Back to NY

This REALLY will be a quick one since I'm heading back to NY tomorrow and I have way too much stuff to do. My mom got to fly with Duane King this morning and had a BLAST! She couldn't say enough good about that flight! She got to see some really cool stuff in the pictures I saw so it sounds like a perfect way to wrap up their visit! We also got to go to Sheep Mountain on Sunday and saw all sorts of sheep along the way. Here's a panorama of the Sheep Mountain area:

"Our" mountain in the evening light:

Lion's Head:

Sheep mommies with their babies:


The garden area so far - we still need to go another layer higher with fencing to keep out moose and then the south side will have fish netting (thanks, Brian and Lori Lee!)

Ellie got too hot while we were working on the garden. It DOES get hot up here, especially when you are out in the sun! I'd REALLY appreciate prayer while we are in NY! It is HOT right now - like 90 hot! I will be MISERABLE if it stays that hot! I'll be miserable if it is 80 but... Yeah.

Dad on my motorcycle. Still don't have a picture of me on it yet. He's better on it than I am!

Wildlife abounds!

We're into another of my favorite seasons here in Alaska. I think this officially means that they are all favorites! I could do without the cottonwood trees starting to leaf out (they bother me now, not when they produce cotton), but other than that, this is truly another amazing season! The first week that my parents were here we didn't see any moose. I think it was because the snow was finally gone and they were out roaming around eating. Now that they are getting ready to have their young, they are back in camp where the bears won't follow. We've been seeing them daily again; sometimes a little too close for comfort! ;)

The other day my parents were out working on getting a garden plot ready while I was back in the house getting gloves for everyone. I heard a yell and looked out just in time to see a moose go charging through our yard, right between my mom near the greenhouse and my dad near the chicken coop! My dad wasn't too flustered but at one point the moose was running straight toward my mom! Guess her heart is still good, because she didn't have a heart attack! ;) It was a youngster fortunately, not too big in reality, though I'm pretty sure it looked about 10' tall to my mom. We sort of expected the naughty dogs to be close behind, but they were no where to be seen. Sort of makes you wonder why that moose was in such a hurry. Other than that close encounter, most of their wildlife interactions have been as we generally like it, with plenty of distance and/or enclosure in between them and it.

Andrei had to have his nose fixed yesterday which meant getting up at the crack of dawn for the two hour drive in. The afternoon before the surgery my parents got the idea that since we needed to be in Anchorage early anyway, they ought to try to catch the morning train to Denali. We got on the phone and within a half hour had them booked for the next morning. They got to Denali at about 4 pm after a leisurely ride with numerous sightings of Denali (apparently not as easy to see as one might imagine, it is usually hiding behind some clouds). They also got to see more moose, a baby bear and caribou. We were thrilled that they had such great weather and a great time! They'll head back today and Rodney will pick them up in Wasilla.

They've had a decent opportunity to view the wildlife. We've had sheep (or goats) hanging about the camp on the hills above our house and along the hills on the way to the school (which we've driven many times picking up kids) so they've had a number of opportunities to watch them. There have also been ducks galore on the lake in front of our house in addition to many western birds which have had us heading to the Audubon books to identify them. We've had a pair of Goldeneye ducks, some Pintails, Mallards of course and Shovelers. There have been others but we haven't been able to identify all of them yet. Who needs to raise ducks when so many of them come in and do the job themselves! ;) None of the work - all of the enjoyment this way! There are pretty little blue butterflies that hang around a damp spot on the lower hiking path. They flitter like little fluorescent fairies around your ankles. I can't even begin to list all the song birds we are seeing and hearing! The new-to-us, ever-changing flora and fauna are a constant source of wonder and amazement!

We're into our 24 hrs of daylight now which is certainly interesting. It doesn't bother me, but the kids and Ellie are having trouble sleeping. Then again, today marks the end of school for the year so I'm sure that is part of the excitement these days. Sergei got up at 6:30 yesterday and rushed Oksana out to the school bus so that they wouldn't miss it. They were an hour early. Ellie has been more than her normal anxious and annoying, keeping us up many nights with her whining. It may be just the daylight, but blood tests show some abnormal liver functioning (may be making her more anxious) so she's on some medication for that and some other possibilities. We'll see how that goes. For now she's sleeping with Andrei who isn't sleeping much either. They can keep each other company while they toss and turn.

