The Carper Family

Blake

2012-01-17T08:31:00.000-09:00

This picture was taken in 1983 - Alicia was 3 and Blake was 12. Charlotte was 30 and Grandma Lusk was 70.

Blake at age 2.

Blake at age 21

Blake in 2nd or 3rd grade.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-09T18:20:00.000-09:00

During the holidays, we blog as an extended family on our other blog: http://family-christmas.blogspot.com/

I have posted a few posts this week. Sometimes, you have to guess which family member has posted. We'll work on that so it isn't so confusing. You can usually tell which one are mine because we mention Alaska or our names or something.

Happy Christmas to you all. Love, Charlotte

Daddy's Obit

2011-10-24T14:22:00.000-08:00

Name:	Theodore Herbert Whisler
Gender:	Male
Age at Death:	81
Date of Birth:	3 May 1929
Birth Place:	Williams, Oregon, USA
Date of Death:	11 Jan 2011
Source Location:	West Jordan, Utah, USA
Spouse:	Marilyn Walker
Children:	Sandra (Susan) Richmond CA, Charlotte Carper (Brian) of Anchor Point AK, Debbie Lund (Bob), Sandy UT, and Earlene Rhien (Scott) Farmington NM
Parents:	Earl Whisler [Doris Edna Hedgepeth]
Full Obituary:	Theodore H. Whisler 5/3/1929 ~ 01/11/2011 Our loving husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather passed away January 11, 2011. Ted was born on May 3, 1929 to Earl Whisler and Doris Edna Hedgepeth in Williams, Oregon. He graduated from Lakeview Oregon High School in 1947. He attended the University of Oregon and Southern Oregon College. He went to work at Safeway Stores at the age of 14 and worked for them for 9 years. He then fulfilled a dream by becoming a Police Officer in Medford, Oregon and worked there as a shift commander and started their Identification Division. In 1959, he went to work as an Insurance Adjuster for the worlds largest Insurance Adjusting firm and spent 35 years handling property claims, then went to work for the Travelers Insurance Company where he retired. He married Marilyn Walker, later divorced, and they were the parents of 3 daughters. In 1978, he married Carole Davis whom had a daughter. He is survived by: his wife, Carole; daughters, Sandra (Susan) Richmond CA, Charlotte Carper (Brian) of Anchor Point AK, Debbie Lund (Bob), Sandy UT, and Earlene Rhien (Scott) Farmington NM; 8 grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren. Funeral services will be held Saturday, January 15th at 2:00 p.m. at Redwood Memorial Mortuary, 6500 South Redwood Road, West Jordan, UT, with a viewing one hour prior to services. Online condolences at www.memorialutah.com

Chester Arthur Lusk

2011-09-12T04:12:00.000-08:00

Well, another sad milestone to record. My dear Grandfather, C. Art Lusk, passed away on August 18, 2011 in Oregon City, Oregon. He had alzhiemers for many years as well as numerous health issues, but he outlived Grandma by 9 months. He was the kindest, gentlest, sweetest man I've ever known and I loved him so much, my whole life.

I am so glad that he and my dear grandmother are together in heaven and I am so blessed to have the knowledge in my heart that he is restored and he remembers her and is with her and all his family.

It is hard to lose all three of my anchors in such a short period of time, but I am surviving. Ten or twenty years ago, I would not have survived losing even one of them, so my sadness is somewhat overcome by the victory of my growth. Brian and Alicia have been so good to help me through all this, and of course their grief at losing these wonderful people is just as great as mine is.

Recovery, step 694,305,300,402

2011-05-17T22:07:00.001-08:00

Unfortuately, the friend I was hoping had the answers didn't have the answers for me. It kind of sounded like parts of my letter (like the parts from the beginning, through the middle, and towards the end) caught him a little by surprise. Like I was saying, the crazy part about facebook reunions, is that one person usually isn't aware of the affect they had on another person's life. One person can have larger than life memories about the other person and person number 2 barely remembers person number 1. So I guess the secrets I was looking for will remain secret or missing. I'm trying to decide that they weren't necessary to the journey I'm on anymore.

Brian's grant for his job was cut so he's looking for another job - probably doing the same thing but with a different age group or at a different school or agency. Welding looks like it will be more profitable this summer which is a big help. If we have a good welding summer, we don't need the work in the school year....but the economy has put such a damper on the welding business, it hasn't paid too well for a couple years. We need another Greek millionaire who doesn't know what he's doing to come along and employ us for the summer. That summer was golden.

Actually, if we could sell our house, we are ready to go to Ecuador. Tired of 10 months of winter, cold all the time... no plants or trees that will grow in the garden. I guess just ready to move on..

Brian's camera finally got here from Africa, so I'll post his africa pictures when I feel better. He is having all his animals mounted or made into rugs, but they won't be here for at least another year. Already dreaming and planning for his next trip and which animals he will look for then.

OH, the recovery progress: the exercise bike, in just 2 rides hurt my knees so bad that I sold it right away. It wasn't the right piece of equipment for this stage in my body's recovery. I HAVE lost a total of 27 pounds - still hundreds to go, but a very good start. I have a goal of what I want to weigh before we move to Ecuador, so I still have lots of motivation to keep going. The therapy program I'm using has you look at your past to find the roots of the problem, which I tried to do, and then you have to move on from there. I think that being mentally crazy and physically disabled combined makes a journey difficult... and I have usually given up before. I don't want to give up this time. Because my mind doesn't always see things the way they were, I often turn to other people to ask their take on what happened, or what is happening. I always assume , or at least hope, that they have an honest or clear impression of what really happened.. and no hidden agenda of their own that will taint their view of an event. But of course, that is unrealistic. We all see the parts of life that our eyes can see. None of us EVER sees an event clearly and without our own agenda. It's impossible. Yet, that is what I am always looking for - the impossible, the perfect, the one that won't disappoint.

It's too intense. I drive people away from me with my intensity and my drama and my desire for all of life to be perfect. I don't know if all the therapy in the world can fix that.

day one of exercise

2011-04-23T16:21:00.000-08:00

3 minutes on the bike today. figured I would only last one minute, so big victory. my blood sugar dropped immediately. cool

steps

2011-04-21T11:46:00.000-08:00

One of the therapy programs the doctor has me on is that every day I have to either go outside or go up or down the stairs. This time of year, I usually choose outside because we are waiting for spring to come and for the shore birds to return to our pond and baby moose to be born - stuff like that. Last week we went out and saw that the rhubarb is coming up in the garden and that the raspberry plants look like they survived the winter.

Upstairs in my house is 1000 square feet of studio - half craft room mostly for scrapbooking and the other half a giant sewing room. Craft and sewing space I have dreamed of my entire adult life. There are 10 steps and a landing between me and that craft utopia. The stairs are beautiful spruce wood - sanded and lacquared, very beautiful. There is even a landing halfway up for resting.

The first few steps, I do great. sometimes, I don't even use my cane, I just bound up them like a mountain sheep. but then I get to the landing and for some reason, I can't get up on it. I switch legs and switch sides of my cane, I try to find things to grab. I always get stalled stepping onto the landing. The dogs find this annoying because the landing is where they spend their afternoons - watching for the UPS guy and Brian to come home from work. They just look at me, like move it or lose it lady - we want the landing back.

The other night I was studying the steps from my chair in the living room - there is a post between my view and some of the steps and I kept trying to measure them in my mind, picturing me bounding up and down them with ease. And I noticed that a step was missing near the landing. I thought the post was blocking my view so I moved from side to side, trying to get a view of that step. Finally, I figured out, there isn't one. Alicia looked over with me and she grabbed a measuring tape and this is what we found: step one is 5 3/4 inches. very manageable for someone with little tiny short legs like mine. next four steps were 7 1/2 inches. about the maximum that I can comfortably manage. last step to the landing is a tiny bit over 10 inches. TEN INCHES !! No wonder I struggle on that step every time. The newell posts are cobbled onto the stair case, so they are no help to use as leverage. We said bad words about the man that built our house. If he had pulled the steps out a couple inches, there would have been room for that last step and all the risers would have been closer to 6 1/2 or 7 inches.

Turn the landing to finish the climb - next step is 5 1/2 inches.

I do this funny thing in my mind when I think I can't tackle something because of my physical condition. I bemoan the fact that I have lost this or that ability... like one day Brian came home and found me crying because i wasn't strong enough to turn the water on or off in the bathroom. I was so sad that I had lost that ability. Turned out the faucet had broken - he couldn't turn it either. I was getting so weak getting out of my recliner that I had to get a lift chair and let Brian have the recliner. Turned out, the recliner is a bugger to close - he and Alicia have to really kick it to get it to close. I wasn't getting weaker, the chair was wearing out. stuff like that. you know. I panic, I worry, I feel sorry for myself. so we have had a bit of a laugh (after a while, you have to laugh) about the stairs now. It wasn't me at all - it was an idiotic build. Haven't figured out what to do about it yet, but at least now we know it wasn't psychological or physical. I just have short legs and the step is very tall.

now that it is quiet

2011-04-18T00:36:00.000-08:00

About a year ago, Alicia and I were watching a very intense episode of "Ruby" where the girls all went to fat camp and went thru intense therapy to try to find the reason for their weight problems. All of the girls there put their weight back to something that happened with their dad. I didn't think that really applied to me but I wanted to find out when my weight did start to be a problem, and son of a gun, it did start with something with my dad when I was a teenager. I have been working on this problem for a year and unfortunately, my father died while I was in the middle of figuring it out. Some of my family are very angry at me because I hadn't been close to my father in the last year as he was dying. I figured this thing in my head needed to be puzzled out and my anger would pass - and I never discussed it with him, of course, he wasn't one to puzzle through emotions. with him, things were or they weren't - there was no emotion and there was no puzzle.

Anyway, so he goes and dies right while I'm in the midst of figuring out this major life problem that has plagued me for the past 40 years and I kind of just checked out mentally when he died - living for the past few months mostly in my imagination and in a mild medicated state... stuck because what little insight I had hoped to gain from him was obviously now on the other side of the veil.

Then I came across a friend of his from 40 years ago on Facebook and one of the final pieces of my puzzle fell right into place. It is funny to reconnect with people on Facebook. There are people that have influenced your life without knowing it and sometimes, they don't even remember you, but you remember them. This isn't the only friend from 40 years ago that I have reconnected with that has helped put my fractured soul back together, but this one came along right when I needed the memory that he carried. He holds other keys to my inner turmoils that I'm sure he doesn't know he carries, but for now I'll let them rest.

The thing I learned this week is that I had options. That is a big thing for me to realize. My mom always says I only see things in black and white - I get stuck and can't see that I have options. For many years I have blamed my father for what I went through in those years - he was too big and too strong for me to fight against. But from here, I can see that I could have gone around him, but I think the methods to go around him would not have been entirely honorable; they were against the ways I had been taught and raised. Maybe being raised in such a strict religious way does close off your options, maybe I was completely bound by my raising to see the options that I had. Obviously, I was so bound that I did not go around him or the way he had raised me...... but could I have ? Could that strength to tackle life be inside of me, hiding behind my religion and my upbringing and what would people think ? I lost almost 5 pounds this week, so we'll see if the answer is here - if I have the strength and the ability to get out of this mold my father put me in.

NOISE !!!

2011-04-17T17:25:00.000-08:00

I wonder sometimes why I never accomplish anything in the evenings and today I think I figured it out. When I woke from my nap this afternoon, I had a hundred thoughts I wanted to write down and record to help me with a problem I've been stuck on and when I came out to the living room I couldn't remember any of them. Just now Brian put the TV on pause so he could put dinner together and the thoughts came flooding back - well, some of them did, I fear some of them are lost forever. It's the NOISE. No one can think in this room when that TV is on. It isn't just the sound really, but also the constant assault of insipid thoughts and stupidity of commercials and reality TV shows.

It's funny because sometimes I think I am losing it mentally because I can't remember anything or accomplish anything and it is always good to realize it isn't me.... it's my environment.

Time Marches On

2011-03-01T21:22:00.000-09:00

Getting Brian all ready for his big safari to Africa next week. Hard to believe after all these years, it is finally going to happen. I'm sure we will have hundreds of pictures to load when he gets back.

We are still working through our grief over losing my dad and grandma. It sneaks up on us - just a little something and you catch yourself wondering what he thinks of a subject or what he would say about this idea or that. And then it just is there: My dad is dead.

For a few weeks I found myself not eating or sleeping, but I was looking up something else on the internet and ran across a WEB md article that said those are two of the signs of grief, so I got some pills to help me sleep and forced myself (with Alicia's help) to at least try to eat dinner and usually something for lunch or breakfast. I was able to stop the pills after a couple weeks.. Having trouble eating again, but I'm sleeping okay.

Alicia is sad too. Life usually doesn't get her down, so this has been hard to help her with, but we are working through it together and it has been a big help to have someone who understands exactly what I'm feeling. Usually, people don't get where I'm coming from.

I don't know if we will do the bathroom remodel next week or not. We just have so little energy left after dealing with the grief, but we might rally and do it anyway. If the refrigerator doesn't die completely and take all my limited budget to replace. Hope the highway comes through and pays us a decent price for our house.

Actually today, I got on to blog about my sweet neighbor, Melva. She is failing quickly and only has a couple days left. It will be so hard to lose her - like my grandma, she is the rock of their family and it will be hard to see them all going through the weeds like we are. Lots of prayers to her and her family.

Sad, Sad Days

2011-01-27T06:42:00.000-09:00

I can't believe it has been more than a year since I posted a blog. I don't know where some of the year went, but I know what happened to most of it.

In early summer, my mother's mother, my dear Grandma Marian Lusk, and my father, Ted Whisler, both were hospitalized with serious health issues and over summer and fall both continued to struggle.

On November 7, 2010, My Grandmother passed away in Oregon City, Oregon.
On January 11, 2011, My Father passed away in Taylorsville, Utah.

I feel like my legs have been cut off and my heart ripped from my chest and thrown through a wood chipper.

We will all miss them so very very much.

On a happier note, Brian's life long dream of a hunt in Africa will take place this year - in March, 2011. We'll post pictures and stories when he gets back.

my new desk and quilt

2009-12-26T20:50:00.001-09:00

For Christmas, Alicia made us a giant super king size quilt for our room. I've included some photos that include the wall in the background that hopefully show that the red in the quilt is the same red as on the trim in our bedroom and library. We have a queen size bed now but we are always fighting over covers, so she made it big enough that when we get our next bed some day, it will be plenty big enough for a king size bed and for us to fight over.. hahaha
As most of you know, I'm working on an extensive family history project and Brian was watching me one day struggle with our little computer desk, which was a family heirloom antique table. Very treasured, but did not work at all for my project. I hadn't said anything because I know money is tight right now because our business depends on other people having and spending money.... so being a grown up girl, I just decided to make do with my little table.
A week before Christmas, Justin and Alicia went to Soldotna - supposedly to get wood for him to build her a sideboard for her little kitchen downstairs. There were lots of sneaky questions, like did I like typing with my text over to the right like that, and did I think the craft table was too high or too low, and one day, Justin sat at the computer table pretending he was talking to us and playing with his tape measure - but he actually was measuring my monitor and the height of the table and such.
There was lots of sawing and sanding and bringing furniture in thru the garage to dry on Alicia's floor and she told me not to look downstairs because on the other side of her present, my present was drying on the floor.. LIes, all LIES.
So finally Christmas Eve when it was time to open the presents, Brian opened all the front doors and went down and the three of them came up the outside stairs with this giant birch desk. The edges are all trimmed with this beautiful carved leaf border. There are pull-out drawers for my scanner and for my printer. A built in holder where I hang the text - on the left - next to the monitor. Shelves that fit the little boxes where I keep the family history slips. A huge table top to hold all the books and pictures and stuff that I need to put into the computer. The wood is a light birch - the same color as the other wood in our living room. I'm so excited. I'll add some more pictures of the trim and the shelves and such, but this is the first of just the desk when it came upstairs.

