Here's a standing shot!

Well, my wife lost it and drove to New Hampshire today to get us a new dog... like two of them wasn't enough.

It was a busy weekend around here. The girls had the second half of their Soccer tournament almost 2 hours south of Albany in the Catskill mountains. It is a beautiful location. To get there you have to drive through this large gorge in the mountains, and the school and soccer field are at the base of Hunter Mountain... you can see the ski slopes and ski lift there towering up just a few miles from the school. Last weekend it rained steady through the game. This week, it was a bright sunny day. The team was missing four of their players who were away at different events. I picked up 5 of them from the Women of Faith conference in Albany (they missed a few hours of it) and brought them.

The game was tough... the other team had a very talented player named "Na". We heard a lot about Na from here Dad and all the parents on the team. In the end, our team was able to contain Na and they scored a 3-2 victory. Emily Cobb, playing defense, popped a very long shot in with 2 minutes to go for the win, and she was named tournament MVP. She scored 2 goals in this game, and the 3rd was scored on a penalty shot by Janice Jackson. Steph and Jes both got a lot of playing time with 4 of their team missing. They were pretty excited all the way home. The coach reminded them after the game that they are 5 wins, 2 losses so far this year. Last year they only won 7 games the whole season, and they still have 11 games left!

Karen was busy at the Women of Faith conference this weekend. She had her sister and grandmother down from Vermont, and a couple of friends up from Virginia as well. There were about 15 thousand women there... a small number for Women of Faith conferences, but a pretty full arena for Albany. They broadcasted it on a local station, so we got to listen to it.. good stuff. The girls listened in the van on the way to the game until it got out of range. Then they switched to their "get pumped up for the game" tunes!

These soccer pictures aren't from this game, but were some I had on the digital camera...

Jessica



Stephanie

As usual this time of the year, our family is consuming a lot of time at soccer games. Stephanie and Jessica are both playing Varsity Soccer this year at LCS, so it's a bit easier to get to all the games. If you are interested in how the Lady Eagles are doing, check their stats out at Times Union High School Soccer Stats.

Well, this was a great weekend. We decided not to go Friday night because the weather forecast said rain. That was a good choice, as everyone that went on Friday got soaked. That's a bad way to start a camping trip. Karen was going to drive the Jeep and she planned to just stay one night... so I had to fit everything we were going to use into the van...



And after many hours of packing and cramming our stuff into the van... wondering if we got everything... Mikey is happy that we are now in route...



After a few hours, and a side trip to Burger King for some food, we made it. This is our campsite... before we set everything up. It looks so peaceful.



One of the highlights of the trip... the campfires. We had a fire going just about all the time, especially at night. This was in the morning while we made "doughboys" on the fire. You take a raw biscuit and shape it around the end of a stick, and then hold it over the fire until its done. Then you pull it off the stick and fill it with jelly. They are a great breakfast treat. It also drew a crowd at the campfire.... good thing we brought 8 cans of biscuit dough!

The campfire was also well needed this morning. It got down to 42 degrees that first night... burr...







These were our neighbors and spent a lot of time at our campfire.... the Marsans. Rick works for HP, but I can still be his friend :) They have four kids as well.



Here are a couple more shots of the campsite. The screen house came in handy because there were a lot of flies this trip. Absolutely no mosiquitos or black flies, just a bunch of house flies.





This is the best part of camp... worship service on Sunday morning while we can be in the midst of God's creation. This is the view that we had during church.



This is look from the bank of the lake looking up at the folks coming in for worship service. Karen and the kids are sitting on the right side a couple of rows up... she wasn't happy that I took a picture while she had her baseball cap on backwards fooling around with Travis. :(





Back to the campfire for some more doughboys and hot choclate. Ashley loves the campfire.



I couldn't resist a picture of our coffee pot. Karen brought our electic coffee pot from home... got to have that real Dunkin Doughnuts coffee! It was kind of nice.



Putt-putt anyone?



Stephi in action!



We had a couple of group meals. This was one of them. The food is always great when you go "pot luck".



Jessica's finest!



Aren't they cute!



At each meal, our fearless leader (Ashley's Second Grade Teacher this year) would select the order of tables going up to eat by different things about the people at the table. This time it was "people who were here camping for their first time". At the last minute, Jessica moved to sit with her friends, and she got to go first because her friend Rachel here had never been camping before.





Now to the playground... there was something for everyone! (that's Travis facing the wrong way)





Steph and her friend were headed for the playground too.





