Brian Headlee

So yesterday I finally broke down and bought an iPhone. I have wanted one for quite a while but just could not justify it. Then on Christmas Day Mary’s phone took a header off the counter onto our tile floor and suddenly I was in the market for a new phone. After a bit of cell phone wrangling I got Mary’s number moved to my old phone allowing me to get into an iPhone .

So here I am traveling acrost the country blogging in my car. Today I am picking up Kelly in North Platte Nebraska after her Christmas back in Iowa. Thanks to the iPhone I can share this truly boring moment with all of you.

I have a sneaky feeling the spooks will be out in force in just a few days. Tonight. being the weekend before Halloween, we decided enough was enough and it was time to carve our pumpkins. This year, we grew some pumpkins in our garden. We harvested two pumpkins and Emily and I carved our home grown gourds. Mary and Kelly went to Wally World to pickup two more and we almost missed the boat. When Mary went shopping this morning they had tons of pumpkins. This afternoon when they returned to buy them, they were almost all gone. This is not the first year we almost lost out on pumpkin carving because we waited to long. Next year we are going to grow MORE pumpkins ourselves.

Emily and I worked on our pumpkin drawings this afternoon while Mary and Kelly were out fighting for the coveted orange gourd. Emily was focusing on a “Vampire Cat”. We went through several revisions and finally landed on a pumpkin plan. When we finally looked at it, we were shocked to see how much it resembled Winston our cat. In that spirit, I too made my pumpkin look like a pet. I cut a picture of Scout out of my garden pumpkin. Mary, using her shiny new “Big Shot” was able to create star cut outs that she used to trace on her moon and the stars pumpkin. And Kelly made Domo. I don’t know what a Domo is but she sure likes him. She has Domo notebooks and other various school supplies and you can’t go to Target and not see Domo everywhere. But what is he? No idea here.

So with pumpkin brains firmly smeared on my keyboard, I bring to you our pumpkins for the Halloween Season of 2008. May many sweets find their way to you in the days to come.

Have you noticed my Twitter feed on the left margin of my blog? If so then you know a little bit about what we have been up to lately. I know some of you have been asking for more information about Land Sharks.

Land Sharks, as I understand it, is a program put together to promote children’s interest in running. Different schools organize the program and the parents sponsor their kids. Emily met in the morning before school and practiced three times a week for about six weeks. They primarily played running games and just had a good time. Land Sharks are for kids in kindergarden through 5th grade and after about three weeks of pratice they started their fall running series.

In the fall Land Sharks focuses on long distance running. As I understand it in the Spring they will run sprint type races. The running series this year was three races long and was held on Monday nights. The various schools around the area would gather together and they would hold three runs. The kids got to choose between 1/2 mile, 1 mile or 1.5 mile races.

Emily participated in all three races and had a blast. She ran a mile for the first two and a mile and a half fir the last one. All in all I was pretty impressed with the program. It really got the kids excited and it was nice to see so many kids interested on running. If I had to guess maybe 200 kids participated in total. Emily’s school alone had over 40 kids running.

It was really fun watching all the kids. Everyone was so positive and nice even if the were from different schools. I feel that was because the Land Shark program itself was focused in such a positive way.

I know Emily enjoyed the program as well did Mary. She volenteered her time in the morning to help with the pratices. I know I enjoyed running with Emily on the weekends for a little extra pratice too. Even Kelly got into it and helped take photos of the Odyssey kids as the ran.

Go Land Sharks!

How are you traveling on your Journey? Have you ever put any thought into how you get from place to place every day? How does that effect your life and ultimately your experience? Today I have two short stories that will help express this thought.

Some of you know I own a motorcycle. I love it. It is a Suzuki Boulevard C50 street bike. I have had it now for about three years. I have always been interested in motorcycles, but a few years back I finally was able to justify it when gas prices broke 3.00 a gallon. While I could easily prattle on about how much money I have saved over the past three years riding my motorcycle to work every day, I will not. Everyone needs to find their own way in todays world of ever increasing gas prices. No, today I would like to tell you about something I have experienced on my motorcycle. It shocks me every time and I find it interesting. Trees. When I am riding my motorcycle and I hit a section of town that has old growth trees edging the streets the temperature drops dramatically. Not just a little mind you, I honestly mean dramatically. The same holds true when you finally leave town. As you drive out of town on the main road and you pass the last housing district it happens. Just like in the trees, there is an obvious drop in temperature. I contribute it to the sudden shift from cement streets to open grass lands. I find both of these two experiences to be very interesting and telling all the same.

The other thought I had was today when Mary and I went for a hike. We started at the Middle Columbine trailhead and hiked three miles along a canyon to Helen Hunt falls here in Colorado Springs. The hike was much harder than I remembered for it had been years since I last hiked it. Mary and I decided that rather than take the trail back we would walk back down the paved road to where we had parked our car. This paved road is a beautiful drive right through the middle of a canyon with a stream that follows the road all the way from the start of the canyon. As we walked the road back to our car we were serenaded by the roaring sound of the stream that runs through the canyon. It dawned on me that all the cars that were driving past us were missing something. Something very wonderful. After about a mile we came to a very narrow section of the stream that was roaring very loudly. We stopped and enjoyed the sound and view that was nestled over the edge of the road such that no car could ever see it.

