We ran into St. Louis yesterday to do some lunch with Jodi's family at her sisters house.  The food was good and we enjoyed hanging out with Kyle, his girlfriend and others for a few hours.  We then visited Jodi's mom and step dad who were unable to attend due top an injury and took them some dinner.  We left about 8:15am and were back home at 8:30pm.  To my disappointment, all of the White Castle's along the route were closed fore the day.  Oh well, at least the employees got to spend time with family instead of working.  

Today being Black Friday, I went online and grabbed a couple deals on items we needed and that will be the extent of my shopping today.  Yesterday I ordered a Springfield Hellcat Pro OSP 9mm to be my new every day carry firearm.  It is replacing my Glock 19.  I really want a Stacatto CS but the $2500 price point is giving me pause.  

 Jodi is almost done editing her last session that she has to do until Spring and our last two ordering appointments of the year are tonight.  We are looking forward to the long break ahead which will give us more time to relax, get some other things done that we need to do and maybe get a bit of a vacation in also.  

I have a dumpster coming next week as we intend to do a purge.  Cleaning out storage rooms and getting rid of some oversize items will be the priority.  It is both hard and costly to get rid of anything that won't fit into a trash bag these days so the dumpster made the most sense.  

On January 1st, I will once again be seated as President of our club, beginning my 4th term as President.  We ended the year with 715 dues paying members and 6400 in our Facebook group.  I am looking forward to the many things we are planning for 2023.

 I have got into RC rock crawling over the last few months and have assembled a collection of about 8 vehicles.  They can be customized just like a Jeep while adding parts like high clearance links, different tires and beadlocks, upgraded motors and servos, bumpers, add a winch, etc.  It's been a lot of fun building them as well as an RC rock crawling course in my backyard.  I'm about to start building an indoor course in my storage room downstairs so me and my friends have a place to play over the winter too.

Jayson played for a new team this Fall and he is their catcher.  He really has improved over the season and is currently doing a catching clinic for the next 6 weeks.  I am pretty sure he led the team in hitting as well as doubles, possibly RBI.  He seems to be really enjoying it and wanting to get better.  The team he played for is much more talented than the one before and has far better pitching.  They won their Fall league and won their last tournament too.  He has started wearing contacts now and that seems to have helped his play as well.  We did a photo shoot with him a few months ago before he joined his new team so this isn't his current uniform but they turned out pretty cool.  

 I haven't updated the blog in quite some time.  I either forget about it or don't have the time but now that I am on a 4 month plus vacation, I will try to do better.

Jodi has about 3 more sessions to edit and once that is done, she will just have some product design and ordering work ahead which doesn't take the time that photo editing does.  We have had a great year and we are finishing with some unexpectedly strong sales.  

We have decided to get another cat so Niko has a buddy to play with.  Siberian Forrest cats are pretty needy when it comes to attention.  Niko seems to want more attention these days so we are hoping a buddy will keep him busier.  We pick our new Siberian up at Christmas just outside of St. Louis.  

Elections are taking place in our off road club right now.  I am running unopposed again for a 4th term.  We grew to a record 715 dues paying members this year which is quite impressive.  Membership and renewals for 2023 open December 1st.

We had a great trip to Hot Springs ORV earlier this month with about 50 rigs joining us.  My big tire group has an awesome first day doing a lot of 5 rated trails on Friday.  That night we had a tornado warning and hellacious thunderstorm for about an hour.  The trails were still pretty decent the next day but I wound up breaking my steering assist mounting tabs off my diff cover and that ended the hard wheeling for the day.  The trail I did that on was called "Impossible".  It was that day.  

Not a fan of these 100 degree days for my photo shoots.  Got through last night fine with a young lady and have a boy today.  Tomorrow looks to be much better as well as going forward.  We still have 22 sessions to get in and maybe more if the weather remains mild in November as it did last year.

This Saturday I'm going wheeling at Kansas Rocks, the following Saturday at Tuttle and the first weekend of November to Hot Springs, AR.  Looking forward to a great time and hopefully dry conditions.  

 The last few days has been tough as our club lost a member in an accident at a local off road park.  While coming down an obstacle, the Jeep flopped onto the driver's side and he was pinned beneath the vehicle.  Fortunately, his passing was instant.  He was my neighbor, living just a few streets over from us.  

