Some of our Thanksgiving pics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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! ! !

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 ???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 ?

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

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

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

Is this the year?

I'm somewhat conflicted about writing this blog after declaring earlier this year that I would not be attending the Olympics .....

I kind of feel that this is the year for us to petition the Olympic committee about adding a sport that is near and dear to my heart - INDIVIDUALIZED SYNCHORNIZED SWIMMING.

I think that individuals who want to be in the sport and don't have twin sisters, or feminine brothers, are really discriminated against. I mean, maybe someone is an only child and anti-social, should they be denied the right, nee, the privilege of representing their country in this grand sport ??? Is that fair? Is that what this country is all about?? Is that what the Olympics is about? Making poor children, who suffer all their lives from not having siblings, should we be singling them out and mocking them and denying them the great joy of standing on the top of an Olympic platform == just because their parents weren't as fertile as others?

I say, NO !! Do you even have any idea how hard it is to synchornize with yourself for hours and hours under water ? I can tell you, it is not easy. I think the individual synchornized swimmers of the world deserve a voice.

NOW THE QUESTION - is China really the place I want to start this protest. I know to not protest in Tianamin square - I'm allergic to tanks running me over... if I get arrested and shot, will one of you volunteer to pay the .89 cents for the bullet they shoot me with? Or perhaps should I wait for a more friendly place to protest and let the Tibetans take center stage in the protests this year?

Also, they have outlawed dog in all the approved restaurants (of course, you can still get donkey, camel and bugs), but no one is saying if cat meat is outlawed - and being a cat lover, I'm a little uncomfortable with that.

My Chinese is not so good and I might order it by mistake... Also, I have been feeling a little under the weather, if I'm unable to get to China who is willing to take my place and make our voice heard?????

Yes, Blake - we have Olympic fever, also known as

Brian has been working 12 hour days, 7 days a week, for 45 days straight for an INSANE amount of money.

So, for our anniversary - YAY 30 YEARS - I finally bought a home theatre surround sound to go with our existing TV and it is FANTASTIC. We put 2 speakers right behind Brian's head and 3 more point right at him. So we all can hear the sound, but none of us is going to go deaf because of it. Then of course, you notice that the TV would be even better if the picture was the same quality as the sound, so that got us looking at a new TV, but we haven't got it yet. I hope to get one before the Olympics.

We were going to go up and get one together, but the job keeps going and going, so I'll probably have to go without him to make the Olympic start.

Then, if we have a new TV and surround sound, we should have a different satelite dish so we have all the latest channels and bells and whistles, so that might happen too. These are all projects we had been trying to buy for about 5 years, but just haven't had the money. So, we'll see .

The job was only supposed to be 3 days, but it shows no sign of stopping any time soon. It's really insane. And we are being smart with the money too - we paid off our car this week. COOL - HUH ??? I bought the new car the month before Gates let us know that the company was shutting down, and EVERY month since then, that car payment the last week of the month has been the bane of our existence. SO WHEW, what a relief to finally not have that hanging over our heads.

We are very blessed and know that this is a direct gift from God and we are very thankful to Him for blessing us so abundantly.

Love, Charlotte

Answers about the goose

Well, guys I really don't know how long geese live. For Alicia's 18th birthday i wanted to give her something unique and she was headed away to Montana to study Agriculture, so I figured livestock would be a good gift.

We bought mated pairs of 4 kinds of ducks and the 2 geese. We didn't know that one of our ducks was homicidal until the mama goose and 3 or 4 of the ducks were dead. The plan was to keep all the mama and daddy animals and eat the little ones, but we never did. The first year, we just had one baby live - Dixie - and you all know the story of how Heathcliff adopted her as his own the minute she walked into the yard after being born.

And the next year, we got about 15 baby ducks, but we didn't know how to cook them so eat just let them live and when Alicia and I went to Hawaii, Brian gave them all away, or sold them. Alicia threatened to drop out of school and come home if he got rid of the goose, and we kept Dixie for all those years to keep him company - until she got eaten by the eagles last year.

I think geese might live for 25 years. We like him because he has lots of personality, he is an excellent watch dog - even though he lives in the back, he knows when ANYBODY comes onto our property and lets every one in the neighborhood know. He protects the other animals from predators - dogs, eagles, hawks, owls, etc. Dixie was down on the pond alone when the eagles got her, so he couldn't save her. He rides herd over the whole flock and makes sure they stay in the yard where they're supposed to be and stuff like that.

Once a year or so, he leads an expedition to the neighbors house to eat Melva's flowers, but we've only had to replace them twice I think. Usually they make such a racket we catch them before the flowers get eaten. Other than that - he keeps everybody back there where they belong. He yells at airplanes and birds when they fly over to sound the warning to the others.