We'll be back in NY in about a week. It is hard to imagine that it is coming that quickly! We'll be at Middlesex Baptist with intense jet-lag and red-eye-lag on May 30 and may be in East Palmyra at my parent's church (CRC) the next Sunday, June 6, if everything works out. My brother and nephew are coming from Florida and my sister may be coming from Calgary so that is going to be a BUSY week! Not sure if I mentioned or not, but a friend brought a new trailer up from Georgia for us so I need to pack our remaining "stuff" into that while we are in NY. Then we need to figure out how to get it up here! Ideally we'd like to buy a Suburban in the lower 48 and have someone drive that up, but we have some other options if that doesn't come together. Interestingly enough, there are a number of people willing to drive if we provide the vehicle and gas! I'd love to do it again too someday if there's no schedule, no anxious dog and no crabby teens involved! We'll plan on that when the kids are in college, or out of the house or something.

Speaking of wildlife... The last day of school means crazy dressing, plus the nose cast. Maggie would like to sign his cast, but I didn't want to set a precedent at school so she'll have to wait until tonight.

Mama and last year's baby swam across the lake yesterday - as you can see, no more ice. Eider has also discovered that and is wet pretty much constantly now.

A pair of Pintails earlier in the week when there was still a little ice.

Goldeneyes that same day.


Apologies in advance for any errors! Rodney normally proofreads but he's gone for the day and I'm too impatient to wait for him to get home late in the evening to read this before I post it!

Broken nose and parents visiting

This is going to be a short one not because there's not much to tell, but because time is at a premium lately! My parents arrived a little more than a week ago and things promptly got crazy (to put it mildly). On Monday night Andrei was playing volleyball with the community group and one of the girls on his team went for the ball at the same time Andrei did. Her elbow? (or something) connected with his nose and this is the result:

I promptly sent this picture to my brother and sister-in-law (it's handy to have doctors in the family) to see if it needed treatment now or if it could wait until we returned home in a couple of weeks. They were rather adamant that it be handled NOW! He'll get it put back in place this coming Wednesday. This was taken the day after the break. It is actually getting some pretty color now!

So far, much of my parent's visit has consisted of driving to doctor appointments in Wasilla. I think we've now made 3 visits to doctors in just over one week. We did squeeze in a trip to the Iditarod headquarters today. That was more store than museum, but it was still interesting. We also got to spend a day with my cousin in Palmer seeing his farm. That was fun! He's always got interesting experiments going on! We got to see some Bald Eagles at the farm and some of the penned moose and caribou. We've also seen sheep (or maybe goats) on the hills between here and the school almost every time we've gone to the school for one thing or the other. They'd been here a week before they saw their first wild moose on the church driveway! My mom was thrilled! Us, not so much. We see them so often it has become old hat, but I do remember that same feeling - wanting to see a real, live moose.

Oh, one side note on moose. Remember that lovely little moose we put in the freezer? Well, I can't eat it. I'd eaten it a couple of times and it just didn't agree with me. Then we had it at Nate and Maggie's house and I mentioned having some bad experiences with it. Katie asked me if I was allergic to aspirin. I am, but I couldn't see how that had anything to do with moose. Katie explained that moose eat a lot of willow in the winter and get a lot of salicylates built up in their systems. Who would have thunk it! Much as I love the taste of that delicious young moose, I don't much care for the suffering it produces in my gut over the next 24 hours!

Back to the parents. We did get to go out for a tour of the Matanuska glacier! We had a beautiful day to do it and Matt Sherrer from camp was an awesome guide! He's so funny and so knowledgeable about the glacier that it made it quite a trip! The glacier was BEAUTIFUL! I've been waiting for the right time to make a trip out there and this was perfect! Hope you enjoy the pictures! This is the color of the ice through the rocks it has carved out of the hills:

Too bad the camera doesn't quite capture the splendor of the day, or the glacier.


