Procrastination...

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment. ~Robert Benchley


It isn't that I haven't spent plenty of time at the computer in the last three months that I haven't added a new post, and it isn't because I have been consumed entirely by my gargantuan projects; it is more a combination of things and the biggest of which is procrastination.

After the completion of the geothermal installation I did spend the next time home trying to turn my nuclear landscape back into something that looked nice. Sandi went to Oregon for a week for a horse clinic so I rented a dozer and Gordy came up for a couple of days and we pushed a bunch of dirt and stumps. I did have a bit of a problem being too hard on equipment as I put a stump through the oil cooler on my Dad's loader which put it out of commission and then I tipped our (Sandi's) tractor over trying to move dirt. All in the same day mind you. In the end we got most of what I wanted to get landscaped completed. I still have some work to do next summer but we do have a fairly sizable new pasture (fairway) that now needs to be seeded. It has been really nice to have the open area as I think we actually doubled our usable acreage with this project.

In October and early November with the help of Ted and his loader, I was able to get the two long walls on the barn and the bottom half of one of the gable ends. My big pile of SIP's has disappeared from the ground in front of the barn and the few that are left are now residing inside the barn. I had to get enough done so that the garage door installers could come hang our garage doors. So now we have two garage doors and one whole open wall. It does stop the wind and snow from blowing through which is nice. I was really hoping to get all of the walls up before Christmas but it has been pretty cold and the daylight is from 9am to about 4pm and usually by the time I get motivated half the day is wasted. This last time home my motivation has decreased in direct proportion to our amount of sunlight. It is really low as is the sun in the sky. Luckily that all changes soon and we will be gaining sunlight soon.

I'm getting a new snowmachine in December so I don't anticipate being a real ball of fire as long as we have good snow.

For Thanksgiving we went to my parents house for dinner and my contribution was the 28lb turkey. I even cooked it! It took me all night to cook but it was ready by 2pm on Thanksgiving day.
Aside from that I'd say things have been pretty quiet around the house. The geothermal has been working really well; the oil fired boiler does seem to kick on to assist the heat pump when the temperature drops really quickly outside but otherwise we have been heating with the geothermal since September.

We got Thane's snowmachine going last week and he and I have kind of turned Sandi's new horse pasture into our new snowcross track. He's a riot to watch and since his machine tops out at probably 15mph (if he's luckily) he's pretty safe. I've taught him how to lean on side hills and how to get unstuck when he gets himself stuck. I have to laugh because when he gets stuck, he throws the exact kind of tantrum that I do when I get stuck. I didn't teach him that part, I guess it's just genetic.

It looks like sunset but it is actually just a November afternoon in Alaska. A view of our new pasture/snowcross course.

My pile of SIP's that finally disappeared.

A view of the sinkhole side of the yard.


Another view (overcast and wintry) of the fairway...


Our two man SIP installation operation; Step 1- get panel in the air


Step 2- get panel on the sill plate

Step 3- lift, tilt, slide, OK don't move until I get it attached to a post....
Did I mention that the brakes weren't working on the loader? Just part of the fun of the project.


South view from the second floor of the barn

Same view with Mt Illiamna to the left of Mt Susitna.

We may not have all the walls (or even a complete roof for that matter) but we do have garage doors!

Note the roof opening for the not-yet-complete cupola.

But the doors are nice!

The West wall; I like to think of it as a big window to nature! Not too good of an R value though.

The South wall with all of it's panels...

The fairway with a little sunshine on it.

Thane got his Yellow belt in Karate last month.

Our livestock guardian dog thinks winter is cold and has decided that sleeping in the hay feeder is warmer than sleeping on the ground. Smart dog....

Pictures to go with yesterday's post

I apologize that my post from yesterday was four pages long but it was because I sat down three times and started writing and never got to post any of them. Last night I compiled them all and put them into one really long post. I guess if a picture is worth a thousand words then these pictures should justify yesterday's text.

Here are some pictures of a couple of my latest projects:

Here is the trailer with 9000 feet of 1" pipe and 500 feet of 1.25" pipe ready and eager to be placed into a trench.

This was the first trench for the header into the house. Since my septic system pipe runs under this trench I was very careful and ended up hand digging a lot of it just to be on the safe side.

This is trench one which went down the left side of the drive, looking from the house. Note the greenery on the other side of the drive and refer back to it after seeing pictures from trench three and four.

