Saturday, July 4th, 2009: Installing A Clothesline.
After many years of using a dryer to dry our washed clothes..We decided last week to dig a few holes, put in some 8 foot posts, purchase some closed screw in hooks, and last but not least, puchased some 1/4 rope. All went very well and we completed the entire job in under an hour. So far, our clothes smell much better and it's truly relaxing when outside hanging or taking clothes from the line. You can see our finished project on the swimming pool cam.

Saturday, March 7th, 2009: Setting Up The Fish Aquarium.
Today we setup an old 20 gallon fish aquarium that my parents had operating back in the 1970's. It had been sitting in storage and we finally decided to see if it would still hold water after all these years, which it did. After a drive to the local World Of Fish Store and purchasing a new tank heater, air hoses, air pump, and water chemicals..we were all set to add the colored rock and pour in the water. All went well (no leaks), and we now have the water circulating for a few days before we start adding some fish. The aquarium can be seen to the left side of the computer desk located in the living room. Maybe we'll have to add a Fish Webcam now. lol.

Saturday, February 21st, 2009: It's been a very long time since we've updated the 'Thoughts' webpage. So to bring you up to date; We've been downhill skiing a lot, snow tubing, ice skating, and today we took our toboggan out to a local hill for a fun filled afternoon. Last night we received about three inches of brand new snow so the toboggan slid down the hill extremely fast. It was great!

Saturday, October 4th, 2008: Afton Alps Ski Resort Fall Fair.
This is a yearly event that we started attending last year. They offer chairlift rides, hiking up and down the ski hills, hayrides, a swap sale, and rides for kids. It was a perfect day with no clouds in the sky and warm temps, so after taking two hayrides it was time to take that first dreaded chairlift ride up the hills. We are all afraid of heights and riding the chairlifts can be something that almost gets us to a panic state of mind, no kidding either. lol. While riding the chairlift we all kept talking to each other and I kept looking down to the ground so as not to see way up ahead. When we finally arrived on top of the ski hill we all took a very deep breath that we'd made it alive! Next, we picked a fairly steep ski hill to walk back down. While on the way down the hill our son was running and he couldn't stop, so he went down on his stomach and rode that way for about 30 feet. He was ok, so afterwards we could all laugh about his adventure. Here are some pictures of Afton Alps.

Sunday, September 14th, 2008: Hair cutting and Chores day.
Today was one of those days where we got out the cutting sheers and scissors to save alittle bit of money by cutting our own hair. This was all done in the middle of the kitchen and sitting on a really awful wooden chair..Needless to say, it was quite humorous, but in the end it all didn't turn out half bad and we can actually go out in pubic too. Once that was all done we decided to tackle a project we've been putting off for awhile-the downstairs bathroom and shower. We hadn't used it in a very long time and it started to turn into a storage closet. We took everything out, cleaned it, bought new mats, towels, and washcloths that match. After that, the true test of our accomplishment - We all took turns taking a nice hot shower. Was perfect :)

Monday, September 8th, 2008: New Video section added to the website.
Thats right, there is now a video area for you to see things we've uploaded for fun and laughes. Take a peek at the bottom of the main webpage and click on Video. Enjoy.

Sunday, September 7th, 2008: We finally had a real vacation.
In 15 years we've never had more then 3 days off in a row, so this year we planned an actual vacation. Off to Bismarck North Dakota we went to visit some relatives. After that, we went to a resort located near Park Rapids which is way up in northern Minnesota. The lake that this resort was located on had water so clear you could see down about 25 feet to the bottom. Made you tempted to try drinking the water, but then again, NOT! lol. Lots of snorkeling, swimming, golfing, and having the most wonderful meal at the LumberJack Camp kept us busy during our stay at the resort.
While up north we also visited the Itasca State Park and took our shoes off to run thru the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Look for pictures of our vacation to be uploaded to the Pics area shortly. Great fun.

