ANOTHER OF DAD'S PROJECTS

At the recent Portland tractor show, my dad bought an old motorcycle cargo trailer. He tore the top off and gave it away. Then he changed the bottom into a 4-person trailer to pull behind his Cub Cadet. He is AMAZING.

I wouldn't have seen value in this thing.

He took the top off and put it out by the road; it was gone within the hour.

It had good underpinnings.

He custom-ordered Amish buggy seats and the finished product looks pretty spiffy.

Here is the old trailer he had built for Mom years ago.  We used it this year.  There's something about the ladies being consigned to riding on the back that makes people laugh.  (What the guys don't know is that when the day is 90 degrees, being removed from the heat coming off that engine is a great relief!)

 OUR WHEEZY

Wheezy Trotter Welton, age 13, of Grove City died today at the Franklin Animal Clinic of cancer. Born April 1, 2008 in the woods, he was brought to the Welton home during a severe storm and decided to be adopted there, where he remained a valued member of the family until his death.

He was an indoor-outdoor cat. He went in and out and in and out and in and out and in. A voracious hunter, his winning streak was a chipmunk every day for 3 weeks in a row. He also brought frogs, mice, voles, and flying squirrels to the back door.

In addition, he was a lap cat, gently leaping onto any person’s lap who happened to sit down.

He was God's good gift and he was the smartest and best cat who ever lived.

This was the moment he claimed our family.

The catsitter had him star in a movie.

He does not look sorry.

His photo was chosen to be the December Man in a calendar.

Wheezy "lost" his wrapping within 30 minutes; to this day, we don't know where it is.

Christmas could be enjoyable in a different way.

He really had a thing about jumping on the roof. Once he fell down the chimney and Ben had to go to the basement to fetch him out of the fireplace.

This was one of his favorite spots to sit.  Can you see him?

 FAIRY CIRCLE

This fairy circle appeared at my parents' house this year.  They have lived there for 45 years and have never had it before.  It was quite an attraction and was photographed by many people.

A fairy ring starts when the spawn ("seeds") of a mushroom falls in a good spot and sends out an underground network of threads.  The threads grow out evenly in all directions, which forms a circle--like spokes on a wheel.  So the mushrooms that grow up through the ground come out in a circle.

Some people believe that fairies dance inside the circle at night.

After a while, Dad would get tired of it, so he would mow the grass.  Dad mowed it off 4 times, but they kept growing back.

Someone stole the one he had spray-painted red, so we had to paint another one (we think it was a friend who wanted to have it analyzed by an expert...but he's not talking).

SOME THINGS LAST FOREVER

This is the Tooth Fairy glass.

When I was a kid, I asked my dad how tall the Tooth Fairy is and he pointed to his glass of milk and said "As tall as this glass."  The glass came free from the gas station with jelly inside, over 50 years ago.

Dad still drank milk from it tonight.

THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG

I have been thinking a lot about chickens and their owners lately.

I love the looks of a chicken.  I could collect chicken photos on Pinterest forever, they're so beautiful.

My co-mother-in-law's chicken

I get excited about chicken houses too, and the different ways you can protect your chickens while gleaning all of their benefits.

But purchasing good eggs on a regular basis seems to be a very difficult thing to do.  There was a time whereby an egg owner would give eggs to a friend at her church, and then I'd have to stop by the friend's house to pick them up, but that eventually chickened out.

Then someone in our church appeared to want to regularly bring eggs to OUR church, but that turned out to be a one-time deal.  Then there was a patron of the library who brought them once.  Then there were a couple of families who said they would bring regularly, but they keep forgetting....you get the picture. These folks seem to be...well...so flighty.

It has set me to wondering if there's a certain type of folk who raise chickens.

My brother and his family recently began to raise chickens.  They have been very methodical about it, doing research, building things.

My niece and the one my brother built.

It sounds like such fun!  I haven't heard much news since the chicks arrived, but eggs have started coming.  He lives far away, so I'll probably never partake. But now I'm wondering what kind of person he REALLY is.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER

Wrote this years ago, but never posted.  Today is the day:

This year on Christmas Day, my husband’s mother told us it was her best Christmas ever.

This could be a silly statement, seeing as how she is in a nursing home, in a wheelchair, and hardly knows who-is-who or what-is-what. Because she had a nap before we arrived, she wasn’t even sure it was still Christmas when we visited.

And yet, it gave us all pause. My sister-in-law was greatly moved because she said it should really humble us, we who have so much. Mom has so little and yet is so grateful for what she does have. How poor of us to dare complain about ANYTHING after that!

I myself am very moved by the grace of God toward Mom. How unfailingly kind He has been toward her in her older days, causing her not to realize the passage of time while sitting alone or not to be aware of pain and loneliness. If she does have any emotional hurt (which I don’t think is often), she finds solace through holding the Bible in her hand and staring at the page.

His grace in this situation extends to us too. We do not have to agonize so much because we can’t spend every minute with her. How comforting it is to see her passing into His presence this way.

Romans 15:13~~ May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

JOB OPPORTUNITIES

My cousin Delbert was lounging on a bench at the mall when a mall official approached him.

"Why?" you might ask.  "Was he doing something wrong?"

It was his beard.  And possibly his tummy.

"Have you ever thought about being a Santa?" Delbert was asked.  "Well, no I haven't."  he replied.

