My life in Fort Collins

Merry Christmas - 2009

2009-12-23T13:24:00.004-07:00

We shot some pictures at the Organ Recital hall at Colorado State University. I also included a shot of the house and kids sledding. I don't think it's supposed to snow on Christmas day, but we've had about 6" in the last 18 hours and that's on top of about a 5-8 inch base. I'll add more pictures as time permits.

Have a great Christmas and best wishes for 2010!

Black Hills, Crazy Horse Pictures

2009-12-23T13:16:00.003-07:00

Here's some more pictures from the Black Hills Area the Crazy Horse memorial. If you ever are in the area be sure to visit the Crazy Horse memorial. It's about 15 minutes from Mt. Rushmore and is well worth the visit and price of admission. It's a very interesting story about the guy who started the monument to Crazy Horse. The pictures of Bison are from Custer State Park.

Mt. Rushmore Pictures

2009-12-23T12:56:00.007-07:00

We've made a few trips to Mt. Rushmore over the past 6-7 months. The Black Hills of South Dakota is an awesome area. If you get the chance go. Custer State Park is a huge state park with lots of camping, fishing, hiking, and scenery. This post contains some pictures of the approach to Mt. Rushmore. I tried to arrange the pictures in the sequence. Don't know if how well I succeeded.

Finally!!!! Added some more Pictures

2009-12-04T14:07:00.007-07:00

OK, well it's only been 9 months since my last post. It's been a hell of a 9 months!!! And no... there's no more additions to the family. We've made a few trips to Mt. Rushmore over this time. ...oh, and there's this employment thing that I'm not quite getting... Yes, I'm now part of the 10.2% unemployed. Some of this will be discussed elsewhere, like maybe on my other blog that I'm using as a journal.

For now, here's some pictures of some of the kids. There's more of Zita than anyone else because she's so darn cute... And she does not freeze up in front of the camera. I think the pictures below are all from Mt. Rushmore or Rocky Mountain National Park.

More Hiking Pictures - Deer

2009-02-09T19:34:00.008-07:00

Francis, Rebecca and I went on a hike this past weekend. The weather was great and we saw a decent sized herd of deer. By the time we got to the top of the ridge that was our destination the clouds had started to roll off the mountains so our views were not what they could have been, but we had a great hike. This trailhead is about a 10minute drive from home. We usually try and get in at least 1 outdoor activity every weekend.

Post Christmas greetings

2009-01-25T16:31:00.002-07:00

I got absolutely zero Christmas cards out this year and these posts are about the best I'm gonna do. We had sort of a "themed Christmas" this year. To cure my annual "I miss San Diego" blues, Cathy and the kids got me a bunch of stuff to compensate for the cold weather....and warm me up inside....
A Jimmy Buffet concert DVD, Margaritaville Margarita mix, a "Beaches of Mexico" calendar, Mariachi CD, and an outdoor firebox... The net result was a good Margarita buzz for several days and a very relaxing few days.....

Family Picture

2009-01-25T16:07:00.003-07:00

It's almost a year old, but this is probably the best picture of us all that I could find right now.

Also, here's a picture of Rebecca... I don't think she's featured in the other pictures.

Francis and Zita /Sam's car

2009-01-25T15:55:00.004-07:00

I took F&Z up on a long hike in the foothills. It was real windy at the top of the ridge. I took this picture of them at this point because if you look carefully (and probably expand the image) there's about 8-10 deer on the hill about 40 yards behind them. You should be able to click on this image to get one of more detail. Not bad weather for January in Colorado.

Sam and her car.

Some Pictures of Zita

2009-01-25T15:36:00.005-07:00

Zita is Very into ballet, she loves watching "The Nutcracker" and enjoys dressing up in this outfit. Hard to imagine that over the summer she'll be digging under the rocks for bugs and is totally fearless when it comes spiders.

OK... I'm finally back

2009-01-25T15:04:00.002-07:00

After 2 years of no posting, I'm going to start trying to update this with some regularity.... I won't even try to cover everything over the past 2 years, but here's a brief synopsis.

Scott - Still working at United Airlines, trying to keep in shape, doing lots of hiking and some running. Trying to teach myself guitar on a Stratocaster I picked up a few years ago.