Karen got talked into entering the doubles Tennis tournament. She had only played tennis twice since last year. She made it to the finals and were beat by two brothers, a high school senior and college student... and very good. They beat some worthy opponents to get there. I held her rackets for her. :)



Ashley and Travis had something to show me.





We woke up this morning to the sound of rain on the tent. Oh no! But, God is good... it stopped about 6:30 and didn't rain again. This was our last campfire.... smores anyone?



After a few hours of packing the car, the campsite looks pretty much the way it did when we arrived.



Car's all packed... time for a little tennis again. This time the non-professionals of the family go at it. Stephanie and I went at it with Travis and his friend David. We won 6-4... that was too close for comfort!



After a little pizza and seafood on the lake, we were off for home. The end of the summer traffic heading back from the north is always a fun trip... steady traffic, but no delays at all... that was great.



And all the tired souls take a nap... except for me (Karen and Ashley came home the night before). Can you tell which one of the sleepers if faking it?







And of course, Dad isn't sleeping.



This is always a highlight of our summer. The one thing that I remember especially about this year was the stars. You can always see ten times as many stars when you are out in the wild like this. Well, the first night we were there, the sky was crystal clear and the stars were incredible. You could see the Milky Way very clearly, along with all the contellations... and of course Mars. I had never remembered seeing the Milky Way like that. We are already looking forward to next year.

Well, we are going to be camping over Labor Day at Word of Life Camp on Schroon Lake. A large part of our Church does this trip each year. The camp is closed except for two churches from the Albany area, so it is safe for the kids to run around with their friends and have a great time. They have a small fishing and canoeing lake, pool, game room, etc. The kid's favorite part is the campfires. We were supposed to go up tonight, but with soccer practice ending at 6, and a 1.5-2 hour drive there.... it will be first thing in the morning instead. I don't want to setup the tent in the dark... uggh!

The big problem is that we haven't camped all year, so our camping stuff and habits are scattered all over the Collins homestead. It will take probably 4 hours to pack, and then there's all the food that needs to be prepared. Got to get my work finished so I can get to it... chop, chop!

I haven't posted in forever... because it wasn't working. Well... it just started working by itself! Do I sound like I don't know what I'm doing... well, I guess you have a point. I'm just taking up space here to see if I can post anything.

I posted the one we saw at the auction... ugh! This one is a '97 with 70K miles, and it is pristine condition. The young lady that is selling it clearly has a spot in her heart for her Jeep... it is well taken care of and it shows. Its for my wife, so that is good. We wanted to get it today so we could drive it around this weekend (I say we... like I'm going to get to drive it...) . The folks selling it didn't feel comfortable with us driving it on their registration until Monday, so we have to wait until then. Karen and I cruised around with it last night with the top off... sweet! We'll have a lot of fun with it. She wanted a motorcycle, so this will hold her for a few years. Who knows, maybe my Jeep Cherokee will get sold and we'll have two "real" Jeeps.

Showing my daughter how to post stuff!

I can't believe it. My laptop hard drive crashed again... second time this year. I am going to have a tough next week as I try to recover this. Ahhhh!!!!

Here's a closeup of a Social Security document that came in the mail today...

My dog, being mostly Greyhound, spends all day sleeping near one of the humans in the house. In case you weren't aware, Greyhounds like to sleep most of the time. But, oh can he RUN!

Well, it's still the same day and I'm still here.

I'll post a link to my other website... pdaPhoneHome

How about a list of things..

1. eggs


2. bagon


3. juice

How'd that work out?

Here I sit, waiting on hold. How much time do we spend in life waiting on hold on the phone, waiting in traffic, waiting for appointments? Once when I was waiting ... in traffic I think... I calculated the total amount of time I spent waiting in the car each day, week, month, year, career. I ended up moving!

I guess I shouldn't be admin all the time. I'm now mikey.

My wife loves to take pictures of everything.. the kids, dog, etc. Well our newest dog is a Greyhound/Lab mix and is the hardest thing to get still so you can get a picture. I snapped a picture here of her trying to take a picture of him. He kept leaning forward with this bone whenever she'd pick the camera up.

Playing with the new Nikon camera and took a picture of my messy office shelves. Does anything look out of place... HTML, Java, PHP, Unix, ... Barbie?

I've got a friend that can wholesale cars at the auction and we are thinking about a soft top Wrangler. This one was a little rough and had a hard top. Oh well.

Isn't this exciting... I'm talking to myself!!! The picture seemed to work.

Now I'm getting adventurous and will post a picture. Let's see if it works?



Let's see how well it worked?

This is the first post... wanted to check it out and see how it works.

This is the first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging !