selected to be the leader of the song Frosty the Snowman after she very enthusiastically told them that she wanted to sing Frosty.  They were standing on their seats dancing in the aisles and singing at the top of their lungs having a very fun time.  Finally as we were a few minutes from Bryson City depot Santa entered our train car.  Ne met with each and every boy and girl and gave them all a magic silver bell just like in the book.  This was truely a very special and magical experience.  The looks of happiness and and joy from both the girls truely made it a priceless adventure.  I would say that if you have small children this is worth while endeavor and i guarantee…. We will do it again.  We are staying the night at a Fairfield Inn in Cherokee, NC and will head home in the morning.  (via the Blue Ridge Parkway).  Hera are some pictures from the Trip to the North Pole.

Waiting

reflections.....

reflections.....

Hot Chocolate???

Clap and Cheer....

LOOK...!! THE NORTH POLE!!

Cheese!

Kaitlyn Leads the Song!

Chef Kaitlyn!

Chanting for Santa

Everyone who believes gets a silver bell from Santa's Sleigh!!

It was a priceless adventure…..

Well alot has happened in the last few months and I have just plain been too busy to Blog.  I will attempt to give some sort of a recap in this.  Well Things were just plain crazy for the last few months.  Most of this Kimberly has blogged about in her blog.  I will not go into detail as you can read about it on her blog.  We went to Deep Creek Campground in Bryson City, NC and had a lot of fun despite that fact that I had to go to the ER at 4:00 AM with the worst Migraine I had had since Chemotherapy.  Kaitlyn and i got to go Tubing together for the first time that was alot of fun!  She had a blast floating in her own little tube (with me holding onto her and her tube with a death grip you would not believe) down the river.  We did all of our tubing near a stretch of the river that ran alog the campground.  Short runs for the first time, we will try longer runs next time when I don’t have a magnificient migraine.  We also went to Cades Cove while staying here and I gt to drive out on a back road of my choosing Kimberly has an excellent account of the experience in her blog here.  After getting home from that trip I was off to visit Steinmart in Jacksonville, FL the very next morning.  That was just your usual run of the mill busines trip. Install and configure a bunch of big software solutions at their corporate HQ Boring Boring (at least when written about in a blog…)…. but I got to come home early because of hurricane Hannah!!  For once I got to be happy a hurricane was coming (that sounds bad to say).  After getting home we had a normal Weekend and I flew out Tuesday to Hagerstown, MD for the grand opening of a Giant Foods Store there.  I was on site to make sure nothing technical went wrong with the Personal Shopping System handsets (a new way to shop one of my main projects).  Stayed there over night and flew back form DC late that next evening.  Got home and it was time to get packed as we were turnign around and heading to Baxley, GA for the wedding of one of Kimberly’s Friends from college.  Once again she has alot more time on her hands than I so she got to blog about it first.  (she will get mad at me abut tha comment)  The girls got to stay with relatives for that weekend – Karlee with Grandmama and Kaitlyn with Aunt Mimi.  We stayed in Macon as there are no uh….. REAL Hotels (a real hotel to me is a Marriott)..near there.  The wedding was beautiful and very enjoyable.  THe food was great also.  The next Week was extreamly busy with work.  I had not really been in the office forl about 2 weeks so everything was backed up.  I spent all week digging my way out and then Thursday I was on site a a local customer doing data center installs for Bi-Lo.  That weekend was quite busy around the house and the following week was also extremely busy still cleaning up.  The next thing up was a trip to North Dakota.  I was sent up there for three days to install a mobile point of sale system for Barnes and Noble College Booksellers at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, ND.  Got there the first day at about 11 AM finished and tested my part of the install by 5 PM.  It took the network guys on campus the whole next day plus part of the third to get their network configured correctly for suport this system…It worked right off the bat at the hotel … They were a good group to work with though.  On the third day I got done working at about 10 AM and deciced since Canada was not far away i woulf go for a visit!! This is a very exciting story that I will post a nother blog about shortly.  It involves incidents with 3 branches of our domestic homeland security department and also the Canadian Border Partol.  That was a fun day.  After arriving back in Asheville late Friday night i got to spend the Saturday with the girls and to get macked for the next two trips.  Sunday I went to church and then later that after noon I had to get on the road for Atlanta, GA.  I ws being sent here for a week to attend a class on 802.11 Wireless Networks under the the CWNP Program.  This was a very exciting and fun class for me as I am a geek and wireless networks are very cool.  That friday after the class I Drove down to Peachtree City, GA where I met Kimberly and the girls at Kimberly’s Parents house.  No sooner did she arrive there from Greenville than we had to turn around and leave for the Atlanta Airport.  We were flyin gout to Sandusky, OH by way of Akron, OH for the weekend.  The whole point of the trip was… drumroll please….. To go to Cedar Point... The roller coaster capitol of the world!!  There will be a seperate post all about Cedar Point to come soon.  We spent Saturday at the park from Open till Close it was a blast.  We will be going back…and SOON!!! I cannot wait!.  Suday we got up and were bored at the hotel… someone (K) forgot her bathing suit so we could not take advantage of the indoor pool.  We decided to go driving.  We explored downtown Sandusky, OH and the shores of Lake Erie.  We then decided to explore Cleveland, OH since it was on our way back to the airport (CAK) we flew into.  We spent several hours driving around Cleveland and saw the sights.  Including the Agilysys home office….That’s who I work for…  We then drove on down to the Canton, OH area which is where the airport is and had dinner at the Macaroni Grill there.  It was good. and then we caught our flight home.  We were picked up at the airport and were whisked back to Peachtree City, GA by Kimberly’s father (thanks again for the drop-off and pickup at the airport as well as keeping the girls!!).  We stayed the night there and drove home on Monday.  I spent all week at work catching up from the two weeks before that I had been out of the office, and the nights studing for the test i was scheduled to take that Friday morning.  The class i had taken the week before was to prepare me to take the CWNA (Certified Wireless Network Administrator) exam.  I studied as much as I could that week and Thursday night stayed at the office till about 9 PM studying.  I had myself so twisted up in knots with nervousness and thoughs of failure i was not sure if i would even make it to the exam.  But I got there took the test and passed…WHOO HOOO!  That was a huge relief.    Friday afternoon kinda sucked though as we had it confirmed by the allergist that Karlee is now allergic to peanuts in addition to milk and eggs, poor thing she is never going to get to eat anything good.  We now have to carry EpiPens and be ready for anything at a moments notice with her that is a scary feeling but we will take good care of her.  Our allergist has been so wonderful and still gives us genuine hope that she is going to our grow all of these allergies.   So that pretty well gets us caught up.  This weekend has been pretty uneventful more of a catch-up and clean-up from the weeks before. except that we went up to Skytop Orchard and picked some apples and got a punpkin for halloween.  I got the lawn mowed today and we went to the church’s Trunk-or-Treat tonight the girls had alot of fun at that.  Now I am going to wrap up this post.  The other two posts I promised are coming.  I just have to get them typed up  so keep watching they will be up soon.  Thanks for reading this… if you are still awake.