Cathy - Health is getting better, We're never sure of the root cause...age, hormones, or allergies. Zita and Francis keep her real busy.

Sam - Starting her second semester at CSU. Is a music performance major. So far all A's.!!! She's very proud of her car, an Eclipse.

Martin - 10th grade at the local highschool. He's on the crosscountry team, and is training for the track season this spring. He plays acoustic guitar, likes bluegrass, blues, and some rock.

Rebecca - Chief dog care person around the house. Mom's right had "person"... likes to drink coffee in the AM's and just relax. She's the champion dog walker of the house

Francis - Still into art, Starwars, light sabers, etc...likes to take his bike to the bike motocross track and just tool around.

Zita - She's cute and a troublemaker. Boundless energy, we refer to her as a mosquito. She somehow has a special talent for pestering Francis.

Dogs - Abby - Survived Distemper, but now has seizures every now and then. Kodi - a white fluffball who adores Sam. Max - our "greyhound/lab mix" from the shelter... I think he's a Dobie/lab/hounddog mix..

We still enjoy Fort Collins, but around January-February we tend to miss the warm weather of California.

Eating Snow & Clearing Snow

2006-12-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas!!! Here's a few more pictures of all the snow we got. For Francis and Zita, the best part of snow is that you get to eat it. Somehow water or ice from the freezer is not the same as eating snow..It's magical how this stuff that comes from the sky is a tasty treat.

On Christmas eve, the city of Ft. Collins road crew came by our cul-de-sac and cleared out the snow so we could get out of our driveways. This was almost as exciting for the kids as Christmas. The heavy equipment spent about 40 minutes clearing out the snow. They left some huge piles that will no doubt turn into sledding hills.

Blizzard

2006-12-21T19:11:00.000-07:00

The snow started falling Wednesday AM, by 10:30 is was a blizzard, by the next morning Fort Collins had received 23 inches of snow!! Contrary to popular belief this is pretty unusual in this part of Colorado. It's especially rare to receive that much snow in 1 day. Both I-25 and I-70 were shutdown for a day. Denver Int'l airport was shutdown for 2 days.

I did a TON of snow shovelling. I had to start Wednesday afternoon, because if you get behind on something like this your really behind. Here's some pictures both during and after the blizzard. I'm done shovelling now, and am ready for a hot bath and beer!.

Dawson Family update 2006

2006-12-03T18:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the start of all the updates I'm going to do this year for Christmas. Rather than send out a generic Christmas card... I'm making everyone look here. Sort of cheesy on my part, but the picture images are better off the web than my printer can produce on plain copy paper. ...And lets face it, if I send a picture of my family to everyone it will be looked at for a few minutes (or seconds) then either pitched in the trash, or thrown in a box somewhere. Here you can look whenever you want.

So any posts from this point on will be a 2006 year end review or directly related to Christmas...
Maybe I'll start with a post for each kid!

Samantha

2006-12-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

Samantha probably had the most event filled year of any of us. It started out by finding out that the puppy she got for Christmas had distemper, and eventually had to be put down. (For a full description on our experience with Canine Distemper....click here.)

Then she got repeated bouts of Strep Throat. This was after our friends from Indy came out for 3 weeks. (This adventure can be read about here).
In early May she got another puppy...Kodi, the white and black dog that is some of the photos on this blog. 3 weeks later she had her tonsils out and spent about 2 weeks recovering. Immediately after her recovery from having her tonsils out, she spent a week living in the dorms at Colorado State University (CSU) attending a Pipe Organ Encounter. She still plays the piano some, but is really into pipe organ.

By the time August rolled around she was taking a full load of classes at the local Community College and CSU. She's taking 17 units including organ performance, economics, English Comp, Us History, etc..As it turns out CSU has one of the finer pipe organs in the world. As it turns out, Sam's organ teacher plays at our church.

Right after she started the semester we found out she has a type of mono. She's had to take it somewhat easy in the exercise dept for the past few months.

Rebecca

2006-12-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

Rebecca is doing well. Her spare time is spent either hanging around a few of the other girls her age in the neighborhood, or with her dog. She plays football with the boys and is bigger and stronger than most of them. I think she feels her lot in life is to keep an eye on Zita and Francis....She also keeps Martin in line when he says something that isn't quite correct.

