Emerald's Turn

Alexis, Alectra and I collected these seashells the first time we went clamming this year, at Sadie Cove. We play with them and put water in them to give our toy animals baths.
We use these pink and red shells as jewels. We hide the little ones inside two bigger ones, like treasure in a treasure chest except it's seashells in a seashell chest.

We use the snail shells as steps for the toy animals to get into the bathtub shells.I'll tell you about my day. We went swimming today for swimming lessons. We have some friends taking lessons with us. They have a baby brother who has to take medicine that makes his lips and tongue purple. We came home, ate lunch and then went to the Ranch. We rode 4-wheelers, read a book and played with Alectra and Alexis, while Mom and Dad taped off the house for the guy to do the texturing on the walls. Mom and Dad got the primer sprayed last night. I got to drive the bobcat for the first time today. It was bumpy but FUN!

Jayce Posts: grammar

Jayce: I've gotta get the grammar done! Well, I have to blog some of it. Firstly, I have to write something about an embarrassing moment. Here goes!
An embarrassing (and funny) moment was when I took my first jump with a fourwheeler.
I was at my cousin Brandon's house, and I was (of course) riding their little yellow fourwheeler. Their fourwheeler is so little that your knees touch the front wheelwells. They also have a jump that has two sides coming up diagonally and goes down in the middle and then comes back up to go down the other side. So, I was going up the jump at about 10-15 mph. I knew I was going too fast because before I had been riding a bigger fourwheeler going that fast, and my front tires got air. So I COASTED up the hill and POW! I was in the air. Luckily, I didn't break the fourwheeler by landing in the depression, and landed on the other side. It. Hurt. Badly. Remember when I said my knees hit the wheelwells? When I jumped, my knees were pulled back; when I landed, they were forward, and WHAM! they hit the wheelwells. It hurt. Then, as I was driving down, the front rack fell off! So Brandon and I spent the next half-hour figuring how to put it back on. It is SOOOO funny when I think of it now.

200, 201, 202, 203, 204. ARGGGH! My paragrapgh was supposed to be 200 words max. Well, I don't think anyone will mind if it's 4 words over the limit. ;)

Now, about my swimming lessons (grammar required)

This year, my swimming lessons are hard. I have a new teacher, and I get SO tired from the workout I get. I thought it would be fun, but it was not. I must swim over 500 yards' worth each day. Each day's work goes like this:
"Let's do streches."
"I want you to swim freestyle across the pool and back. "
"Hold on to that buoy tight."
"Hold the top of the kickboard."
"We're doing a backstroke pull."
"Yes, we're doing freestyle across the pool and back 3 times; one at a time."
Not that I don't like my teacher. She's great, and gives me good exercise

100, 101, 102, 103. PERFECT!

Now, a Warriors update. . . and alert.
Update first.
Errors on Warriors book 2: Fire and Ice:

Greenflower; a RiverClan queen; is not listed in the alliegences

Oh, and I missed an error in Into the Wild:

Tigerclaw is called Tigerpaw once.


Now for the alert!

Warriors Power of Three Book Six: Sunrise is a book that (in my opinion) should not be read by children under 10. Also, it doesn't even have a remotely happy ending.

Jayce

White Mountain Ranch

I finally figured out how to get a picture of the Ranch on to the blog from another program. Now you can see a little more of what we have. I'll try and give you a picture tour.

The square in the top left is a pond, which will be our water supply. That is Warren's job of the week, to get the water system functional, winterized, and work at figuring out the filtering system necessary to make it drinkable. The driveway comes in at the middle of the top, to the right is the Big Machine shed. To the left is the Little House that we are fixing up. On down the lane is the Big House that I want to move over to the other side of the Big Machine shed and then we will fix it up and move into it. On down the lane is the Three Bay Shop, on this picture there is a little shed beside it, that is all gone except for the concrete floor. Around the circle drive is the Little Machine shed and the Meat House for hanging meat. The huge building at the bottom is a pole barn built with telephone poles. To the north of the Huge Pole barn is the Barn with small silo pad beside it. To the west is the Little Pole barn with a concrete floor. The bottom of the property is mostly trees with small creek wandering through it. Some day we would like to put another pond down there.
Here are some pictures of the buildings.
Front of Little House, this is the one we are remodeling. The sheet rock taper is texturing this week.