Trench one on the way down the side of the drive.

Placing the piping into trench one.

My number one helper at the controls. After a few hours training he had it down and could fully operate the excavator as long as he was in my lap so his feet could reach the pedals.

Here he is up close...

Looking at the house from the end of trench one.

This is the start of trench two and three looking from the house end of the trench.

This is looking back up at the house from where trench two splits off of trench three.

Looking down trench two which went down the left side of the drive.

The barn in the background of trench two.

Looking from the house out at trench three. Refer back to the third picture to see the loss of vegetation.

Trench four with trench three on the right. Trench three hadn't been back filled as we were trying to save time by saving the final back fill for after all the trenches had been dug.

Looking at the house while digging trench four about 75' from the end of the trench.

Same location looking towards the end of trench four.

Navigating the mountain between trench three and four while trying to back fill.

We had to dig trench four right in front of our shed, I accidentally swung the boom around too fast and broke the awning away from the shed. I was thrilled as this created yet one more project.

This is me placing piping into trench four. The pipe is not real easy to work with as it retains a fair amount of memory from being coiled in a roll for so long.

From the deck looking at trenches five and six, trench three and four went on the right of the shed. The dog kennel used to be on the right side of the shed but had to move to a temporary location.

From the deck you could barely see the excavator on the hill in the background while digging trench five and six.

This was one of the trees that I really wanted to save while digging trenches five and six.

Working on trench six, Gordy was operating while I laid piping.

Looking back up trench six toward the house. There are two passes on the bottom ready to be covered with 18 to 20 inches of dirt so the two upper passes can be put in the trench.

This is Gordy working his way back up onto the pile to back fill the end of trench six.

Looking back at the barn from the end of trench six. Note the devastation and loss of vegetation. I have to plant some trees next year so we will have a little oxygen output left in the neighborhood

This gives a really good visual of how the pipe lays in the bottom of each trench.

Brian and Andrea's back porch timbers. I am really happy with how the tapered posts turned out.

This is Sydney sitting on the back porch after the trusses were put on the roof. Their back porch is going to be nice and tall.

The front porch with the set of test rafters on top to get an idea of how it will look.

The tapered posts on the front have braces (big challenge) and I think it turned out really good. Note the embellishments that Brian added to the garage, this is going to be a great looking house. They have already had a developer stop by to ask about the porch because he wants to incorporate details like theirs into his houses. Kind of cool.

Going brown to go green...

Over the last month I’ve thought a lot about what to title this post and here are a few things that came to mind:
My nuclear nightmare…
Our nuclear neighborhood…
Trench warfare…
Go Big or Go Home…
This is even more stupid than my last big stupid project…

The list goes on.

I only had eight days off work in August and spent every minute of it working on our latest project of installing a ground source geothermal heat pump system that will heat our house and barn. Out of all the projects I’ve done, I worked harder on this one in such a short timeframe than on any other project that I have attempted. Ground source geothermal (geo-exchange) requires that the system flow water through a ground loop either through horizontal trenches or drilling vertical wells. Since the cost of drilling in Alaska this summer is $38 per foot we opted to use the trench method. I spent seven and a half days prepping and digging trenches and laying 1” plastic pipe into each trench. Based on the instructions I got from my system designer, I needed six trenches 375’ long each and I wanted to go 12’ deep just for a safety margin. In Colorado they dig 6’ and my friend in Washington went 10’ on his system so I figured 12’ was probably a safe depth for our soil conditions. The killer is that each trench has 1500’ of pipe in it and that adds up to 9000’ of 1” pipe that had to be unrolled (500’ rolls) and placed into each trench. I have never worked so hard for so many consecutive days in my life; not even when I used to commercial fish (I wasn’t on a crab boat though). I got home Wednesday evening and the rental company dropped off the excavator Thursday afternoon. I rented it for a week thinking I’d only need it for three days or so but actually ended up putting 78.5 hours on it in 7.5 days. It was the first time I had a week off of work that I didn’t get a single day to sleep in.
I spent all afternoon on Thursday clearing trees and getting used to operating the excavator. I selectively cleared the trees that I thought needed to be moved for the trenches and cleared all of the slash. My friend Gordy stopped by Thursday night to see what I had going. I had talked to him a few weeks back about the excavator because he operates one almost every day for a construction company and I always try to seek professional advice when I can (I am now in search of a good therapist).

