Before

Before again

A bit blurry, but a good view of the overall room

Mom wanted to make curtains with some really nice fabric that we used for table cloths at my wedding, but then I was looking on JCPenny, and they were having a huge sale, and we got these much cheaper than making them, and they are done! Turned out great I think, and much better than the blinds/towel hung up before. :) Now we just need to repaint the green, its a little faded.

Springtime in Alaska

I need to take some photos, I'm not sure how many posts I have started with that phrase, but I really mean it this time. hehehe

We didn't have a garden last year - it never dried up enough to till the garden so we grew a couple things in the little greenhouse Justin built up on the deck, but that was all. So the ground rested and got covered with a foot of goat bedding and manure. Plus the volcano ash that fell on it.

We have had a perfect spring. The ash really did melt the snow early and then it has just been warm and blue skies and perfect weather. I think this is the second time in 16 years we have had this kind of spring.

So our backyard got all dug up last year putting in the new septic system and Brian didn't want to plant it to grass - he hates to mow - so Alicia got the idea to put in a berry patch inside the fence where we can water it and tend it and hopefully it will grow. So they put manure in and tilled it a couple times and begged raspberries from everyone we know and then it rained for 4 days -a warm, light rain - and the berry plants look marvelous, darling, simply marvelous. At our other house in Anchor Point, we had excellent raspberries, so they do grow really well here, we just haven't had them in a good spot. keep your fingers crossed for us.

Anyway, back to the big garden. I had a physical therapy eval last week in Soldotna and it was a perfect spring/summer day so we stopped at one of their nurseries and got our standard 144 plants of broccoli, 2 zucchini, some celery, dill, pok choy and cabbage and seed potatoes. The seed potatoes at our nursery would have run around 150 dollars for the amoung we paid 18 dollars for in Soldotna. It is so frustrating to shop in Homer.

We had been buying seeds for the garden for months - it's how we get thru the winter. So Brian and Alicia went out one beautiful day and planted and planted - they got everything in except the peas which we couldn't find. I have cucumber and tomato seeds to start and grow in Justin's green house, but i haven't started them yet.

the little plants got a little beat up in the wind we've had for the past couple days, but they still look cool out there. I love watching a garden grow.

The mama and daddy crane are back - we see at least one of them almost every day - sometimes they are out together, but usually just one at a time, which means they are nesting again. We are so excited they came back this year. Last year was the first year they fledged a chick in our neighborhood.

A new mama moose had her baby in the neighborhood. She looks like one of the twins that was born here 2 years ago. She is small and this is her first baby. Hopefully the first of many that she will have here.

We are overrun with eagles this year. As near as we can tell, we have 6 pair nesting on the bluff below us. That's a lot of hungry chicks to feed. And they make no secret of still using our yard as a McDonald's drivethru. Poor kitty cat can't go outside until it's dark (from midnight to 3 -- no self-respectable cat thinks that is long enough to be out chasing tweety birds - not to mention that the tweety birds sleep during those hours as well. It is driving him crazy - he can hear his tweety birds singing in the day time, but no one will let him out -- and then when he does get to go out, there aren't any birds singing).

Alicia had to put netting over the goat pens so the eagles wouldn't take the baby goats. She ended up with the nanny, Gabby, who had a boy and a girl. One girl baby survived from the batch that died and she bought a billy goat baby that isn't related to any of the girls so we will have 3 nannies and one billy. The billy that Gabby birthed will be sold. We decided to not name them after TV characters anymore - we don't know how their story lines will go. So Gabby is still Gabby from Desperate housewives, but her kids are Mr. Tumnus, the fawn and Lucy - the characters from Narnia. Our favorite new book of 2008. Oh, so Susan the other nanny baby is still called Susan, but instead of being Susan from Desperate Housewives, she is Susan from Narnia. and the Billy we are keeping is Billy Bob Thornton... which has nothing to do with Narnia but it seemed to fit him. hehehehe

A girl from our ward in Pendleton when we were girls found me on facebook and she has a bunch of friends from the ward there that she is on facebook with. Her name is Cathy Udy - her dad was so nice to always try to keep that stupid blue car of mine running. It's strange to be in touch with someone from my teen years - I miss having contact with people from my past. It has been so hard the past 30 years because Brian has been surrounded by everyone he ever met and I haven't had anyone to be in touch with. Especially losing 5 friends this past year, I am very aware of how much those people from our past meant to me.

