Winchester aka: Winnie

Well, we finally broke down and bought a lab. Yep a chocolate little girl who is almost as sweet as my 2 great kids. She is only 7 weeks old here and doing really good on potty training.

Her name is Winchester but we call her Winnie. She is getting pretty good at letting me know when she is in her kennel that she has to go outside.

Megan and Grant adore her and love to run around the backyard with her. Pooperscooping time for me! YAY?

She has a little attitude but she will fit in nicely with it in our family. At least she doesn't roll her eyes at me like my kids.

By the way sorry if the pics are blurry had to try out the new camera..

Halloween 2008

Beth took the kids trick or treating this year. I should have been home for this weekend but, well work got in the way and that's all I care to say about that. The kids had a great time and we live in such a great neighborhood. They had to stop back by the house once to unload so they could keep going. I never had that problem when I was a kid. Megan was a Sorceress and Grant went as a Skeleton or "Bones" as he called his costume. I did get to see them in their costume about a week ago. Beth let the kids stay up a little bit late one night to surprise me when I came in the door. It was lots of fun seeing them all dressed up and trying to hide from me.

I'm glad they had a great Halloween and I hope I'm

home next year for Halloween.

Megan's Ballet

Megan tested for the first two stages of ballet and passed both, so she recieved a metal for each stage.

Here Megan is performing one of the ballet moves.

Megan has been attending Let's Dance Studio for about two years now and has really enjoyed dancing. Every so often you can sign your child up to be tested for each level she has learned. Megan was ready to test for her first two levels so we signed her up. She did a great job and we were so proud of her. She was the first little girl to test that evening and she had to get up by herself in front of about 10 other students plus all the parents. Beth and I were both nervous for her but she did great and the crowd didn't seem to bother her at all. She went through each move that she was to be tested on and performed them perfectly. After her testing she recieved a metal for each stage she passed. Megan passed Stage 1 and 2 so she got two metals. She was so proud of them. Now she is almost ready to test for Stage 3, but we're going to hold off until she is ready for Stage 4. Once she passes Stage 3 and 4 she will not only get a metal, but she'll also get a pretty nice trophy too.

More Work Pictures

I am relying on my dear sweet wife to update this blog with something other than what I can do. I have been at work since September 23rd so I haven't had access to the kids or the ability to take more pictures of the kids other than the pictures from the casing break. So hopefully Beth will put some more pictures of the kids up pretty soon. I should be heading home on Saturday at some point and when I'm home I will probably not be spending much time on the computer but I will update when I get back on the next well and I get all caught up. So for now you'll have to look at pictures from work.

This is the normal flare we have burning while drilling. Yesterday we had to change out the bit and motor so we were pulling pipe out of the hole and then running pipe back in the hole most of the day. It took about 18 hours to pull more than 16,000' of pipe out and put it all back in. When we get back on bottom we have a large amount of gas that has to be circulated out of the hole and burned off. So I put a few pictures of the normal flare and the "Bottoms Up Gas" that we circulated out.

Normal Flare while Drilling Ahead

"Bottoms Up" Flare
The pictures were taken at a weird angle and it was incredibly windy yesterday so the flare doesn't look as big in the pictures as it really was. I'm pretty sure that had there been any grass on the hill behind the flare we would have had an even bigger flare.

Sunday at Work

This was our Old much to small (13") TV. It made watching the games somewhat challenging. Well since everyone knows that the Geologists are at the bottom of the list, on the Rigs anyways they get our old TV. And we get........
This ONE.

Sunday October 12, 2008

Another fine day at work, good thing there's football on today. It's Snowing, Sleeting and mostly just Crappy out.

Just Checked the Weather for the Weekend

Pretty Nice Weather expected over the weekend. Beth and the kids are in Bismarck which is in the 1-2 in. Band. The rig where I'm at is in the 4-6 in. band. This time of year the snow is usually really heavy and wet and makes a muddy mess as it melts. Should be pretty funny this weekend as I have a trainee working with me from East TX. He's already been asking if he needs a ski mask and thermal underwear. Not yet my friend, not yet. It's only October, it may snow and it may blow like hell, but the temps will stay above 0 for another month.

Casing Break!

Finally Casing Break! What does that mean you ask? Well it means that I get about 24 hours off. That means I don't have to stay at the rig, usually I run back to Bismarck but this time Beth and the kids drove to Dickinson, ND and we got a room at the Comfort Inn. It was really great to spend the time with my family. The way the drilling has been going I'm out at work for about two weeks before I get this little break. After the break I am on the countdown. We are drilling 20,000' wells, 10,000 horizontally and we're knocking them out in about 28 days. So after I get back to work following my "Casing Break" I only have about 10 to 12 days left before I'm done and heading home for about a week, give or take a day.

This time the break was a little bit quicker than normal so I didn't get to spend as much time with Beth and the kids as I would have liked but it still recharged my batteries and I'm ready to finish this well up and go home.

The kids had such a good time in the hotel's pool and waterpark. Most of the hotels up here have at least a few waterslides for the kids and in the winter it's kinda fun to get a room just to play at the waterpark. Megan loved the Clam waterslide she was up and down and up and down all evening long. Grant surprised me, he loved the bigger waterslide. He would go down the slide, climb out of the water, less than 1.5' deep, go up the stairs and do it all over again. Megan didn't mind the bigger waterslide but the material her little swimsuit is made of must be a little slicker than Grants' because she flew down that thing. Beth and I had so much fun watching them go down the slides and splash around. It was so much fun spending time with them.

So that's the update for now, well there's one more thing.... We purchased a camper last days off. We'll pick it up in a few weeks when I'm done with this well and I'll get some pictures up. It's a 2008 model travel trailer, we got a heck of a deal as it was used about 5 times and turned back in. So check back in a few weeks for pics of our new camper. No other news to speak of besides SNOW in the immediate,( Thursday Night) future.

Thanks for stopping by.