Sunday, August 17th, 2008: We had a birthday party at our house yesturday. Had a few relatives over, a nice steak meal, followed by birthday cake and ice cream. You may have also seen the candles on the cake being blown out if you had been watching the dining room cam at a certain..Fun time to say the least. As for today, it was a workday for us as we had to replace a fence post once again. We were out in the backyard later in the afternoon digging, measuring, and more digging..It's now 8:30PM and we are finally done with sinking in the fence post.. We'll let it sit over night and then probably attach the fence panels tomorrow evening or on tuesday evening.. I hate fence posts! Have a great week coming up :)

Saturday, August 9th, 2008: Saturday has been a busy day so far.
The swimming pool needed to be cleaned badly, plus our weekly adding of chlorine and algaecide to keep it looking nice like drinking water. After doing that it was haircut time! lol. We purchased some cutting shears at one of those used stores, but yet it was brand new and still in the original shrink wrapped case. It also has rechargeable batteries in it which makes it nice because you can take it anywhere. So there we are cutting my hair with the number 9 attachment and it actually didn't turn out too bad either. Surprise, surprise! lol.
In between doing all that we have been nursing our son who is sick with a high temp and making him lots of chicken soup. It's going on 4PM here, so it's time for an extremely late lunch and then we are going to try and remove the old glue (left behind from the old wallpaper) off the walls. What a mess..Blah! :)

Friday, August 8th, 2008: The Chatroom Is Back!
Feel like a conversation with those you see on the TC HomeCam? Heres a perfect chance to do some yaking with others. Just scroll down to the bottom of the Living Room #1 image and you will see some links. Click on 'Chatroom', pick a screen name, and start typeing/chatting. You can also register your screen name so it will belong to just you, create a profile, even upload a picture of yourself if you'd like. This chat program looks better then others we've tried in the past, so give it a try and tell us what you think. Thanks

Friday, August 1st, 2008: Guess who's back? lol. We are :)
Hi everyone.. Yes, we are now on a new Internet Service Provider (ISP), and a new webhost. So far, everything seems to be working ok, but time will tell. This has been a completely new experience for us because we had to rewrite many of the html strings and paths so as to point to the new services. What a headache, blah..lol.
Neil (Netman) took a look at our new webpage home and gave us a few pointers as to what was wrong and how to correct it..He has great eyes for catching details. Benny (the creator of Camzor) helped out with giving us the new registration codes for all the thumbnail cams, and also the main webpage cam. Without those codes the transition when clicking from one cam to the next cam would be very choppy, plus the advertisements would be in there too.
It's so nice to be back On-The-Air :)

Wedesday, July 9th, 2008: We Are Leaving The Internet :(
Relax, it's only for a short time.. We are leaving Frontier.net who was only providing us with 3Meg download and 368K upload speeds, to a new company that is giving us 20Meg download and 5Meg upload speeds. What a difference this will make.
Frontier had changed their computer server equipment so that people could no longer port forward, stream audio, and or stream video. This was totally unacceptable since all of their compeditors have lower monthly prices for internet access, plus way faster speeds. So, july 13th will be TC HomeCam's last day on the internet until we move to our new ISP home. It may very well be a week or two until you see us back on the internet air waves, but we will be back with even more fun projects up our sleeves. With the access speeds provided to us by the new ISP, we will have more then enough bandwidth to stream video with most our current webcams. Until we see you again, Bye for now :)

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008: So far it's been a very busy summer here in Minnesota:
We've tried out the new camping tent in our backyard several times now and actually stayed in it all night long rather then run inside to the comfort of the house.
Hiking: During the week we have started hiking a two and a quarter mile long trail in a remote area that goes around a lake. The first few times just about killed us because of the cramps in our lower legs, but now because we are doing it three times a week, our legs are getting much stronger and we feel much better overall. Doing these hikes must be catchy because we are now hike leaders for an outdoor group. lol.
The Website: I have to admit that we are pretty happy with the way the entire TC HomeCam Website looks and how it operates now. Just about every internet browser is able to view it, it seems to load fast when accessing the site, the thumbnail pictures and remote windows are working properly, and people seem to like this latest design (out of all of them) the best. You should all know that this was totally a team effort and not the work of just one individual. A great many hours were devoted to improving the site you now see before you. Most of the work was done by Neil (Netman) from over in England. He spent countless hours (not getting sleep) trying to get this site to be viewed on as many internet browsers as possible. Plain and simple, had it not been for Neil and his dedicated efforts, this website would have been no where near what it is today. The other person that was a great help in many ways, was Nick. Like myself, Nick usually hardcodes (creating html without the help of a program) his html. Nick and I enjoy looking at other people's html and playing around with it to see if we can make it better, or how they were able to do certain things with the html on a webpage. Nick and I would spend our break times at work seeing what would work, and what wouldn't with the html coding. Thanks for all your work once again guys, we really appreciate it :)

Sunday, May 11th, 2008: After church this morning we decided to go into the backyard and saw up some wood for our bonfire ring. Even the old christmas tree came in handy for the effort. Taco's for dinner and maybe some peppermint bon bon icecream for desert.