She always is ready to go hiking, biking or just throwing the baseball around. She sings in the choir at church as well.

Cathy

2006-12-03T13:51:00.000-07:00

Cathy is still doing the work of 2 people. She's the primary school teacher (we're still homeschooling), she does the cooking, and runs the house. Because of some health issues, most meals are cooked from scratch using organic ingredients. YIKES!!!

Although Dad get's the role of the "fun parent" for taking the kids hiking, etc... Cathy is still champion for providing TLC. I think she has her own blog around somewhere, but I don't know the URL.

Martin

2006-12-03T12:52:00.000-07:00

Martin is now 14 is doing well these days. Here's a picture of hime when we were above the treeline at Rocky Mountain Natl Park. He still has learning issues associated with autism, but his overall health is much better. His intellectual development is going well also.

One of the more interesting things with this is that he has a very hard time with somewhat ambiguous things. He likes things to be defined in clearcut ways. For example:
Movie Ratings seem to cause a lot of confusion. The difference between a PG movie and a PG-13 movie might not seem like much to you and me, but Martin really wants to know WHY. In other words, what EXACTLY makes a PG-13 movie different than a PG movie.

Martin has really gotten into jogging this year. He usually runs about 3-4 miles every other day. He wants to start training for a half-marathon, then a marathon, but I want to keep him at the 5k - 10k distance for now. He has the rest of his life to be distance runner, but for now he should concentrate on speed & strength.
Martin also likes hiking.
Martin is also a loyal Colts fan, but if Peyton Manning has another crummy playoff game.... That may change.

Scott

2006-12-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

I started posting from the youngest to the oldest, but seeing how the blog would present the results to a viewer in reverse order, I didn't want to appear that whatever I did was more important than anyone else.... Even though this is my blog... I don't want to get to narcistic about the whole thing.

My big "news" of 2006 is that I really started working out and training again. I have been doing a lot of jogging year round and biking between April through August. I did 3 events this year: A 37 mile mountain bike ride, A 5k run with Martin, and a 50mile road ride. Next year I want to ride a century ride to Estes Park and back. The 50 mile ride I did this year had about 2500 feet of climbing. The url for the event is:
HorsetoothDoubleDip Bike Challenge

The 50 miles involved a lot of hills, but it was an awesome course through the foothills. It took me about 3.5 hours to finish. That was a pretty good time for me.

My usual weekend routine is to go on a bike ride while the rest of the family goes to Church. The other weekend day is spent taking the kids hiking, on bike rides, etc...
We bought a tandem bike this past may and it's a lot of fun. They are so fast it's insane.

I've been working a lot with Martin this year. He ran a 5k with me this past spring and got to the point where he was jogging 3-4 miles every other day. He's taking some time off right now because he has developed
Osgood-Schlatters disease. It's not too big a deal and should not cause any long term problems, but theres no sense pushing too hard at this age.

Other news is that I'm getting balder, and what's left is getting more gray. Well at least haircuts are cheap.
We've spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with dogs this year, then we had to deal with Sam's health problems (She had her tonsils out after several bouts with strep throat, and then got some sort of mononeuclosis). This fall I have been travelling a lot to Chicago to work at the airport. We didn't do any real travelling this year. After 5 moves in a 1 year period, I did not feel like going anywhere. When I took 2 weeks of in Summer, I just didn't go anywhere.

As an FYI, I still have not gone skiing since I've been out here. I suppose I should, but the fact of the matter is that when it's cold I just as soon stay indoors. I do like to go out a night and walk around when it's very cold, usually it's very clear during these conditions and you can see tons of stars.

Work is ...well work. I'm still employed but the Airline industry is still very chaotic. Rumors of mergers, layoffs, etc.. abound. It really doesn't bother me, since I figure if the worst happens, I'll find another job.

Misc Pics Part I - December 2006

2006-12-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

Here's some pictures from around the house and Fort Collins. Some of the pictures are when my Dad and his friend Marilyn came to visit, there's pix of Elk in Rocky Mtn National Park, and just around the house. The picture with the snow on rooftops and hills in the background was taken from my bedroom window.