There are some truck drivers that always honks when they go past - some honk at us, some at the neighbors - and Heathcliff always honks back - it's pretty entertaining. Since we mostly deal with him from up on our deck, we can be entertained by him and don't have to worry about him chasing us unless we are down working in the barnyard.

So there you have it - everything I know about the goose and why we have him. They also eat bugs in the garden - and slugs. Chickens will eat everything in the garden, but geese usually will just eat a bite or two of veggies and then they eat all the bugs.

When I was a girl, my grandmother lived near acres and acres of mint farms - they smelled so good driving thru - and the farmers just had flocks of geese in the fields to eat the bugs - no fences or anything to keep them in. They just stayed where they were supposed to be and worked. That was how I first came to like them - I never had any up close experience. It also had always been my goal that if I ever had a pond, I would own ducks and geese. Hope this answers your questions. Love, Charlotte

For Ben

I can't believe you can't remember Heathcliff. We've had him for 10 years 3 months. He was one of Alicia's 18th birthday gifts. We had him when you lived here - maybe you didn't get to know him because you were here mostly in the winter.

Notice all the tiny white feathers surrounding him in the summer picture? When he molts - he first drops his big wing feathers. They are about 10 inches long and he has about 30 to 50 of them. This year, they all fell out within a day or two. Then he has to grow in the new ones and the whole process just saps him of all his strength. After his wings come back, his medium feathers come out and regrow and then all the thousands and thousands of tiny ones.

Sometimes, you can see he is just desparately needing a scratch here or there and you want to just pick him up and scrub him and speed the process along, but that would be ill - advised as he does have a pretty nasty bite. Just imagine trying to scratch out every hair on your body and scratch in all new replacement hairs over your whole body - and do it without hands or arms. It is truly a remarkable feat.

Reprieve for the Turkeys

Well, the turkeys earned a reprieve from the freezer for another couple weeks. Well, for 2 reasons.

1. We were going thru an entire feeder in the chicken house every day, plus the turkeys were eating everything we put out for Heathcliff and we figured they were eating us out of house and home and we were going to have to hack them sooner than we had planned.... them being so nasty tempered plus eating so much. We know how much chickens should eat - especially when we are letting them range all over the entire property.

So we couldn't figure out what was happening to the feed..... then last night Justin went out to work on the new goat barn and he got around the corner just in time to see Gretta - the big momma goat - slipping thru the tiny chicken door into the chicken house to eat their grain. She is really big, we have absolutely no idea how she squeezed thru that tiny door, but he saw it with his own eyes. so that mystery was solved and we had to apologize to the turkeys.

2. Alicia and I were in our studio on the 3rd floor and she had a window open to the back yard and we heard a funny sound. At first we thought the dog was into something but she was laying on the stairs asleep. so alicia went over to the window and looked down on the back yard and the Turkey was in full battle array - his head was as red as a tomato and his back was all ruffled and his tail splayed. And he was making a funny chortle. She said, "What's the matter turkey" and this bird flew up and out toward the pond. she didn't get a good look at him, but as near as she could tell it was some kind of falcon.

the Turkeys had corralled all the chickens so that the turkeys were between them and the falcon and had encouraged the other chickens to fly into the goat pens and hide. As soon as the falcon flew away, the chickens in the yard ran as fast as they could into their house. Alicia and I went down and herded and chucked the rest into their house and shut them in until the guys can come home and secure chicken pen. these chickens are really good escape artists, so we have let them be completely free range, but they will have to be penned up now that they have been "discovered." We had the turkeys come out of the chicken house for the afternoon so they wouldn't eat all the feed and they both lay down - one on either side of the chicken ramp and have stood guard for over an hour.

good one on them. We expect that from Heathcliff, but have never seen anything like gallant behavior from these turkeys before --- and Heathcliff is molting so he has no strength to fight anything. He can barely walk across the yard, poor thing.

I didn't even know I could navigate the stairs in such record time. Good to know I still have it in me in an emergency. My heart is still racing, though. WHEW.

Wait for the pictures to come with this post - the cord is upstairs, and I'm not.

A fruit guy came to Homer this week and we went on the last afternoon and paid half price and got a bunch of fruit. The only bulk he had left was apricots and onions. So we got 2 boxes of apricots and 50 pounds of sweet onions. Alicia worked and worked for 2 days and put up 70 jars of apricot jam, preserves, and nectar. We didn't think the apricots had as much flavor as we wanted, so we had 7 peaches and we chopped them into teeny, tiny pieces and dispersed them thruout and it was just that little bit of flavor that we were looking for. Lots of Beta Carotene and Vitamin C to get us thru the winter.