Saturday, May 10th, 2008: Canoe Has Arrived:
After a lot of messing around and mistakes made by the sportsman store, we finally have the canoe we wanted. It's a brand new Rogue River 14 TK and can hold 3 people, plus it has a really neat center console. The console has a storage compartment, a watertight compartment for things you don't want to get wet, and also cup holders for drinks. The length of the canoe is only 14 feet long, but it's 42 inches wide which makes it extremely hard to tip over. After picking that up and driving 80 miles with it on top of our toyota 4runner, we stopped at the local fleetfarm store and picked up some life preservers and some canoe paddles. After that, we had our first bonfire of the year out in the backyard just beyond the swimming pool. With no wind it made for a very pleasant evening just roasting marshmellows over the fire and enjoying ourselves.

Sunday, May 4th, 2008: Today was a work day around the yard for us:
Lots and lots to do, so we hurried to get it done so we could relax a bit later on in the evening. As you may have noticed by now, the swimming pool winter cover has been removed and the pool water is already starting to look nice with all the chemicals we've added. On the opposite side of the pool there are some small little white things sticking up..These are miniture lighthouses that have a solar panel in the top of them that recharge batteries and then at night, they light up just like a real lighthouse..Pretty neat to see. Also, you may see a white table and chairs..These are for when we want to enjoy a meal outside. You might just start seeing us out there kicking back and relaxing. Now, if it would just warm up some more..We are so behind with our normal temps here in Minnesota. At night, it's still getting down into the 30's which is very unusual for this time of year. Till later, have a great week coming up :)

Friday, April 4th, 2008: Earlier today we purchased a new tent from craigslist (www.craigslist.com):
It had never even been used, so we couldn't resist getting it. Now it's just a matter of actually taking it out and using it this summer. lol.

Friday, March 14th, 2008: Problems viewing the webcams:
About two months ago we started receiving emails from people telling us that they could only see the top 10 webcams and nothing else. Part of the problem was that we had switched to using Frames to help divide the webpage up so that certain things refreshed, others didn't, and some that refreshed but using the Java Applet. In doing that came problems depending on which internet browser you were using to view our webcams. We were aware of the viewing problems, but didn't know how wide spread it was until Neal (Netman) from the U.K., (who had experimented with all sorts of different browsers.. ex; FireFox, NetScape, Maxthon, etc.), informed us. It turned out that more often then not, most people could not see our entire webpage anymore and only a small number who could were using Internet Explorer, but with a Microsoft VM that is nolonger supported because of a falling out with Sun Micro Systems (Java). So, here we had Sun Micro Systems with their version of Java and then Microsoft's..What a complete mess! LoL.
Neil had taken an interest in our webcam site and offered his computer experience and help. It wasn't long before he found something for our webpage that would work. The software is called Camzor and it comes with a java applet that refreshes not only our 640 x 480 (big picture) on the webpage, but also the little thumbnail pictures that you can click on to view the many other cams. While Neil was working on the Camzor html coding, we then approached a co-worker friend of mine who's name is Nick. I showed Nick the TC HomeCam and explained the many problems we were having with the webpage. Almost immediately Nick started rearranging our current html coding and came up with some interesting ideas. By the end of the day, Nick had the entire layout finished for the New TC Homecam Webpage..He had even hard coded the html using Microsoft's NotePad which I think is totally cool. Later on that same evening I had emailed Neil (Netman over in the U.K.) the html coding that Nick had put together with the new design for our website. Within just a few days and Neil working very late into the night (and not getting very much sleep I might add), everything was finished and ready to go 'live' online. What you now see is the work of both Neil and Nick. We'd like to thank both of them for offering to help us here at the
TC HomeCam :)