The brave adventurers!

Glacier hike

Today was a glorious spring day with dazzling sunshine and temperatures right up around 60 degrees. Yesterday was more of the same. The snow is rapidly losing ground (literally) under the intensity of the sun. I know, you can't believe that it could be intense in ALASKA, but trust me, it is! 60 degrees in the Alaskan sun is downright toasty!

School groups are here in camp for their "Outdoor Education" trips. Camp offers trips to fossil beds and the Matanuska glacier so today Matt Sherrer took Brian Wilbert, Aaron Meeuwsen and I down to the glacier to check it out and to teach Brian how to do the trips. Despite the great melt-off we've had this week, it still wasn't quite enough to make it possible to get to the glacier. There's just too much snow and mud to get there safely. Snow is a problem because you need to be able to see holes and crevasses in the ice so that you don't fall through them (they could go down hundreds of feet). Mud is a problem because it is glacier silt which is more like quicksand than your garden variety mud. I was glad I brought my sun hat and sun glasses. It was blinding! I LOVE the blue of the glacier! The water that settles in puddles coming off the glacier is blue too. Beautiful!

Little Miss Naughty Pants has been at it again. There is a small stand of pines in the front yard and Ellie chased her pet squirrel up there today. She stood out there for hours yelling at it and trying to get it to come down and play! Poor Eider could NOT figure out what all the noise was about! If she had access to a ladder I have no doubt that she would be climbing right up that tree! When the weather is nice (which is most of the time now) she spends almost all day outside keeping the house safe from squirrels and the like. Good thing Ellie is on duty keeping us all safe! I'm sure the world would fall apart if she didn't keep watch!

Here's the lake today - it doesn't look all that safe for driving now, does it? Or walking for that matter!
I made reservations to go back to NY in about a month. My mom and dad will arrive for a visit in about a week and then we'll follow them back. We'll be in NY over the Memorial Day weekend, hang out for a week or so, see lots of people, go to the doctor (we have only emergency medical coverage out here unless we want to pay for it ourselves) and basically do a lot of visiting. We also bought another trailer (car hauler) to haul the rest of our stuff up here so I need to fill that while we are there. We're still not certain who will drive it up yet. We've had a couple offers so we just need to see what comes together.

As I said in the last post, things are going to get crazy from here on out. I doubt I'll manage to keep up with regular posts very soon. I've been shooting for weekly posts up until now, but we'll see how things go before I set a "summer" goal! I'd better start some sort of list somewhere or I'll forget what has happened! We've already gotten the first camp "summer" schedule and it's looking pretty crazy. Maybe I'll just hang onto those to remind myself of where we've been! :)

Breakup

In Alaska, Breakup isn't about relationship, it's about snow and ice giving way to mud and slush. Lots of slush. Deep, machine sucking slush. This is the time of year when even 4-wheel drive isn't enough sometimes. It pays to invest in a winch. Unless you're looking on Craigslist, then you'd want to look for a wench. "4WD ATV with wench for sale." I don't know why they sell so many of them with wenches. Little signs started appearing on the periphery of our awareness building up slowly until now we see them everywhere. They warn truck drivers that axles have limits lower than normal; 50%, 75%, 80%. I finally heard the explanation the other day. The roads are vulnerable to frost heave this time of year so they want to keep heavy weights off of them until the frost is out.

I got to learn first hand how to use a winch yesterday. If you remember way back to October 24, 2009 I showed you the "corduroy road" section of our trail. The reason we had to put down all those little trees to make the corduroy was because there are springs that go across the trail there. The trees allow us to drive across the muddy spots. Things are a little different there now. There is a stretch of path that is one big sheet of ice. Add some fresh snow so I couldn't see where Rodney's tracks were and just a bit too far to the lower side and I went off the trail into a good 18" of slush. There was a ledge of ice preventing me from getting back on the path. Sergei had already messed up the winch once by not operating it correctly so I wisely chose to get someone who knew how to use it (that would be the tired spousal unit). I'm glad I did, not only because he taught me how to use it, but also because he was big enough to do the manhandling required to get it back up on that ledge. The winch may have done the pulling, but he still had a lot of maneuvering to do to get it out of there.