So there is my deep thought for the day. How are you traveling on your journey through life? Maybe you should shake things up everyone once in a while just to see the ordinary every day things differently. Walk to the grocery store. Bike to the library. Roll the windows down, turn off the stereo and listen to the sounds of the road. I don’t know what will work for you but think about it and try something different soon.

For years I have avoided reality TV. I hate the whole idea of it. Why would someone watch a bunch of people be jerks to each other on television. Maybe if you know they are ‘acting’ it would be alright, but with reality TV in the end they are really just jerks. No fun. So, a few months ago, Mary told me she wanted to watch a show called “So You Think You Can Dance”. I was not exactly thrilled. Mary’s stamping friends really like the show and always talked about it at her stamp club. So, naturally, she wanted to see what it was all about.

What is the point of this show? How does it work? Well, it’s all about a dance competition from the initial auditions to finale. The show starts out going all across the country for auditions. You just show up and you get your chance to show a panel of judges what you can do. If they think you might have what it takes to be “America’s Favorite Dancer” you stick around and try your hand at group choreography later that day. In the end, the judges decide who they want to allow into the next round. This has UG! written all over it. You can only imagine how many people show up because they just want to look dumb on national television. The judges are brutal. It’s exactly what I imagined reality TV was.

After the auditions, the selected few get to go to a one week crash dance course where they are quickly trained in styles of dance many of them have never even tried before. Let’s say you are an awesome freestyle break dancer. If you make it to this point in the show you get to find out how well you can ballroom dance. You can imagine there are some honestly heart breaking moments during this section of the show. And you really get to know the people that have made it this far. By now, the people are all actual dancers that are looking to jump start their carriers. In the end, the choreographers decide who showed the most promise and the group is cut down to the people that will actually make it to the dance competition.

This is the part of the show that gets good. Next is the actual dance competition. Every week the guys randomly pull a girls name from a hat. That will be their partner for the day. The girl then draws a dance style out of a hat. That will be what they dance. They then get five hours to work with a choreographer to learn the moves before they are put in front of an audience and live national TV. When the dance is over, a panel of judges talks about how they did. Once all the dancers are finished, the judges pick the ‘bottom group’ of dancers for the night of which two will be removed from the show next week. The trick is that if you want to ’save’ a dancer you can call in and vote for them. The two dancers with the lowest votes from the group selected by the judges are the ones eliminated.

As the show progresses and the number of dancers dwindle the judges still give their comments but they no longer choose who will be in the bottom. America votes for all the dancers and the lowest ones go home until the final week when only one is left. That dancer claims the title “Americas Favorite Dancer” and takes home a laundry list of prizes. The most important of course is the publicity which will kick start their career.

I have to tell you, the first three episodes or so I could take or leave. The auditions are brutal and there are many really stupid people that just want to be on TV for a few seconds. Even if it means being made fun of in front of all of America. It’s worth the wait though. Once the actual competition starts the show is absolutely MUST SEE TV. What these dancers can do, how they can move. There were some nights I literally would shout out loud when a dance would end or someone did a particularly amazing move. As you watch the dancers you begin to learn about them and why they are there. Soon you have favorites and the few you think will make it to the end.

I won’t spoil anything here, but there was a point a few weeks ago during season four when due to some amazing dancing by the underdogs one week, the voting landed such that two of the best dancers where on the chopping block. One HAD to go home. I could not believe what had happened. Everyone assumed they would get enough votes so no one voted for them. Ouch! From that night forward, Mary and I watched the show live so we could cast our votes. No way were we not going to let others make stupid decisions for us again! There you have it. My dirty little secret. Not only did I watch a reality TV show, but I loved it so much that I even participated. I am so ashamed.

What can I say. I am a HUGE fan. I just loved this show. It was like the good days when the show “24″ didn’t suck. You would see an episode and you were like no way, that didn’t just happen. Then you were stuck waiting until next week to know how everything turned out. It is like an amazing roller coster ride of a show. I can’t recommend it enough. This past season, season 4, is my frame of reference. I bet the previous ones were good too, but I know for sure season 4 was AWESOME! Keep this show in the back of your mind and next summer when it comes back check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

Yesterday I was reading Emily one of my very favorite bedtime stories. It is called Knuffle Bunny Too ‘A Case of Mistaken Identity’. It happens to be a sequel to Knuffle Bunny ‘A Cautionary Tale‘. These books have great stories about a little girl named Trixie and her stuffed toy Knuffle Bunny. Thank you Mo Williams for these great books. Not only are these stories great, but the artistic quality is wonderful too. All of the artwork in these books are black and white photos with the cartoon characters drawn into the real pictures. They are a joy to examine.