Saturday, March 8th, 2008: A lot has happened since we last wrote. Our 14 year old dog was having trouble walking with his back legs and then just collapsing. We had to make the extremely hard decision to have him put down by the Vet...Our entire family was with him (including our other animals) during the entire final moments..It was just awful that day. Since that time we have been trying to get things somewhat back to normal around here, but now it feels so different with one of our beloved dogs gone.. Other tidbits: We have found a few nice catches on craigslist (www.craigslist.com), one of which is a 6foot long Toboggan which we've always wanted to slide down a hill with. Friday evening we took it out to a big hill about five miles from here and took our first ride with it. What a blast, and whats even better is we didn't break any bones. lol. Major fun time to say the least! Finally, yes finally the day came to get a Real Computer Desk instead of using our old dinner table for one. Again we found one on craigslist.com and brought it home. It's not exactly what we wanted, but very close to it. You can see the oak computer desk on Living Room #2 in the backround. Other then that, the days are starting to get longer and we switch our clocks later on tonight by one hour. Next week our weather people say it should be up in the 40 degree range and that means the snow should start to disappear as the winter season comes to an end and spring begins. Keep an eye on the backyard cam and you should start to see the swimming pool reappear as the snow melts.

Friday, January 18th, 2008: T.G.I.F.! No doubt :) *Some New News* We now have a chatroom..Stop in and say hello. Also; The webpage for our cams is finally starting to take shape. All of the webcam pictures are now located on the top part of the main viewing screen..you can just click any of them when you see activity taking place in that part of the house or outside and it will then take you to that particular webcam. If you want to view a webcam but use a remote window..just click one of the cam names listed to the right of the main screen. Both of us have been learning html using frames..it's a slow process but thats ok, we've been having fun designing the TC HomeCam Webpage. Oh, and by the way..If you know of a way to make our html better, or see an error that we made, please let us know..thanks. By the way, it's freezing cold here tonight..the temp is going down to -12F..Burrrr. Stay warm..

Thursday, January 10th, 2008: If you were watching as we did all this in the livingroom, it had to have looked funny. Tonight was the night to try and fit into some used skis that had been given to us. We had the skit boots, but all the ski bindings had to be re-adjusted to fit our size boot. Nowadays the ski shops won't even touch a ski that has bindings older then ten years, and the skis that we had were twenty to thirty years old. With alittle bit of work we adjusted both the front and back bindings. Then as we put on our boots and clicked into the ski bindings, the other person would kick the side of the boot to see if it would break away from the ski. We did the samething while leaning forward on the skis and having the binding release at a certain point..This is done in case you fall while skiing and the skis are suppose to release from your boot, thus keeping you from getting injured. Even though it's a no-no to do this work on your own, years ago it was the norm to do it all yourself..So thats exactly what we did.

Saturday, January 5th, 2008: Ever been Snow Tubing? We haven't and today was our first time to try it out. There is a really nice place called Badlands Sno Park near Hudson Wisconsin, and it's only about a 40 minute drive from our house to the Sno Park. When arriving we noticed that not only do they have Snow Tubing, but also some hills for beginner downhill skiing. After we purchased our tickets, picked out a few inner tubes, we then headed to our first hill which was referred to as a bunnyhill. Not to steep but still it looked good enough for us to handle our first time down. We got in line and waited for our turn to ride up the tow rope (a rope that you hold onto and it takes you to the top of the hill). Once on top of the hill, we all looked down and then at eachother. That little hill looked a lot more steep while now standing on top of it. Down we went and it was major fun! After a few times up and down it, we went over to the really steep hills. All I can say is WOW! What a rush and super fun time. After about 4 hours it was time to make the drive back home and now we are all totally exhausted but looking forward to the next time we make the trip back over to Badlands Sno Park. Here is a link to Badlands Sno Park> http://www.badlands-snopark.com/