Maggie reminded me that we wanted to live out here. Actually, that was a great reminder. It helped me to be thankful for the privilege of living in such a beautiful spot, in such a beautiful house, in such a wonderful camp, with such amazing people! :) But I'll still be happy when the rest of the slush melts! We're using the ATV path exclusively now and it is quite a hike if you have to carry things. It's also a bit of work when it is REALLY slushy. I'm not that comfortable with the ATVs and mine doesn't have chains anyway so most of the time I'm hiking if I want to go out. That includes hiking IN groceries! Thankfully I also have teenagers! Lee Althens (the guy who built this place and raised his kids here) said that they used to drag a canoe across the lake with one foot in the canoe and one foot on the ice and push themselves along that way. Using that method, if the ice gave way they always had the canoe to jump in. I'm not quite Alaskan enough for that yet!

I actually bought a small motorcycle (Honda CR85R) for making the trek in but will have to wait until the snow melts to be able to use it. Nate built a windscreen for Rodney's ATV which makes it much more pleasant to ride in the cold weather, but it doesn't have a defrost unit or wipers so sometimes it is still a bit hard to see. It does block a ton of wind though! Slowly but surely we're figuring out what works, what doesn't and learning what to do better next time.

Rodney has had some really crappy days lately. He and Nate spent two days this week trying to thaw a frozen sewer pipe. They do that by blasting hot water into the pipe. Unfortunately due to the nature of a BLOCKAGE, all that water (and other "stuff" in there) has no where to go but to come right back at you. That section of pipe is only 16" below the surface at that point so it is frequently a problem. They would like to replace it with a line that is straighter and further under the surface, but to do that would require that it be built to current code, apparently a rather expensive endeavor. At this point there are so many other project requiring time and money that it isn't high on the priority list.

Speaking of priority lists, one of the highest priorities at the moment is for staff housing. There are a LOT of families preparing to come on staff at Victory soon and very little housing available. Camp is trying to raise the funds to put in a number of new houses. We're also still trying to fill counselor slots for the summer (at both Victory and Li-Wa). If you know of any college age teens that would love to spend a summer in Alaska working with kids, have them check out the Victory website!

Summer is fast approaching! May starts our work team schedule so things will be HOPPING here! I'll have to fill you in a bit later on exactly how all of that works because we've never actually seen all of it in action. We saw a little bit of it last year, but we were still settling in ourselves at that point so we didn't really get that deep into it. Keeping those work teams running will be a big part of our summer. Since they are here non-stop from May through September, we'll be BUSY! I may not be able to blog as much this summer so I hope ya'll can forgive me! Just because we still have snow on the ground does not mean summer isn't almost here. Sunrise is now at about 6 am and sunset at 9:30 pm, with twilight an hour before and after that so our days are LONG already! The kids have less than a month of school left at this point. Summer will hit us before we know it.

One more sign of spring is that the squirrels are out in full force. Ellie has taken over as squirrel-chaser-extraordinaire! She is filling the empty shoes left by the mighty squirrel hunter Piper. Too bad she doesn't fill the rest of Piper's shoes! Piper was such a great dog and Ellie is the naughtiest dog on earth. I'd started to forget that recently until yesterday. Ellie had a busy day yesterday. First I looked out the window to see Eider happily busy under my suet feeder. I became suspicious and upon closer inspection I noticed the naughty hound on TOP of the wood pile! She had broken open the suet bag and shared her ill-gotten gains with the black beast. Then she spent half the day chasing that crazy squirrel which was funny until I saw that she was standing ON the insulation around the pipe right below that feeder! It will not be a happy day if she breaks that insulation loose! Later that afternoon she suddenly appeared from upstairs! I have no idea how she got there or how long she was up there, but I had not been up there in quite some time. Somehow she had gotten past the barrier and up the stairs and then hid up there without my noticing. She wasn't done yet though! Sergei left his chair out after dinner and those who know Ellie can guess what happened next. To her, a chair left out is an invitation to climb up on the dining room table and see what she can find. Yesterday was no exception! To top off the evening she sat down next to Rodney (who had rather foolishly set his mug of water on the floor next to the couch he was lying on) and proceeded to drink all his water. There was water in the DOG water dish, but it tastes better out of a cup! Anyone want an adorable, sweet little hound dog? She had a bath recently. Not that it did any good. She was stinky again the next day! Oh wait, I'm supposed to be convincing you to take her...