Have you see the pics of the eagles on Alicia's blog?? they are incredible

Baby Goats

Gabby had two little babys the other night! They are happy and healthy, so far, fingers crossed. They are cute and playful, maybe some good news finally. She will post pictures soon.

Raspberries

Alicia and I went to some friends house today and dug up a bunch of raspberry plants, to plant in our new berry patch, that we tilled up in the back yard. So far we have 3 rows of raspberries and a row of strawberrys. Mom wanted some for her birthday, so there you go! Still rainy here, no good fishing so far, but maybe soon. Always optimistic!

No Cancer

I forgot to post on the blog - I posted on FACEBOOK and called a few people, but for the rest of you here's the good news.

They didn't find any cancer at all. I am going to stay on hormones, the doctor says probably for the rest of my life, which is fine because the really help me feel better. They we will continue to follow up with check-ups every 4 months, but he doesn't anticipate that for the immediate future, anyway, that he will find any cancer.

WHEW - a whole year of my life wasted on worry, but a good result. I'm a little discouraged that they won't be doing any of the other surgeries. I was looking forward to having the giant hernia fixed, but after the funny German doctor explained to us how they would fix it, we all agreed that didn't sound very promising.

so life goes on as before - except I'm back on hormones. the really funny part is that this condition was diagnosed and treated successfully by our country doctor in Oregon, when Alicia was 1 year old. the doctors here took me off the hormones when I came to Alaska because they didn't understand why I was on them. The treatment plan I am on now, is exactly what was prescribed for me 28 years ago and if they had just kept following it, none of this would have happened.

Oh well. We are now busy with summer. Brian is done at the school and is busy welding. The fish aren't here yet - the salmon - a friend took him out halibut fishing last week so we have had our first fresh halibut of the year. Memorial Day was so early this year the king salmon aren't back yet so that fishing is really slow. Plus, we don't know how many will return because there were those 2 years of giant floods that wiped out many baby salmon - obviously those salmon won't be returning to the river to spawn, so it could be a slow run this year.

Two of the baby goats died this week. Two still live. The goat lady is on her way over right now to check Gabby and she is going to come over when Gabby is ready to deliver in case we need help. The trouble that Gabby might have is that she is really tiny and might need help getting the babies out. She seems really healthy and is still running all over her barn and yard and is eating and drinking.

The kids have more and more boats coming to launch. Not as many as we had hoped, but enough to pay the bills. Justin's brother-in-law walked off the job one day and somehow got someone at the Anchorage airport to pay his ticket to Albequrque (SP?) . so they had to hire another water boy. It turned out to be the son of a guy on the Time Bandit. 6 degrees of separation.... hehehe. Anyway, we are all fans of Deadliest Catch and Eddy's dad came and launched at the boat launch and Cordell got to meet him and have his picture taken with him so he is all atwitter with excitement. Eddy's dad (I think his name is Eddy, too?? ) is the Polynesian fellow - one tough fisherman. A couple seasons ago, he fished the entire crab seasons on a broken ankle.

Now Justin's sister and the kids want to go home, too, but they don't have the money to since her husband took all the money with him that they had. So everyone is a little on edge right now. We have had what we presume to be the swine flu. And that doesn't help anything. Alicia is going back and forth between treating the ulcer and treating the flu. She had a fever of 102 for 3 days, but Justin gave her a blessing and it finally came down to 99.

Brian and Justin are both still coughing and weak. We are hoping that this will give us immunity for the winter. I have hardly been sick at all, just mostly some muscle soreness, but I have lived thru 4 epidemics of this flu before, so i seem to have more immunity to it than the others.

Hope you don't get it. LOVE YOU ALL - Have a great summer.
OH- we have swallows, yellow legs, 2 kinds of ducks, a pair of cranes, and a mama moose hanging around our pond. WAY COOL. Also 3 pair of bald eagles nesting across the street, but you know how we feel about that. Darn vultures ! ! !