After the story was done, I had a few minutes to kill be before Mary got home from work so I was playing around with my sketch book. As you may know, I have have been working on drawing cartoons as of late. It just so happens I was working on the section of Cartooning for the Beginner by Christopher Hart that very same day. The section was about making sure your body type matches your character. Anyway, two of the characters I was practicing from the book looked like they could be found in a gym. So I thought it might be cool to try and create a picture like that found in the Knuffle Bunny books.

I took out my drawing pad for the computer and started trying to create the first character that I had drawn on paper earlier. Let’s call him ‘Buff Dude’. I then did a quick search of the web to find a photo of an empty gym. Once I had that in hand it did not take long to turn the photo in to a black and white picture. Next I had to merge the cartoon with the photo. That wasn’t too tricky either so I decided to add the next gym rat. I wanted ‘Skinny Dude’ to be looking at the eliptical and thinking ‘oh man I don’t want to do that’. However, I had some issues making him the correct size for the placement I wanted. Click on the image below to see the full sized version. This picture needs a lot of work yet. For example, Mr. Skinny needs to have a reflection in the mirror. He also needs to be a bit bigger too so I can place him in the location I intended. Anyway, it was a fun little experiment that I might try again later.

This weekend Mary, Emily and I went on another hike. Last weekends hike was so much fun we thought we would do another. This weekend we hiked Seven Bridges. This is a beautiful little hike in the Cheyenne Mountain Canyon just south of Colorado Springs. There is a little bit of a boring road walk to arrive at the trail head but once you arrive, you are treated with a great trail that crosses a stream seven times.

This hike is mostly uphill so our plan was to start hiking and turn around whenever Emily got tired. Sometime after bridge five I started to get the impression that we just might make it to the seventh bridge after all. Emily did an amazing job. We were all very excited and satisfied when we found bridge number seven.

The hike was beautiful and we took a photo at every bridge to mark our progress. Looking back at our photos, I noticed we saw a lot of really great creepy crawlies on this hike. There was also a ton of beautiful flowers too. The columbine and wild roses were all a bloom.

The hike down from the seventh bridge was a bit tricker for Emily. It’s always easier to climb up the hill. Once you turn around you have be careful not to slip on the scree. We had a few close calls but we made it to the bottom without to much injury.

By the time we were done two and half hours later we were all a little pooped. It felt good and the sights were just delightful. I hope you enjoy these photos.

Father’s Day is one of my favorite days. It’s awesome because you get to think about all the things you love doing the most and then share them with your family. Father’s Day this year was no exception. Emily, being seven this year, was very excited about Father’s Day. She actually let me sleep until about 8 o’clock. I’m pretty sure this was not intentional, but I was pretty amazed by it. I can’t remember the last time I opened my eyes and saw the first digit on my alarm clock as an eight. Shortly after I opened my eyes, Emily arrived. I’m not sure how she does that. I think she can hear me blinking. Seriously!

We all got ready and Emily was very excited to give me my Father’s Day gifts. I asked Mary to not get anything to crazy, but she didn’t really listen. They got me three things! It felt like Christmas. First a little back story. For Emily’s 7th birthday we got her some handle bar streamers for her bike. So for Father’s Day she thought she should return the favor. She got me leather streamers for my motorcycle handlebars. I just love them. I have always wanted some. I also got a “Life is Good” tee shirt too. I was eyeballing it the other day at the store and Mary must have picked up on that. I liked it because it has a guy playing a guitar on it. That’s fitting because I have been learning how to play the guitar for a few months now and I have to agree … Life is Good. Last but not least, the girls got me a book on pencil drawing. I have been drawing in my free time and this book will be very helpful. Thanks guys!

After that, we hopped into the car and took off to Castlewood Canyon. Castlewood Canyon is a small state park located about half way between Colorado Springs and Denver. This is a great place to go hiking. It offers a very beautiful hike that is not very difficult. We first went hiking here when Emily was only 5 years old. We got to the park at about 9 am and it was just perfect out. The hike starts out at the top of the canyon. You make your way slowly downhill as you look out over an ancient glacier lakebed. After a short while you find yourself on the canyon floor and you make your way through the canyon all the while crossing a little stream. There was so many thing we saw and did on this hike. It was just amazing. We saw lots of wild flowers, a western garter snake, a caterpillar, an inch worm, lots of dogs and many happy hikers. We threw some rocks into the stream, we poked our heads into a little cave and we rediscovered butt rock. We had a great time!

As if that was not enough, once the hike was over Emily and I spent the afternoon drawing in our sketch books. Emily drew a picture of a comet, a horse, a house and she practiced her cartoon eyes. I read the first few pages of my new drawing book and I practiced drawing some basic three dimensional objects, some clouds and bushes, and a strawberry. Emily had a great time.

Father’s Day just would not be Father’s Day without a round a miniature golf though. So after a wonderful dinner of astro-beans and BBQ ribblets we jumped into the car and had a crazy game of crazy golf.

Wow! We all had a great day.