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008: Happy New Year! Hope everyone enjoyed ringing in the new year..Can you believe it's now 2008! Wow! New stuff: Chatroom is here! TC Chat appeared on the website yesturday after playing around with it for awhile to make sure it would work. It's a free chatroom so it's not perfect, but it does seem to work :) A Calendar has also been added to the TC HomeCam site..What a pain it was and still is to try and register the program. It's one of those programs where you can use it for ten times, then you have to purchase a registration key or it doesn't continue to function. With any luck though, you will start to see our daily schedules on the calendar. Oh, one other neat development to bring up. While doing a google search (www.goggle.com) I found anacam's (www.anacam.com) sleepstation html webpage from long ago. This was a webpage that displayed nearly 16 different webcams used by other people showing them while they slept. Yes, thats right - On cam while you were in dreamland! It was so neat. Here is the link if you want to view the old anacam sleep station> http://web.archive.org/web/19991128170952/http://www.sleepstation.com/. There isn't much there now because it's nolonger being used. Anyway's, I wrote anacam and asked her about the sleepstation.com site and whether or not it could be revived in this present day. Her feeling was that not enough people are around anymore with webcams to do it.. Bummer, because I thought it was a really neat project. So now, here is the idea - If we could get enough people to do something like that or similar we may just try to do it in the future. It wouldn't have to be just a sleepcam pursay, but maybe just other peoples webcam sites and displaying what is going on over in those different places. Have the pictures of the webcams update about every 3-5 minutes and then if you found something interesting going on, you could just click the picture of that webcam and a link would take you to their webcam site. Hmmm, could be interesting...

Thursday, December 27th, 2007: Another Christmas has come and gone. Every year the holiday seems to come and then go faster then the previous one. Have you noticed the big ten and a half foot christmas tree in the living room? We decided to go one foot taller then last years tree and color it with more lights..It turned out really nice. A few of our relatives stayed for a few nights during the holiday so there was a lot activity going on here. Our son received four more Ho Railroad Sets so the downstairs is going to look like a complete miniture railroad yard. I gave 'T' a three month membership to a massage salon which she is totally looking forward to. She loves those massages. 'D' received a pair of ski boots because he is taking up downhill skiing again and it should be interesting since he hasn't been on skis since 1974! Eeeeek. All in all in was a very nice Christmas and I hope yours was also.

Sunday, December 8th, 2007: I'm up early today, it's only 5:50AM and here I sit in front of the computer...lol. Saturday, I was all set to do my water skills test for SDI (Scuba Divers International) certification. The morning started at 6AM and had to be at the community swimming pool by 8:30AM. So there I am bright and early lugging in my equipment plus two big air bottles that were to be strapped to my back later on. Everything went very well including the treading water for 10 minutes, swimming 12 laps in the pool, taking the air bottle harness off and then putting it back on several times while submerged, and of course, the skills test. The only thing I didn't care for was the removing of the diving mask while under water. Talk about having to stay calm as the water is flooding your mask. Argh! I had to keep my eyes closed and just concentrate on my breathing...otherwise I could start to feel myself starting to panic a bit. The last part of the exercise was to remove the mask (underwater of course) and hand it to the person sitting in the circle next to you to your right, and then the person to your left would hand you their mask. Next we had to clear the mask (remove the water) given to us (which is now on our faces), and show the instructor we did it successfully. Four times in a row we had to do this exercise without stopping...But, I wanted the scuba diving certification so bad that I talked to myself while underwater and calmed myself down by saying in my mind; "you can do it, just breathe...you have air, just breathe with your month and not nose." Well, after 8 hours I passed the SDI skills test but once I arrived home, I was totally exhausted and was into bed by 6PM. Glad I did too because I felt just drained, but I passed the test so all is good.

Thursday, December 6th, 2007: Today is the one year anniversary of the TC HomeCam.. Time sure has flown by and I can't believe how fast this last year has gone by. Originally, we started out with one Logitech Pro4000 webcam, and within just a few short months we went upto nine webcams broadcasting, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The friendly emails that we've received from people all over the world has been fun and also an eye-opener for us here. We never dreamed that the internet now reaches so many different places. Another interesting aspect of webcam broadcasting is that we've had some fun chats with others who broadcast their webcams to the world as we do. People such as; Stvlive.com, Anacam.com, Stephthegeek.com, Camliving.com, all have shared their insite and views. It's been a really fun year here at TC HomeCam.com.. Thank you so much for watching and also for your very kind and thoughtful emails.. We enjoy reading them all. Here's to another year ahead of us..Cheers :)

Friday, November 30th, 2007: Winter Storm Warning! Thats right, they are forecasting 6-12 inches of snow for us here in Minnesota saturday afternoon. With the snow they are also expecting high winds. This is our first major winter storm of the year so everyone is getting their snowblowers and shovels ready tonight. Keep watching the webcams during the day on saturday..From what the weatherpeople are saying; expect a winter wonderland. C'mon snow :)