Time to move for the month

2009-12-04T23:49:00.001-09:00

Time to switch to the family christmas blog for a month or so. We haven't been blogging a lot since we have been on facebook, but facebook is only good for some kinds of communication. for the whole story, I think a blog is better.

so drop by and visit our whole family on the Christmas blog:

http://family-christmas.blogspot.com/

2009-10-17T18:06:00.002-08:00

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

2009-06-09T22:23:00.004-08:00

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

2009-05-29T15:23:00.001-08:00

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

2009-05-29T15:19:00.002-08:00

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

2009-05-25T10:37:00.002-08:00

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

2009-05-17T01:35:00.002-08:00

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

2009-05-10T09:38:00.002-08:00

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

2009-05-09T10:26:00.003-08:00

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.

Birth Day

2009-05-08T12:04:00.002-08:00

This is Alicia's story, but she has to go to work so I'll tell the beginning.

Alicia started to leave for work this morning and heard a new bleat from the goat barn - she went in and Gretta had given birth sometime this morning. the kids were all dry by the time Alicia found them so they are several hours old. She found one outside that was really cold so she and I took turns warming it up and then Ruthie came over and taught that one how to nurse and then Alicia taught the others and then Gretta started paying more attention and was nuzzling and licking them all.

when we first went in, she was just standing there sort of in shock - like "WHAT JUST HAPPENED ? ? ? " But after we worked with her a bit, she picked it right back up again and was doing her job. this is her third litter we think - first one for us - so she probably knows more about what to do than we do.

Anyway - we took pictures which Alicia will post tonight. We have 3 girls and 1 boy. Their names are from Desperate Housewives: Bree, Susan, and Edie. Ben wanted us to name one of the goats after him, but we are sort of planning to eat the boy goat, so Ben should let us know if he still wants us to name it after him.

Ready to blow

2009-05-05T13:05:00.002-08:00

Mt. Redoubt is getting ready to blow again. For the past month, it has been building a lava dome, but on Saturday, the dome began to become unstable and they expect a major explosive event any minute now.

You can follow on the website, as always. Check out the webcorder labeled RSO - it is right at the summit and it is really going crazy with the rat-a-tat rat-a-tat .

Today's progress

2009-04-29T23:03:00.002-08:00

Today was a major day of progress for Anchor Point Enterprises. They got the office / house and the separate bunk house both moved to the beach and Justin's family are all settled in down there for the summer. They have been with us since the day after Easter.

The second skidder was brought down from Anchorage today so they are both here. I think the first skidder has been retrofitted and is ready to work. Justin is going down to the beach at low tide (that's at 1 am tonight) to clear the rocks out of the launch path while there isn't anyone down there.

He has some welding to do on the second skidder and has to waterproof the alternators.

You have to love living in a small town. They got the second house down to the beach about 5:00 and around 6:00 a woman from the Mexican food bus was down there to see if they had a job for her son. We hope they will hire him. Besides being good people, her son has worked there for 3 years so has the advantage over the rest of our crew - 99% of whom have probably not even been in the ocean before - of actually knowing what he is doing and could train the rest of the troops.

The house is very quiet. We aren't sure that we don't have the swine flu. Clarks spent two weeks the end of March with their family from Texas and as soon as they got here, everyone got sick with coughing and fever and headache and occasional diarrhea... just like in the news reports. We have passed it back and forth a couple times.. nothing serious, more just annoying. Plus for those of you who don't have Facebook yet, I slipped into a serious Lupus flare about a week ago... wolf bite on my face and arms even- which I haven't had for almost 10 years. Before Brian noticed the splotching I cried for several days and just kept going back to bed and asking, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME ?? ? ? Over and over in a somewhat pathetic and whiny voice.

Brian recognized the wolf bite on my arm before we recognized it on my face and then we all just took a relaxing breath and said, OKAY, we know how to take care of this. Actually, at first we couldn't remember, but it came back very quickly. Mainly, I have about 10 minutes of activity and then 30 minutes of rest. All day long. back and forth... but it is okay because in that 10 minutes I'm up I can do lots of stuff. I think mainly because I know it will be for a very short time so I can get something done - knowing that a rest period is scheduled and I won't need to save my energy for something later in the day.

Love you all, Charlotte

Can't decide which to do

2009-04-28T22:24:00.002-08:00

1. So I couldn't understand how everyone was exchanging information and pictures but not blogging so this week Alicia set me up on Facebook and now I get it. It is like being inside the brain of everyone you know - all at once. It was a little overwhelming at first, but now even Brian checks it every night to see what went on in our circle of friends. So I don't understand how people, like Joanna, keep both Facebook and the blog up to date. It is beyond my abilities at this time. Of course, there is still lots about Facebook that I don't get.

If you are on Facebook and don't have us as a friend, but want to - just do a search for my name and there I'll be.

2. Happy Birthday Blake.

3. Just an update on the volcano ash. It is EVERYWHERE. It is very fine and is filling my house. The dogs play outside all day with Justin's family and then come in all wet and full of ash. Of course when they dry off, the ash just falls wherever. You can see it rising out of the carpets and on every surface in the house. It's all gritty and impossible to clean up. (well, in the dog's defence the cat does the same thing but he is smaller and just goes out once and comes back in the morning so the main place he deposits wet ash is on Brian's pillow - he comes in when Brian leaves for work, so the pillow is all dried out by the time Brian needs it at night).

A friend in Homer started gardening this week and said she had to wear a mask the whole time because as she dug the ash got all stirred up and airborne and then it was really warm and she got all sweaty and the ash started clinging to her and she was completely miserable.

So i'll probably be letting the flower bed go au-natural this summer. We'll get the ash tilled into the garden in a few weeks and then won't have to deal with it, I hope. Except the webcorders at the volcano are making that little rat-a-tat thing that they do just before the thing blows up again. We are thinking about getting the greenhouse going, but the temps in there are still fluctuating too much for seedlings so we have to wait just a bit.

4. Justin and Alicia scraped up the money they needed for the downpayments and will open their boat launch business on the first of May. Please keep them in your prayers. It's going to be a long summer.

Boy is our face RED ! ! !

2009-04-06T18:52:00.002-08:00

Well, I feel really ignorant, but it turns out there really are ash holes.

Here in Alaska, on a sunny day in the winter, the sun shines but it is sooooooooooo far away that it doesn't heat and melt the snow. It is so disappointing to go out on a sunny afternoon and find out that the ice is now polished and slicker, but not melted at all.

Now, it turns out, the ash really does absorb the heat of the sun faster than the snow does so everywhere is covered in pits as the sun shines down and warms the ash and it melts the snow beneath the ash, but not the snow that isn't under the ash.

We had to drive to town today and it was amazing to see all the "streams and riverlets" flowing beside the roads and driveways and down hillsides. The ash is melting the snow underneath it - I'm really glad we don't live at the bottom of a hill or creek. (Worried about you, Maxine and Ray).

The river, of course, is still frozen solid so all this water really has no place to go. There is a giant lake forming on the highway by Diamond Ridge road.

We are all completely fine and not in any danger from the volcano at all. Thanks for all your prayers and concerns. I am totally in my element as those who knew me as a child can attest too. What a science project I could have made. hehehe

As for the surgery, we are still on hold. Looking for surgeons and a hospital. In the end, we might have to go to Seattle or the Mayo clinic, but we are still hoping to have it done closer to home. Tired of doctor appointments and scared because of Mark's surgery that they will find the same in me, but I've had a couple really thorough conversations with my two doctors that I really trust and they are convinced that I don't have rampant cancer and that we have plenty of time to find doctors who are comfortable operating on me.

I have let myself get really down over this, but there was an excellent talk at conference that letting ourselves feel despair is one of the first steps that Satan uses to get us to doubt the Lord and start the journey away from the safety of the Savior so I am more determined to recognize that when I start to feel despair, it is time to hit my scriptures and then my knees (or vice versa).

Love you guys - and again, watch out for ASH HOLES - they really do exist and they are everywhere. hahahaha

Inside a Volcano

2009-04-04T14:15:00.003-08:00

This is a government picture we got off the AVO website - it is a radar picture of the ash cloud an hour after Redoubt erupted. Last time it erupted, the ash took almost 6 hours to reach us - this time it was here before the AVO have even announced the explosion. Isn't this a cool photo? we live sort of right in the middle of the cloud just about 1/8 inch north of where the road jigs west.

The volcano quieted down and showed signs of a lava dome building. On the monitors, there were these perfectly timed little blips - looked like goblins hammering in unison for 24 hours. When we went to bed, Alicia looked at those rhythmic blips and said, it's gonna blow.

We woke early this morning to the dogs barking their heads off. Our dogs are very well behaved and don't just randomly bark. Alicia could hear what sounded like footsteps on the stairs and porch and the dogs kept barking and she thought, OH NO, we are being robbed. So she opened her window and looked out and there was this black black cloud coming from the volcano and tons of thunder. We never get thunder here - it is one of the anamolies of living here. We have thunder maybe once every three or 4 years... usually just one clap, maybe two. Never a long term thunder and lightning storm. So these dogs who have lived here all their lives have never experienced a thunder storm before.

anyway, we all got up and every once in a while we could see the orange lightning like in the pictures from last week and we heard lots of thunder. It was really spooky. The cloud was much darker and quicker than last week. Daytime had just arrived and then it went dark as midnight. I mean DARK ! ! ! And then the ash started falling.

On the NOAA radar, which we usually use to track storm clouds, we can sometimes track the volcano and today, the weather radar showed the ash cloud coming straight from the volcano to OUR HOUSE ! ! ! We were the very first hit (I think most of you know that we live on the bluff of the point of Anchor Point - we are like the actual most westerly highway point in America) so lots of times our neighborhood gets storms and winds and stuff before anybody else on the mainland.

So it lasted about an hour - just black as night. We got a call from Homer that they were cancelling conference at the church and it was still daylight there and when Brian told her that it was black as night here and ash was falling - it scared her and she hung up to prepare.

It was also surreal because we could click on the pictures from the webcams that are on the north side of the volcano and while we were sitting here in darkest darkness, the webcams were in broad daylight on the other side of the volcano.

the cloud moved fairly quickly and then it was just yellow and brown in the sky - I'm sure people who grew up in Kansas and Texas were looking for a storm cellar, because it was that heavy, yellow that is so scary if you have lived in tornado country. The tail of the cloud was lit from the bottom by daylight, so the horizon was divided in three parts - the grey earth that was completely covered with 1/4 to 1/2 inch ash, then the daylight, then the yellow and brown of the cloud.

It was so cool.

the ash today was actually loud as it hit - meaning the other day, it was very soft ash and this ash was the lava dome all smashed to pieces and it was much more little pieces of rock.

The Homer News actually has a story from today with pics from Homer - they only publish the paper once a week, but have this story from this morning on there if you want to read it. The cars at the end of the story belong to our friends Heather and Trace in their car rental business. If you ever need a car in Homer you should rent from them - Adventure Alaska.

We have pictures, but I don't know if they can even begin to vaguely show you what it was like. We'll post them later.

lightning pics

2009-03-28T12:49:00.002-08:00

there is lightning that occurs at the summit when the volcano explodes, but until now, no one has been able to photograph it.

Yesterday evening a photographer captured some absolutely breathtaking photos of the lightning. The pictures look like you would traditionally think a volcano explosion would look like, but instead of lava, the light is lightning.

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/images/recent_images.php

Volcano pics

2009-03-27T20:45:00.001-08:00

Be sure to go to Alicia's blog for the pictures and story of the volcano dumping on us yesterday. She put up a couple digital scrap book pages today and yesterday, she put up dozens of pictures of the cloud coming and of the snow before and after the ash. It is really fascinating.

What you don't see in the pictures is the smell. Like sulfur, of course, but much much stronger and it had something else in it too. I didn't expect to get volcano gases this far away so that was a curious surprise. We love things science. It is great fun.

Attn: Moms with little kids

2009-03-25T23:54:00.002-08:00

my niece always finds the greatest stuff for kids to do during conference - you can find the link on her blog to the right - it is "Joanna, Cory, Gabe and Hunter".

The post about conference was down aways but well worth the trip if you have little ones to entertain. Just be sure to have a full pack of crayons. My nephew Jed had a disaster at his house when President Monson was named prophet because they were missing the color of his tie. Just be forewarned and prepared.

Life in Alaska

2009-03-25T12:16:00.003-08:00

So we are still fine from the volcano - so far it has all gone north. On the first morning that it blew, we went to bed knowing that there was a 50,000 foot ash cloud, but not really sure if it was going to hit us or not.

Brian went ahead and went to work - he went in early since it was the first day after spring break and grades came out during break, so he had to get there and plan the schedules for his kids.

then as the rest of us were thinking about getting up, at 8:30, the power went off. I was supposed to have a doctor appointment first thing that morning, but didn't want to drive in the ash and with the power off, we had no way to know where the ash was. I called Brian to see if Homer had power and they didn't. He said an avalanche had taken out the power to the entire peninsula. So weird that it came at the exact same time as the volcano, but they were totally unrelated.

So I didn't go to my appointment. All the doctor's records are on computer now, so I didn't figure we could accomplish anything without power, plus we still couldn't figure out where the ash cloud was.

When the power came back on, the phone company had some kind of snafu and the internet for Homer and Fairbanks was down for 12 hours. Everybody in between had internet. Again, not related to the volcano, just a fluke that all three things happened at once. It was very surreal and kind of spooky. Made us realize that we really need to add a battery radio to our storage. We always say, Oh, we'll just go out to the car and use that radio, but it was snowing and cold and windy and nobody wanted to go out to the car to listen to the radio. hahaha, so I guess we'll be getting one.

I love Alicia's post about the problem with ash holes and about people complaining about the webcam being turned off at night. I guess they have gotten thousands of calls over the past 3 months asking them to please leave the webcams turned on at night so we can watch the volcano at night. It's kind of scary that people that dumb are out there walking around. Anyway, just wanted to warn you that the ash cloud can circumnavigate the globe so all of you should be on the lookout for ash fall and the resulting ash holes. They're everywhere ! ! ! hahahaha

Finally, Mount Redoubt

2009-03-22T23:59:00.003-08:00

We were just turning the tv off to go to bed and I switched from a Brady Bunch marathon (I know, extremely lame... where were you when the volcano blew? Oh, we were watching the Brady Bunch episode where Cindy loses the gold earrings.) hehehe

Anyway, we jumped online to find out more and stayed on the local tv channel. Alicia and Justin went out to see if they could see anything, but it is really cloudy and the mountain is socked in from our view.

They say the ash is moving north so it shouldn't affect us too much at this point.

It is extremely interesting to look at the monitor graphs on the avo website. The graphs are linked on the right side of the site - below the daily update box.

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Redoubt.php

YAY ! ! !

2009-03-19T13:41:00.002-08:00

The surgeon here in Homer got the report from the cardiologist and his office called this morning to say he would do the colonoscopy, no problem. And I said, well, things have kind of changed now, what I need is a hernia operation... and she said, "OH< Hernias are his FAVORITE ! ! ! He loves to operate on hernias". I asked if she thought he would do it and she said she couldn't speak for him, but she didn't see any reason why he wouldn't and he really really loves to work on hernias.

YAY for prayers and for good old fashioned doctors that aren't afraid. I'll let you know next week for sure.

Dr. Wise, my primary doc, was at the tubing hill yesterday and he asked Alicia how I was and she told him and he just shook his head at the idea that I needed to be on aspirin therapy for another year. I have an appointment with him first thing Monday morning when he gets back from spring break so things are definitely looking very favorably. YAY again. ! ! !

No Surgery

2009-03-16T16:05:00.002-08:00

Well, just as we were packing and doing our last minute errands, the doctor from Anchorage called and said that after talking to the cardilogist, she has decided to postpone my surgery for a YEAR ! ! ! A YEAR !! Are you kidding me?

I have a uterus the size of a full term pregnancy and a hernia that is actually bigger than the full term uterus - in other words, I have two mass growths in my abdomen the equivalent of 2 watermelons. they have no structural support so standing and walking is just stretching my skin to limits that will never be repairable, the weight of carrying these two growths around is exhausting and painful and yet they will not at this time attempt to repair either one of them because according to the cardiologist, if they operate on me I am at risk for chest pain or elevated heart rate while on the operating table? Are you serious? I have had continuous chest pain due to lupus for 30 years.

Anyway, the gyn said to come on up (and spend another thousand dollars or so) and we'll do a D&C and do a close look on the tissue. Yeah, right. I can do a D&C down here and be home an hour later.