Then today our ward put in a GIANT bulk food order and Alicia and Justin borrowed a trailer from Carlos's and went up to Anchorage to the church cannery and got the order for the ward. They had to load it and unload it 5 times and ended up moving over 11,000 pounds of food total. Plus the drove more than 10 hours to get there and back. WHEW - they are pooped.

Bad news from Anchorage - the fireweed up there is already blowing cotton and is an inch from the top. Ours hasn't even started to bloom. You know what they say - when the fireweed gets to the top, winter is here. We are relieved to have our food and wood in for the winter. We are still wondering when summer is going to get here, but it just might be one of those years when there is no summer. My apple tree just bloomed this week....???

Watch for the pics of the apricot canning to come soon. Love, Charlotte

funny new blog

http://seriouslysoblessed.blogspot.com/

Joanna put a link to this blog on her blog and I have spent like more than an hour reading it and all the silly comments - the blog is funny, but is funnier if you read all the stupid comments. if you like Mormon culture jokes, this is hilarious.

I actually worked with a girl when I worked for the church that came to work one day and said she was pregnant. How far? well, 30 minutes... she always started her period when she got up in the morning and it was 8:00 and it hadn't started yet, so she announced to the whole office, including the bosses -giving them notice that she would soon be a StayAt HomeMom - but then at 10 minutes after 8:00 she started and just absolutely broke down sobbing and had to go home. It wasn't like it was a miscarriage, she was 30 minutes late - not 4 months along.

It all ended happy though - like within 2 months, she really did get pregnant and got to be a stay at home mom afterall.

I realize this post makes no sense if you haven't read the blog I'm referring to - but is funny if you have read it. The blogger and the commentors mention alot about the new craze of selling crafts on the internet -like in an etsy shop - ooops, that one hits a little close to home. hahaha

This week I sold some glass marble magnets that have little bees on them and under them are President Hinckley's 6 bees for young people. hmmmm

"What do we live for but to be sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in return?" (from Mr. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice)

I survived

Thank you for all your prayers about playing the organ. I have been having panic attacks in my sleep for a couple weeks and have gone back on Lyrica to stop them and have been medicating at night so that I sleep soundly, but this morning I was in a panic attack when I woke up. I couldn't take my extra medicine last night because I had to get up early for church. So the attack continued for about an hour, but didn't turn into a seizure. It tried to, but the Lyrica is really good about controlling the seizures.

Anyway, I told myself that I am not going to miss church anymore and so I hyperventilated and paniced all the way to church, and then just got myself up on that bench and played my songs. There were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many people there. They completely filled the gym from what I could see. It was good to hide behind the organ and not see have to think about them all being there.

Anyway, I think the playing went the best I have ever done, so it was a good experience. We finally came to a peaceful conclusion in our family history consultant class and had a really nice Relief Society meeting. Then, our ward is sending in a giant food storage bulk order and we were so excited to have this extra money that Brian is making and we were able to send in a good order to complete our food storage. Justin and Alicia have put in so much firewood, it is such a good feeling to know we have done what our prophets have counseled us to do.

LOVE YOU ALL, Charlotte

from Seattle Times

Thursday, July 3, 2008 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo, other than personal use, must be obtained from The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale@seattletimes.com with your request.