Saturday, November 24th, 2007: Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday. On Friday we put up an old pingpong table downstairs so that our son could setup his HO Railroad..While doing that, we also moved the downstairs desk cam so that people could watch the railroad in operation. Now with the weekend upon us, we are still enjoying some of the leftover Apple and Pumpkin Pie that was sent home with us after the thanksgiving meal, which we don't mind one bit ;)

Saturday, November 17th, 2007: What a day! This was the weekend to finally remove the wallpaper in the dining Room and kitchen. What a job..Argh. First we had to squirt warm water all over the wallpaper, let it sit for 15 minutes before we could lift up a corner using a puttyknife, and then pulling it off section by section. After that, we decided to cut out some sheetrock seperating the dining room from the kitchen giving it more of an open look..Looks nice so far, but we still have two more walls of wallpaper to take off. Ahhh, the joys of home ownership. lol.

Friday, November 9th, 2007: Tonight while out shopping, we found the most neatest bamboo chair that included a big oversized cushion. Turns out, it is extremely comfortable just like it looked on their webcam! So, if you look at our living room webcams and see us being swallowed up by bamboo, it's just us enjoying our new comfy chair.

Thursday, November 8th, 2007: By now you've probably noticed a few new changes we've made in the layout and appearance of the TC Homecam webpage. Some of the neat things are: 'Weather' Cams and Current Forcast for cities close to us. Just click on; Austin, Rosemount, or St. Paul and a screen will pop up with a webcam picture and current weather readings for that city. Also, if you click on 'Radar', a screen will pop up that displays the state of Minnesota with a radar return showing rain, snow, or clear skies. The 'Radar' will even show what direction the clouds are moving. So cool!

Thursday, October 25th, 2007: Earlier today the pool company came out to close our inground swimming pool. All that was left for us to do was to put the winter cover over the pool, anchor the cover down with water bags and we were finished. Thank goodness there was no wind today. Mission accomplished.

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007: Back by popular demand (email received), we are going back to the original 640x480 sized webcam windows. I thought this might happen actually... When we decreased the cams down to 352x288, it just didn't feel the same or as homey feeling.. So, back we go to what looked and felt right. We'll just have to figure out a way of working around the big webcam pictures with the new modifications coming to the webpage.

Saturday, October 20th, 2007: Have you all noticed how the tree's have been changing colors? It's just amazing how quickly time is flying and how the season has changed. Earlier today, my mother and father inlaw, wife, son and I took a scenic train ride from Osceola Wisconsin to Marine on the St. Croix in Minnesota. This passenger train runs on the side of the river bluff and then crosses a old beautiful swing bridge over the St. Croix River towards the town of Marine. I had a special little secret going which was a locomotive engine cab ride for both grand parents and our son. They had no idea they were about to ride up with the train engineer for 45 minutes each direction. LoL. You should have seen their faces when told that they wouldn't be riding with us in the passenger train cars, but up in the locomotive pulling the entire train! It was priceless :)

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007: Hello; It's been awhile since I've written and I thought tonight would be a good time to give you all an update. You have probably noticed that we've reduced the size of the webcam windows from 640x480, to 352x288. This was done to accommodate all the new thumbnail windows which will show all the webcams on the main screen and what is going on within those miniature windows. This way, you'll able to see where their is activity on a webcam, and where there isn't. When you see activity, just click on one of the thumbnail webcams and the image will go from small to very big. The old index area (off to the rightside of your screen) with the Additional TC Webcams and Misc Links, will be disappearing in favor of the thumbnail cam windows. We are still learning HTML, so it's a slow process. I'm going to miss the large 640x480 webcam images myself.

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007: It's now the season of fall here in the state of Minnesota, U.S.A. You can tell the season is changing over from summer with the heat and humidity..Too cool nights, not so hot days, and the tree's leaves changing color rapidly. There is a bit of excitement and hurry as the amount of days where you can do many things outdoors is going to be limited with winter coming on. So, the last two days have been really interesting and fun. Besides getting up early to let our new newfoundland puppy outside, our other dog is getting to that age where he can't hold it as long (he's 14 years old). After letting them out, I made breakfest of bacon, eggs, toast, and juice. Then it was off to church where our son started his sunday school education classes today. After church, we've had this problem with our swimming pool getting very cloudy recently, so it was time to tackle that and shock it (lots of liquid chlorine poured in). One other thing we thought might help with clearing up our pool water was to change the sand in our sandfilter since it hasn't been done in about five years.. Now we can see it's already making a difference in the water. Neat! Now time for a late lunch at Subway (coldcut sandwiches) and grocery shopping. Off we go...

