Justin Rummel . com: News

Strawberry Picking 2009

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:03:09 GMT

I'm starting to question on keeping this website:

I don't seem to have much time anymore with my job traveling everywhere
My job deals with very technically savvy individuals, clients, and customers. I'm beginning to second guess how much of myself I want to put out on the internet

Here are a few pictures from Strawberry picking that we did a couple of weeks ago just after Gavin's Birthday.

Pictures

Strawberry Picking

Gavin Birthday

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:57:22 GMT

Here are pictures that I was able to capture of Gavin's birthday week (as eloquently described on Colleen's site). Can't believe the little guy is now five years old. There is so much that I can't for us to experience such as camping, bike rides, roller coasters, water parks... just having fun "beating each other up".

Pictures

Gavin Birthday

Running with the Bulls... err... Cows

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:21:12 GMT

Holy Cow (pun intended) I really failed at writing this post as I had this "written" in my head almost three weeks ago.

Our trip in Goshen was VERY brief (less than 24 hours), so this story is a little daunting and dramatic given the quick timeframe that we spent in Goshen. Monday afternoon I was with Holden, Gavin, and my mom enjoying ourselves that a farm can offer: Tracker rides, swinging on ropes in the barn, feeding mini-donkeys... things that Gavin will NEVER get to do unless he is at my parents house. Just as we were going ready to return to the house, I noticed several cows (dare I say, a Herd) off in the corner... a corner that has NEVER had cows before. Here is the picture I took of the cows just before ALL COW DRAMA BROKE LOOSE!

It was at this point that to natural reactions occured: mine (holy F! There are cows overthere... lets run and hide). My Mom (Oh dear, I'll go drive off and fetch an Amish guy... they fix everything).

Well, as my mom drove off to fetch an Amish guy, I "kept watch" to make sure they didn't do anything... as if I could stop since I was at least 350 yards away... but damnit I'm "keeping watch"! Fifteen mintues later (everything in Indiana is 15 minutes away), my mom returns with Lonie to help with the cows and quickly drives to the cows to start herding them back to wherever they came from... and then did the worst thing... she looked at my direction and gave the "come over here" wave. CRAP! Now I have to be all manly and go help these stinking cows when all I want to do is escape into the house where it was safe and take pictures with my telephoto lens.

I quickly jogged over to the place and watch Lonie trying to out flank the cows off to the right, so I pretended this was a little Command & Conqure and started to slowly push the main front line. It was at this time that my Mom must have felt that between the Amish MAN and City BOY, we should be able to take care of things and took off back to the house... just ditching me as if saying "see you later, SUCKER!" laughing and skipping her way back inside the safe zone.

So, to make things more elabriated and dramtic that I already have stated; we had the cows backed into the corner where there was a small path back to a larger field (i.e. not in our backyard). The issue is the cows knew once they started to go back down the path it was a sign of failure and the humans would have won. Some cows were smart and simply started down the path... others were not going down without a fight. They started to perform some fancy foot work, trying to go back and forth but Lonie and I held our line strong and kept pushing forward. Finaly all the cows retreated, but that is when they must have decided they will still get the last laugh.

I have never seen so much piss and poop being extreted from an animal that I didn't know if they were ill and I should feel sorry for them or take them down at that very minute because "honey, were having steak tonight!". Cows are the most disgusting animals I've every had to follow, and I've done the band parade thing down South Bend, I know what animals leave behind. I wanted to burn my shoes, strip everything off and request Colleen to just hose me down including my mind... there was so much dirtyness I just couldn't stand it!

To make a long story even longer, the cows were a pain in the ass and wondered back into my parents backyard, at which point my mom returned and said we should just put them in he fenced yard till the owners return. Once the cows were locked in, we sat and had dinner. The owners came around 5PM and I don't think they were finished with those dumb animals till 6:30pm at which we too were heading out the door, ready to return home to the safe house without animals (well, animals that are larger that Cooper).

Goshen Pictures

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:04:09 GMT

Our return home trip included a stop at my parents house in Indiana. I have a long winded, over-dramatic story during the 24 hours we were at my parents house... but also I have LOTS of great pictures of the boys playing around the farm. Here are a couple of pictures, be sure to click on the link below.

Holden (who just taught himself to ride a two-wheel bike a couple hours prior to our arrival)

Kaiden, the master dare devil

Incognito Cooper

Tracker Driving Gavin

Psst! Hey, Kaiden. Why these city boys crying?
Holden, I just don't know.

Pictures

Goshen Pictures

Happy 1st Birthday Meghan Barker

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Sun, 03 May 2009 01:29:37 GMT

Last weekend we drove to Chicago to visit family, and celebrate Meghan Barker's first birthday. We had a great time with our Chicago family.

We started our trip on Thursday and made it about half way, just pass the Pennsylvania border where we had scheduled one night of rest as to not press our luck with traveling with both boys in the car. We completed our trip on Friday, just in time for Colleen to get her Pepe's fix and have a great evening with Pearl.

Saturday we went to celebrate Meghan's birthday. It took Gavin and Cooper about 30 minutes to get adjusted to the new house and all the, *cough*... crazy people that were in the house (that statement is meant with love... :D). As soon as the initial shock was erased, Gavin immediately began bonding with Mitch and Becca, and started to destroy the house by running like an insane little beast with no purpose or direction other than to enjoy life and have fun.