I'm so hacked right now I can't even begin to have words for it - oh wait, the heart treatment that we are going to do for the next year while we let the abdomen fill with cancer??? Beta Blockers and aspirin therapy. I've been on aspirin therapy for FORTY YEARS, but I guess he thinks that forty-first year will be the one that kicks that teeny tiny piece of placque out of that teeny tiny spot in the bottom of my heart.
GRRRRRRRR !!!!!
My plan right now, is to have the D&C done here in Homer, we have a gyn that just opened up a part-time clinic at the hospital. He usually works out of Soldotna and I will have my regular surgeon do the hernia repair, also here in Homer. I would prefer to do them in Anchorage where we have access to cardiology back-up, but if the choice is waiting for a year and having cardiology and doing it now and trusting to God, I choose to do it now.

Schedule

2009-03-13T10:15:00.002-08:00

Earlene asked about the schedule so here it is.

Brian is going with me. They are on spring break at the school, but he also has sick days to use on me.

We go up Tuesday for the pre-op with the doctor and then the surgery is around noon on Wednesday. She said I would be in the hospital for 3 or 4 days - longer if I have a fever or complications.

We are on the list to stay at the cancer housing at the hospital and if they have room for us, we will stay in Anchorage for a day or two after I get out of the hospital if I'm still feeling peaked. Then we'll come home.

Alicia and Justin start their full time days at the Tubing Hill today. They have 2 private parties today- 2 different schools coming for start of spring break parties. then they are open for 3 sessions a day every day thru the 22nd. With another private party one night this week. They got some good new snow yesterday that should last out the week.

they have so much to do for the start up of the tractor launch that this might be the last week for the tubing hill. Just depends on the weather and their energy.

WOW - GOOD NEWS

2009-03-11T01:29:00.002-08:00

We finally got a call back from my doctor in Anchorage today with the results of the abdominal ct scan. (they used a machine, not an actual cat like they use down here in homer, hehehe).

She told Alicia that the mass we thought was the ovarian cancer was revealed to be a simple hernia. Well, we don't know it is simple yet, but compared to it being an ovarian tumor, a hernia sounds simple. Dr. Murray said she really thinks we will find that I don't have cancer yet, she thinks the chance of cancer is "very, very slim" and she is hoping they will do a simple hysterectomy and see if they can repair the hernia and in 3 or 4 days, I'll be home and fine.

We are all dancing off the walls with joy around here. Thank you for all your wonderful prayers. I know we can feel them working.
Love, Charlotte

Stir Fry Recipe

2009-03-09T20:16:00.002-08:00

Hi, mom asked me to post the recipe that I used for the stir fry the other day on her blog, so here it is. It was pretty easy, I just used a little bit of whatever we had on hand.

Stir Fry:
Yoshida's teriyaki sauce (we had the costco sized bottle)
ginger (powdered)
sesame seeds
honey
2 very large cloves garlic
1 medium onion, (cut in half, then thinly sliced into half rings)
1.5 pounds thin sliced moose steak (or whatever meat you want)
broccoli florets (frozen)
1-2 stalks celery
half head cabbage thinly sliced
corn starch
rice

Take about 1/2 cup yoshidas sauce, mix with about 1/2 teaspoon ginger, about 1 TBL sesame seeds (more if you like), and 2 big cloves garlic minced (if its smaller cloves I use 3-4), and about 1-2 TBL honey. Whisk together in a bowl, then add thinly sliced meat into bowl. Allow to soak as long or as short as you like. I mix it, then let it sit while I chop the veggies, and sautee the onions. After slicing the onions, pour into hot saucepan with about 2 TBL oil. Sautee until they start to get translucent, then add meat/sauce mixture. Cook until meat is almost completely done (about 5 minutes) stirring often. Add broccoli, celery, and any other vegetable desired (but not cabbage, put cabbage in last). When vegetables are almost done, add cabbage and allow to cook until just limp. While its cooking, take about another 1/2 cup yoshida sauce, more ginger, and sesame seeds, and a little (about 1 TBL) corn starch, and whisk together in small bowl. Pour over pan, and stir. Allow to boil and thicken, and voila, its done! Serve over rice. Its also good with chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned). Sorry the recipe is kind of vague, but it really was one of those - hey I've got some of this, I'll toss it in - recipes. :)

Totally psyched

2009-03-06T10:45:00.002-09:00

We just received notification this morning that we have won the UK LOTTERY ! ! ! I am so excited. I have never even been to the UK. I have been to Canada a couple times and I speak English (although not always the Queen's English ) but I have seen Pride and Prejudice about 300 times and I have read and seen all the Harry Potter books and movies many many times.

We don't know yet how much we won. If its a lot, I'll be thinking of all of you as we spend it.

blood sugars dropped

2009-03-05T11:42:00.002-09:00

sorry, I think my blood sugars might have not been that high. the batteries in my meter were going out. I've never had to change them before. I bought two specialty batteries in Anchorage (and went to 3 stores to get them) for my scales and it just happened that they were the batteries that my blood sugar meter uses. So Brian changed them last night for me and my sugar was 200 points lower than it had shown earlier in the day. I think the meter may have just been malfunctioning.

so anyway, my sugars are back where they usually are. YAY. one less thing to worry about.

Love, Charlotte

Decontaminating

2009-03-04T11:28:00.002-09:00

We are all just chillin' this week. Justin and Alicia are waiting to hear if they got the boat launch concession for the next 7 years. Please keep them in your prayers.

I have de-ionizing and de-isotoping or whatever you call it. I was so loaded with 3 different kinds of radiation I'm surprised anyone in the neighborhood needed lights for 4 days. I think most of it is out of my system, I hope, but my blood sugars are off the chart. They made me stop taking my diabetes med so that the kidneys could work totally on ridding the body of the radiation and now that I have started taking the metformin again, my sugars won't go down. It's all very confusing.

We did a really cool thing - for us anyway - this week. We always buy produce at Sam's club because it is pennies for food that would cost many dollars here in Homer and we can't use up all that produce in 4 days and so lots of it goes bad, but it is still a bargain for us because of what we would have paid for that much produce here. This week, we decided to freeze as much of it as we could, so Alicia looked on the internet about how to freeze each part and then we just went to work peeling and chopping and freezing. And we were able to put all of it into the freezer. We are so excited to have access to this produce whenever we want it. I don't know why we didn't look into this before. Partly I guess because when we get home from Anchorage we are dead tired and don't feel like working in the kitchen for two days.

anyway, last night Alicia made the most fabulous mongolian beef stir fry that I have ever tasted - better than the best Chinese restaurant we have ever eaten in. It was spectacular and we are so excited to be able to have this food right available in our house. Unless you have lived in the boonies where fruits and veggies are not available, you have no idea how excited we are to have produce available. For instance, bell peppers cost $5.0o each in Homer. We got 6 at Sam's club for $7. 50 - $ 1.50 each instead of $5.00. Plus the ones we got were red and yellow and orange - the $5.oo at Homer is for regular green peppers.

You get the idea. It is all like that. Yogurt - last time we paid $5.oo for a multi-pack and it was $22.oo in Homer.

Anyway, we are patting ourselves on the back for being good little housewives. I always remember what Brigham young said, " A careless housewife can throw money out the backdoor with a teaspoon faster than her husband can shovel it in the frontdoor with a wheel barrow. "

We're doing really well this week, just waiting for the surgery. Love, Charlotte

These people don't know their own silly business

2009-02-28T10:47:00.005-09:00

We are home safe and sound. Got to spend last night sleeping soundly in our very own beds. YAY. There is a MAJOR winter storm moving onto Alaska from Russia and we just beat it home. Had a huge shopping trip to Sam's club, plus all the little things we bought during the week to distract us. Everywhere we went people were saying, well, this product won't be made anymore and this company is out of business, this is our last shipment from them, etc, so it felt like there was shopping that needed to be done while the products were still there.

Anyway, Thursday, the ct scan of the heart should have taken 10 minutes. We rested all morning and didn't even leave our room so we would get to the hospital in time and be all fasted and hydrated like they required. It was a nightmare ! ! ! Well, not a nightmare, but an infuriating and frustrating 3 HOURS . They couldn't find a good vein, so they finally got the nurse from the other morning and she put in the needle and showed them how to hold it down so that it wouldn't blow out when they put in the medicine, but they didn't pay attention to what she said. So they were putting all these meds and saline in me and not holding in the needle so it all pooled right under my skin.

so then, they got all freaked because the meds were supposed to slow my heart down, but my heart wasn't slowing down and they couldn't figure out why it wasn't slowing down until she went to put the contrast in and I said OUCH ! ! and she started looking under all the tape and finally figured out she had blown the vein. I'm so glad we noticed it before she put the iodine in. She said that is really painful if it doesn't go into the vein.

So they said what we'll do is put you on the oral beta-blocker for a few days and that will slow your heart down, (because we can't get it to go down thru the IV- which of course didn't go into the vein, so they don't know it didn't work). Anyway, we will have you come back in a few days and we'll TRY again. I just burst into tears. I said, you don't understand, we had to pay 300 d0llars just for the motel to stay and have this test today, I can't afford to just go home and come back in a few days, you just don't understand. Seriously, you DON"T UNDERSTAND, my husband works at the school and he doesn't get paid during spring break and next month is spring break and you just don't understand, I can't afford to just keep coming back so you can TRY .... cry, cry, cry.

They went and got the cardiologist and 3 other nurses. The doctor said we would try to find one more vein and if that didn't work, we would just forget the contrast part of the test, that basically we ALREADY HAD SEEN EVERYTHING THAT WE EXPECTED TO SEE. There is a tiny amount of plaque, maybe, in the bottom part of the heart. He said to keep taking my aspirin every day even though the surgeon told me to stop for 2 weeks before the surgery and to keep taking the beta blocker. that's it. He kept stressing that my heart is abnormal and there is a risk if I have surgery, but then he'd say, well, it's not that big of a risk, but there is a risk. I was just like: OKAY, I get it already. so the 3 nurses tried for probably another hour to find a vein, they poked every blue spot clear up to my arm pits (seriously) and then the tech came in and said, well, I can't use a vein in that part of the arm, they aren't big enough for the contrast. .......so they just sent me home.

Mind you the day before, in the same vein, I had the same contrast put in for a different CT and they could have run me strait from that CT to this CT and used the same contrast, etc. but NO, they didn't do that.

So late Thursday afternoon we finally got to spend an hour in our favorite scrap book store, which we had been keeping for our treat for end of testing. She didn't have anything new in from the craft and hobby show in Anaheim. It will be in later, but we had a nice visit. It is a very tiny, personal store.

Then we got to spend 2 hours listening to our Relief Society general president from Salt Lake City. and we got to visit with our friend Amanda. We were so upset after the hospital mess that we almost didn't go and then at the same moment, the Spirit just said, GIRLS YOU HAVE TO GO. So we did and we got some good hope and some good encouragement.

Friday as we were driving home, we got phone calls from the surgeon and the cardiologist. The surgeon said, "I don't care what the cardiologist said. Stop taking the aspirin 2 weeks before the surgery."

And the cardiologist said, "What do you mean you are going ahead with the surgery, even though you have this tiny defect in your heart?" And he wanted to know why I had left so early the day before, he had wanted to talk with me again to set up our game plan. I was there for 3 hours, he couldn't have mentioned the game plan somewhere in the 3 hours???

So I said, Doctor, the risks from having the cancer are more of a concern - if you saw the cancer, I'm sure you would agree. Have you seen my cancer? He said no he hadn't but he guessed if I was sure that I needed the cancer surgery right away, he would go ahead and write up his report based on the fact that I was going to have surgery in 2 weeks. As long as I realized there was a risk ( and believe it or not that last paragraph is a direct quote).

So I spent a week and thousands of dollars of state and personal money to go to a specialist that nobody is going to listen to. Silly Silly people.

Alicia caught a bug - seems like a cold - this week. Justin says it is from hanging out in the hospital all week, probably true. Anyway, we are home and we feel good about the condition of my heart. Considering my age and weight (which apparently according to everyone we met at the heart institute is too much) and that I have had lupus for 40 years, I am very relieved that all they found was a teeny tiny bit of plaque in one teeny tiny area of my heart when it was stressed. When it is resting, the heart is perfectly normal.

Thanks for all your prayers. I know they worked. We could feel them. I was much more worried about this week of heart tests than I am about the surgery. I just have faith that there won't be the amount of cancer they think there is. I think we found it before it turned to cancer and the surgery in the end will just be a routine hysterectomy.

Barbara Gulley - I got your beautiful card this morning. THANK YOU. It lit up my day.

Have a good week and welcome to MARCH - I think we have made it thru another winter, almost. Love, Charlotte

Day 7,099,548

2009-02-25T16:54:00.002-09:00

Also known as Day 2.

We did the resting nuclear test today and met with the cardiologist. He started by announcing in a dramatic ominous voice that my heart test was abnormal. So we're sitting there waiting to find out when they will put me on the heart/ lung transplant list and he shows us the pictures --- during part of the stress test, there is a tiny spot at the very bottom of my heart that might not be getting as much blood as the rest of the heart. It may have been that they just couldn't get a good picture of that spot because of my size. How will we treat it??? aspirin daily (which I have been on since 1968, seriously ! ! ) and a beta blocker added to my other blood pressure medicines.

Couldn't he have led with that?? instead of sitting there for 15 minutes like my heart was gonna give out right there in his exam room. Cardiologists and neuro guys are the worst. They are so doom and gloom.

Anyway, he wants to get one more test -they keep saying that - just one more kind of test, one more set of pictures, one more blood draw. Anyway, today I had a ct scan of my abdomen with iodine contrast and barium and tomorrow i have a ct scan of my heart with just the iodine. It is all really hard on the kidneys especially since I am diabetic so I'm supposed to be drinking and flushing and drinking more and more (water type liquids, nothing heavier, hehehe). So I have another day of fasting and lots of drinking water all this night and all tomorrow and tomorrow night.

We checked out of the Marriott this morning - the state paid for us to stay 2 nights for free and then we found a really good rate on a comfort Inn down by the port. It is Fur Rhondy weekend and a lot of the activities are down around the comfort inn. so we checked into it after I had been at the hospital for 6 hours today and it was filthy and moldy and smelled bad and had water damage all over the ceiling and some kind of picture that some tenant had created on the wall paper apparently with some kind of body fluids. It only shows when the light comes in the window in the afternoon. So we decided we were just gonna take a loss on tonights stay and we were able to cancel tomorrow nights stay there.

Then as we were trying to leave they had the operations manager come out and try to get us to stay in a better room and then they had the main manager of the company up here come out and try to get us to stay. She said our rooms just aren't like that - they are usually really nice. Let me find you a room that is up to our standards. So she took Alicia to see another room and it was just as filthy and beat up and Alicia said, It has mold just like the other one and the lady said where and Alicia showed her where it was and she said, ewwww this is icky. Oh my, I'll take care of checking you out. sorry

I know, we are pansies. But I just needed a place where I could chill for an evening and drink my water and feel safe and clean, so we are back at the Marriott. We did go online and get a better rate than Marriott said it would be so that saved us some money.

Yesterday, we spent a couple hours at the Providence Cancer Center which is proudly sponsored by Conoco Phillips and BP oil. (its in giant letters on every floor of the medical center). Anyway,, I said, I have to just step inside here and get a picture in my head so that if I have cancer and have to come in here, I will be okay because I know what it looks like.

Well, it was fabulous. Chairs and sofas and a gas fireplace arranged into all these seating combinations, computers to use whenever you want, private meditation rooms, and craft rooms and really private rooms called rabbit dens where you can go between appointments and eat or watch tv or sleep. And they are what they call a "navigation team" and I have a navigator and she will help me get thru all of this.

Alicia looked like a deer in the headlights the whole time we were in there. Jan and I were both trying to address her needs as well as mine and Jan kept trying to pat her knee and comfort her and she wanted nothing to do with it. It would have been funny if it wasn't about something so serious. I wanted to go back there today between appointments to rest, but Alicia wouldn't even go on that floor of the hospital (and when we did have to go on that floor, she kept her head turned the whole time so that she couldn't see the beautiful entrance doors), We could have stayed tonight in the cancer housing - the services are mostly free, but the housing isn't free, but it is very affordable. But she isn't up to that yet. Baby steps for everybody.