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007: Saturday, we went down to southern Minnesota where a man has this narrow gauge railroad on his property. Yes, it's an actual railroad that people can jump onboard and ride on the cars. He needed help with clearing the brush (trees grow so quickly) fixing the switches and track for an upcoming community event. People from all over ride his trains to see the fall colors, enjoy fresh popcorn, music, and view the many historic buildings. Hundreds show up for this fun time and we enjoyed doing our part to help out with his large outdoor public project :)

Saturday, September 1st, 2007: It's labor day weekend here in the U.S.A., with monday being the actual holiday so we have 3 days off in a row. Nice :) First we went to bank then to our favorite thrift store to see what fun stuff was for sale. Today, we found a used Yamaha Keyboard for just under $50 dollars. It has all these buttons for different sounds when you press a key, so it's not just a piano. After we cleaned it up (it looked like someone had spilled a can of coke all over the keys), it played wonderfully. What a bargin. Elton John lookout! lol. For lunch we stopped at a LeeAnn Chins Restraunt and had a yummy meal..Love those wings. Earlier in the week we received a series of very nasty thunderstorms with straight line winds in excess of 70 miles per hour. As usual, it did some damage around our house so today it was time to repair our backyard six foot high privacy fence. Big sections of it had blown down during the storm breaking off many of the fence posts so we had to dig four foot deep holes for the new posts to sit in. What a job to say the least! Whew, atleast we were able to get two installed this afternoon.

Saturday, August 25th, 2007: Today was a very interesting day to say the least. First the lawn needed mowing badly because of all the rain we finally received after a very long dry spell..One extreme to the next it seems in regards to our weather lately. Anyways, after getting the lawn back into shape, we went for our weekly trip down to the Petco (the local pet chain store). Every saturday they have this 'Last Hope' animal adoption day. We are suckers for animals and love to go visit them, so today was another one of those days. After playing with the kitty's for awhile, 'T' and I went over to the dogs. Sure enough, there was this little puppy that had the most beautiful set of eyes. It was an 8 week old, black, Newfoundland / Lab mix. In otherwords, eventually going to be a BIG Dog!! lol. We bought the dog and you can now see Abby's crate in the living room next to the entertainment center. She is full of energy but yet very kind around our 14 year old Shepard / Malamute mix whom we've had since a puppy. Our cat is still checking Abby out, but so far so good.

Sunday, August 12th, 2007: After getting some much needed rest and sleeping in this morning, we decided to go snorkeling/diving in a lake north of the cities once again. The water was truly perfect and it felt just like warm bath water. Saw lots of sunfish and even had one swim right up to my hand at one point. Then, it was time to see if we could sit on (without falling off) of a big log that was floating in the water. You have to have perfect balance or you spill off into the water.lol. Great fun. I made a nice basket lunch so we just relaxed had some food and soda, then time to drive back home from a perfect weekend of fun filled events. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend also :)

Saturday, August 11th, 2007: What a weekend so far! Wow. Friday evening we did the Burnsville Fire Muster which is a yearly community event that features a large carnival, live music and dancing, fire department events, and also a really neat fireworks display after sundown. Saturday was more of the same but included a 80 firetruck long parade. After the parade 'T" and I pulled some firehose from the pumper truck and had the kids spraying water all over the place..I couldn't believe how long the line was with kids wanting to see what it's like to shoot water from an actual firehose. After about 2 hours of being in the direct sun, we both took a break and walked around looking at all the different firetrucks and then watched a police k9 (dog) demonstration. Those dogs are mighty fast when chasing someone... We are exhausted, whew. Time for bed. Night.

