Montana Women's Run

Saturday I walked the two miles in the Montana Women's Run. I have done this before, but it was years ago.  One year Jennifer walked with me. The courthouse got a team together which we were called Hardin Hotties.  The team leader was Dulcie Bear Don't Walk who is the elections administrator.  She wanted to do this as a challenge to herself.  She is a very large woman and wants to get into better shape.

She thought it would be a good idea to have a team together, there were 9 of us all together, one didn't make it on Saturday.  With a team you pay your individual entry fee, however the team leader pays $45 total.  Dulcie had us pay an extra $5 each to help defray the team entry fee for her and she had hair clips made for us.  If you registered online the fee was $20, but if you mailed it in it was $25.  With this fee you got a t-shirt. This way we could spot our team members.

Dulcie didn't get much support from her husband, he kept telling her that she couldn't do it, 2 miles was too far for her and if I walked with her she would be slowing me down.  I told her not to worry about me.  I'm not going to win a medal or anything.  For that I would have to run.  I did tell her to get out and walk so that when the time came she would be ready.

Dulcie picked me up at the house, Gary met me later in Billings.  Dulcie picked me up early and we ate breakfast in Billings, her two younger brothers came as well.  We were lucky and found a parking space a block from the starting line.  The 2 mile race started at 9:00 am.  It didn't take long for the rest of the team to arrive.

I walked with Dulcie, the rest took off on their pace.  Dulcie thanked me to staying with her and she apologized for slowing me down.  I told her not to worry about it.  She made it.  She kept asking me how much further we had but she was a trooper.  Once we made our last turn you can see the finish line.  After we crossed I told her to look behind her and see all the women still coming in.  Her greatest fear was that she would be the very last one.  Every woman received a pink carnation as she crossed the finish line.

We didn't stay for the finish line festivities, she was tired her ankles and feet were sore.  We had to walk 7 blocks back to her truck.  Again she thanked me to staying with her.  She had all of us give her our cell numbers and who to call in case one of us "biffed" it.  I was worried about her.

After I dropped Dulcie off I met Gary at Tiny's Tavern, which was just a few blocks from the starting line.  He kept sending me text messages asking where I was.  I told him that I was on my way and to just look for me, I'm wearing a pink shirt.  He just laughed, said that there were alot of women inside wearing pink shirts.

There were 8500 women registered this year, we looked like someone had spilled a giant bottle of peptol bismal.  Here is the photo of our team.

Left to Right:  Veronica, Georgette, Tammy, Gayle, Anne, Sandy, me and Dulcie.  Emi in the stroller.

School Elections

Tuesday were school elections and I survived my first one.  I had to work from 8:00 am and we finished at 11:00 pm. 

The only election that we had to do was for Hardin, the other school districts ran their own.  All we had to do for them was print out the voter registers and answer their questions.  It went smooth.

Hardin did a mail ballot, so every voter in the Hardin school district received a ballot.  This year there was a mill levy request for spending authority of more money and in one zone for trustee.

We mailed the ballots three weeks before the election and received a majority of them back right away, then there was a trickle.  About three days before we got alot of ballots back.  We couldn't count them until after 8:00 pm.  Had to give the voters time to get their ballots in.  Found out that for next year, we can count ballots early on the mail in election if we advertise two weeks before to give the voters notice.

We had to hand count all the ballots, we had received over 1200.  Four clerks from the district office came to help count which was a big help.  The mill levy failed by 31 votes.  Last year the mill levy failed by 22. 

It was a learning process for me and school elections are every year.  At least we have it down that we can count ballots early for next year with proper notification.  We are still getting ballots in the mail after the election.  Can't count those.

Mortgage Paid Off

What a way to celebrate our anniversary.  On Friday Gary and I went to the bank and paid off our mortgage to the house. 

I bought the house in 1986 and have been making monthly payments for 27 years.  During that time we have refinanced twice.  The first time was back in 1995 so that we could get the steel siding for the house and get me out of the FHA subsudized loan that I had, the second time was in 1999 just so we could get a lower interest rate.

