From Doug

Hey everyone, since all of you have been posting like crazy I figured I should too!

Not a whole lot really new with me, except my jeep, it's pretty much my whole life... lol...



That's how she sits now, except there's some windshield lights that I just finished installing so I don't have a pic yet.

Other than my jeep, school's going good. I was really sick for the first 2 weeks of the semester and missed a lot of classes, but I'm better now. I had my first test this morning, it was for my human sexuality class and the test was really easy. Hopefully that trend will continue and I'll bring my marks up this semester. They're not bad but it'd be nice to be a bit higher and give me a better shot at getting into Physio.

That's pretty much it for me, I'm glad everyone seems to be doing well. Good work with the job and all your future plans ross, good to see you getting excited and ambitious at it.

Anyways, I'll talk to you later and hopefully see everyone soon!

Love,
Doug

Updates

Hello to all, nice to see all your updates, I think there is more on here this month than in the last 6 months. Mostly this is just for Ross. Buzzy we are all so proud of you. You have all of our love, and best wishes up there. I hope you are having some fun. Please be careful, take care of yourself. We would love to see some pics if possible. Not sure if you have much internet access though. I love to see your longterm plans. The house idea sounds cool. Take your time, your young and don't need to rush into anything that is going to tie you down. Make the money SAVE it and when the time is right you will be set. As for firefighting I like the idea of trying it out on a volunteer thing first. You so freaken smart some days it amazes me. Then there all the other days lol Just kidding. Hope all is going well up there and cant wait to see you and hear all about it when you get home. Lots of love Ashley and family

Riggin it.

Geoff! Don't ruin your life! go kick a ball around you can't waste this talent. man up!

I don't know whats goin on with anyone. I'm in red deer alberta, staying at an old army base, I go out to my Rig on friday or saturday, I'm saving 12 grand for firefighting school in texas. then saving 40-50 for a down payment on a house of my own in kelowna. then I'm going to do a paid on call firefighter for 6 months to a year before I decide whether I want to go to school or not and continue with firefighting. I should be able to make the money for school and a house by next summer, this money is going to be nuts! hope everyone is well, quick update because im in starbucks and I'll let you guys know whats next, update me on your lives please!

Love you guys more than you know! 

Ross

life today

hey folks.
rob, that suit is sweet, i have a similar one in my video game but yours is way cooler being real and all that.
jen, the kids look great, i hope things are going as good as they look. thanks for your help with the house. sorry things are going slow i haven't been all that on top of it but hopefully next week we can sort it out.
ashley and corey same to you guys and i hope things are going well.
mom i'm excited to see the new place when we move you next weekend.
ross i'm glad to hear you had your first scare and made it out without a scratch, i'm sure there will be more scares along your travels but hopefully you'll continue to walk away unscaved. i was talking to ashley about your firefighting idea and i think going to work on the rigs for a bit is a great idea to pay for it, i don't know if you're in a hurry to get into firefighting school but i was saying to ash that it might be a good idea for you to get into fighting forest fires for the summer to see if you like the whole firefighting idea, plus you'll get some experience and make some good jake too. just an idea. and it might help with your decision to pursue firefighting before dropping 8g on the course.
as for my crap. school is going pretty good. i have one reallly cool class where we just learn how to be good PE teachers. my other 3 courses are going to be ok but arn't as interesting. things with kristen are going pretty good. we don't see eachother as much now that we're in school but it's still good. you'll be suprised to hear that soccer hasn't been my entire life lately. haven't been as excited about it and i even got benched last weekend and only got about 15 minutes today. getting benched was a bit of a wake up call though, hopefully i'll get back into it soon. anyway just thought i should throw my two cents out there. love ya'll

Ross again.

WOW, the man's gettin serious about his hunting! such a cool suit! and Josh looks even better than Rob haha. I forgot to call on Katie's birthday! tell her I'm sorry and that she doesn't get her present until I see her, Kids are looking great Jen! 