I was very comfortable in the cancer center and found it a place I know I will find comfort in when I need it (and they gave me a teddy Bear and a beautiful suede journal and all kinds of information and stuff.

So everything looks pretty good. Thanks for your continued prayers. Love, Charlotte

Heart Test

2009-02-24T15:48:00.001-09:00

Just wanted to post a quick note to say that Mom's heart test went fine today. She did the chemical/nuclear stress test. Everything went fine though. Tomorrow is the second half, but its just imaging, today was the "scary" part. So, all that is fine. Will post again later. :) Love Alicia

So Far, So Good

2009-02-23T23:49:00.002-09:00

We had a beautiful drive up to Anchorage today. The skies were blue and clear and the mountains were just breath taking. spring is definitely on its way to Anchorage. I always forget when I come here in the spring how much farther along they are than we are. In the winter the farther north you go - the colder it is, but in the spring it is the opposite.

I'm glad I don't live on the Kenai River. The North end of the River and the lake it feeds from are melted and the river is flowing pretty good. At Soldotna and Kenai the ice hasn't even begun to glimmer yet. When the free flowing part hits the frozen solid part in a few days, the people along the river better be sure their stuff is on high ground.

We splurged on some books and magazines at Barnes and Nobles. It is one of our favorite splurges and we hadn't been the last 3 times we had come to Anchorage. Tonight after our dinner we decided that would be our treat for the day. I got the Brothers Karamazov - I finished War and Peace in 4 days and haven't read Anna Karrina yet, but I heard that in the end she gets run over by the train, so that doesn't sound very uplifting. And I got some craft books.

I was going to get some other classics and I was like, this is dumb. I can check these out at any public library - especially our public library which is a very very fine library indeed. I almost picked up a Heminway set, but then I read a couple pages and I instantly remembered reading them in High School and how hard they were on me and how I've always said I thought the Bell was tolling for Me. Again, not very uplifting reading for scary hospital distractions.

We will post as soon as we can after the heart test on Tuesday. thanks for keeping us in your prayers. And HAPPY 96th birthday to my dear Grandma. Love, Charlotte

Cancer Stinks

2009-02-23T09:34:00.002-09:00

I know there are some of you that would have liked for me to call and talk to you about my big cancer scare and I know that the laws of family and society would have been better served if I had said something but I hope you will forgive me that I haven't.

There are some people I just can't talk to about this because if I do, it will make the scare and the cancer so REAL that I won't be able to function. I love you all so much and you are all so far away and if I don't talk to you about this, then maybe it is all a mistake or it is someone else's life or something. I just can't face yet having cancer interface in every area of my life.

I had a couple friends call to talk about it after they heard it at church and after the first couple calls, I was like, OKAY , I don't want to talk about cancer anymore. This isn't fun.

I don't mean to leave you out and I don't mean to deny you the blessings you would get by helping me - I just need to be an ostrich for a few more weeks. Every day that I have to get my blood drawn or some stupid scans or pictures taken or something - the beast raises its ugly head in my face and says - HEY CHARLOTTE _ YOU ARE SICKER THAN YOU USED TO BE. and I deal with it for a few minutes or a day and freak out and then I'm able to put it out of the front of my face for a while.

I love you guys and know that you love me. Thanks for the prayers and any of you that can, please put Alicia and Brian and I on the temple prayer rolls. Thanks. Love, Charlotte

our schedule for the next month

2009-02-19T17:02:00.003-09:00

I have debated back and forth about posting all this, but I've decided to put some of it up.

We pretty much have a doctor or lab appointment or prep-work everyday, it seems.

On Tuesday we go to Anchorage for a nuclear heart scan, the stress test on Tuesday and the resting part on Wednesday, followed immediately by the visit to the cardiologist on whom we are all waiting to see if my heart can take any of these surgeries. Right after we are done at the cardiologist, we run upstairs and have the abdominal ct scan with contrast.

So the surgery is tentative set for March 18th, pre-op in Anchorage on the 17th. It can't be laproscopic .

Anyway, we are very blessed to have full medical coverage to pay for all of this, they would fly us up and back for our medical appointments, but then we wouldn't have a car to drive around in and couldn't shop to distract ourselves. I might fly up and back for the actual surgery since the road is really bumpy this time of year with the frost heaves and such. It is during spring break so Alicia can't come - they run the tubing hill full time that week - and Brian might not be able to come because he has a bunch of welding that he had lined up for spring break. Plus, trying to rent a motel room during spring break is really hard.

After losing 4 close friends (3 of them my age and one younger) to cancer this past year (lost another one last week) I'm scared, but being scared is what led me to get the first biopsy after Jackie died just about exactly a year ago.

Earlene and her family are having a fast day for us on Sunday, Feb. 22nd. If you would like to join in, we could use your prayers. Thanks. Love, Char

Westminster Kennel Show

2009-02-10T21:24:00.003-09:00

We always watch the Westminster and the Eukanuba dog shows. We saw this little dog last night that had a tiara and some pink bows on her ears, so we decided tonight, to get our girls ready for the show by putting bows on their ears. We have some quick pictures to post later that Alicia very quickly took of the dogs with their bows.

then before bed we were trying to show Brian what they looked like and we found a new way to tie the ribbon on so that it stayed on the ears pretty good and only had to be tied on the top, instead of around each ear. So we tried it on both of them and they wriggled out and then we got it onto Mya's head pretty good and Anna went up to her, and studied the ribbon and grabbed the end and untied it and then dropped it on the ground and rubbed noses with her. It was a very sisterly thing to do. We'll try to get the pics up soon. It was really funny.

I guess you can't take the country out of the country dog. We just aren't New York kind of folk.

Much ado about nothing

2009-02-01T12:42:00.003-09:00

Today was the first clear day we have had in weeks and we had an excellent view of Mount Redoubt all the way home from church. It wasn't even poufing. At least Illiamna was venting out the side with a big puff of steam, but Redoubt just sat there looking like it always does.

The reports say that the earthquakes started up again this morning after quieting down on Friday night and that there is more melting and a bigger vent in the top of the mountain that is supposedly venting steam, but we couldn't see any sign of any action at all.

So, I'll guess we'll just sit around and wait and do something besides hit the refresh button on the avo sight (alaska volcano observatory).

The sunshine is beautiful. I wish we had had a camera in the car. It is one of the prettiest days we have had this winter.

Check the avo sight and there are some photos from the overflight yesterday that show the hole in the mountain top that the steam is coming out. I tried to put it on here, but failed, I'll try again later.

Mount Redoubt

2009-01-30T13:01:00.002-09:00

Check Alicia's blog for all the info about Mount Redoubt. It isn't the mountain directly across the street from us - it is the next one north. We can see it from upstairs and from the porch and yard.

We are as prepared as people can be = we have dozens of masks and we have water and food and wood heat. they might shut down the power to save the equipment from the ash so we might be out of touch for a few days, but know that we are safe and as completely prepared as anybody can be.

the activity has just now increased and they expect it to blow any minute now, so keep us in your prayers - but we aren't afraid. Being a science nut, I am really excited to be so close to something like this.

(Okay, so the dogs aren't prepared, they can feel all the constant little earthquakes that we don't ever notice, so they keep running to the windows to see what is happening, but if they get too crazy, I think I will give them some sedatives, hehehe ).

See you on the NEWS ! ! !

Earthquake update

2009-01-25T17:54:00.002-09:00

After the earthquake yesterday, Brian went from room to room looking for what had caused all the crashing that he had heard. No damage on main floor, no damage in the Clark Family apartment. Didn't even think about the top floor.

remember I said it felt like the top floor was going a different direction from the floor that we were on.

Today, Alicia and I went upstairs to scrap book and WHAT A MESS ! ! ! Every room on the top floor has stuff everywhere. We were in the middle of rearranging the use of the rooms (turning the sewing room into the guest room and turning her old bedroom into our sewing room). some stuff was lying more than 5 feet from where it was on Friday. Drawers shaken open, books and trinkets shaken off of the book cases and off of the desks. WOW - there is just a mess in the whole upstairs. the bathtub has all kinds of products in it that used to be on the edge of the tub.

We've never had an earthquake that actually shook stuff off the shelves before. I'm curious about the store and restaurant in town. Although, they are single story buildings so probably didn't get the shaking that our third floor did. there aren't too many 3 story buildings in Anchor point.

Fox News said it was a 6.1, but the earthquake site said it was 5.7 or something like that.

4 Days for Alaskans

2009-01-24T18:14:00.002-09:00

There are 4 days that every Alaskan treasures in their heart as special. One of them happened this week.

The first, of course, is December 21. The winter solstice. But I have noticed that you have to truly be Alaskan in your heart to celebrate on December 21. The sun still just comes up at 10:20 in the morning and sets again around 3:27 - that's a short day, and the 10 short seconds that adds to our day on December 21 is more in your mind and heart than on the clock. So I have noticed that people who really love Alaska have faith in those 10 seconds and rejoice, but some, like me, are still suspicious that the darkness will really leave.

2nd best day - when you are just going about your business and notice that it is after 5:00 and you can still see outside. It sneaks up on you, unnoticed. We were at scrapbook day and were loading our cars when all of a sudden we realized that we had stopped scrapping at 5:15 and it was almost 6:00 when we left and we could still see - not daylight exactly, but we could see (well, 5:47 to be exact).

3rd best day - the day when you are cooking dinner or watching Tv or something and realize that it is 6:30 and it is broad daylight. BROAD DAYLIGHT. That is a happy day, but again, it sneaks up on you and you don't have a specific date when you know it will be here. So it is always such a happy surprise.

and Lastly, there is the day when the alarm goes off and you can look around the room and see things and you realize that sometime in the past 3 months, MORNING has come back.

This morning Brian was the only one up when the earthquake hit. It was 9:09 and I could see around the room, but he still had to turn on all the lights to check for damage. It was a very noisy earthquake - I was sound asleep and just woke up for the jolting - but the others heard it before it hit the house and then the whole house just rode up and down like the ground was waves of water. Then it smacked the house and the part I heard was the bottom half of the house shifting east and the top half of the house was shifting west. At the same time, downstairs, they felt it lift about 3 inches up and drop back down.

I'm not a door frame stander. I worked with a girl from Austrailia who would jump into a door frame at every shake. She was always trying to get me to hide under my desk and I was like NO ! ! ! my desk was the originial piece of furniture that came with the mental health center - it only had 3 legs and it was an Lshape so should have had 6 legs. She's was always "get under your desk" and I was always, "NO, I'll be crushed for sure".

I just always try to be sure that I don't hang pictures with glass on the stairways and don't hang heavy stuff above people's beds and try to have valuables in secure positions. I really need to buy some clay that they use in museums to hold some of my special things, but then if they haven't fallen in these 2 biggest earthquakes we have had, they probably will be okay.

No tsnunami warning, which surprised us because the quake was center right smack in the center of the inlet where it meets the pacific ocean, but i'm glad there wasn't one.

So anyway, we have passed 2 our of landmark rejoicing days so far. Two more to go. (and if you are wondering, the saddest day of the year for Alaskans: June 21. The busiest day of the year and the beginning of winter. Very sad.)

Hope Susan had a happy Birthday this week. and hope Mother gets rid of the flu. We've all been sick for about a month now, but it is very subtle: headache, fever, some stomach discomfort. Easiest flu we've had in a long time, but it lasts and lasts and lasts.

Apple Cart Upside Down

2009-01-18T23:35:00.002-09:00

Our ward played "Apple Cart Upside Down" today. We have a new bishopric - Bishop Greenmun (Fran Evarts father), Brother Jimenez (sorry, I know that isn't spelled right - I'll fix it later), and Brother Trimble. Brian was released as Elder's Quorum president. He was tired - he's been in the EQ presidency or the bishopric for 7 years. I was teasing him that they would call him to be cub scout leader, but I just read the Clutts' blog and I think they have the cub scouts covered, so that's good. Brian really isn't a fan of the boy scout program - I blame the boy scouts in Joseph, I'm sure Blake will agree.

We don't have a Relief Society President - they changed her to Young Womens a month ago and have just left her post blank since then.

We are still hoping to form a branch here in Anchor Point. We have at least 10 active priesthood holders in the winter and have 30 or 40 in the summer. Our ward covers an area that is 100 miles of road from one end to the other. Makes home and visiting teaching a journey - not to mention the ward members that can only be reached by snow machine or argo.

Well, we will keep you posted. We added another abandoned dog to our house today, but 2 labs are toooooooo many ! ! ! ! Anybody around here need a really nice dog?? She's really sweet, but I just don't know that our house is big enough for 2 big dogs.

Well, I gotta go - Luke just blew up the Death Star so it must be time for me to go to bed. (I'm watching the original, purist version, of course). there is no way that Jabba the Hut was agile enough to walk around los Isley....
NIGHT !!!

When she was bad, she was horrid

2009-01-17T00:43:00.003-09:00

I wasn't going to post this and then I was and then I wasn't, but I guess I will.

My mom used to always say that I was the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, and when she was good, she was very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.

I know that Joanne and Heather have both gone digital in their scrapbooking, but Alicia and I are very tactile people and we like to have our hoards of supplies and tools all stacked up on our desks where we can see them and where we have to move them everytime we have a new project. Last winter, my project was jewelry making and I sold a few pieces on etsy (there are still some there, if you are interested) . hehehe

Anyway, this summer, we took up rubber stamping in a serious way and last week while we were in Anchorage, we asked the owner of our cool new scrap book store how to color the stamps and she introduced us to these super cool markers and now we are so addicted. We just want to color all the time. Of course, we can't do that, but still we think about it all the time. I'm terrible at coloring, I always have been. I don't know what made me think that these markers would be the answer to my lack of skill, but I did. I don't know, I will study and try and see if I can get them to behave. There are all kinds of lessons on the internet on how to use them on different paper and with other mediums like colored pencils and such. Alicia is good at them already, but she has an eye for colors that I just do not have. She also got some really good scrap book pages done last week, but we don't have a 12 inch scanner, so we can't scan them in to show you.

Everytime I spend money on craft supplies and then go upstairs and try to put them away and there is no place to put them, I feel like a bad person. It's just REALLY hard to get thru a winter up here, you know?? Last week, it was 35 below and this week it is 45 above and it should be nice and springtimey out there, but up here the sun is still far far away and so when it warms up to 45 all it does is polish the ice. It is so slick out there - the school has cancelled all sports for 2 weeks - last week too cold, this week too warm and slippery. Freaky.

Oh, and I threw a fit a couple weeks ago because I could not get a single computer in this house to print ANYTHING, so we broke into our savings and got a new computer. We dreaded getting Vista because everyone says it was awful to work on, but so far we love it. I can turn it on and check all my email and blogs and etsy and my bank account in less than 5 minutes. the other computers took at least 10 just to boot up. It's really fast.

So, I know I can't single handedly jump start the US economy, but you know I always have to try. It is my patriotic duty. So I've been bad, but I've also been very patriotic and good.. :))

One more gone

2009-01-10T00:08:00.002-09:00

Alicia's friend from Joseph passed away last weekend. He first was diagnosed with cancer when he was a senior in high school and he has fought off that and 2 other bouts of different cancer and just got done with chemo for a return of his original lymphoma and he thought he had pneumonia because he couldn't breathe. They took him to the ER and the doctor said it was cancer and Levi said, NO IT ISN"T. I don't have lung cancer. so his dad came and took him home to Joseph for Christmas and the doctors in Enterprise found that it was indeed cancer and he died a day or two later.

I know he couldn't take another round of chemo. He was so tired and so sad. His name was Levi Bobbit - I know we have written posts about him before. In kindergarden, Alicia said his name was Levi 501 Jeans, so that is what we have always called him.

We are thankful that his last months were spent leaning on the Lord and finding his relationship with God and we know that he must be in a better place where there is no pain or swelling or chemo, but he was so young - just 28 - and instead of being a teenager and a young man who experienced life, he spent the greater part of the last 10 years fighting to just breathe.

We love you Levi and we'll be thinking of you.

Back from the Doctors

2009-01-08T19:41:00.002-09:00

We have just walked in the door from Anchorage. It is zero here which is 25 degrees warmer than it has been for 3 days in Anchorage (well, okay, sometimes it was only 15 below - but sometimes it was 35 below)... But the wind is here and it is about 35 below wind chill. As of today, we have set the record to be the third coldest period that Alaska has ever experienced. I'm not sure how many more days to be the coldest, but it is supposed to stay this cold for another week at least.