Francis - December 2006

2006-12-02T15:27:00.000-07:00

To say Francis is into Star Wars stuff would be a gross understatement. It seems that his major source of activity is light sabre fighting. Usually I am the opponent (uh I mean Darth Vader), and Francis is Obi Wan Kenobe(sp?). He's not so much a movie fanatic as he likes to sword fight.

He also draws alot. We go through 500 sheets of printer paper every month. Most of his pictures are very entertaining, sharks, light saber fights, etc... Francis is in general a happy guy. He will read if he is inclined, but if he's not in the right mood it's just one question after another.... We get a lot of questions like: Why are the days shorter in Winter? , Why do we have bones ? When we die do we turn into skeletons?
etc....

Here's a picture of Francis with our oldest (11 yr) dog Misty.

Zita - December 2006

2006-12-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

Zita is now 3. She's is usually a lot of fun to have around. She has a great sense of humor. She likes "girl" toys, likes to wear "pretty dresses" and "look beautiful". Getting her to eat is still somewhat of a challenge. She's not really a picky eater, but it's hard to get her to hold still long enough to get a whole meal in. Usually it's my job to watch TV and drop food in her mouth.

Zita has a special talent for tormenting the dogs. It would be easy to say she's just being overly friendly, but that would be overlooking a lot. ... Anyhow, here's some pictures of Zita

A few pictures in the Fort Collins area

2006-05-03T21:09:00.000-06:00

These pictures were taken in the Fort Collins area. The family picture was taken on a hike near our house. It's a place called Coyote Ridge, an openspace of about 3000 acres about 4 miles due West of our house. The landscape picture was taken at a different area when I took the kids out to throw rocks in a pond. Both these pictures were taken within a 5 mile radius of our house, so we don't have to spend a bunch of money on gas to go out and do neat stuff.

Picture of Francis

2006-05-03T20:52:00.000-06:00

Francis wanted me to add his picture to this blog.
Now he wants his picture printed as well.

Newest dog

2006-05-02T21:50:00.000-06:00

Here is the new puppy we got at the end of April. This is Sam's dog. It's name is Kodi and it's and Australian Shepherd. So far so good. He gets along with Abby and they spend a lot of time playing. He is a great puppy.

No good deed goes Unpunished!!!

2006-03-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

Since we’ve moved from Indianapolis to Fort Collins, everyone’s health seems to have improved improved. Colds have not been as big a deal, the kids are more active, etc…We’ve also had the boys tested for heavy metals again, and the levels of arsenic, nickel, etc…are pretty close to normal. This is a considerable improvement from when we lived in Indy. The allergy sufferers in the family are doing much better also. We get 16 inches of rain here, vs. 39 in Indy. Why this matters is that there is much less vegetation, mold (indoor and outdoor), and pollens out here.

Anyhow, Cathy has been spreading the gospel of healthy environments to some of the folks back there with kids on the autism spectrum. To make a long story short, for 3 weeks we’ve had 7 house guests with us. 6 kids and a mom. The parents came out to see if this place would have any positive impact on their kids. …Kind of an experiment. Well, as if having 11 kids and 3 parents in a single family home were not tough enough; we did some exchanging of germs… For most of the 3 weeks we had at least 1-2 kids (often more) sick. Passing germs back and forth became the order of the day.

At the end of the 3 weeks, 4 of my 5 kids and Cathy were taking antibiotics for Strep throat. One of the visiting kids had strep, and one had bronchitis. Despite all this, their kids looked better out here (probably due to lack of allergens) and didn’t have as large circles under their eyes. The family is thinking of moving out here. I think everyone was fairly worn out at the end of the 3 weeks.

I don’t mean to knock Indy, but if you go http://www.bestplaces.net/ and compare Fort Collins, CO with Indianapolis, IN, then click on the health link….you will see the difference between the quality of air and water out here.

Late March update

2006-03-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

OK. It’s now the end of March and it looks like Abby is fully recovered from distemper. She is a bundle of energy. Her personality and looks remind me of those animal characters on the old “Wonderful World of Disney” show…you know the show that was on Sunday nights on NBC about 40 years ago… She is a sweet dog, but has a talent for getting in trouble. Pulling things off the counter, getting into the garbage, tugging on pant legs, are all tricks she knows well. I think she has been good for our 11 year old dog. She plays with Misty nonstop in the backyard. Here’s a picture of Abby.