 Ok, I leave sunday for red deer, do some training sorta stuff there for a few days and then I'm out to my first riggin job. I'm going to work the rigs until I make $8000 because thats how much the firefighters course is. oh yea, I was talking to Jen on the phone yesterday and she reminded me of how I wanted to be a firefighter since I was a kid. Being as I have no life and would still love to do it, I'm goin for it. So I'm workin the rigs, coming back here to Kelowna for snowboard season, while training to become a fireman (just by myself going to the gym to get ready) and then I'll try and enroll in the may program because i'll have gotten rid of my N and thats one of the requirements of the program. so looks like I'll actually be kinda busy for the next couple years, compared to the rest of my life anyways. 

I also have a biker story for you guys, don't worry, already told mom about it.

So, the other day, I was sitting at kate's place trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life, and I got really frustrated and decided to go for a ride. I was about half an hour in, riding on a back road to winfield, and I saw a rock about the size of a large grapefruit on the road, right then I realized that I wasn't paying enough attention to my riding because I was thinking about other things in life. and I've learned that when your riding, it's not like going out for a cruise in the truck to think and relax, it has to be all about the ride. anyways, I ride about another ten minutes and I'm back to thinking about life, when I round a slight corner, and BAM! just kidding. but I round this corner not paying enough attention and find myself drifting off the road into the gravel, there were cars infront of me, behind e and coming toward me. I skidded along a gravel truck rut for about 25 feet just trying to stay on my bike. I managed to keep it on two wheel and stay alive. but it really made me realize how important it is to stay focused. I was absolutely pissed off at myself! after all the traffic was gone I turned around and rode home and haven't ridden since, I told myself I wasn't going to ride untill I knew I could stay completely focused on my riding.  

One more thing! dirtbikes ride sitting up straight, feet under you, and cruisers ride sitting back stretched out feet up, and I feel like part of me not being able to stay on the road by just quickly turning back into my lane was my seating position. It's a really weird feeling to be sitting in the cruiser position and lean over into turns and it's also hard to do quick maneuvers, It made me feel like maybe I'd be better riding a crotch rocket just for the reason of how at home it feels because of dirtbiking. I'm not sure, but I sure wasn't happy with myself after that mess up! 

Life at the Funks

Hey All, just chatting with mom and she wanted some pics of Josh but I figured if I put them up here it would be better than emailing to her cause then you can all see.

I am glad we made it home to post these today after our adventurous hunting trip last night though!!! We ended up totally stuck with mud up to the bottom of the doors on my truck! Me, Rob and both kids, an hour from town at 7:00 at night... thank God I got cell service for a brief second and got a call out to Nicole and Troy who came and rescued us. Doug that streachy rope you were telling me about rocks - Troy had one and it pulled us out no problem and with no yanking to damage the trucks! There are two pics of Rob's new hunting suit as well - its hillarious - its called a Ghillie suit! He was hidding around the house and yard all day going "can you see me here?"

Anyhoo - here are a few recent pics of your nephew and some of Katie's birthday party yesterday morning. 10 girls, some sidewalk chalk, a skipping rope and hotdogs... it went really well though and Katie had a blast!

We are all doing awesome - wish fall temperatures werent here yet but we had a great summer so I cant really complain.

Ross I think the rig pig might be a really cool experience - you should give it a shot then come up here to visit after!

Rig pig

So, there happened to be a job fair in kelowna yesterday for a company called trinidad, their a rigging company, and I was one of the people they chose to hire. I'm supposed to go to red deer in about a week for a fitness test and to get my h2s, and then within a week from that they'll send me out to a rig. the lady is going to call me on wednesday to confirm everything, so I have until then to find a better job or I guess I'm gona have to be a rig pig for a bit... 