It is so hard to navigate in this kind of cold - everyone in Anchorage was cold and tired and grouchy. Except the people who were visiting from the bush and Fairbanks and stuff. They thought it was kind of toasty and didn't mind so much.

So the news is I do have to have surgery. We start the pro-op work here in Homer and have to get clearance from my doctor here. I have to start some physical therapy that will help me manage the post-op recovery. It should mostly be laproscopic. for sure we have to take one ovary, we are still looking for the second ovary, so we don't know if it needs to come out or not, and they I have to have my uterus taken out and some kind of procedure done on my bladder. I'm not that excited about it, but in a way, it is a relief to finally have something planned. It will probably take a month or so to get all the pre-op tests done and such. We'll keep you posted.

Hope you are all warm - I wish we were. hahahaha

55 below

2009-01-05T10:35:00.002-09:00

The HIGH today in Fairbanks is supposed to be minus 55. That is the HIGH. I didn't hear what the low was supposed to be. YIKES. Makes our 15 to 30 below look more liveable, except that I have to spend the week in Anchorage getting in and out of the car to go to doctor appointments and shopping and such and that degree of cold is really painful for my body. Please keep me in your prayers. It is kind of a good distraction = I'm not nearly as freaked about the biopsies and the ultrasound as I am about getting too cold. (well, I'm a little freaked - there isn't any change in my condition since I was up there in June, this is just my followup - I'll probably keep doing this until something changes).

I'm on page 300 of War and Peace. Ihate to tell you, Jed, but the beginning is just like the middle. Tolstoy just drops us into the lives of these people and continues on like that for the rest of the book. I love it, but it seems more like a woman's book than something a man would enjoy. It's mainly about going to dinner parties and getting married for profit and getting ahead in life or in politics. The best thing I can think of to prepare someone to read it is to read about Marie Antoinette and the time of the French revolution - that was the subject I studied last winter and this just sort of picks up where that left off. The russians were so into all things French in this time period.

I keep waiting for the great items of "doctorinal import" but so far I haven't found anything of the sort in the book. All the characters are looking for that one thing in their life and just like in real life, that one thing is different for each person.

Well, stay warm. A HIGH of 55 below.... too cold to even consider. BRRRRRRRR

Hunting the Mid Rivers

2008-12-28T20:14:00.002-09:00

Well, as most of you know, our gift to each other and to the kids this year was to get a new satellite and upgrade to get some channels that we all were wishing we could watch. The first day or so, I don't think Brian was that impressed with the selection, but now he has discovered 2 hunting channels and he watches them 18 hours a day. Yippee.... but anyway, that isn't what this post is about.

We just watched a show about whitetail deer hunting and I heard that it was in Montana, but didn't listen to the rest, then I glanced up from my reading and said, HEY where in Montana are they? and Brian said, I don't know ...somewhere where the Missouri river meets up with another river. "the Yellowstone?? " I asked, and he said yes. It was so cool to see that country again. They call it the "Midriver country" now. I was looking up the outfitter on the internet and they even offer a fishing guide to Fort Peck Reservoir. and I said, "HEY, I could be a fishing guide for free on Fort Peck Reservoir. We used to fish there."

The outfitter is based in Fairview - which if you remember, is the town 11 miles from Sidney that is half in Montana and half in North Dakota.

Brian has a friend going to Africa to hunt in March and that combined with all these hunting shows is getting Brian anxious to hunt.

Our Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T23:10:00.001-09:00

Christmas Eve in Alaska
It is late. Judy Garland is singing "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas" in St. Louis. The children are all nestled snug in their bed and the stockings are hung by the chimney with care. Pa isn't in his cap or his kerchief, but he is in bed and wouldn't hear a clatter if it hit him in the head... We had a lovely ham dinner with twice baked potatoes, deviled eggs, whole wheat rolls. It seems like there was more than that but I can't remember and we all got so full we didn't eat any of the desserts (until now, I'm sampling the pies). We had lots of breaks with tradition this year. Usually we have a breakfast for Christmas Eve but this year we had a wonderful ham dinner instead. (It was a whole, bone in ham with GREAT flavor, and Brian put water in the bottom of the pan and the meat was so soft and juicy. I have to say it was the best ham I've ever eaten.) A friend at church loves to make whole wheat bread and she and Brian go back and forth on storing and grinding and using wheat - it's a huge, long-standing joke between them and half the ward. Anyway, this summer, we finally bought a bit of wheat and I forgot that I had bought a little hand operated mill. a couple weeks ago, Brian decided we better get a wheat mill (BOTH of us forgot we had bought the small hand mill) and he ordered an electric mill that should be here any day. So our friend brought Brian a loaf of her wonderful whole wheat bread last week as a congratulations gift for his breaking down and getting a grain mill. It was so good we decided to try to make whole wheat rolls for our dinner. Brian was a trooper and ground the wheat in the little hand mill. He says it will have to be some heck of an emergency before we use that mill as our daily flour grinder... but he got enough to make the dough. He is a master of making bread dough in our bread maker. We wore out 2 other bread makers, but this one has a faulty bake cycle so we don't use it very often, but it is great for making dough and he makes wonderful dough combinations in it. So he made the dough and then I used my brand new Pampered Chef 13 x 9 inch pan which I bought specifically to bake rolls in. They turned out PERFECT. sometimes when you go to a party or a demo and see a product and get sold on it and them come home and are so disappointed. Well, I am not disappointed in this pan at all. The rolls come out completely and more importantly, the pan has even heat, so all the rolls are the perfect amount of doneness. The glass pan I have used for 30 years has hard rolls on the outside and doughy ones in the middle... and I hate that. So I am happy as a clam with this purchase. So the kids are exhausted. They have been working 14 hour days, 7 days a week - and of course the tubing business is very physical and outside in the cold and wind a lot which is so tiring. They got home around 6:00 and we had dinner mostly ready. Alicia thru some finishing touches on the eggs and finished the potatoes. Justin set the table. Before they came home, Brian had started a sweet dough in the machine for Alicia to make into the Christmas morning roll and she thru that together before we ate and it rose during dinner and the presents. The other break with tradition is that Christmas day we are having dinner at the inn. We never leave home on Christmas day - at least we haven't for about 20 years. They are cooking prime rib and all our friends from church are coming and doing potluck again. We have dessert duty again. Brian made pies and we worked together to make a blueberry cheesecake dessert kind of thing. We will make some more stuff in the morning, I'm sure. It was fun for Brian and I to work together in the kitchen again. We paced it out all day and built in rest periods and finally I had Brian bring my walker in so I could sit and work at some tasks, like peeling eggs and chopping potatoes. So much of the work and cooking that I used to do has fallen on him and he never complains and I really appreciate him taking over and it was very nice to be able to work together. We had a lovely evening and we are thinking of you all. It was a humble Christmas in our house - more love that money was spent, but we are learning to like that kind of Christmas better. We are so grateful to be celebrating the greatest gift of all - the gift of a Savior who was born to redeem us, to pay for our sins, and to save us all. There isn't a better gift around than that... HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL. Love, Charlotte

Check out our holiday blog

2008-12-18T23:13:00.003-09:00

During the holidays, Alicia and I usually do all our posting on our family blog:

Family Christmas Countdown

the link is beside the posts. You can see the beautiful trees Alicia decorated this year. She did mine and hers. Today she watched Paula Deen make a caramel cake and we are all now in sugar comas...

Don't you love the holidays??

Some of our Thanksgiving pics

2008-12-08T23:49:00.018-09:00

Don and Jenn after the toddler party in the girls restroom was broken up.

Jake trying to win at pool.

Cassandra and Boyd and Saundi.. Trying to decide if Kareoke is as bad as others say it is (I think that is what they are talking about, I don't read lips, they were probably discussing something about Primary. ) Note the look on Boyd's face, he was just removed from the toddler party in the girls restroom.

Fred and Carol show their way around the Kareoke machine.

Heather explaining the finer points of pool to Jake and to our pretend grand daughters Wendy and Brittany,

Luke playing pool with Grandpa Brian

One of 4 tables packed with good, good food.

Jennifer and Jess belting one out while Kimmie and Rachel dance.

The battery on the camera kept dying so I didn't get the best picture of this. There were these twirly lights that went in a circle on the stage and every time she saw them, Vee just danced and danced in circles until finally we had to turn them off so she didn't get dizzy. You can't see the lights in this photo, but you can see her shining eyes. She was in heaven.

Kimmie belting out her ABC's and I think Twinkle Twinkle.

These two photos are all of us singing Happy Birthday to our pretend granddaughter Jessica for her 19th birthday. In the top photo, she is trying to crawl under the pool table and Shauna is holding her back. Below, we finally not only got her to smile, we actually captured it in a photo.

Gavin just loves to talk to Justin.

5 Toddlers, 3 babies, 6 teenagers, 2 pre-teens, 2 missionaries and 2 rooms full of adults.

New Floor

2008-12-07T19:06:00.003-09:00

Alicia posted some pictures of the new floor on her blog:

http:// justinandaliciaclark.blogspot.com

I'll take some of the furniture and such when we get the tree up. It feels so elegant. I also have fabric to make drapes to replace the $2.00 blinds the first owners put up. Have to wait until after Christmas to get the drapes done, I think.

There are a few pics on the Family Christmas Countdown from our Thanksgiving at the Inn. I'll put some more on here.

The cord for the laptop is not connecting, so it takes me about 5 hours of intense pushing to connect the cord to the computer to recharge the battery, then it takes about 30 minutes to run it down. Grrr. Alicia is going to take it in to the shop this week.

I was contacted by a new Whisler genealogy cousin this week. We share the same great great great grandmother - Sarah Bender. He has some info that I don't have and vice versus and he is working on new family search, which is always a help, and it is good to have a new Whisler connection. There aren't that many of us around.

In case you have forgotten what time of year it is, let me say: LET 'ER Buck ! ! !

Where I've been

2008-11-19T23:37:00.002-09:00

I wrote this long post a couple weeks ago, but then erased it instead of posting it, but I think I will try to post a short version today.

I had 2 friends die this month and my 2nd dearest friend (and mission companion) suffered a severe stroke the same week and has not recovered her ability to speak or get around too well.

The deaths hit me really hard as they were my 2 friends that had diseases like lupus. When it was too cold to go out or when flu season was everywhere and I stayed home to hide, I knew my friend, Christine, would be home too and we would call and visit for hours, knowing that exactly what the other one was feeling. She ended up dying of colon cancer. She had a really tough life and in the midst of it learned to add beauty and grace to her life and the lives of those around her.

The other death was a younger man who had MS. His wife was my friend and mentor when I worked at mental health. When you share a tiny office, and work responsiblities, with someone for every day for 2 years, you get pretty close. She was Alicia's age or younger when her husband was diagnosed with MS. I remember the day and how we all assured her that with proper nutrition and stress management, he would outlive us all.... But you could see it in her eyes then that she saw the future and knew he would not want to live like a caged animal. In the end it was out of their hands as he had an aggressive form of MS and he failed very quickly. If I remember correctly, he and I received our diagnoses within a month of each other, so to see someone so much healthier and younger than I fade so fast has somewhat sobered me.

But more than that, I just feel so bad for her to have known all these years in her heart that she would be a young widow --- and just watching and waiting for it to happen. I'm so sad for her and her girls.

In the end, he died when his ATV flipped on him in a ditch and he wasn't strong enough to push it off, but it was the MS. He used to be a state champion wrestler and was really strong until the disease wracked his body.

And finally, I can't even begin to think about my dear friend, Edna, and how afraid I am for her. She has been having little strokes for years so this was not unexpected, (she just turned 85), but she is always so full of energy and light, I just can't bear to think of her struggling in a silent prison. It is one of her greatest fears, as well. Alicia says it is everyone's greatest fear, and I'm sure she is probably right.

And on top of it all, I have apparently had this year's flu... killer headache and fever for 3 weeks. I have finally had 3 consecutive days where my head wasn't killing me all day, just part of the day... I think I might be recovering.

So the upshot of this all, is that I haven't been spending time on the blogs or emailing folks - I'm kind of in a tortoise shell, hiding my head and trying not to think too much, so I don't make myself (and everyone around me) totally crazy . A very sobering month.

I'm grateful for the health that I do have and for our beautiful warm home and that Brian gets to work inside after all those years in the frozen woods. I'm so thankful for the season of properity we had this summer. I'm thankful that I can walk and talk and read and think and sing and play the piano and the organ and do crafts. and I'm thankful that I have a healthy, loving husband who takes such good care of me and never makes fun of my "sick with the flu bedhead hairdo". Truly blessed.... truly blessed.
Love, Charlotte

Hats off to new Top Chef

2008-11-12T20:25:00.002-09:00

YAY !!!!! New season of Top Chef. Brian read all the bios yesterday on Bravo.com and sort of rated the beginning class of losers. He picked right on who would leave at the end of the show today. We'll see if he gets the rest correct.

He likes Carla because her special ingredients are chocolate and butter and her specialty is pie making. The man loves his pies...

REgarding food: the beans that we canned dry and covered with boiling water popped a lot of their lids. Every morning we would wake up to the sound of lids popping, so we put the rest of them into the freezer. We haven't noticed any of the cooked beans popping yet. Justin's mom does hers without cooking them first, and doesn't have any problems.... but she is at 7500 feet and we are at like 40 feet. We figure that must make a difference.

Beans

2008-10-29T17:56:00.002-08:00

So crazy lady says, you know, it isn't anymore mess or trouble to can 35 pounds of beans than it is to do 5 pounds. We might as well do them all.

and the part that always surprises the crazy lady, is that people say, yeah, you're right. It isn't anymore trouble, let's do them all.

Crazy lady forgot that each canner took time to warm up, 90 minutes at pressure, and 30 minutes to decompress...... that's a lot of canner time - lot of time sitting in the kitchen watching little weights jiggle back and forth..

I was so going to stay up and run that last cycle of beans, but I was having such trouble staying awake, and I had sent Alicia to bed at midnight. I could just see myself falling asleep and blowing up the house, so we decided to just wait until morning to reconsider. When we got up this morning, we just decided to feed the last 5 pounds of beans to the chickens. They really enjoyed them.

I would still like to can another 20 or 30 pounds. The point of canning them is of course so that you don't have to store the water to rehydrate the dried beans. I think people store lots of dehydrated food and then forget that they also need to store the corresponding amount of water. Plus, the ready cooked beans are so handy to have on hand.

Anyway - check alicia and justin's blog for the pictures. and the rest of the story.

I'm a Bette

2008-10-23T01:43:00.002-08:00

I took the test on Alicia's blog and I'm a Bette Davis.... hmmm. Scariest movie I ever watched had her in it. It was one of the triggers that started my adulthood of panic attacks.... anyway, i didn't come here to tell you that. Just the Bette Davis part. i usually see myself as more of a Doris Day.

No weigh in this week to report. ummmmm I haven't been a good eater this week - I'm on hormones all the time now, after 15 years of not being on them, and my family is sort of afraid to see what will happen if I don't eat the stuff I'm craving. I definitely know it is the hormones because I have been craving stuff that I literally have not even thought of in 15 years since I quit taking them.

So to all you out there, within my reach, we just have one thing to say: BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID....... (you might think i'm joking, but i'll let my roommates tell you if it's a joke or fear). Big Sigh.... I love being a guinea pig .

Weigh In Wednesday

2008-10-15T11:08:00.002-08:00

I finally dug the scales out of hiding after the big remodel and reluctantly got on them. SURPRISE ! ! ! I'm still at a minus 15. YAY !! I was totally shocked after not weighing for 3 weeks that I had maintained the loss. Very excited.

Flat Stanley here to visit

2008-10-10T12:22:00.002-08:00

Flat Stanley is here to visit again. This FS belongs to Taylor Gulley - the younger sister of the Flat Stanley we had last year. He wants to visit all 50 states, so we'll have to work hard and fast to get him around the country quickly.

He was going to go snow machining here this week, but it warmed up to 50 and all the snow melted. It is still supposed to snow for 5 more days, but with the temp so high, I don't think it will stay. Justin will be sad, but I think there will be enough winter left for him to enjoy, later.