Here the naughty monkey is enjoying her ill-gotten gain.
Mr. Innocent. NOT! Too bad for him he's not a chocolate Lab!

The offending squirrel. Cheeky little thing, isn't he? The ear tufts are cute.

My geranium is happy. My cousin's wife Luci gave it to me last fall. I ignored it all winter and this is how it thanks me.

Gunsight

Today was the annual sledding bash at Gunsight, a gravel pit up the road a bit past Sheep Mountain. I figured the best way to show what went on was with some video and pictures. They tell the story better than I can.

The first vehicles arrive:
Ben Gerwig unloads the first of their machines:

Joe Gerwig the next:

The Roubs came well prepared with machine, grill, firewood, chairs, table, food, etc. Their "camp" was the center of activity for the day. The trailer even had a barrel stove in it in case people got cold. It was a mild day though so only those who didn't wear proper clothing got cold.

Oksana and Katie Regier "before" sledding:

Chuck Gerwig hauling a small load of kids up the hill. Some went part way up, other brave ones went the full mile to the very top. Randall Thiessen enjoyed just riding up and down on the snow machine in front of someone.
This video gives a decent overview of the sledding. This is a long-ish video. The others are pretty short. It was hard to get video and pictures because the sun was right over the hill. I could hardly see anything on the screen of the camera because of the sun so it was basically just pointing the camera in the direction of the activity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCdJIXTMMS0

The next shows Sergei, Robert VanDaam and Jenny Lee as they come to the bottom of the run.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fe8darppf0

Then Andrei, Katie and Alaura Sherrer as they get to the bottom. Andrei, Mr. "I Don't Want to go Sledding" actually ended up sledding all day. Katie made him promise to go with her, then Jenny, Miranda... Pretty soon he was asking others to go down with him! He complains that I was laughing too much. It was hilarious. Sorry!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQorseqlYpE

Then finally Rodney decided to go too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcVtUiLQ3OE

The video of him coming to the bottom was just like any other, but I did get pictures:

Just a few more pictures to just fill out the story. Sergei, Ben and Trayton Cohen chatting by the fire:
Jenny was a little covered in snow:

Sergei wasn't wearing long johns, so he soaked through to the skin. This picture didn't come through well. He was literally steaming standing there by the fire. He ended up wearing an extra pair of pants that I had brought.

I'll finish up with a few pictures of our trail at home. Despite the fact that it looks like there is a lot of snow (and there still is) it is melting quickly. My machine tonight before we went across the lake:
The ATV/snow machine trail in winter:The hill that leads down to our house. This was taken a few days ago. Today that hill is mostly mud.
The view from the overlook.

Oh yeah, definitely spring!

I'm making up for the lack of posting last week and now you've got THREE posts in one week! :) There's just so much to write that if I don't do it now the next one will be a mile long. Can't have that! I left off with us having a foot of water over our "ice road." The next morning Rodney drove out the camp truck and the water was up to the floor boards! He was afraid that it would start coming in the doors, but it didn't. Needless to say he did not bring the camp truck back that night. Nor did we bring our truck over to pick up the cap. We're officially done using the ice road for the year.

Rodney talked to Lee Althens, the guy that built this place and lived here for 20-25 years, and he said that if there is that much water, it is no longer overflow but must be coming through holes in the ice. He said those holes can go from 3" to 3' in 24 hours! Yikes! We could see fish swimming above the ice, so we're pretty certain that is exactly what is going on. We have one of those holes out on the road beyond the generator shed and probably a few more out past the peninsula. Lee also gave Rodney some suggestions about better placement of the road next year (closer to the peninsula) so that it will last longer. We can still take the snow machines across the lake if we stick to certain trails (like straight across the peninsula), but for the most part we're taking the ATV trail. It was a bit of a disappointment that we didn't get some horse manure brought out for the garden before we lost use of the road, but we'll figure out something. We may just have to start a bit smaller with the garden this year.