I got the notification of the accident from his wife while at our new member meetup on Saturday.  She was not with him at the time.  I offered to go pick up the Jeep from the park the next day and she accepted.  I went down early the next morning and loaded it up on the trailer and brought it to my house. 

His wife came by the next day and it was an emotional visit to say the least.  I offered our club's support, my support, whatever was needed.  I told her I had a friend who would store the vehicle for us until a decision was made as to what was to be done with it and she was fine with that so I took it to my buddy's where I store my trailer.

Our club meeting was last night and we did a fundraiser for his family.  I donated the Powertank I won recently as a raffle prize and ticket sales for it generated over $3000.  We raffled some other items that were part of our normal monthly raffle and donated those proceeds to the family as well which generated over $900.  All told we raised over $4000 for the family.  So proud of our club for that.  Next week our club we will be escorting the family to the location chosen for a memorial gathering at an area lake. 

Jodi and I have been busy with business stuff as usual.  We still have a couple months left of busy season and then we will get a long break that we always look forward to.  We plan to hit the road for a month and  see if we like that or not.  When we retire, we will need something top occupy us.  I want to get a crawler hauler.  We shall see.

 I spent some of the weekend at SMORR.  Wound up having to haul a club member's Jeep to the dealer in Springfield on Sunday.  Due to the wet conditions, there was some carnage amongst the group, which fortunately I escaped.  

We have been busy with the business as always.  We are still keeping up well and have a couple more months left of the season before we get our winter break.

Jayson is on a new baseball team and playing more catcher now.  He seems to like that position.  The team is undefeated so far and he is enjoying it.  He is going with JD and Megan to Florida for a week starting next Sunday.  They are all looking forward to their vacation.  

We have made it to the start of the school year and the next two and a half months will be very busy for us.  We only have 9 sessions left available and they are all in October.  So far, Jodi is keeping up well and we are fortunately not having to reschedule any sessions.

We went to the Missouri State Fair yesterday and it was the first time for both of us.  We only stayed a few hours but walked around quite a bit, had lunch and visited with a friend who had a booth there.  It was a fun drive there and back in the new car.  

The day before I was at SMORR for an event our club participated in.  We didn't fare too well due to a broken Jeep but it was a fun time.  I did not participate due to insurance reasons but I did get some wheeling in while there.  I also won the top two prizes in the raffle they had.  I won a Powertank setup and a set of Dirty Life wheels.  It was my lucky day.

My RC car collection is taking up some of my time as well.  I have a course in the backyard about 80% complete.  I need to go get some more rock to finish things up.  Cooler weather is upon us so that should help me get it done.  

We keep banging out sessions and Jodi is doing a great job at keeping up.  I hope that continues and we will have a great year that combines plenty of profit while having more free time overall.  

We had a great club meeting last night with about 130-140 present.  The food was great, the conversations were great and naturally, the meeting emcee was great too.  :)   We had a fun raffle at the end and gave away some cool stuff.  

This dang heat needs to go away.  I'll leave it at that.  Not much else exciting to report. 

Three sessions this week and it's going to be upper 90's.  Yee hah!  Oh well, gotta do what ya gotta do.  

I have a new hobby.  Yeah, I need a new hobby like I need a hole in my head but I do.  RC rock crawling.  I picked up a 1/24 Bronco and a 1/10 Jeep and now am modding them to flex like crazy.  You can pretty much do anything to them that you can to a real Jeep or Bronco.  I'm going to build a crawling course in my back yard when it cools down.  Jodi just rolls her eyes.  

 We are back to photographing the next class of high school seniors and will be busy for some time now.  It usually takes me a couple weeks to get back in the rhythm of things but I have had 4 great clients to work with to start off the season which has helped tremendously.  

I have been spending time in the garage getting it organized which was a long time coming.  I bought a 8'x8'x2' 5 shelf rack to help get everything off the floor and in a better place and it is nearly full.  I cleaned off the other two shelves that I already had and put things into some tubs to lessen the clutter look.  Home Depot probably appreciated my visit and purchases.  Had to get me a Milwaukee Packout while there.  