It will take about two weeks to get the lien release, then we can file that at the courthouse.  We are also going to put Jennifer's name on the house title.  This way if anything happens to either of us, Jennifer has a house to live in.  Now we have to remember that we are going to have to pay the insurance and taxes ourselves, no more escrow.

It is nice to know that all the hard work in scrimping and saving has finally paid off, hard to see that our savings has dropped but just have to keep reminding myself what our final goal was.  It won't be long before we get our saving back up. 

We are going out to celebrate on the 11th with our biker friends.  I will post the mortgage burning photos up later, haven't burned it yet but we will.

Laughlin River Run

We spent last weekend participating in the 2013 Laughlin River Run motorcycle rally.  This is like a mini Sturgis. We went with our friends Marty & Vickie Davis.

We didn't ride down due to weather, the guys tried to figure out a way to trailer them down but the time frame didn't work with all of us working.

We spent Wednesday night with our friends as we had a very early flight out of Billings at 6:00 am on Thursday morning.  We had to be at the airport by 4:00 am so that we could get through security.  Didn't get much sleep, stayed up visiting until 11:00 pm and then we had to be up by 3:00 am.  Our friend Dale Butterfield picked us up and took us to the airport.  He said he wanted to do this that way we wouldn't have to pay for parking.  That is a true friend.

It was a good thing we got their early, about 10 minutes later security was backed up with people catching flights.  We had a quick cup of coffee and shared a roll at the airport.  Our past experiences with Alaska Air hasn't been good, but this time we had no problems.  On this leg we went from Billings to Seattle, had about 1 1/2 hour layover then on to Vegas.  We landed in Vegas at 11:00 am, got on the shuttle to the car rental place.  Marty & Vickie made the reservations for the car rental and we split the cost.  The car we got was a white Nissan Altima, not as fancy as Mary's.

Got the maps, GPS programmed and made our way.  Marty wanted to eat at a Mexican restaurant in Henderson that he liked many years ago, but couldn't remember the name.  He had sort of an idea where it was.  Needless to say we couldn't find it.  Oh well, we did find one called Rubio's in Henderson and it was very good.  Managed to get on the road to Laughlin by GPS, which it really wasn't that hard to figure out.

We got into Laughlin around 2:00 pm.  Found our hotel and got checked in.  Traffic was pretty busy with all the bikers coming in.  Our hotel was the River Palms, it was nice but you could tell it was on of the older ones.  After checking in and regrouping we then made our way down to registration to pick up our packets.  Registration was at the Riverside Hotel which was about a mile walk down the little strip.  We walked, would have been too hard to find parking down there. It was also very hot temperatures in the mid 90's.  We are not used to this hot this time of year.  We did meet up with the group from Billings who did ride their bikes all the way.

The weekend we spent wandering around, looking at all the vendor tents and t-shirt tents.  Had a good time but it go to the point where everything starting looking the same.  We were there two days before we figured out that the river walk goes all the way up and down the river side of all the casinos.  That made the temperature a bit cooler.  We did ride the water taxi once.  Did gamble a bit, won enough money to pay for dinners.

Our last day we drove up to Vegas.  Our flight out on Monday morning was at 10:00 am, this way we didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn, we could sleep in a little bit.  It was recommended that we turn the car in around 7:00 am, that would give us time to do the check in bit, catch the shuttle to the terminal and get through security.

Checking the car in was a breeze, we were directed where to stop, they scanned the car and we were free to go.  It took us longer to get our stuff out of the trunk.  The process went very smooth, got on the shuttle, made it to the terminal, got checked in for our flights and boarding passes printed.  Security was a breeze, no lost car keys this time.

On our return flight home we went Vegas, Portland then Billings.  We had about a 3 hour lay over in Portland so had plenty of time to eat and just relax a bit.  Our flight was on time landing in Billings, in fact we were about a half hour early.  Dale picked us up and took us back to Marty & Vickie's house.  We got back to Hardin around 8:15 pm.