Hey just me again, here is another one, tis one is here in kamloops but again looks like something that might work for you. lots of different opptions Check it out.

http://www.tru.ca/tourism/adventure.html

Hey Ross, went on to the northern lights collage websit and saw this program, it is offered in tumbler ridge which is not ideal but the program looks cool. One of my business proffs, who has a double phd, use to be a rafting guide for 15 years and he said he loved it. anyways check it out.

http://www.nlc.bc.ca/public.program.php?ProgramActiveList=programdetails&ProgramID=77

here I am... uh oh, now where did I go?

 Hello family! well, Ash, I'm not one to go to school, or finish something I started, or stay in one place for more than a few months, BUT in your case, I would say the best thing for you personally would be to finish your schooling, help corey find something fun to do for the next few years. I've heard mom's story of how dad didn't let her finish school, and she still hates it, it would be a shame to see you leave it now.  I think for corey he needs a job where he has FUN! likes the people he works with and makes enough money to make it through the next few years, then once you've finished school, the kids are a bit older and as long as corey is ready, a move to fsj would be great, as you could both find good work, and the girls would have lots of friends. Jen always says how young the community is in fsj. ok that's my 2 cents.
Now, for myself... well here we go.Today, sept 6th, I'm at kate's place in Kelowna, I've been here for the past week, ever since she moved in, so i want to get out of her way for a bit, and let her get started in school without me in the way. I've been spending my days working on finding something to do with my life, literally putting in a full 8 hours searching the internet, calling places and writing down my options. I haven't had much luck, the plan was to go up north and make some money, but the only thing that looks at all promising is a land surveying job, the problem is it's not camp work so I'd have to get a place in fsj, and that's not so easy to do from kelowna. nor do I want to stay there for very long. So, after calling about 40 places all over b.c and alberta to find some camp work, nothing was looking very good, sure I got some b.s "yea it's very busy get up here right away" but nothing convincing in any way. So I started looking for other options, heavy equipment operator? I drove a little bobcat and an excavator about a month ago and it was fun! but when I looked into it, the shortest course is 5 weeks, but $9000-$10000. I'm not sure I want to spend that much when it's not something I know I'll enjoy. so now I'm kinda lost again, I'm going to look into the heavy equipment operator thing some more, I just want to get some direction and go for something. whatchya guys think? any ideas? 

I've been spending any extra time working on my truck and just playing with my truck, I got the bed Line-x'd the other day and it's great! looks awesome and is really nice to use. since i got new tires n wheels I've been having issues with rubbing, so i've spent alot of time making my wheels fit, still having issues, but I think I want to get a 3'' lift so that will get rid of the last little bit of rubbing. 

ok well, there's my huge post tell me what you think of my ideas when you get a chance!
Love you all very much! 

Ross 

September Update

So, it sure has been a while. I finally updated the book the other day and was going to send it to Ross, but he has no home at the moment so Well see where it goes. Wow what a crazy summer, I realized the other day that I did not go camping even once this summer, that really sucks. The other thing that really sucks is that I realized that after all that money we got, I am only slightley better off financially that I was a year ago. Man I would like to kick my own ass. I love my truck and I am very happy to be married but that money sure did not go as far as intended. Oh well its done now what can I do! So wanted to give a little uptade as to my life, corey and I were thinking about making some changes, I though we had kinda decided to but now were not so sure. He deffinatley needs to find a new job as he hates the one he has, but I dont think were gona move right now. In a way I would like to have a fresh start, try something new and have some fun, but I am also really enjoying school. I know that might sound crazy, but well I guess you all understand. After being back this week and going to all my classes I am really excited to be here. I am finally starting to feel like I am getting somewhere with my education. I think I am really going to enjoy this semester. I am doing a political science class, and also a business and ethics in society, which is a third year. they are both very interesting and the proffs are awsome. And with all this upcomming election stuff I think I am realy going to learn a lot.

So thats were I am, any input or thoughts would be great, stay in school and get through a few more years, or stop, try something new, see where the road takes us and try to get back to school later? What say you??????

Well I hope you are all doing well, Mom I cant wait to come see your place, 15 more days. Ross where are you? Love you all lots.
Ashley