Speaking of Milwaukee, I think I may be a bit compulsive when it comes to buying their tools.  There's a few not shown here.  

While working in the garage the other evening, we had a great sunset which was worthy of a picture.  

With $2000 worth of ORI struts just laying around, I decided to case them up for ease of taking them with me when I go wheeling and protecting them from damage.  Yes, I'm obsessed.

I'll wrap up this post with a few recent images.  The first is a shot of the Liberty Memorial at the WWI Museum where we went to attend Taps at the Tower.  

And these two are from going wheeling at Tuttle a couple weekends ago.  The 43's were awesome that day so they are starting to get broken in a bit better.  Wound up in a good flex pose on a trail too.  

 I spent Saturday and Sunday at SMORR for our club's Memorial Day weekend annual event.  We had about 100 people go on the trip and had a great time.  I got to put the new 43's to the test.  They still need some break in time but I got up Cheap Trick's waterfall for the first time unassisted.  

We wound up having to recover a friend's rig after an electrical fire knocked out all his power.  Luckily I saw the smoke pretty quickly and a fire extinguisher saved his rig.  The problem then was he had no brakes or steering.  We had to winch him over the obstacle he was battling at the time of the fire, haul him up a hill and then down a steep hill to get back to the main road.  I strapped my Jeep to another Jeep and then the two of us attached to the disabled one to get him up the hill.  For the downhill section, we put another Jeep at the rear to act as the brakes going down.  It worked.  Good recovery practice for us.

Jodi was in St. Louis for a few days and we both pulled into the drive about the same time Sunday evening.  I offloaded the Jeep as soon as I pulled in and decided to take my trailer to my friend's place where I store it.  He was having a gathering and we wound up staying until 12:30am.  I was in bed by 1am and I actually slept 8 hours straight through for the first time in probably a year or more.  I wish that was every night.

On Memorial Day, we met up with a few others on a "Honoring the Fallen" event.  We drove to Concordia, MO where there is a new mural and we did a photo shoot with our vehicles there.  We then drove back to downtown KC and went to the World War I Memorial where the traveling Vietnam Wall was.  It was the last day for the exhibit and by the time we got there, they had already disassembled it and packed it away.  That was disappointing but we did get to see some pretty cool sites while there.  We finished the evening by going to dinner with our friends.  We beat the thunderstorms home by about an hour.  

Here are some pics from the weekend.

 We had our club's Go Topless Day event this past Saturday and had over 120 vehicles participate.  Following a half hour cruise to the lake pavilion we rented, we played corn hole, fixed hundreds of burgers and hot dogs and had a pretty awesome raffle.  We raised $6000 for St. Michael's Veteran's Center here in KC, which helps veterans with housing.

Memorial Day weekend I am heading to SMORR with the club while Jodi heads to St. Louis to hang with her family.  I am looking forward to trying out the new Mickey Thompson Baja Pro XS tires.  It may take a couple wheeling trips to break them in.  

 Business is slow right now due to May being a dead month for us so we will have about 5 weeks of free time before the craziness starts all over again.  I spend much of my time dealing with club related things.  There is always something to do it seems.

We had our Off Road Skills Day last weekend at 4 Wheel Parts and it was  great success.  We had a great turnout and the feedback was very good.  It was geared toward people who are newer to off roading and we had six stations setup where groups rotated through.  I taught the "Pre-trip inspection" segment while others covered airing down, disconnecting the sway bar, steering and suspension, safe jacking, etc...

We are going to Kansas Rocks for Adopt a Trail this Saturday to clean up our section of the park and get some wheeling in.  Later that evening we are going to a minor league baseball game with the club,

   

 Got some wheeling in at Tuttle last Saturday and it was great until the torrential rain came in the afternoon.  After getting my new custom track bar installed, Nemesis needed a good testing and mission accomplished.  The new track bar is longer and allows full extension of the 14" struts where before I was coming up about an inch and a half short in the front.  I also clearanced my front crossmember so now my front driveshaft won't bind at full droop.  Noir I'm just waiting for those 42" Mickey Thompson Baja Boss tires to drop.  

 Had to get out and get some shots of Jodi's new Bronco.  This one is a placeholder for her until her ordered one arrives.  This one has a 3.5" lift and rides on 37" Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T's.