Good Week for us so Far

I had my first minor surgery on Thursday in Soldotna. We were very impressed with the doctors and the nurses and the other staff we had contact with. Very on the ball and willing to listen to you and make you as comfortable as possible. Brian was able to take 2 sick days off from school to take care of me so Brian and Alicia tag-teamed me for the last 3 days. I'm still a little sore if I get up too quick, but that is all.

We had Negative results on the ovarian cancer markers so that is really exciting. The test should have been done a year ago, but somehow was overlooked so we have been worrying about ovarian cancer for a year longer than we needed to.

We should have the rest of the results of the by-bi-ba -bopsies on Wednesday and we can figure out where to go from there.

The kids finally had a really good day at the boat launch. The Clarks have never seen a good charter fishing day so were very surprised when so many boats showed up today. We know how many boats should be there every day - the question this year is definitely the tourist economy. And yes, Sandy, Alicia does know exactly how many boats they have to have a day to make money; how much to eek out their payments; how much to be able to eat this week..... Thus the ulcer and the vomiting blood. But today, they made money ! ! ! YAY.

I think Brian welded every night this week. He had done like 3 projects all winter and we didn't know how the economy would affect his business. He has 3 to 5 days of school left so it is very comforting to know that the guys will be bringing him their boats. One scenario we have been hoping for is that because money is so tight, people will be wanting to fix things instead of buy new - and if that is the case, we should do okay this summer.

Heavenly Father answers prayers. He really does. We had lots of prayers answered this week.

There was a really bad wildfire out East End Road. We have many, many church friends who live out there and the area was blocked off, so no one knew which houses burned and which didn't. We have a really close family that just paid off their house 6 months ago. they are living in Anchor Point for the summer, so were not in the house when the fire came.

They said the fire burned right up to the house on one side and someone had dug around the rest of the house with a bulldozer and had saved it. We are all so glad. These are humble people who could not afford to lose their home. Prayers answered.

Anyway, I just watched this strange movie : Children of Heaven. Very strange, indeed. Not to mention it was not in English. Strange.

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day! To all the mothers I know, especially the Mother of my children! Charlotte, I love you so much, have a special day. Love Brian

Poor Alicia

Alicia has had a really hard week. One of their investors decided he wants his money back and she has been stressing about that all week.

then her favorite goat died right after delivery. Her therapy and solace for the past 6 months has been to go into the goat barn and spend time with Gretta. she spends hours brushing her and talking to her. So now she is devastated that her goat died and the person that can calm her down WAS the goat.

they brought the babies in the house last night and put them to bed by the heater. They didn't make a peep all night so that kind of worried us so she got up and was having an anxiety attack anyway and went over to check on them and they were too hot and were panting and she just lost it, because that was what Gretta did before she died. So Alicia did what she always does in stressful situations, she threw up, repeatedly. And then she noticed that the throw up was pink and then red ...

I had stayed up all night to be on hand for any emergency, but she thought I was sleeping so didn't even come get me - drove herself to the emergency room. The doctor thinks she might have an ulcer and the throwing up she has been doing just scratched her throat. The doctor in the ER today is an ear, nose and throat specialist.

Justin called the goat lady early this morning, she was heartbroken too. she really loved Gretta and wants to trade one of Gretta's nanny babies for the billy Alicia and Justin want. She had lots of frozen colostrum and 4 gallons of milk and some milk replacement. There wasn't any at the feed store when Alicia went yesterday to stock up, so we were lucky she had some extra.

thanks for the info, Carol. Everybody told us they had to be fed every 2 hours and had to be on colostrum for at least 3 days and stuff that just isn't possible - so your help is very calming. I read your post to Alicia in the Er and she was very relieved.

Anchor Point Chamber has this huge fishing tournament that was scheduled for today so the whole time Alicia was up with the goats and being sick, she was worried about what to do about the giant tournament and all the miles of boats they had to launch today. But the weather started out bad so they are having it tomorrow instead. so she can come home and rest when she gets done at the pharmacy.