January 2006 = Canine Distemper

2006-02-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

If by chance you landed here looking for info on Canine Distemper, I'll include some useful links at the bottom of the post. First my story about the disease from hell.

The picture is of Francis, Zita and Morgan(the puppy).

We got 2 "rescue puppies" as a Christmas present for our daughters. Almost as soon as we got one home, we noticed blood in the stool of one of the dogs. We went to the vet and she was diagnosed with Kennel Cough and tapeworms. She was also dehydrated so was given some sub-cutaneous fluid. We got some antibiotics and some worming pills.

She appeared to recover somewhat, and we took both puppies to a vet for the "Free" vet check that comes with a rescue dog. The vet changed antibiotics and said the dogs were doing pretty good and not to worry. We have since changed Vets....but that's another long story.

One of the dogs was the dominant female of the litter, the other was the runt of the litter. They were both really fun puppies, the smaller one was a real lap dog. Very Sweet. They both seemed to know we rescued them from the "Gas Chamber".
They both had a cough and very loose stools. (YUK!!!). Anyhow we thought we were nursing them back to health. On the 12th of January, the smaller one had some sort of seizure. Samantha began to search the internet and found out about Canine Distemper. The symptoms matched exactly, even with the "Chewing Gum Seizures". These are where the dog appears to be chewing gum. She also found that the disease has about a 50% mortality rate in dogs, and up to 80% in puppies....

We brought the puppy to a new vet and found out that she had "Raging Pneumonia". We changed antibiotics again. Since distemper is viral, the antibiotics are mainly to treat pneumonia and other secondary infections. The new antibiotics were $10 a pill generic price. We also started her on phenobarbital to control the seizures. This seemed to work, for a while. After about a week, the seizures came back with a vengence. Samantha and I were up all night with the puppy. I had a real bad feeling the dog's days were about up. Thankfully, I went to work that day. The dog got worse and after many conversations, discussions with the vet, we had poor Morgan put to sleep. Samantha held the dog the whole time, and it was an incredibly sad day. Morgan was a real sweet dog.

Well, the other dog (Abby), was still sick but had not had any seizures. So we kept up with the antibiotics, special diet, etc.... About a week after Morgan died, Abby had a seizure. Rebecca woke us up to tell us. We had been somewhat concerned because Abby had been acting real sluggish the night before. DAMN!!!! Going through the distemper death march again was not anything we wanted to think about. It was very draining. Physically draining because we had to give the dog her medicine every 6 hours ....around the clock. It was pretty tough seeing the kids that upset for a long period of time. ...And yes, I felt pretty bad about the dog too....

Anyhow, we got Abby on phenobarbital the next day. The initial prognosis did not appear to be good, but we decided to fight it out. A wierd thing with the phenobaribital loading dose was the dog got real hyper and didn't sleep much for the first few days. Those were long nights. Abby seemed to get better, she had only one more seizure. She is now off antibiotics. We still have to give her her anti-seizure medicine for how long no one knows. She seems to be back to a normal, hyper puppy. When comparing her to how lethargic she was a month ago, we can really tell how sick she was.

When Abby was really sick, we fed her almost exclusively Hill's science diet a/d. This really supports the dog's immune system.

So anyhow, that's my January 2006.

If you have a puppy with distemper, good luck with the fight.

Here's a few good links on distemper:

http://www.vetinfo.com/ddistemper.html

http://www.animalhealthchannel.com/distemper/

Starting Point

2006-02-18T08:41:00.000-07:00

My main reason for doing this is to communicate with family and friends, keep them posted on what we're up to, and of course since this is the internet....I'll get to rant and rave to no one in particular. Sort of like a conservative radio talk show host....Only with a brain!!!

I will try to update this frequently, depending on how busy I am. Probably at first I'll be posting a lot, then it will wane. I guess this is the novelty factor. I may discuss personal stuff (money, autism, politics, religion, aging, parenthood, sports, etc....) but won't be discussing anything that is undertaken whilst naked!

From time to time I will include links to things I find interesting, and sometimes include photo's.

OK, without blathering on...I'll get to posting things.