Anyway, Taylor is in kindergarten in Georgia and they have only lived there a couple years and they miss their grandparents and family in Ohio, so we want to do everything we can to help Taylor with her Stanley project. Hope you are all willing to help again... we did a good job last year for Taylor's sister.

By the way - Gulley's are cousins of Brian's on the Carper side. We met thru genealogy. Really nice people - good people to call friends and family.

Maunder Minimum

2008-10-06T09:43:00.004-08:00

I read a really interesting article last week about the lack of activity on the sun and about the lack of solar winds. They say the sun is quieter than it has been in decades and may be heading us into a small ice age like in the 1700's. I know you folks in the lower 48 have roasted this year, but we have had the coldest "summer" on record - which is a bummer since we have had 2 polar winters on either side of the missing summer.

I wish I could find the article to post it here - it was very educational. Even if we don't go into an ice age, the lack of solar activity should help cool the earth a little and give some comfort to those who are freaked about global warming. (Don't flame me - I'm not saying we shouldn't be environmental caretakers, I'm just saying, we're freezing our tushes off up here.) It has snowed in Homer three times this week.

************
Alicia found the article. But it was in the NY Times and they wouldn't let me copy it - so here is another one. This one doesn't talk about the cooling effect this event could be predicting, but it is still interesting.

Spotless Sun: Blankest Year Of The Space Age
enlarge
Left: A photo of the sun taken Sept. 27, 2008. The face of the sun is "blank," i.e., completely unmarked by spots. Right: The sun on Sept. 27, 2001. The sun's face is peppered with colossal sunspots, all crackling with solar flares. (Credit: ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO))
ScienceDaily (Oct. 7, 2008) — Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the "blankest year" of the Space Age.
As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1954, three years before the launch of Sputnik, when the sun was blank 241 times.
"Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "We're experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle."
The image taken on Sept. 27, 2008 by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) shows a solar disk completely unmarked by sunspots. For comparison, a SOHO image taken seven years earlier on Sept. 27, 2001, is peppered with colossal sunspots, all crackling with solar flares. The difference is the phase of the 11-year solar cycle. 2001 was a year of solar maximum, with lots of sunspots, solar flares and geomagnetic storms. 2008 is at the cycle's opposite extreme, solar minimum, a quiet time on the sun.
And it is a very quiet time. If solar activity continues as low as it has been, 2008 could rack up a whopping 290 spotless days by the end of December, making it a century-level year in terms of spotlessness.
Hathaway cautions that this development may sound more exciting than it actually is: "While the solar minimum of 2008 is shaping up to be the deepest of the Space Age, it is still unremarkable compared to the long and deep solar minima of the late 19th and early 20th centuries." Those earlier minima routinely racked up 200 to 300 spotless days per year.
Some solar physicists are welcoming the lull.
"This gives us a chance to study the sun without the complications of sunspots," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Right now we have the best instrumentation in history looking at the sun. There is a whole fleet of spacecraft devoted to solar physics--SOHO, Hinode, ACE, STEREO and others. We're bound to learn new things during this long solar minimum."
As an example he offers helioseismology: "By monitoring the sun's vibrating surface, helioseismologists can probe the stellar interior in much the same way geologists use earthquakes to probe inside Earth. With sunspots out of the way, we gain a better view of the sun's subsurface winds and inner magnetic dynamo."
"There is also the matter of solar irradiance," adds Pesnell. "Researchers are now seeing the dimmest sun in their records. The change is small, just a fraction of a percent, but significant. Questions about effects on climate are natural if the sun continues to dim."
Pesnell is NASA's project scientist for the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a new spacecraft equipped to study both solar irradiance and helioseismic waves. Construction of SDO is complete, he says, and it has passed pre-launch vibration and thermal testing. "We are ready to launch! Solar minimum is a great time to go."
Coinciding with the string of blank suns is a 50-year record low in solar wind pressure, a recent discovery of the Ulysses spacecraft. The pressure drop began years before the current minimum, so it is unclear how the two phenomena are connected, if at all. This is another mystery for SDO and the others.

ooops

2008-10-01T23:31:00.002-08:00

Alicia accidentally dropped her beautiful perfect cell phone in the bathtub last week and the screen fried. She had to change to a different phone and all our contact numbers are in her old phone, so if you were expecting us to call you about something and we didn't.... it is possible, your phone number is in her phone, circling the bath tub drain.

Would you drop one of us an email with your cellphone or office phone or home phone - what ever number we usually call you at? Thanks

Poor sick Daddy

2008-10-01T23:14:00.004-08:00

I have been trying to convince Brian to get a pneumonia shot for several years now. He and Alicia fight pneumonia every winter, but his personal physician last year said a man of his age didn't need the shot..... my doctor would have told him to get it to protect me, but his doc doesn't know he lives with a loopy lupus patient.

Also lots of students up here don't have shots - between the earthnics and the Russians that grew up around the world and the natives.... so Alaska leads the country in TB and whopping cough. A couple years ago, our dear Bishop, who was principal at a Russian village school, contracted whopping cough from his students and it almost killed him.

They have now come out, just recently, saying that adults our age should get that Tetnus, Pertussis, Diptheria booster again. When we got shot as kids they thought it would last us a life time, but they are finding out it doesn't.

so I had mentioned to Brian that he needed to get a new vaccine now that he is working directly with kids.... On Monday, they unexpectedly brought a vaccine clinic to school for the staff, so being the loving husband he is, he got the pneumonia shot for me, and the flu shot, and the TDP.

I was surprised when he came home and said he had gotten all 3 shots - and I was really surprised today to find out he got them all in the same arm - his good arm, no less. How did I find out he got them all in the same arm, you ask? He can't straighten it, or move it. He has a terrible fever and aches and pains. Last night he tossed and turned all night and would go from overheated to literally shivering in bed at a moment's notice. Poor sick daddy. I tried to convince him to stay home today, but you know Brian.

A lot of the high school staff got shots - I hope for the student's sake they are on good behavior for the next couple days. A sick daddy is sometimes a grouchy daddy.

good weekend

2008-09-28T00:29:00.002-08:00

The heritage dinner at church was really good. Our ward isn't that good at cooking usually, but this idea really got everyone excited and we had some good food. We were most seriously blessed to eat fresh baby carrots from Heather's very own garden. hehehe (sorry it's a private joke about being seriously blessed, but the carrots were really good and did make me want to dump out my tiny tators and try to grow carrots before winter comes)

I had just talked to my sister, Earlene, and she had told me that her daughter-in-law's mother had fallen off their church stage and shattered her leg and after the dinner this woman, new to our ward from Hawaii, was up in the front of the curtain, on the stage, teaching us about hula and i was just holding on to the table, hoping she wouldn't fall and break her leg, too. She didn't, but I was sending good vibes to Nicole and her mom, hoping she heals soon.

We had a luncheon at church today (after eating dinner at church last night) and then we watched the Relief Society broadcast. Last couple years, they have tried to get us to drive up to Soldotna, but not very many of us want to, so they went back to having a luncheon and having us watch in Homer.

At first, it was just a regular broadcast and we were starting to get disappointed, especially after being sooooooo spiritually fed at Time out for Women a couple weeks ago.

But then President Uchtdorf spoke and WOW ! ! ! If you missed it, as soon as it is available at lds.org, go watch it. He had very specific, but new ideas for how we can fill the full measure of our existence.

In a nutshell, CREATE and be Compassionate. Create anything - even it is as simple as creating a warm smile to share with someone, or as difficult as a beautiful garden, or a baby, or a painting or music.... Just Create - He said, "We are royal daughters of the most creative being in the universe.... it is in our genes to create."

And of course, we need to be compassionate to others to find true happiness.

It was so inspiring. i was taking notes as fast as I could scribble and trying to not cry because it touched me so much. In the end, I cried and wrote. It was really special.

Also, on a different vein, we are going to go ahead and order the carpet from the cheapest place we can find and then hire an independent carpet layer. Everyone we have called has quoted us 300 to 400 dollars, instead of the $2000 that Home Depot came up with. (which if you are keeping track is TEN times higher than the preliminary bid). I wonder if they have connections on Wall Street or something.

Stupid Home Depot

2008-09-24T23:49:00.002-08:00

So here we are, half way done in our great room remodel. The tile in the kitchen and entry are lain or layed or laid. Anyway, Justin finished setting the kitchen tiles this evening. He has grouted the entry and it is done and he will grout the kitchen in a couple days when they have completely dried.

We paid $200 for a man from Home Depot to come and measure for the carpet. We picked out a very comfortable carpet that will last for decades, knowing that we won't ever do this extensive project again. And you know, Home Depot has that $199 to lay the carpet in your whole house (tiny print - whole house means 2 rooms).

Really really tiny print - they charge extra every cut they make in the carpet: 3 stair posts, 5 thresholds, one stove pipe, pets in the house, stairs in the house, particle board on the floor, another $100 service call because we are in Anchor Point (I already paid an extra $100 for the service call for the measure guy to come) and 12 other things that I can't remember. Bottom line, the laying of the carpet would cost us $2000. Just for the layer and what it would cost to cover all the stuff he requires us to do so he can lay the carpet.

That isn't the price of the carpet and might not be the cost of the pad. The tile already cost twice what I had planned and now the carpet is so far out of the budget, we don't know what we will do. In the end, since we have the tools and the set-up paid for we will probably tile the whole room, which is what I wanted in the first place.. Lots more work for Justin but since it hasn't stopped raining since April, he is home a lot now until it snows and he can go snow machine riding.

The tile is so beautiful - just takes your breath away. Good one on Justin and Alicia and THANKS !!!

Shout out for my DAD

2008-09-23T14:09:00.002-08:00

We have been having a fun email exchange this week about the Oregon Ducks football team and I found out something pretty amazing about my dad that I didn't know. He was on athletic scholarship to the University of Oregon in 1948 - and they passed him up as quarterback for Norm Van Brocklin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_Van_Brocklin

I looked him up on Google and have given you the link above. Pretty impressive that my dad played football with him. My dad quit school and then got married, so he still has eligibility left to play college football. We're saying that someone who came in second to Norm should be out there - but my dad says if they didn't want him in '48, he doesn't see why he should come back and help them now... He says it's sour grapes. I think he has just changed his allegiance to the Utes or BYU and doesn't want to admit that he isn't truly a Fighting Duck anymore. He probably spends every Saturday in blue and white with a Giant Y on his chest and we just aren't there to see it. hahahahaha

(okay, don't kill me, Daddy, I know you would never wear a BYU shirt). LOVE YOU

Freezer - operator error

2008-09-23T13:42:00.002-08:00

Way more than you need to know about our refrigerating and freezing problems:

If you go to Alicia and Justin's blog, you can see the pictures of the freezer the day they thawed it out. It sits in our upstairs -right as you come in the front door and all spring and summer and fall, the sun shines on it in the afternoon, in the warmest part of the day.

The freezer was supposed to be smaller and fit next to the refrigerator in the kitchen, but we didn't measure, and it was a rush job to buy it 3 years ago - Brian was on the way home with a bunch of moose meat and we already had 2 full freezers. so we ran up to Home Despot and got the biggest freezer we could afford - which had always worked for us before. We just didn't know that they made freezers bigger now.

It is kind of timely that this issue came to light this week. The reason we have to replace the kitchen floor, is that Alicia and I had tried to move the fridge and the giant freezer into place by ourselves and we gouged up the kitchen floor, really badly. We used to have a freezer in that spot in the kitchen and we just couldn't understand why this one wouldn't fit. So we just kept dragging them in and out and arranging them until we had ruined the floor and ended up putting the freezer in the living room next to the front door.

Not that convenient at Christmas time because that is where the Christmas tree is supposed to go. But it is handy to have a freezer on the main level of the house when it is time to cook.

So this year while Brian was hunting, we knew we had to defrost both big freezers to make room for the new meat (which he didn't get)... we hadn't looked in the freezer in the living room for a while because it was such a pain to relocate the duct tape every time.... so it was quite a shock when we opened it and it looked like one giant ice cube.

So we went back to Home Despot and talked to them about getting a new gasket or a new door for the freezer, because obviously, it was malfunctioning. They gave us a number to call and a booklet of how to get a hold of the company. Then Alicia went and tracked down the warranty book to find the warranty and the model information = and right there, it said it was supposed to be defrosted at least once a year, more often if ice formed on the shelves and such.

I had NO IDEA that they still made freezers that had to be defrosted. TOTALLY SHOCKED ! ! ! but then it all made sense. Ever since we got this freezer, the ice built up on the shelves and on the food and we thought it was just because we had to buy a cheap freezer and had gotten an off brand we had never heard of and because it was in the sunny window. Boy, is my face red.... Redder even now, because I had thought about defrosting it, but didn't know what to do with all the melting ice in the middle of my living room carpet... Come to find out, there is a hose underneath freezers now, and the water just drains into a pan that you empty, no water flooding all over the floor.

SIGH

So now, where the freezer has been for 3 years, we have this beautiful tile floor that Justin is laying (again, check Alicia and Justin's blog). And we all like the look without the freezer sitting there, so we are going to take the freezer downstairs and empty it out and put it in the kitchen and then take all the food out of the freezer which is sitting in the middle of the dining room now and take it downstairs and put it where the littler freezer sits in the food storage room. It's all very over whelming, but in the end, we will have a freezer in the kitchen and a beautiful new tile floor and a place for the Christmas tree and most importantly, we now possess the knowledge and skill to defrost. hehehehe

One of the next big appliances we are hoping to replace is the refrigerator - it is the last appliance we bought 15 years ago. If we have a free standing freezer in the kitchen, we want to replace the classic fridge with a free standing refrigerator. It doesn't make any sense to have that little freezer above the fridge if you have a full freezer right next to it. Our friends have the two different appliances, and we really like the functionality of it. But, I still want to get a new satellite dish and have to get the new crown for my broken tooth, so it probably won't be this month. I would say with my PFD next year, but if the stock market keeps dropping like a giant boulder off a tall cliff, our PFD will be like 20 cents, next year.

Happy FALL to everyone. Hope you don't get snowed on today like we are supposed to. BRRRRRRR

Democrat to Republican

2008-09-18T19:42:00.008-08:00

Charlotte's change from democrat to republican came about strictly because of Alaskan politics. There was a very close primary race that was truly vital to Alaska's future and since we have closed primaries up here, I switched parties to vote in that race. Up here, the democrats are more like the Green party or the libertarian party - often the candidates in the democratic races are people who switched from Green or Libertarian - so to vote for a "main street" candidate, usually the only party choice is Republican.

I haven't changed my views that much except I am very against gun control. I always was a hawk when it came to war - I always thought that the reason we lost the Viet Nam war was that we didn't fight it hard enough, so I have always disagreed with other family members who hate all war. (We all remember trying to digest dinner in Billings, in the dining room with the map of Viet Nam on the wall above the table, and Dan Rather reporting live from Viet Nam, and all the yelling and door slamming that followed ).

I like Sarah Palin, not because she is republican or even because she is a great example of what I always thought a woman politician was capable of being, I just like her because she came into the governorship and did what she said she was going to do, in a very timely manner - and in this state, that is not easy to do.

Although, I will say that since all my life I have been taught to believe that a woman would one day be president (it never occured to me when I was growing up that my sister would not be the first woman president) - so in that vein, I really like Sarah for the fact that she IS a woman, a good wife, a good mother - she isn't shrew or harpy like some women in power, she is the ideal woman candidate... the one that women like me have always been looking for.

BRRRRRR - BAD BAD NEWS for Charlotte

2008-09-18T19:42:00.006-08:00

This is our actual forecast for this weekend. It had a picture of the little snow flakes falling, but it didn't come over when I copied the forecast. I guess Justin and the muskrats were right. you should know anything Pa Ingalls taught on the prairie is true. I noticed 2 GIANT muskrat houses outside Anchorage last week. All I could think of was Pa and Laura Ingalls and the Long Winter..... BRRRRRRRRRRR

Saturday Night
Mostly cloudy with a slight chance of rain and snow showers. Patchy fog. Lows in the 30s. Light winds.
Sunday
Mostly cloudy with a slight chance of rain and snow showers. Highs in the 40s.