I got my snow machine stuck in a pile of slush by trying to turn around in a spot that was too soft, not packed trail. Fortunately Rodney wasn't too far off and came to pull me out. Good thing my machine is light! Rodney was a bit annoyed with himself later that he didn't have the foresight to bring the camera. ;) I wasn't too far off the path, but I just didn't have the strength to do it myself. It really is a two man job when you get stuck like that - one to pull and one to hit the gas! The worst that happened was that I got a soaker (a cold one at that!) and had to go change into some boots. I was trying to get going on my way to Anchorage so it was a minor annoyance to think I would be late, but it worked out just fine in the end.

Rodney and I did a little snowshoeing yesterday while surveying the water situations. That was kind of fun! We were able to buy two pairs of almost new snowshoes at about half price so we've been getting some good use out of them. They are a perfect size for me - I hardly go through the snow at all. They are a little under-sized for Rodney, but he'd finds them to be a handier size than larger ones anyway, so they work. At any rate, we walked around the generator shed to check out the hole and then out to the road to look at the ice/water situation there. There are THOUSANDS of sticklebacks (a small fish with spines on it's back) in the hole near the generator shed. I'll try to get a picture of them but it will be hard to see. They are just massed in there, probably enjoying the aeration provided by the water flowing in.

Yes, spring is definitely here! The snow is quickly melting, revealing all the mess that we left last fall with the construction. We're starting to clean up as stuff appears from under the snow. We're gaining about 6 minutes of daylight each day now. According the the local weather, our sunrise is at about 7 am and sunset at 8:45 pm, but it starts getting light at 6 or so and stays light until about 10. Sheep Mountain Lodge up the road from us (owners Zack and Anjanette Steer are the ones who run the Iditarod) has a weather station that is much closer to accurate for us than Sutton, Palmer, Wasilla or Anchorage. It is almost always 5-10 degrees warmer down in those cities than it is near us. http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=99674 I'll try to link this on the front page as well so ya'll can look at our weather and gloat. Honestly, go ahead, I don't mind. I LIKE it cool and/or cold! :) When you guys have 80 degree weather (or worse!) I'm thanking God for bringing us to a nice cool place to live! :) In my opinion, anything greater than 70 is just a waste of degrees! ;) You can always add layers of clothing, but there's just so much you can take off and it is STILL hot!

One more sign of spring is all the rock slides on our drive in to Palmer/Wasilla/Anchorage. The roads are carved into the sides of the mountains leaving HUGE walls of dirt and rock along the road sides. I'm not sure if I mentioned with the "guardrail" post or not that there is a reason for the lack of guardrails. It is so that they can plow the rocks off the road! This is the time of year when we really see that. They don't snowplow this time of year, they ROCK plow! Honest! With the thaw comes loosening dirt and rocks on those hill sides. Considering the angle of some of those hills, gravity takes effect and down they come! They often land in the road and then the plows come by and push them off the other side of the road. It is certainly efficient this way!

Another indication of spring is of course Easter. Dan Woodard, a friend we stopped to visit on our trip up, here recently shared a piano rendition of And Can It Be that was just beautiful! It is one of my all time favorite hymns and the words tell the wonder of the Easter story. Unfortunately Dan's rendition is only on Facebook, not Youtube. If you've got Facebook you can hear it here:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/video/video.php?v=1372439345719 He said it was a Kim Collingsworth arrangement but it didn't sound like the one she plays here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuwPlsdaEBs Either way, it is such a moving song! Lyrics below:

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

One more QUICK note, Rodney ran across a video of dog sledding that was really good so I'll link that here for anyone interested in seeing it in action. I think it is a local TV show from Vermont - pretty well done at any rate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv2If_a-apE So that's my story for today. As you can see, there was a lot to tell and I know ya'll don't appreciate when these get to be a mile long! Oh wait, it is already a mile long!