We ended the evening by going out with Jim and Debbie to Ditka's. The restaurant is wonderful, the food is excellent, the wine list is exquisite... don't take your kids there. We find out as were sat down and started ordering that this is a restaurant that encourages it's guests to make an evening of the meal. We ordered drinks and an appetizer, but we never got to order the main meal until the appetizer was finished. We didn't know this till we were about 30 minutes into the meal where Colleen and I were getting a little upset that we had not ordered any of the kids meals as they were not interested in our food.

Overall, it was an excellent weekend. I wish it could happen more frequently... but as it takes two days to drive in and two days to drive back.... we're already talking a six day vacation which only really leaves two days with family. Of course we would prefer to fly, but as prices are too high and Cooper will be a fourth ticket come this July... I don't see us flying in the near future.

Pictures

Meghan's 1st Birthday

Comments Suspended

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:15:56 GMT

I've disabled commenting for anonymous users because I'm getting a lot of spam. Since I wrote the comment section code and I currently don't have a quick fix, my only option is top scale back on anonymous users. Registered users are still able to comment, just be sure to use the "Login" link at the top right hand corner. Hopefully I can re-enable that feature soon.

Update - 2009.04.22
Passing email address and other self checking functions to see if I can reduce the spam. Anonymous Comments are re-enabled.

Annual Stripping for CSS Naked Day

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Today is CSS Naked Day. CSS is used for webpage layout and color design by applying color and position descriptors to HTML elements.

The purpose of this annual CSS Naked Day is to promote web standards, semantic markup, and good code hierarchy. Plain and simple. This also tests if your website is functional and looks nice even without any style applied to it.

Update

If you missed the site on 4/9/09, click here to see it again.

Miracle Valley Vineyard: Season Opener

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:57:09 GMT

Season opener for visiting wineries (at least for myself since everyone else started while I was in Alaska), and we started off with a bang at our current favorite Miracle Valley Vineyard. You know you have a 'home' for a winery when you enter the door, and one of the owners comes around the corner and gives everyone hugs.

It was a beautiful 70 degree day, but the wind was really strong which is why Gavin and Cooper had hats and jackets. We did their tasting of their entire 2007 line and I am very pleased. Can't wait for their new bottle that should be out in a couple of months. (Don't know if I can publicly announce it or not... so I'll be safe and just say you won't be disappointed).

On our way back home we quickly checked out a new winery that is just down the road from Miracle Valley called Barrel Oak Winery (a.k.a BOW). I purchased a couple of reds and we drank them both during dinner and they were great! We're going to have to visit a couple more times, especially since they are open late on Friday nights making a perfect reason for getting a baby sitter and going out on a date with Colleen.

The many faces of Gavin

I'm the somber cute one!

Sippy Cups

Pictures

Miracle Valley Vineyard

Happy 2nd Birthday Peyton Williams

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:35:34 GMT

Yes... two birthdays on consecutive weekends... we've been a little busy. Peyton's birthday was great, because Andrea (I believe) had the idea to see if the local fire department would "swing by" for a children's birthday party... and they did! OMG! She got a fire truck to show up for Peyton's birthday (guess she wins greatest mom this week... Colleen can't take all 52 weeks )!!! I guess the fire department does it often as one of the firemen stated they do this thing about once a week between showing up to locations or having events at the firehouse.

As you can imagine the internal competitive parenting is trying to kick in:

Ainsley had McDonalds bday
Peyton had a FIRE TRUCK
Gavin... hmmm... has a bunch of friends @ school so this is going to be interesting
Cooper... dude... sorry man

We'll figure something out... here are the pics!

I'm the birthday boy... being silly in-front of the camera

What's this button do?

Ready to roll!

Pictures

Peyton Williams Birthday

BTW; I think someone was having flashbacks of her Bachelorette party...

I'm a bachelorette again!!! Hover over my picture!!!

Happy 4th Birthday Ainsley Zdanowski

j@justinrummel.com (Justin Rummel) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:59:02 GMT

It looks like my traveling days are going to be slowing down as we just hired a technician at work in Alaska that will start first thing next month. I know it is the best not only for my family and my company, but inside I'm a little sad as there this pretty much eliminates any reason for me to return to Alaska anytime soon.

So my first full week back home and what did we do??? Nothing, because Colleen left for training in North Carolina thus I had to ~~suffer~~ ~~feel the pain~~ enjoy the opportunities single parenting can provide. The boys are still alive (somehow), as Gavin is not liking having only one parent around the house; thus acts out by not listening at daycare... and Cooper performs face-plants off of steps then wonders why his head hurts.

The weekend finally came around and we celebrated Ainsley's Birthday. Ainsley decided that McDonnalds was the best place to have a party (I'm sure this was not influenced by Kari what-so-ever), where Cooper's lack of fear-lobe was prevalent as he scaled the winding tree steps and jumped head first down the spiral slide. Gavin, watched below... for the first 90 minutes terrified. Oh well, at least I know Gavin won't be going to the hospital anytime soon.

Listen, I'm a princess and you're a princess... but I'm eating you.

AAAAHHH CAKE!!!

My face should be a sign, I will cause trouble.

I'm at the top!!!

Pictures

Ainsley Birthday