Delbert and his wife Sunja have no children, and he hasn't much experience with children, but he is kind and gentle, and you can see he certainly looks the part.

ALASKA:  KISSIN' THE MOOSE IN TALKEETNA

 

I tried kissing a moose a couple of times.

I tried BECOMING a moose once.

And I even tried to dance with a bear.

But cousin Adele REALLY kissed a moose antler, and it wasn't pretty.

When we left Anchorage to start our land tour, we boarded the Wilderness Express train to go north.

Our cruise company (Celebrity, owned by Royal Carribbean) had private cars with a restaurant on the lower deck and huge windows on the upper.  It allowed us to walk during the trip, to look for moose and bear, and to learn a lot of info about Alaska from our tour guide.

Tom and his wife Rita

Our first stop was in the small town of Talkeetna.  It's often advertised as being like the town of Cicely in television's Northern Exposure.  Broad streets, quaint buildings, VERY low-profile and quiet.

Although 50 miles from Denali, it is the starting place for climbers, who fly in to Base Camp.  Talkeetna has a small museum that talks about the history of climbing...and also a cemetery that honors some of those who have lost their lives.  At least six men have died on the mountain this year.

The shuttle bus dropped us off at the town, and we were off!  The very very first tourist shop had a cute decorative garden of gravel, flowers, and several moose antlers laying there, and when Adele walked past this lovely decor, she slipped and fell!  FLAT ON HER FACE, wham!  Down!

Of all the impossible things to happen, her face hit a moose antler, and the point of the antler went INSIDE her mouth and punctured the inside of her cheek!

Did you ever hear of such a thing?!

It was large enough to be concerned about, and so a doctor was consulted, but they decided to leave it untouched.  The whole side of her face was bruised for the rest of the trip.

But you have to admit, there's a lot of humor to be found in it too.  Of course we were concerned about her, but it was hard not to laugh as well.  I imagine the doctor did--and went off to add it to the book he's going to write some day, called My Crazy Adventure with Tourists in Alaska.  Meanwhile, Adele got a lot of "ribbing" about moose every day.

ALASKA:  A GUNMAN HELD US UP

When you go to Alaska, they say you should do the land tour first and the actual cruise afterward.  I think this is a good idea.  My cousin Tom had chosen to do the Cruisetour #12* offered by Celebrity Cruises so that all transportation and hotels were taken care of (with our time free to do what we wanted).  It was a great way to get commentary and teaching about everything we were seeing, along with making friends whom we would later see on the ship.

We began in Anchorage, took a train up to Denali, and took a motor coach back south all the way to the ship.  Our last night before the cruise was spent at the Alyeska Resort near Girdwood, with the biggest ski mountain in Alaska.  The accommodations were very luxurious.

We rode the tram to the top (wedding photos were being taken),

 

some of our group rode bicycles,

 

some of us just hiked around,

along the highway

and through the woods.

Claudia petted a local dog who was milking all the tourists for anything he could get.

But the next day we had troubles.  We were to meet our bus at 1 PM for the final leg of our trip to.........THE SHIP!!  Until the gunman arrived.

It seems a gunman took another man and his car as hostage--in Anchorage.  They began driving south toward Seward on the only highway there is--the Seward Highway.  The Point A is where we were in Girdwood.

Along the way, the gunman decides he needs a restroom break, so they stop at the rest area in the scenic Turnagain Pass, he locks the kidnapped victim in his car, takes the keys, and is off to find the loo.

BUT the kidnapped man has an extra set of keys--HA-HAH!  So he happily drives off and contacts the police.

Now EVERYONE has problems, because this is the only highway going south.  It is a Friday afternoon, and many tourists want to get to Seward to get aboard their cruise ship.  Many tourists are getting off their cruise ship and want to come north.  AND "the red are starting to run" (the red/sockeye salmon are starting to enter the creeks and to upstream spawn), so all the locals are getting off work and going south to the Kenai Peninsula to fish for the weekend!

All traffic was halted for 3 hours while the police searched for the gunman.  This included the bus that was supposed to take us to our cruise ship.  I can't remember the reports, but it was between 20-30 miles of backed up traffic??

We were fortunate to be stuck at the hotel and not in a bus sitting on the highway.  But still...we had to hang around in case the bus came.

Some of us passed the time making phone calls. 

                                    Cousins Tom and Greg                                          

A lot of us created roadrunner jokes, started by (yours truly):  for example, what did the roadrunner do when his best friend died?  Weep-weep. Why does the roadrunner shop at the Dollar Store?  Cheap-cheap.

Aunt Carol and Cathy

                  

My husband and I tried to make interesting photos.  Here's a fountain growing out of his ear:

 Kissing a moose

Leaping up in the air

Being roasted alive

Because we were on a Celebrity cruisetour, the Celebrity ship would have to wait for us if we were late.  But we got there just in time (literally) at 8 PM.  The ship was churning the water by the time my big toe touched the deck.  We missed the sit-down dinner meal and wandered around a bit confused for a while, but our on-board adventures had begun!

* Cruisetour #12 cities:  1 night Anchorage, by open-ceiling train to Talkeetna (1 night) & Denali (2 nights).  Tundra Wilderness Tour in Denali National Park.  By bus to Alyeska (1 night) & Seward (where the cruise ship is boarded).

P.S.  Who is the Roadrunner's favorite female movie star?