A few things Gordy told me (that I didn’t want to believe) were that it would take me two days per trench, that for every foot in depth I needed to go about two feet wide, and I’d have to take down a lot more trees.
How could this be? First, I only have seven days to get this done and second I didn’t have to dig up that much material when I dug my water line across the yard at 10’ deep.

I hate it when Gordy’s right! After the first day I was only half done with the first trench and because I didn’t dig it wide enough it kept collapsing. Sandi had to work so I was on my own to dig and lay in the piping. The soil is mostly dry sand; I can’t seem to get away from sand lately. Digging in dry sand is like digging in flour, each scoop is only replaced by more sand. I worked on the first trench all day Friday and Saturday and Gordy came on Sunday to help me with the second trench and I realized that he could dig two to three times faster than I could! How did he make that excavator dig so fast? By 6pm he was done with the second trench. One thing that slowed things down when I was digging by myself was that I had to keep stopping to pull in the pipe before the trench collapsed ahead of it. When there is someone to do the ground work the time is significantly reduced. Sunday was the only day Gordy had off work but he did come up in the evenings after twelve hours at his regular job to dig for two to three hours for me. I had to do some bartering to make it worth his while but he made the difference between finishing and having to rent the excavator again three weeks later. At $750 just for round trip delivery of the excavator I was trying everything possible to get done before Friday night.
Monday I started trench three still wondering if I’d get done by Friday night and luckily Gordy showed up and finished trench three Monday evening. Trench four started first thing Tuesday morning at my normal start time of 7am which wasn’t too easy since I had been working until 10:30 or 11pm every night. I can work 18+ hour days at work but at home it is hard to drag myself out of bed so early. Gordy didn’t make it out Tuesday so I was on my own but I had gotten much better at digging and actually finished the trench in one day. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were all more of the same; dig all day and drag fifteen hundred feet of one inch plastic pipe into each trench. The last two trenches were by far the hardest to dig of all of them because I had to dig down into a sink hole and back up the other side due to the contour of our property. Gordy came out both Thursday and Friday and we finished the last trench at about 11:30pm Friday night. We finished our rough backfilling by midnight and I spent until 1:45am cleaning the excavator up for pick up. I finally made it to bed a little before 2:00 am to get up at 5:30 and head for the airport for two and a half weeks of work (actually a little relaxation after the last eight days). Unfortunately I overslept by about a half an hour, so I had to rush all the way until the last minute when I was the third from the last person to board the plane.

After eighteen days of rest and relaxation I headed back home for a little more work. We had a plant turnaround so I really didn’t do too much relaxing but there was much less personal stress.

My first week home from work included trying to get everything ready for setting up my Water Furnace geothermal unit and helping my friends Brian and Andrea cut timber frame porches for their new house.
When I raised my first timber frame, Brian showed up every day and was the only one who showed up the third day and helped me set rafters in the snow. He also helped me wire most of my house, so even though I was up to my ears in my own projects I felt that I had an obligation to help them on their new house. We worked on their back porch Thursday through Saturday and got everything cut and raised. They are going for a Craftsman style look so the posts are all tapered. We used 12x12 posts and tapered them down to 8x8’s to fit into the rest of the timbers. It was the first time I’ve ever cut tapered posts and they turned out really cool. Once Brian figured out what needed to be done he did ninety percent of the work on the front porch. I did the layout on the tapered posts and cut the tenons and all of the mortises and Brian did most of the rest.

Brian and two of the guys working for him had most of the front porch raised by the time I showed up on Wednesday. We spent most of the day working on the braces and layout for the rafters and by the end of Thursday Brian had all of the rafters cut and sitting on top of the frame. Luckily for me he did most of the work on the front so I could spend a little time getting ready for our geothermal installation. After I left Brian’s I had to go to Anchorage to pick up 110 gallons of Ethanol for freeze protecting our ground loop water and get a few more items for the installation.

On the way home from Anchorage I had an appointment to help my friends Brad and Kay Underwood with Milestone Concrete (http://www.milestoneconcrete.com/) pour a huge concrete countertop for the front office of a new Veterinary Clinic in Eagle River. I felt a little obligated to help since I referred the job to them in the first place and they normally pour cast pieces and this was their first poured in place piece. These guys know their stuff when it comes to mixing concrete. They had a bunch of additives I had never heard of and some I would never think would be used in concrete. I am also quite envious of their 12 cubic foot electric cement mixer as it only took two batches to complete the counter and both batches were perfect. The whole pour went great and I can’t wait to see the finished counter. It is nice to know that when I finish my barn and start working concrete again that I’ll have these guys as a resource.