In your blood

2008-09-18T19:42:00.003-08:00

I was just thinking of something that Blake might find interesting. The first political campaign

that Blake ever worked on was the 1972 presidential campaign.... he was part of the Pendleton office in support of George McGovern. In his stroller, he did lots of door to door campaigning, made calls and stuffed envelopes and served at the local fund raising dinner. It was kind of pathetic that the young democrats in Pendleton could only afford to put on a bean supper at one of the schools. We cleared 58 dollars, TOTAL.

On other occasions,we had baked sales and lots of campy stuff like that.

The same night as our bean dinner, the area republicans held a $100 a plate dinner--- they cleared more than $58 for each person that attended.

All the McGovern supporters were high school and young college kids. We housed a whole group that came from somewhere , Portland I suppose, that came one weekend to canvas the entire town. Blake was a part of it all - actually a very active part - he enjoyed it and helped a lot, even though he was only 15 months old.

Home from the hunt

2008-09-13T18:57:00.003-08:00

Brian is home from hunting. His friend from Oregon, Larry Shirley, came up to hunt with him this year. They had a good time, but didn't kill anything. Just didn't have the urge. So Larry is here for a day or two to fish and then he'll fly home on Monday.

I think Brian starts his new job on Monday - not sure.

Hats off to Levi "501" Bobbitt

2008-09-12T18:42:00.002-08:00

I tried to post a comment on Levi's blog, but it kept restricting me to less than 300 characters, and I just couldn't say what I wanted to say in 300 characters, so I decided to post about Levi 501 here on our blog.

When I first met Levi "501" Bobbitt about 23 years ago, I remember this little white haired boy who had lots of energy and smiles. Alicia came home from kindergarten and told us there was a boy in her class named Levi 501 - like Levi 501 Jeans. I said, there is a boy named, Levi Bobbitt, is that who you mean? and she said, "no, Levi Bobbitt is someone else, I don't know him - I just know Levi 501".

So, as she told you, we have always called you Levi 501 Jeans. I don't know what that has to do with having cancer, just whenever we think of you, we smile, but now our smile sort of turns to a tear as it is breaking our hearts for you to be suffering and fighting this fight again. I wish I knew what to say.

I DO KNOW what it is like to get up every morning and look at that pill box and know how sick each of those pills is going to make you and then knowing how sick you will be if you don't take them. Every meal tasting like sawdust, but knowing you have to eat it. Hurting so much you can't lay in bed or sit in a chair or stand up - that doesn't leave any place to put your body that doesn't make you cry out in pain.

And your loss of personal relationship and setbacks at work just when you got your ideal promotion -

There aren't any words from me that are going to help you thru this but I want you to know that we do wish for you to be able to once more be that little light-hearted boy that didn't have a care in the world and didn't know what the future held for him besides running around the playground and swimming at the lake. Our prayers are with you and we are pulling for you to win this fight again.

So, Hang on, Levi 501, Hang on. Love, The Carpers

YAY for Alaska

2008-09-12T14:13:00.003-08:00

First, my weight has stabalized and as near as I can tell, I gained 1.5 pounds last week.... so that is my official weigh in weight.

Second, today is PFD day plus our wonderful Governor, the lovely Sarah Palin got each man, woman and child an energy rebate of 1200 dollars that came today. She also had them push PFD day up a month so that the villagers could pay for their winter fuel before the ice freezes their ports and they can't get the fuel... So usually we have fun in October, but this year it all came in September. We feel sorry for Justin - only the people who qualify for PFD (permanent fund dividend) get an energy rebate and since Justin got here last year in April, he doesn't qualify for either.

The kids are on their way up to Kenai to get us a new washer and dryer. Our dryer is one of the 2 original appliances we bought when we came to Alaska 15 years ago today. And it is tired. And the washer is only 4 years old, but it was when Brian was out of work and it was the cheapest washer Sears makes. At the time, it was only supposed to last 3 months or less and then we were going to move, but then we stayed and Alicia and Brian have cussed that cheap piece of metal EVERY day since.

We did some research this morning and decided on a top-loading Maytag washer, called the Cenntenial. Does anyone have that washer and could give us some quick feedback on it?

We looked at front loaders, but our clothes are so dirty with the guys and their grime that we decided we'd better stick with a top loader so we can soak the dirty stuff in lots of water.

Brian called from moose camp and is ready to come home. We have had a steady stream of REALLY wet and windy weather systems overhead since he left. One day they were forecast to have 60 degrees, which is unheard of at moose camp - and then the system moved in and they forecast 7 inches of snow the next night. He said they didn't get the snow, but the wind and rain were miserable and he just wasn't in the mood to hunt this year. So they might come home early and fish or they might stick it out, he didn't know. Just time for a change, I guess.

Well, this is kind of a random post - go Cougars, Ducks, and Utes tomorrow - and I'll throw in a go Miami (Ohio) for the Gulleys. If they aren't playing us - and I don't think they are.

Happy PFD Weekend ! ! ! Sorry you don't live in the last frontier. My friend called and said the lines at the banks were absolutely insane. hehehe I'm so glad we went to Anchorage for our conference last week, instead of this. the stores and the traffic will be legendary. YIKES.

Oh, I know what else I got with my PFD - I got an aerogarden. I have wanted one for a while and finally saw one at Bed Bath and Beyond last weekend. We started with the salad pack and we already have little bits of salad greens up. Very exciting. I think I will get a couple more for strawberries and tomatoes and maybe herbs. After studying the design, Justin has figured out how to use hydroponics for our greenhouse next year so we don't have to buy and haul all that soil upstairs and then waste it when we are done. Anxious to see how that turns out.

Does anyone else hve an aerogarden? What do you grow in it? Do you like it?

Not a good week for weight watching

2008-09-10T20:15:00.003-08:00

I wasn't going to post this week, but Joanna fessed up, so I will, too. When I travel, I have to alter my medications so much that I have no idea what my poor body is trying to do now. I have only eaten 3 meals in the last 4 days, but have gained sometimes 1 1/2 pounds from last week and sometimes 9 pounds from last week.

I think it is actually that I just gained a pound or two - we walked all over and didn't eat much. I think we only ate in one restaurant. We stopped the first day and bought slim-fast and peanut butter and bread and fresh fruit. We weren't against eating out, we just didn't feel good and peanut butter sounded like the easiest thing to digest and provide nutrition.

We'll see next week. I'm not beating myself up over it because one of the things I learned this weekend was to not listen to Satan when he tries to bring me down about myself. I am trying to eat healthier and exercise more and it doesn't matter what He says or what the scales say.

I read two really good books from the Time Out for Women presenters - one by Emily Watts, can't remember which one - all of hers apply - just pick one if you haven't read her before... The other book which I finished today is by Sheri Dew - God wants a powerful people.

Her last book or two I thought were a little light on substance, but this one is packed with all kinds of day to day, concrete ideas to help you become who the Lord wants you to be. I highly recommend it ! ! !

Alicia didn't gain weight this weekend. YAY ! ! ! Better luck to the rest of us next week. Charlotte

Brian's new job

2008-09-07T18:05:00.002-08:00

Brian has a new job when he gets back from hunting. He has been working 1/2 time at the school as weekend custodian for a couple weeks. He was a couple weeks late starting since he was still working for the Greek on the barge project.

Anyway, they still haven't heard if he is going to get back on full time as custodian and at first, they wanted him to come in at 8 pm until midnight for 5 nights a week. and he said, I don't think so... too annoying to work that late at night for no reason and too expensive to pay $5.00 a gallon to drive all the way in there for that kind of money, half-time.

so he has been working Thursday evenings from like 3:30 to 7:30 or something and then Fridays and Saturdays, he works from 3:30 to midnight or he works Saturdays during the sports events and then an 8 hour shift from whenever they had him start. It is all very confusing and hard to plan around and sleep around.....

anyway, they had a job for a special education aide to work with emotionally disturbed children... He has been working with a lot of them after school and on weekends, because they often get detention and they often spend detention working with the custodian, especially weekend detention. of course he has that degree in law enforcement that he has never used, but the training from that degree is a lot of what they were looking for in the aide position. I am excited because for the first time ever, he will be working what I call "real person" hours - I think it is like 7:30 to 4:00 or something like that. REAL Hours ! ! ! that normal people work. I'm not claiming that we will ever be normal people........

And I had just gotten used to having complete control of the TV remote all to myself and now I'll have to share - no that's not true - there isn't any sharing... I'll have to relinquish the TV remote forever. But we can have dinner at a regular hour, go to bed at regular time, get up at a human hour and he has weekends off again. We won't even know how to act. He is excited because he has more of the summer off with this job - the custodian stays later in the summer and starts earlier in the fall, so it has been cutting into his fishing time. You know how he hates that ! ! !

Anyway, I Hope it works for him - he is really good with the kids.

Time out for us! ! !

2008-09-07T13:52:00.004-08:00

We are back from Time Out for Women in Anchorage. It was a rough couple days to get started, and Alicia really earned her money taking care of me, but it was SOOOOOOOO worth it. We had the best speakers and subjects and we came away so spiritually fed, it was fantastic.

We feel really dumb as we didn't take a camera. On the morning of the second day, I noticed 2 of our favorite speakers across the room and I said, quick take a picture with your phone... so she whipped it out and tried to get it to focus and one of the speakers saw us and walked clear across the room to meet us - EMILY WATTS ! ! ! ! We were so excited . Our friend, Heather, first introduced us to Emily's books and she really loves Emily. So when Heather came in a few minutes later we told her what happened and encouraged her to go seek Emily out. It was really cute. They did get to visit for a minute and we tried to get Heather to get her picture taken with Emily - Heather actually remembered to bring her camera - but she said, No, just meeting her was enough... but we kept at it and I think someone did finally get a picture of the two of them together.

Then we were out in the hall helping Cassandra with her baby and one of the presenters = Merrilee Boyack came out and took the baby and shewed us all back into the hall and she walked him and put him to sleep. You know, usually, you don't go to a major convention in a big city and just hand your baby over to a stranger and go back into the convention, but we all just said, COOL = Thanks and didn't give it another thought. I talked to Merrilee about it afterwards and thanked her and she said she actually had ended up with 5 babies during the day. But it meant a lot to us - and it was kind of the theme of her presentation = taking those mini-seconds to stop and improve someone's life, just by a smile or a word or small deed.... so it was cool that she walks the walk, not just talks the talk.

We spent the weekend scribbling in our journals as quickly as we could scribble and then talked about it late in the night Friday night and then all the way home. Trying to embed the memories and concepts in our brains.

The music was by Hilary Weeks. None of us knew or realized that she grew up in Alaska - her family mostly all still live here (they probably realized she had grown up here - I just mean those in my circle didn't know it) , so it was really special and very personal for her to perform here and it added a lot to the event. Her parents and sister in law and such were all there and it was very touching.

We also got to hear the story of how Wendy Watson Nelson met and was courted by Elder Nelson and that was fun. Wendy and Sheri Dew are bestest friends and they were on stage together and had lots of fun and shared lots of BFF moments with us.

So watch out world, because we now have the tools to improve all our relationships and cure the world of its woes.... hehehe, okay, maybe not the whole world, but it was REALLY good.

Brian is off hunting this week. Keep him in your prayers - the weather has taken a giant turn to fall and winter.. Love, Charlotte

Wednesday weigh-in

2008-09-03T18:05:00.002-08:00

I lost 7.5 pounds this week ! ! ! Yes a lot of it was water ,but HEY - 7.5 pounds in one week. So all together I've lost 15 pounds since we started.

Alicia lost 5 pounds this week and hers wasn't from water pills. Yay.

As you can see, we are working hard and trying to stay committed to this project.

Okay, OUCH

2008-09-02T17:18:00.002-08:00

I went in to this new dentist today. Haven't been in a while - most of my molars are crowns because I am such a grinder, so there isn't a lot of maintenance on my teeth. Anyway, I had one tooth towards the back that the filling fell out earlier this summer and I kept putting off taking care of it. it was a fairly large filling and took part of the tooth with it.

So finally today, i went in - just to get a new filling put in........... As soon as they took the x-ray, he said it was really deep and awfully close to the nerve and if it was in the nerve they would just go ahead and do a root canal while I was there.

That wasn't what I signed up for today. *frowny face* that money was supposed to be fun money to spend when we go to Anchorage this weekend. SIGH , I have medicaid to cover part of it, but I have to pay for the rest and for the crown. *bigger sigh* So I'm sitting here after a 4 hour dentist appointment, thankfully in Vicodin land, but still ----- OUCH ! And Darn it, I really wanted to get some new furniture and stuff. *pout pout pout*

Labor Day Labors

2008-09-01T17:24:00.002-08:00

I'll save you all the gore - we didn't take pictures. We butchered the turkeys today. We had no idea until it was done that we had a male and a female, and the female even had eggs in her - we could have started eating turkey eggs and raised baby turkeys next year....

Except they got on Justin's bad side by pooping all over his new goat barn and by pooping all over the back stairs and after we locked them all into the pen, they kept trying to roost in the hen's boxes. Of course, now we know that one was a female, that makes more sense.

Brian worked on his new welder trailer and Justin worked on Brian's pickup. Funny story there - when Alicia was in high school some guys from Anchor Point used to do stuff to the truck while she was at school - like drain the air from the tires and stuff like that. Around that time, the front gas tank stopped working. We just assumed it was faulty and we never had the money to pull out the tank and replace it all. So Justin has been working on our fuel pumps and gas tanks and when he pulled it out this weekend - it was full of paint that someone had poured in - all those years ago.

We have a busy week ahead of us - not as busy as Rhiens, but busy for us. Justin and I both have dentist appointments. Alicia and I are going to Anchorage for 3 days for Time out for Women, Brian is going hunting for a couple weeks, we butchered the turkeys and tomorrow we are going to pick raspberries from some people at church and we are going to feed the missionaries.

We are so excited to have Governor Palin on the GOP ticket. She is one tough cookie, but she is nice about it. She has done things in our state that the past 4 governors tried but didn't even get close to accomplishing. Except for the people she has angered by her determination to accomplish things, she is very very popular in our state.

for those that think she doesn't have enough of whatever to take on the establishment - can I just say that 2 years ago, Frank Murkowski was our governor - he had been our senator for decades and had always won his elections by landslides.... Sarah took him on in the primary and kicked his butt to the curb. It wasn't even close - I say if she can stand up to someone as "Washington inbred" as Frank, she can certainly stand up to Joe Biden. Give her a chance and see what she has to offer before you decide. We really like her.

Charlotte

YAY college football

2008-08-29T20:02:00.002-08:00

I love college football - I really do. I'm glad we are playing football pick 'em this year. I'm a little bit uneasy about my picks because I agreed with the experts on our site. That doesn't seem like a good omen.... we'll have to see. GO DUCKS and COUGARS and UTES.

Time out for Women

2008-08-28T21:44:00.002-08:00

For those of you who don't know - Deseret Book plans a few events around the country that bring some of their favorite authors and musicians to different locations for those who can't get into Utah for BYU women's conference and education weeks.

For the first time, they are coming to Anchorage. We are so excited - I'm more excited than Alicia because I've been wanting to go to the other events, but haven't been able to. Anyway - it is next weekend. About 25 women from our ward are going up. Alicia and I are going up the day before so I can rest and not be too tired from the trip. Also, a lot of the women are rooming together, but we are staying in a different hotel - again, more for my health than for any other reason. It will be much quieter and restful.

Almost all of us are doing a temple session together on the morning before the conference - looking forward to that. We are a close ward and it will be like a giant family temple session.

The speakers that are scheduled are Sheri Dew, S.Michael Wilcox, Emily watts, and Ardeth Kapp. I can't remember the rest - these 4 are 4 of my all time favorite authors and speakers, so I am really psyched.

Two other events that weekend we are looking forward to is that a REALLY good friend of ours moved to Anchorage last year and they wanted a baby so badly and they were suddenly chosen by a young woman to adopt her baby - and we are all sooooooooo excited to see the baby and share in the joy. I actually think that the baby has not yet touched a piece of furniture or bed - I think she has been held since she got home from the hospital . :) We love the blog, Amanda.

And the other event is that our Alaska Permanent Fund checks are coming out a month early - it is one of the largest checks they have ever issued AND our governor got us all an energy rebate. And it is all coming to us the week after we are in Anchorage, so we can spend it while we are there. YAY !! Giant shopping trip !

