Welcome to Billy’s Webpage!

Updated 12-21-06

Photo by Wendy Shulz Photography

Here’s another pic of me doubling as “Jungle Jim.” Also, note that this is one of the few pics of me without facial hair. I got tired of all the younger women hitting on me, so I grew it back where they could see all my gray hairs and stay away.

Well, the year started off with much jealousy of one of my best friends. She was “forced” to move to Switzerland for a couple years for work. Luckily, now I’m totally over the jealousy that her company is paying her to live in Europe where she can take weekend trips to Paris, Greece, Italy, ski the Swiss Alps, etc. Nope, no jealousy here… Well, maybe there’s still a little, but I’m getting better!

Here’s an Easter pic of the kids and I.

Apparently, the first half of the year was pretty uneventful. I don’t have much to share with you of our times through May. Mostly just volunteering for Kimber’s class and field trips (see her page for those pics) and an outing to the jet car drag races with my friend Wendy and her son (see both kids’ pages). However, starting in June, life got much more exciting.

June began with my baby brother’s wedding. This meant a road trip to Dallas, stopping on the way in Midland. There are more pics of that on the kids’ pages. Randy has a wildlife preserve behind his house. This preserve has lots o’ animals… including buffalo.

Here’s a picture of one of the buffalo drinking from a water tank where the animals make a couple trips a day.

Here’s the main reason for the trip, Randy’s wedding. I know you don’t really want to see a picture of Randy, so I just attached a picture of his better half.

In July, I got tired of waiting for all schedules to be cleared and decided to take the kids camping while Lisa stayed at home. This is a pic of the camping area. We went to a new place, across from Lake Mary, near Flagstaff, Arizona. It was really beautiful up there, as you can tell. We didn’t take the boat, though since I wasn’t sure how big the lake was, and I was alone with the kids.

Here’s a picture of part of Lake Mary. It’s a pretty narrow lake, but there were a few boats out with skiers and tubers. In this picture, you may be able to see ski boats across the lake parked on the shore, with campsites just beyond them (depending on how good your eyes are).

That was a fun trip, and by “fun” I mean “eventful.” This is the trip that retired our first tent. There were nightly thunderstorms. There’s nothing like trying to dodge water dripping in a tent, and then having two kids start complaining that their sleeping bags are getting wet. When you are camping in high elevations, you seem REALLY close to those thunder-claps and lightning strikes! And, when the tent is leaking and you have to go outside in the rain and put a tarp over the tent held down by stakes you drive into the ground wielding a metal hatchet (I used the blunt side), you seem even CLOSER to those lightning strikes! Oh yeah, and I discovered that I’m getting old. Yeah, thanks for the laughter and comments! I found that sometime in the past few years, the ground got much to hard for my sensitive body to sleep on. I’d lay on one side until my hip bone couldn’t take any more, then I’d roll onto my back until my butt bone couldn’t take any more, then I’d roll to the other side until that hip bone couldn’t take any more, then I’d roll to my stomach until my chest couldn’t take it, then I’d start the whole process again.

We did really have fun, though. Kimber learned how to throw a frisbee and catch a ball with her bare hands on this trip. Braeden moved all the rocks and pine cones he could find in his dump truck. When we got home, the tent went in the trash.

Schedules finally worked out for Lisa to go camping with us, so we went to Lake Powell with some friends from church. Lake Powell is about 6 hours drive (pulling a boat) on the Arizona/Utah border. Most of the lake is in Utah. We camped in Arizona, and played in Utah.

Here’s a picture of our new tent at our campsite. This was a little different site than we are used to. We usually go up to the forest to camp, where it’s cool and there are tons of beautiful pine trees. This was the lake surrounded by desert and some cliffs. But, it was beautiful in it’s own rite.

This is a pic of the beach where we anchored the boat and played in the water. There were too many of us to all get in our boat, so I ferry’d a few people over to this beach and then went back and got the rest of the troop. Then, we played around that area, some people in the boat, some on the beach. We had a blast!

It never did really rain on us, though it did sprinkle a little one day. Here’s a picture of part of a gorgeous rainbow as the sun was coming up behind me.

Here’s one of the pics of the scenery to give you an idea of what the lake looks like from our camp site. It’s a little like having a lake at the Grand Canyon (I assume, since I STILL haven’t been to the Grand Canyon, yet – we’ve been here almost 10 years)

While we were still on vacation from our trip to Lake Powell, we heard on the news that the President was in town and was going to be leaving from the airport later that morning. So, we decided to go see Air Force One. The actual plane, not the movie!

We parked on top of one of the parking structures at the airport. We watched as the helicopter inspected the runway prior to the plane taxiing. And then, watched the President’s motorcade arrive at the private terminal. I took a series of photos as the plane taxi’d to the runway and as he departed. This picture shows Camelback mountain in the backgound as the wheels are starting to retract. I think the kids enjoyed standing in the back of daddy’s truck at the top of the parking structure more than watching Air Force One, though Braeden did enjoy all the planes and helicopters. I think that was the first time that I’d ever been that close to Air Force One. Pretty cool to watch!

Later in October, we attended the most horribly organized air show that I’ve ever seen. Luckily, we couldn’t find our way into the “real” parking area, so we got to watch the show for free just outside the north end of the airport in the “redneck viewing area”, as Lisa called it. I don’t want to dwell too much on how disorganized and overly priced it was (if we would have actually paid). The main feature of the show was the Blue Angels, but it was not at a military base, and in fairness, this was the first time the event was held at this airport. So, here are a few of the better photos that I got of the show. In case you’ve never tried, it’s a little difficult to use an “automatic” focusing digital camera that is slow to focus, zoom, etc., while taking photos of jet aircraft doing acrobatics above your head. Challenging! But, I did accidentally get a few decent shots.

Look at the gorgeous, clear, blue Arizona sky…

I kept trying to get several aircraft in single shot while they were doing their fancy moves. This was the best shot I got without losing too much focus to make it out.

Here’s the six-man formation just prior to the end of the show. They took off and landed headed south, so we did have a pretty good location. The only problem was that we could see how far apart the jets were during the parts that the audience is supposed to get the illusion that they are going head-to-head.

The final trip of the year was to Ruidoso, New Mexico, to meet my parents and brothers for an early Christmas and to play in the snow. This was the first time that Lisa and I had been snow skiing. I think it was Russell’s first time and my dad got out there and skied too for the first time. Randy and Leslie had their work cut out for them trying to teach all of us to ski. We had a great time on the slopes and escaped the weekend with no major injuries! I only graduated up to the green slopes, but I was feeling pretty good about my first time out.

Here’s a pic of the boys (Randy, me, Dad, and Russell) in our ski garb.

Here’s a pic of me on the green slope. I only wiped out twice (on the slopes), and one of them I don’t take credit for. There was some unwanted interaction with some snow boarders who were in my way and I couldn’t slow down like I wanted to. No, I didn’t run over them, but I would have if I would have thought about it in time. Maybe then they would have paid a little more attention to the skiers in the area. I did crash a couple times while pretty much parked. If you start sliding, it’s hard to catch your balance with skis on.

Here’s a couple pictures of the area around the cabin we stayed in.

There were A LOT of deer roaming around the neighborhood around the cabin.

Can you see the buck near the middle of this pic?

Here’s pic of the kids with Aunt Leslie and Uncle Randy.

Here’s one of the kids with Uncle Russell.

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