Had a good time and would like to go back.  We took our rookie lumps on this trip but now we are wiser.  We would most definately go back.  The guys were talking about taking turns doing this and then Sturgis.  I have my photos and will be getting them up on picasa here soon.

Cabrillo National Monument

Sunday afternoon we met everyone at Cabrillo National Monument.  This is one place that the Schumacher Family has not been to yet.  The monument is located on Point Loma.  There was quite a long line of cars waiting to get in, but we just waited.  Since this is a National Monument, Mom used her senior park's pass which saved us the $5 entry fee.  I got through the gate and just followed the traffic down to the bottom.  I was surprised that my phone welcomed me to Mexico.  Finding a parking space was a chore, the first parking lot was full and had to wait for people to either move so I could get a space or move so that I could get out.  We found a space at the second lot, but didn't see the others.  That was when we realized that we should have went up to the top to the visitor center.

Made our way to the visitor center and we saw Mary, Ed and the girls.  It wasn't too long before Katie and the boys arrived.  We had a good time walking around, visiting and seeing the sights.  We were able to get the 4 generation picture here and also a photo of Mom with her granddaughters and great grandsons.  Unfortunately Lexie & Charlie couldn't join us as they were busy elsewhere.  Lexie had a prior committment on the same weekend that we arrived.  That gives us a reason for another road trip.

After visiting Cabrillo, we had dinner with Bob & Patty Payne.  It was a surprise that Sharon and her family were there as well, so we got alot of good visiting in with the relatives.  The time sure did go by fast.

Here are some photos of our fun.

Libby's favorite cousin



4 Generations



Granddaughters & Great-grandsons

Gruncle Ed

Balboa Park

Sunday morning and we had time to waste before meeting with Mary & Katie at Cabrillo National Monument.  We decided to visit Balboa Park for a few hours, didn't want to sit in the motel and do nothing.  At first we were trying to figure out how to take the little train to the park.  Mom had remembered that the train would pick you up by the hotels, but that is not the case now.  The hotel will shuttle you to where you can catch the train.  If you rode the train from stop to stop it would take you about 2 hours.  We decided to skip this option due to our time frame, so we just drove to Balboa Park.

Finding a parking space was pretty easy, not too much traffic out.  Mom said on Saturday the parking lots were very full.  We just wandered around and looked at things.  There is a Japanese Garden that would be fun to go through, but they are doing construction so some things were off limits.  Will have to visit when construction is complete.

We walked around, looked at the very interesting buildings.  I'm going to have to find out what kind of architecture that the buildings are so ornately decorated.  We did want to go through a museum but the admission price was $17 per person.  That seemed a bit pricy to me for the little time that we would spend, so we went through the free botanical garden.  It was fun walking through and looking at all the flowers with their colors and lines. 

We spent about three hours in the park, took a coke break at the Japanese Garden area, then we made our way to Cabrillo.  By this time the parking lots were pretty full and more people were out and about.  We had fun.  Made it to Cabrillo and met up with the others.

Here are some photos of our short visit to Balboa Park.

Sea World

On Saturday we went to Katie's house to visit with Alfred for a bit.  I think it was easier for Katie to have us come in short spurts instead of all of us at once.  Mom had stuff to drop off for Andrew and the items for a mini baby shower for Alfred from the Gmas.  Jennifer and I went to Sea World.  Jennifer would come on the trip but we had to do something fun.  We left Gma at Katies so she could get some Ggma time with Alfred.

Jennifer and I had a good time, we saw the dolphin & Shamu shows.  We didn't ride any rides just walked around and looked at all the exhibits.  It was fun and we enjoyed ourselves.  We also got a bit of shopping done while at Sea World.

Then we all met up at Katies to decide what to do for dinner.  Katie went to the Science Museum with the rest of them and she was pretty tired when she got home so her family opted to stay home and rest.  Ed spent time with the guys, so the rest of us girls at dinner at a little restaurant.  It was nice, we ordered a meal for 4 people and we had plenty to feed all of us.  We got a half chicken, two different pasta dishes, a salad and the delicious breaksticks.  We had left overs which Mary took home with her.

Here are some photos of our Sea World outing.