It will be a full week - but lots of fun and spiritually and emotionally upbuilding experiences.

Our Olympic moment

2008-08-24T15:05:00.003-08:00

I somehow got to see the synchronized swimming team competitions - I missed all of the duet competitions. One funny moment for me was when the male announcer asked the expert how anyone would get into this sport and I tried to think back to how this all started.

I remember as young girls - probably still in Medford - where we spent a lot of each summer at the public pool - I remember us trying to do synchronized moves where we would sit down on the floor of the pool together and have pretend tea parties (you would probably call that the tea party manuever) and we had moves where we tried to do hand stands at the same time and hold them the same amount of time... It was long before we ever watched Olympics and long, long before the sport was invented. I wonder if someone saw us and used that inspiration to invent the entire sport. WOW - what a legacy....

Back to reality - Earlene - I'm thinking hydraulics made out of soy - water soluable like those packing peanuts that dissolve in water?? We could line our suits with them and as we swam, they would dissolve and when they checked us after the meet - we would just have regular suits..... I don't know if the dissolving would create a cloudy residue in the water? We could work up some kind of threshing motions in our routine so that people would think the water was frothy from our exertion..

Just a thought or two - I really don't want to think our competing days are completely behind us... What am I supposed to do with all those cases of gelatin for our hair?

Who needs boys, anyway ???

2008-08-23T20:35:00.002-08:00

This morning Alicia went out to walk the dog and our good neighbor, Bruce, came over and said that the remains of one of our chickens were over in their back yard - just feathers. Justin and Brian had to work today so Alicia went out by herself and rebuilt the entire wall and roof of the chicken pen almost all by herself (I went out and held stuff and gave important direction and critic). She did a really good job.

We have been talking about how we used to build stuff and do things without waiting for the guys to do it or start it and today, she just took the initiative and did it.

My part came when it was time to round up the chickens. Whatever took the unfortunate one scared the others half to death and they were scattered ALL over the neighborhood. We still don't have a back fence because of the septic tank rebuild so they have had free rein all over the place. They've never sought shelter under the neighbors steps before, though, so it was a bit of a challenge.

They usually come when I call them - usually when we feed them goodies from the kitchen, I go out to watch, so they associate my voice with goodies. So Alicia got me a container of scratch and corn and I lured as many as possible into the new chicken yard. I took my walker in and just sat there and called them and threw out bits of corn. We got about half of them that way, I think Alicia went thru the trees and herded them about 12 times - but finally the turkeys and most of the chickens were in. At one point even the goose came in - he hasn't had corn for a long time and he wanted his share. He didn't want it bad enough to actually stay in there with me, but he thought about it...... We gave him a bunch in his feeder now that the chickens and turkeys aren't eating his food. The final chickens got herded in with the hose.

They settled right in. I fully expect to have a couple dozen eggs in the morning. There is no way these chickens are not laying yet - they are all fully mature when you get up close to them. They apparently have been laying out in the trees where we couldn't find them. We'll let you know.

So Good One on Alicia ! ! Girls ROCK ! ! !

Sandhill Cranes

2008-08-22T10:12:00.003-08:00

We all had some questions about the Sandhill Cranes earlier this summer and this week there was a very informative article in the local newspaper. If you want to read the whole article the link is: http://www.homernews.com/

The males are called roans and the females are mares. The article says that the roans are usually bigger, but the only way to tell is when they do their "unison call" - the roan lifts his beak to the sky and the mare lifts hers to a 45 degree angle. ???

Like I have time to sit around and wait for them to call in unison to tell which is which. Anyway, it also said that in captivity they can live to be 84 years old, but usually only 40 in the wild. Plus they mate for life and return every year to the same land. Except sometimes, when they are young they get divorced and then later usually return to the first mate, but sometimes not...

I liked where it says that if they are angry at people they will throw sticks at you. I have been trying to remember if we ever saw this behavior, but I don't recall if we did. Usually we watch them from a window or the porch, so they don't feel that threatened.

We believe they did have a chick this spring, I can't remember what the article called the chicks, but we think that stupid eagle got it. He just flys over our neighborhood like we are the drive-thru of a McDonalds or something.
Hope you enjoy the article. Love, Charlotte

Thanks Joanna for getting us started

2008-08-21T16:58:00.003-08:00

Joanna has been really good on Weight Watchers for about a month now and it has got some of us going too. I really appreciate her efforts to get us all going. It is good to have support and encouragement from each other.

So, I started last week. I dropped a medicine that was puffing me up and that dropped 4 pounds last week and I made a concerted effort to stop eating the junk food that I have been surviving on this summer and yesterday at my weigh in - I had lost another 4 pounds.

I also have been tracking my sugars better and actually doing something about the numbers, not just writing them down.

the other thing I have been doing is getting up at a set time (actually 8:00 in the morning) which is really hard for me, as Brian will tell you, my heart actually does not even start pumping until after 10:00 - so for 2 hours every morning, I'm just walking around without a heart beat - but I think it helps me to be more active. I can't work-out like others do, but just being more active will help lose the weight.

I see my doctor next week, so my goal is to lose enough that he won't yell at me for how much I gained this summer. My reasoning was that I was going to have surgery and so I could gain some weight and the stuff they took out in surgery would counter-balance the weight gain. OOOPS. *nervous laugh and red face* That was probably a stupid plan.

Good luck Earlene, on your weigh in.

Alicia is having a hard time finding good foods to eat since she can't eat dairy or fish and we don't have fruit and veggies up here that are readily available. We'll have to do some research to help her. (She has lost 3 pounds, too - yay).

Catch of the Day

2008-08-20T14:49:00.002-08:00

Silver fishing has been kind of slow but I caught this whopper this morning. My friend from St. George Utah is here fishing with me for a week. Lot's of fun!

Tomato question

2008-08-19T20:35:00.002-08:00

I have seen ads on TV for the Topsy Turvy Tomato cage that grows the tomato plant upside down. since we are gardening in such a limited space, I wonder if anyone has used them? Our tomato plants were stunted this year - there just wasn't room for them to expand.

Anybody???

some corrections on the tag

2008-08-17T13:38:00.002-08:00

My loving sister pointed out an item in my tag that I need to clarify - being my sister, I would have thought she could have cleared this up, but she didn't, so I will....... Yes, I have been married for 30 years, but no I'm NOT OLD. I was a VERRRRRYYYYY young, child bride. My husband, on the other hand, is indeed, older than dirt.

Secondly, I do appreciate Earlene's support that the thinking part of the meal is the hardest part, despite what Alicia and Brian said in the comments.

Thank you. Charlotte

Tagged by Laura

2008-08-15T23:27:00.002-08:00

How did we meet?

Brian and his friend, Tom, moved into one of the apartments in my four-plex. My friend, Becky, had lived in an apartment house in town when Tom lived there. Tom didn't have a lot of female friends ..... he wanted them, he just didn't have any. (No offense Tom). So his birthday was February 21 and he invited Becky and I up to his apartment to celebrate his birthday. Brian was playing poker with his good friend, Stan Terry, in the kitchen. He didn't even look up when Tom introduced us all and he and Stan stayed in the kitchen while we had a beer with Tom and then left. As that semester in school went on, Brian and Tom would help me start my car and empty my mouse traps and mow my lawn.

Where did you go on your first date?
Brian invited me to be his date for a picnic all the law enforcement class were having to celebrate their graduation. He dumped me and Blake at the "wives" table and he went fishing all afternoon. Then he took us home and he left and had another date with someone else.
Our second date we went to Walla Walla and picked strawberries and made strawberry jam.

How Long have you been together?
We just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary on July 22. We met and first got engaged 35 years ago, but we broke up for almost 5 years before we got married.

Who eats more?
Definitely charlotte, sorry to say

Who said I love you first?
Absolutely no clue

Who is taller?
Brian

Who sings better?
Charlotte

Who is smarter?
The smart answer would be to say my spouse, but I think we are each smarter in different areas.

Who does the laundry?
Brian does now, but I used to.

Who does the dishes?
Again, Brian does now, but I used to. You have to watch him when you are cooking, you just set a spoon down and whish, it is either in the dishwasher or washed. He is really speedy.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed?
I never know the answer to this - is it the right side when you are at the foot of the bed? or the right side when you are lying in bed on your back?
If you are at the foot of the bed, I'm on the right. But if you are lying in bed on your back, Brian is on the right.

Who pays the bills?
Charlotte

Who mows the lawn?
Brian or Alicia or Justin or a neighbor kid if we have one

Who cooks dinner?
We prepare dinner as a team = Brian and Alicia cook most of the time now, I try to plan the meals and make sure we have all the ingredients (I think the thinking up part is the hardest, so I'm usually too tired to do the cooking part, hehehe). I used to cook, but Brian is a really good cook and was famous for his baking before we got married.

Who drives when you are together?
Brian always drives in the country and Charlotte usually drives in the city = but Charlotte doesn't drive very often any more

Who is more stubborn?
ummmm, that would probably be Charlotte

Who kissed who first?
Probably mutual

Who proposed?
The first time, his sister and a friend of mine worked together and he had gone home and told everyone that he was going to marry me and she told my friend and my friend told me. At the same time, I had told my friends and family that I was going to marry him. So his sister, Jenny, had us both over to dinner and said if we were planning to get married, we should probably talk to each other about it. And from then on, we were engaged.

Then we broke up and 5 years later, I moved in with him and I knew we were going to get married, but he says he didn't. then i was having horrible nightmares and my therapist said it was because I was doing something I knew was wrong and that I had to fix it to stop the nightmares... so I said I had to move out and he said, well, I guess we could get married if we have to. And I said I wasn't going to get married because we had to. I wanted to get married because we wanted to and he said he guessed he wanted to. it was very romantic :(

Who is more sensitive?
everybody who knows me knows that Charlotte is the biggest cry baby in the world. Saddest movie on earth: ET

Who has more siblings?
Brian has 5 and I have 2

Who wears the pants?
Brian wears the pants, but I'm the boss. hehehe

We tried to divide up the kingdom a couple years ago to keep things running smoothly and we decided that I am queen of everything inside the fence and he is king of everything outside the fence. But then the fence blew over, and Justin keeps using it to build stuff, so I don't know who is in charge anymore.

When we first got married, our bishop told us that the man is the head of the house and is the final say in all decisions, but the wife is the one who determines what that decision will be. You hear people tell that as a joke, but he was serious. He taught us that a woman has so much power in the home by her attitude and her demeanor and way of handling things, that often she can influence the decisions more than her husband knows. But at the end of the day, Brian is the head of the house.

To our daughter, Christine

2008-08-15T13:20:00.002-08:00

There is a new show advertised on TV , called the Locator, and the very first time I saw the ad for it, my heart caught in my throat and I said, "OH MY GOODNESS, this show is going to scare Christine." and every time I see a promo for that show, I think the same thing.

SO - for the record, Christine, please know that we are not going to send somebody to hunt you down. You will never open your door to find us or anyone we have sent to stalk you.

We feel so blessed to have had that contact we did with you; to know that you have a loving, LDS, family; that you have beautiful children and a loving, supportive husband. We respect and acknowledge that you are sealed to your parents and your brothers and we do not in any way wish to interfer or barge into your relationships with them. They are your family. Please do not worry that we are going to try to usurp them in any way.

I assume you google us occasionally - doesn't everybody google everybody anymore? - anyway, You are more than welcome to follow all our blogs and get to know us - you can comment on them if you like, or just follow them from the outside. There are probably personality traits and quirks that you will identify with and realize where they came from by reading the blogs. From Thanksgiving thru January, we all try to post every day on the Family Christmas countdown blog - it is lots of fun.

the links to the right of my post are mostly family - Tiff & Brett, Carlos family, Jones family, and Katzoffs are friends, but I think everyone else is family.

We all send you our love and wishes for a happy, healthy life - and please don't ever worry that we will try to track you down and push ourselves into your life. Love, Charlotte

Why do we watch ?

2008-08-11T23:23:00.002-08:00

I always hope that the days of crooked scoring in the Olympics is behind us, but after watching the men's teams tonight, I think we can safely say that China obviously had someone in their pocket. This was the biggest bunch of crap we've seen since the french and russian judges were exposed in team figure skating. HOW disappointing. grrrrrr

The 20th Century arrives in Anchor Point

2008-08-08T11:43:00.002-08:00

I can't find a camera so don't have any pictures right now..... but today is finally the day we have all been waiting for. We are putting in a REAL septic tank today. You know the tank we have now is a wooden "crib" that is 15 years old. As most of you are aware, wood rots when it is exposed to moisture and age . . . . . I don't know the official life span of a wooden sewage crib, but I'm gonna guess it is about 10 years. Wait, that makes ours, um, way way dead. hehehe nervous laugh

Justin's boss ended up not renting or loaning us his equipment, so Justin and Alicia are making 3 trips up to Kenai to rent equipment and 3 trips back to return it when we are done, frowny face on his boss..... but Dibble Creek Rock was nice enough to run over with 6 loads of rock - 3 for the sewer and 3 for the driveway, and the pumper guy from Homer Pumping was willing to drop everything and run over and empty the current tank for us..... Very nice of both of them since we didn't have any time warning that this would be the day we needed to do this.

I don't know that I will take pictures of the gross part, but I was planning to take pictures of the piles of rock and such. I'm hoping that Justin will be able to dig the pond a little deeper, too, so that it will stay wet longer in the summer to support the wild ducks that want to raise their young here.

Also, Marpro called Brian back to the dock today . . . but when he got there, they had just dropped their giant cable spool into the bay and were busy with divers and cranes trying to fish it out, so they weren't ready for him yet. He is supposed to work at the high school tomorrow for the first football game of the year. busy, busy, busy

Justin's company went on a weeklong fishing charter but didn't catch a single fish. He's got some great footage of walruses and sea lions or something - it will be a day or two until he has time to upload the footage. While he was gone, Alicia painted their apartment. It is very cool expresso colors - very hip and chic.

Okay, I'm done... just had to share the excitement that we are going to have a sewer system. dumb I know, but HEY this is country life.

Some sanity returns

2008-08-06T23:41:00.004-08:00

Well, as usual, I jinxed the money train by coveting the new Tv and Satellite dish... the cable barge has left dock. They had another project for Brian to do, he told them they could get the items at a store for much less than having him making them from scratch and they said, oh no, we want you to custom make them...... but then they priced out the metal and said WHOA ! you're right, we can buy those a lot cheaper.

So today we were looking out the window around early afternoon and here he came into the driveway and he is done at the barge for as far as we know.

For now he is thinking about going back to work at the school - just the high school for half time for now. He had an offer to spend half day working at the artistic, alternative school, also, but
we were also trying to decide if he should just stay home and do welding work all the time.

but his boss at the high school had an idea for brian to work 8 hours on Friday and Saturday nights and 4 hours on Thursday nights. That way he will have 4 days to weld and fish and such. and he gets to keep his medical and pension. We are thinking this sounds like a really great idea and of course, if they put his full-time hours back, like we all know they will - then he is already on track to work at the high school.

I probably jinxed this too now. It always seems as soon as i mention something in the future, it doesn't work out. anyway, just wanted to let you all know that he is done with the crazy hours for now.

So bummed today - we finally decided to buy some cabinets and such that we need. I have been looking for the right ones for weeks and weeks and finally, they had the perfect ones in the fred meyer weekend ad and we drove up there with JUstin's truck today and even had Brian's good wishes and permission to get these cabinets.

You know how you drive all the way to a store and they are out of that item and it is so disappointing and frustrating? We get to freddies and you won't believe this - but the ENTIRE furniture section was GONE !!! There was just this giant empty area roped off in the middle of the store. Everyone assured us it will be back together maybe as soon as tomorrow.. ??///@#$$ Like that is going to help us... sigh. so we got rainchecks . grrrrr

Oh well, it was a fun day anyway. i'll be glad when the fishermen go home, though, we are so sick of tourists and fishermen everywhere. it is a nightmare to try to shop in Soldotna during the summer.

OK end of rant. i'll post some pictures of the new cabinets that we did get from Penneys. I'm so excited to have reall furniture, not auction or yard sale furniture or plastic totes or plastic drawer units. It's going to be so FUN. Just a little diversion to keep my mind off the Olympics....... you just can't walk away from competion that is in your blood like this, you know... LOVE YOU, totally synchronized Charlotte