Sunday, August 5th, 2007: As you know, we currently are running 9 Webcams here at TC HomeCam which give you a pretty good idea of what goes on around our house. However, some future changes are coming to TC Homecam that I think you will enjoy. We recently purchased 13 more webcams which are a mix of; Logitech Pro4000 CCD webcams, Creative Labs NX Ultra CCD Webcams, and also acouple of Camcorder Cams. Right now, all we need are two more computers and we plan on purchasing those in the next few months. Now, what to do with all these extra webcams and the placement of them is going to be very interesting to say the least. The idea's that we have are; more swimming pool and backyard cams. You may also notice some changes on the way you select which cam to view. Plan's are in the works for making it easier to find which webcam has activity on it. Instead of just picking a name such as 'Living Room Cam 1' and clicking on it, in the future you will just see a picture of it and then click on it to make it bigger. With over 20 webcams possible, stay tuned! :) Now, off to the shower and then off shopping for new lapshades and other nicknacks.

Saturday, August 4th, 2007: Yesturday evening we decided to bring back to the house some air breathing packs off of the firetrucks. Every now and then we need to do some basic inspections and testing of these units for use out in field. If any of you were watching on the cams at this time, you probably saw us putting on these air packs that made us look like something out of a space movie. Bottles on our back, face masks, and all these funny looking air hoses are attached so that a person may be able to breathe in a smoke filled house or environment. After going thru about ten of these air pack breathing units, we called it a night. Nothing like being completely filthy and heading off to take a nice shower, then to bed :)

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007: I'm sure by now you've all heard of the interstate highway 35w bridge collapsing wednesday around 6:07pm here in Minneapolis Minnesota. People in their cars were on the bridge when it went crashing into the mississippi river some 60 feet down below. Just 50 minutes earlier, 'T' traveled over this very same bridge along with our son to meet me at my parents house so that we could attend the weekly diving/snorkeling event held north of the twin cities. About 7pm after being out in the water with the rest of the scuba divers, we were notified of the terrible disaster. My son asked me later on; "why did god let this happen?". Please say a prayer for the people who lost loved ones in this most terrible disaster.

Sunday, July 29th, 2007: Still very hot here in Minnesota. Still up in the mid 90's. Today we went and had lunch at Lee Ann Chins Restraunt and it appears they've changed their menu. No more LoMein I'm told, so it was time to try some new foods which wasn't all that bad after all. Everything there is always good to eat. After lunch we decided to pick up a few household items such as; toothpaste, hand lotion, bubblebath, etc., you get the picture.lol. Then, it was into the pool to try out my new snorkeling dive mask. It works great and I love the color. After dinner it was out on the deck (since the weather was so nice) for some relaxing time in front of the TV and reading. The sky was a dark blue and totally clear. Can't beat that.

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007: Today was wednesday night fun dives which is a day that scuba divers and snorkels get together to play in the water at a lake north of Minneapolis / St. Paul. It's about an hour and a half drive but well worth it because the water is so clear. Visability was about 8 feet which is pretty darn good considering how close it is to a major metropolitan area. Couldn't ask for better water temps either, it had to be over 70F degrees. Saw lots of fish and chatted with a few of the scuba divers. The diving company that puts on these weekly fun events is having a Experience Scuba Diving class and we are planning on taking the class. Who knows, maybe both of us will be future scuba divers huh. Our son had a blast going down the old metal playground slide that was installed out in the water. Kind of like a mini waterpark :)

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007: This evening was hair cutting day for our son. He is getting so big and his hair is growing so fast, it's just amazing. He even sat still for me this time.lol. Both 'T' and myself are feeling icky tonight so we passed on going to the snorkeling/diving event out on the lake..We are both bumming out because we really wanted to go. The heat has gone away temporarily, so it only made it to 75F degrees today for the high temp. Well, off to bed I go.. Goodnight.

Thursday, July 5th, 2007: Back to work today after having a holiday yesturday. Too bad we can't have a day off in the middle of the week all the time huh. lol. We all just arrived home from work and day camp. Once again it's a very hot day here in Minnesota, USA. It's now about 5pm so off to the swimming pool we go for some much needed cooling off relief. If you want to watch us splash around, click on the Swimming Pool Webcam :)

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007: What a busy day to say the least. First we brought one of the firetrucks over to the house so we could inspect and change out the bad pieces of firehose. Then later on, all of us went to ride in a parade in a neiboring town. Nothing like tossing out candy from the parade floats underneath the hot sunshine. After being in the sun for over 7 hours, it was time to hit the swimming pool. Thank god for pools!!