Oops!!

Ok, so now I know not to say anything about the volcano being quiet! Yikes! It has been erupting now for almost 4 days. It started erupting saturday at 2:30 and hasn't stopped yet! Its been sending a continuous plume of ash into the air this whole time. Its pretty amazing. Mom and I have been having a little trouble breathing because of the ash (we're pretty sure that's whats doing it anyway, it started sunday and the more the volcano works the worse it gets), but we're doing ok. We got a big winter storm today and that helped to get the ash headed in a different direction, and to put some moisture in the air. So, we're doing good.

This picture is from the eruption on saturday. I think all the erupting took out the webcamera again, because we haven't seen any images from it, since right after this happened. There were five of these pictures. The others are on the volcano website. It's pretty impressive!

We've really had a lot of snow the last week or so. Its been nice though, everything was just green here, right up until Christmas, so its nice now to get to have some winter.

Not much news to report in the job search area. Dad has been working on the church projects the last few days. Then today he got a call from a company in Anchorage that wants him to come up and work on a project for a month (7days a week), so we're not sure what to do with that one. He'd probably have to get a little apartment in Anchorage for the month.

Well, I guess that is all that is new with us. The same as usual, snow, volcano, snow, volano, snow volcano. hehe.

Oh, I wanted to say that I really appreciate all the comments and everything that you all make! Its fun to communicate with people this way! So, THANKS for checking in on us. We love you all. Alicia

Thar she blows

Well, I think Alicia jinxed us. As soon as she had posted that the volcano was quiet and back to normal, the silly thing blew up again. It was so weird because we had checked the website around 8 o'clock and everything was completely quiet, but when we checked just now - it was all WOW !!! again. The ash is mostly headed to Kodiak Island which is south of us, so unless the wind changes completely, we won't get any of this ash. Keep your fingers crossed. Charlotte

Scrapbooking

I decided to take a little time today and scan some of our layouts on to here for you to see. I only did a few so far, I'll do some more later this evening. Just wanted to show you a sample of what we've been working on. These in this post are my layouts. They aren't from anything special, just some pictures I liked. The ones that are black with the colors, are from the Polynesian Cultural Center river parade, where all the islands and their "colors" are represented and they dance as they float down the river in the middle of the PCC. It's a nice little show. Not as nice as the evening show, but fun still.

The first layout is from a Christmas a few years ago, just a shot of our blue and silver tree. I think it was the first year we did a blue and silver tree. We've added some stuff over the years so it looks a little "fuller" now, more strung beads, and ornaments and stuff.

The layouts I post later will be from Mom's book that she is working on with all kinds of photos from her childhood. She is working on a really nice themed album where she's using almost all black and white photos, with some nice heritage papers. I think she has enjoyed it, even though its hard sometimes to go through old photos.

We are still hanging in up here. Its been really cold. Dad had a project he was working on outside in the shop, and it was so cold that his diesel heater wouldn't even start, he had to carry it around in the truck with him until it got warm enough to start, and it never did get warm enough for the lights to work. So, it's pretty chilly!!

Our volcano hasn't been doing much of anything lately, just steaming and having little earthquakes, but the excitement seems to have passed for a little bit.

We love you all! Alicia

A snowy weekend

We had some great snow storms this weekend - blowing and snowing, then blowing and snowing some more. It was beautiful though. Then today was sunny and bright. We ended up with somewhere around 10-12 inches of snow, it was hard to tell since the wind was blowing so hard, but that's about what we have now. This picture is just of our back yard, from the deck.

Other than that, we're just hanging out here, not a lot going on. We still love you all. Alicia

Our crop room

Well, here are some pictures that I took today of our scrapbooking room. I could have (and maybe should have) cleaned up and made it look all nice, but I decided to show what it really looks like. :) I hope the pictures look okay, I found this new program on my computer that is supposed to compress photos, but I don't know if they will look okay or not, I don't really know what I'm doing. So, here goes nothing, eh? We have such a slow connection that its almost impossible to put photos on in their full size, so I hope this works.

Anyway, the first photo is of our desk, which we made out of an old door that we were replacing (it had a hole in it), and we just put it up on a couple sturdy wooden file cabinets dad built years ago. My spot is on the left, in front of those black paper holders. Mom sits to the right. Then the second photo is our room from by the stairs. Our room is at the top of the stairs in what I guess is technically the family room, but which was really just unused space until we moved our scrapbooking in there. It works really good. Dad installed a big flourescent light for us, so it has great lighting.

Well, anyway, that's our cropping room. Love you, Alicia

Scrapbooking

Today was a nice relaxed scrapbooking day. It is the 3rd Thursday, so we usually go to town to scrapbook with friends, but we weren't really up to that today, so mom and I just went upstairs and scrapped by ourselves. It was really nice. We are both working on books about ourselves, with a series of questions from a magazine we read (Creating Keepsakes); questions like: most influential people, Favorite hobbies, things nobody knows about me, etc. It's really nice to take the time to think about things like that.