Back of little house

The front of the Big House, this is the one I want to move.Back of Big House

Big Machine shed
Three bay shop which is now the storage unit.
Little machine shed
Meat house for butchering, I want to make it into a summer kitchen.
Huge Pole Barn, the fence at the bottom is made from pallets. :-(
The Barn, Emerald is trying to figure out how many horses she can fit in here.
Little Pole barn

It was a cloudy day when I took the pictures so you can't see the mountains but they are close and we can see three glaciers, the spit and some water. I can't wait for my new trail mower to arrive, the grass is knee high. Jayce and I are working at getting all the junk hauled out of the weeds and into burn piles. It will be a long term project, but Jayce enjoys driving the bobcat around.

Speedy the Hodini Turtle

We had a little excitement last week. Speedy, our western painted turtle, was in his new outdoor cage for the third day and was seeming to really enjoy the space and sunshine. Jayce and the girls were playing outside with the hose and I was running into town for the property closing and an appointment with the accountant. I peeked at him around 2:30 and he was basking in the sun.

Right before supper I sent Jayce out to get Speedy, so he could be in for the night, and he was gone! The trail led to the edge of the yard and disappeared into the weeds. Somehow he climbed the two foot high sides of his cage, squeezed out of the top, and made a break for it. We walked the neighborhood with fliers and no one had seen him. We went to bed knowing Speedy was gone forever.
The next morning we got a phone call about a sign at the next road saying "Found Turtle". We called the number, drove over, and sure enough it was Speedy. It was almost a half mile as the turtle crawls, way back in the woods. This was the second time Speedy has been "AWAL". Last summer he did the same thing. Isn't our God a God of Miracles! Speedy has been gounded to his little indoor tank since.

Beachy Bunch

It's been a long time since we were all together but June 7th Sam and Marilyn invited everyone over to meet Warren's Great-Uncle Cal and his new wife Marlene. It happened to be the hottest day of the summer and we all enjoyed the fellowship. We do need to do it more often, the girls didn't know their aunts and uncles. Here is Uncle Cal, a client and Sam.

Warren and Cris


The awesome Alderfer's and sweet baby Jemma.
Sheldon and Kathy's family.

It was so good to see Steve and Angie. It is amazing how we can live in this little town and never run into each other. Katie and John are getting so big!

House tear out!

I didn't get the update done last week. I was busy with appointments and paperwork. I am now the official owner of White Mountain Ranch LLC. Warren officially owns all of Timberline Development without me. It should make taxes a little easier and spreads the assets around.

Warren is finishing up the plumbing and then we will be ready for the tape and texture. It took a week to find a stack washer and dryer, there is a recall on one brand and it locked down all the rest. I'm now the proud owner of a set of front loading machines that are stacked.
Scraping the popcorn off the ceiling took a couple days.

Jayce salvaging the copper to recycle, even the drains are copper.

The girls spent days pulling nails and staples out of the floor. Emerald liked the power of the crow bar but it got heavy.

The hardest job of all was tearing up the layers of underlayment; particle board, green speckle lineolum, plywood, orange and green linolium, plywood, and blue and brown lineolum. The saving grace was it was all nailed down, not screwed.

Trolling pictures!

Our friend Rich sent some pictures I thought I would share.

Alectra and Alexis playing while waiting for the fish.


Where are the Fish!

The feeder king the guys got the first time out! That's the boat.

Yummy!

Wow! What a week!

Summer in Alaska is never boring but last week was amazingly busy. Saturday before Memorial Day we went to put the boat in the water, and after a broken gas fitting and a broken brake line on the truck, it actually got wet! God's timing is perfect, a broken brake line at the gas station down the road is a lot better than when you're backing a large boat down the steep ramp into the harbor. We have enjoyed several trips out on the Bay and one feeder King Salmon that was SOOOO yummy.

Memorial Day we spent on the boat and then went to the Ranch to drop off the 4-wheelers. Jayce found on old trailer under and tree and took the girls for several rides.

Alectra posing in front of the view at the ranch. Yes, We did buy the 80 acres and it is now White Mountain Ranch.

We spent part of the afternoon doing grammar in the sun.

I spent the rest of the week at church getting ready for the summer kids VBS program. We had lots of help and we needed it. Instead of just decorating one wing we had to do almost the entire downstairs. Our theme is Operation Space and how God's Word is True.

I get to teach this summer so I spent the rest of the week getting the summer laid out and all the copies made. This is my Bible Briefing room, and we had a good time this Sunday.

Kathy and the kids at post-flight assembly.

After Warren got home most evenings we went to the ranch to work on gutting the little house that we are moving into. We ripped all the carpet, cabinets, baseboard heaters and appliances out and hauled it all to the dump. Tomorrow we are hoping to get the two layers of underlayment and linoleum ripped out of the kitchen and gut the bathroom. Warren is wanting to move in before the middle of July.

I'll try and remember the camera for some pictures of the project and the boat for the next post.