ZAC GOODWIN / AP
Balloons suspend Kent Couch in a lawn chair as he floats in the skies near Bend, Ore. Couch plans to make his third ascent Saturday July 5, 2008 in his latest attempt to fly a lawn chair to Idaho.
Information
Larry Couch Web site: www.couchballoons.com
Oregon lawn-chair balloonist hopes to fly for more than 300 miles
By JEFF BARNARD
The Associated Press
Kent Couch is at it again. While the rest of the country is sleeping off Fourth of July revels on Saturday, he and a host of volunteers will be up before the sun at his gas station in Bend, Ore., to blow up 150 giant latex party balloons and tie them with clothesline to his lawn chair for his third try at flying to Idaho.
"The first time, nobody wanted to be involved at all," Couch said in a phone interview. "They were thinking I was a lunatic, I mean a balloon-atic. I couldn't get anybody on board to help me. My friends shunned me.
"But this time it's different. One guy is donating the oxygen tank from his airplane. That's $1,500. He said, 'Don't worry about it. It's insured."'
And his wife, Susan, has given her blessing.
Couch, 48, was inspired to go up, up, and away by a TV show about the 1982 lawn chair flight over Los Angeles by truck driver Larry Walters, who gained urban myth immortality and had a play written about him, but was fined $1,500 for violating air traffic rules.
"I said, 'You know what, there is nothing wrong with that. It makes common sense to me," Couch said.
Couch made his first ascent in 2006, staying up six hours before shooting out a few balloons with his pellet gun to descend. But he had to jump to earth in his parachute because he was coming down too fast. He never got that lawn chair back.
Last year, he flew 193 miles before running low on helium and landing in sagebrush near Union in northeast Oregon. The flights have gotten him on national TV, but that's not what drives him.
"There is this desire if you've ever had a cluster of balloons in your hand and just imagine yourself floating up in the air," Couch said. "You don't realize all the other technical things. That's just a carefree day. Or you're laying on your back in the backyard and see a cotton cloud float by. You say, 'Wow, wouldn't I like to go up there and ride that cloud.'
"When you're up there, there's not much stress," Couch said. "There's a little stress on the way down. A few navigational issues you've got to deal with. But there's nothing, really, I can do but enjoy it."
With corporate sponsorship this year, he is much better equipped and hopes to fly 300 miles or more, crossing the Wallowa Mountains in northeast Oregon and making it all the way to Idaho and beyond. He figures the whole rig cost about $6,000, mostly for helium and the lawn chair, plus the loan of various gadgets.
He is putting on more balloons — 150 three-foot-diameter latex party balloons.
They tie onto a framework attached to the steel-framed reclining lawn chair, so it hangs like a pendulum. Just tying balloons to the chair makes it hang crooked.
Instead of bags to hold his water ballast, he is using 15-gallon barrels, which he can drain to gain altitude.
Couch will have a finger clip to monitor the oxygen level in his blood, as well as a tank of oxygen to breathe if he goes too high. He'll also have a GPS tracking device attached to his chair, and another in his pocket, allowing his location to be tracked on his Web site.
He will take along extra duct tape and zip ties for emergency repairs, extra clothes and a blanket for when it gets cold at higher altitude
For food, he'll have water, beef jerky, some boiled eggs and chocolate.
"You don't want to eat much," he said. "There's no bathrooms up there on that chair."
He will wear a parachute, which makes it difficult to put on or take off clothing, but no seat belt. After the first flight he found it just wasn't necessary.
"If I get up around 15,000 feet, I'll pop a couple balloons," Couch said. "If I get too low I'll release some water. All the way you go it's like a seesaw, up and down, up and down. You can't feel yourself going up and down. You have to look at the altimeter."
If all goes well this year, he'd love to fly across the English Channel and even Australia.
"I don't mind them thinking I'm nuts," Couch said. "I've done my research and I feel plenty confident. I did 50 sky dives before this. Sky diving can be just as dangerous as this. Guys who sky dive thousands of times don't have a scratch on them."
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

In the air


getting ready to take off from Bend

Picture of Kent from his flight last year. You can see how much he looks like Brian - has the same body build, but he doesn't have Brian's grey hair yet. His wife and folks probably do.

Flying Kent Couch

Kent flew today instead of Monday. I just did a google search for Kent Couch and there were 760 stories about his flight. From his website, you could even track the flight, but we didn't know that until he had already landed.

his website is www.couchballons.com

We had trouble getting it to work - i'm sure because millions of people were trying to use it. All the news organizations are carrying the story, so you can take your pick of who you want to read. According to CNN, he landed in Cambridge Idaho - he was aiming for Boise. I couldn't get my map to work, so I don't know how close to Boise he got. At one point, mid-morning, he was farther north than he wanted to be, but he got his course corrected and headed back towards Boise.

In the interviews, he said he would do this every weekend if he had the time and the money. I'm sure he will be on all the news shows this week.

Balloon Man

Brian's cousin, Kent Couch, is planning another big lawn chair balloon flight this weekend, probably on Monday, but it might be a different day, based on the weather. He plans to fly from Bend to Boise. He wanted to fly to Idaho last time, but evening thunderheads over the mountains convinced him to come down outside LaGrande, where his dad lives.

If you don't remember = Kent and Brian are first cousins. Kent's dad and Brian's mom are brother and sister. Alicia read a story about it on MSN. Idon't know what other news companies will follow the story.

check out holiday blog

Blake had a great idea to activate the Holiday blog for the 4th of July. You can get there by clicking on the link that says Family Christmas Blog

The picture of the flag I posted is our neighbor's flag at sunset. Their son, Ron, brought it home to them after his tour of Iraq, so it is special to us all. Ron is in Afghanistan now and Mike is in Iraq, along with both of my nephews named Josh., and also Barb and Paul's grandson. Our hearts and prayers and gratitude are with them.