Dad was working in town today, he was installing the new handrails at the church. They rebuilt the all the stairs at the church this fall, and he is doing the hand rails for that.

We are still looking for full time work. We are looking for jobs all over, right now we are looking at Vernal Utah, but haven't heard anything about it. It's a bit of a tough go right now, but we're working through it.

We had some nice snow today, real light and pretty, just enough to cover up the little bit of ash and dirt laying around.

We love you all. Hope you're doing good. Alicia

Just waiting around

Well, the big excitement from the volcano has slowed down a bit. It is still on orange alert, and they are doing hourly updates so everyone can track it. It seems that the top is swelling, but nothing is coming out yet.

We are far enough from the volcano that we don't really have a lot to worry about, even if it does explode. If it explodes we will almost certainly have some ash fall, but we don't know how much, or what kind yet, that' just a wait and see kind of thing. But, the direction of the wind could send the ash anywhere, so we might not even get ash. So, we just get to enjoy the "fun" part of it without any of the real stress about it. We mostly just have to be sure that we don't drive if it erupts, since it is hard on cars.

Other than that, we are just doing our thing. We did a chinese food night, I brought home rice spring roll wraps, so we had fresh spring rolls and won tons stuffed with cream cheese stuff. It was good. Kind of last minute. It was fun though.

It has been really cold here lately. Windy, a little snow, and cold cold. Oh well, guess that's what we get for living in Alaska, eh? hehe. We love you all. Alicia

Augustine, again

About 2 hours after that last post, Augustine erupted again, and the ash cloud went boiling down the mountain and covered over the webcam. There were some really interesting stories about it on the news tonight. So cool! I wish it were clear so that we could actually see what was going on.

Oh, interesting news though, the ash did fall today, it just fell in the form of snow, which we had. The volcano made its own weather, so that was what was behind the snow. It's all so fascinating. I just love it. :) Alicia

Augustine explodes again!

This picture is from the Alaska Volcano Observatory, and the Augustine Island web camera. The webcamera gets updated about every 1/2 hour (on the Alaska Volcano Observatory website). Its the only visual I've seen of the island so far. This pictures isn't ash I don't think, this is more of the steam. The newspaper said that the magma is about sea level and it is boiling the ground water and causing all this steam. Augustine also re-opened the same vent that erupted in 1986, so it is coming out the front and back. Today Augustine has exploded 3 times. They expect that the ash will start to land here anytime this afternoon. It was seen over Homer and Seldovia, but I haven't heard if anything landed on the ground.

We had some snow earlier and I "collected" a couple of samples on a paper plate, and we could see the little ash particles in the snow on the plate. It felt gritty too. We have done everything we could to be ready. We've got all the cars stored, the goose and duck are locked in their little pen, and we're all hunkered down here. Its kind of weird, yet fun. We'll keep you updated on what we know. If you want to check it out yourself, the website is: http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Augustine.php We love you all! Alicia

Dad's moose

Here's a shot of dad's moose from this year. The two of them (the moose horns that is) were 45" and 52". That's his friend Chris there with him. It was dad, Chris, and Steve from New mexico on the hunt this year.

Our volcano is quieter today, it's back down to level orange. The earthquakes have started to pick up again, but nothing real big is going on now. It's still pretty cool though.

I went to the dentist today, which is always kind of nerve wracking. I thought I had a cavity, but turns out I don't. She said my teeth are super strong and I will never have any major problems with decay, so that was cool. I do have to have my wisdom teeth out ASAP though, and then get braces. We've always known that was coming, there was just the hope that my finances would improve and I'd be able to afford it, but that's not looking good, and my teeth need help, so I've just got to wade in and see what can be done. Kind of scary, but I'm sure it will be fine.

Other than that, things are quiet today. We got a little skiff of snow, but there is a beautiful sunset. We love you! Alicia

Our First Blog!

Well we got to thinking that with everyone else having a blog, that maybe we ought to too. That way we can share pictures and stuff too. Not that we have a whole lot of super exciting stuff to say, just every now and then.

I don't know if you saw on the news or anything, but at 4:45 this morning and again a little after 5 am our Augustine volcano erupted. It send a plume of ash and stuff about 5 miles into the air, then the plume broke free and floated about the Cook Inlet for a little while before it disapated. They didn't get any recorded ash landings, so that is good. I went down to the beach about 12:30pm to see what I could see. I didn't get to see a lot, just some really weird colored clouds that I wasn't sure about. In the pictures you can kind of see that charcoal gray color of the clouds - that was the ash as near as I can tell.

Then around 2 the clouds disappeared, and I checked online and found that what I had been looking at was the ash cloud, so thought I would make those pictures the first ones I posted. I hope this all works. :)

According to the scientific people the volcano isn't done, it was just kind of clearing space. It is still on red alert and all. So we shall see. It's kind of a neat thing. We're all set in case anything happens anyway, nothing to really worry about. If it goes, we'll just lay low for a bit until it gets cleaned up.

Well, I hope you enjoy the blog! We love you all. A