On Friday we went back to Anchorage to see Nancy Dobson's (www.nancydobson.com)Textile Art Display at the Snow City Cafe. We have emailed and commented on each others blog for a while but it was really great to finally meet her and see all of her AMAZING work. All of her works will be on display at Snow City Cafe until the end of September and I strongly recommend stopping by to see them. The food there is excellent so you can peruse the art while waiting for an order of the best eggs benedict in Alaska.

Saturday morning I finally got to take three hours to go kayaking with TJ. She has been begging me for the last two months to go but I haven't had the time. I think I need to reassess my priorities when I can't take three hours to go paddle and decompress. I forget what a stress reliver it is. I decided to finally run the little waterfall at the bottom of the canyon in my playboat. I ran it in July in a bigger boat but I hadn't mustered up the nerve to try it in my little boat. Since the creek was so low I figured why not. I have swam out of it enough in the past that if I screwed up I wasn't too concerned about drowning but if I did, I guess I'd get out of a ton of projects... I made it and we had a good time. Even with the creek really low it is just nice to get out and be on the water. Especially this time of the year.

Finally back to my geothermal…

We met Al Wallace at the Western Timber Framers Conference that we attended in April. Al has a company that designs whole systems that are energy efficient alternative type systems. I know a few people in Alaska that have installed geothermal and are using it successfully but there aren’t that many. Since Al had experience installing these systems in cold regions of Colorado we decided to have him design and install our system. Plus he gave us all of the materials at his cost as a discount for being a member of the Timber Framers Guild. http:/www.tfguild.org

Al and his daughter Kristen arrived on Saturday afternoon and we promptly started working on getting setup. Kristen is 13 and about to take her test for black belt in Karate so Thane thought she was awesome and hung out with her as much as he could.
All of the piping was in the trenches and I already had the Waterfurnace in the laundry room (thanks to Gordy) and ready to be connected. We added another hot water tank for an additional fifty gallons of hot water in the system and once we figured out how we were going to tie it all into the existing system we got started. Sunday we started connecting all the pipe ends that needed to be hooked up and making a flow header. Each trench has three pieces of 500’ pipe in them that needed to be connected to make one 1500’ pipe run in each trench. During the installation of the piping in August I had one roll that had been punctured in two places by a forklift and required being repaired. The connections are all made using couplings that are made of the same plastic as the pipe and are connected using a special hot iron to melt the plastic and then press the pipe into the fittings.

Unfortunately the distributer only sent us one bag of 1” couplings and two bags of 1 ¼” which we only needed one bag of fittings for. This meant that we needed to come up with four extra 1” couplings before we could fill the system with water. This all happened on Sunday so I had to try to come up with fittings first thing Monday morning. Al’s flight back to Denver was Tuesday evening at 11 pm and I left first thing Wednesday morning for work so we didn’t have a lot of time to get things connected. I headed to Anchorage (80 miles each way) first thing Monday morning hoping that the distributer that I picked the pipe up from would have the fittings that I needed. As things would have it he did not and he proceeded to tell me that the fittings I was describing did not exist. I explained to him that I had just used over twenty of them the day before and I was quite sure that they did in fact exist. I was able to find another supplier that said on the phone he had the fittings that I needed so I headed across town very excited that we might be able to finish our installation in time. After getting to the second distributer I found that the fittings that they stocked were not the same style and wouldn’t work for our application. We had to call the Colorado distributer and have him overnight six fittings from Kentucky hoping they would make it in time. UPS is NOT Fed EX; Fed Ex has a driver that shows up at my door with packages between six and eight in the morning where UPS contracts a courier service to deliver all of it’s packages that are considered rural. The courier doesn’t deliver to my door either; they drop all of my packages off at a gas station twelve miles from my house. Normally their drop off time is between 2:30 and 3:30 pm each day assuming that they have enough packages to warrant a trip. This happens even though I pay the full UPS overnight delivery fee. I also found out that the courier’s contract with UPS states that the courier has up to five days to deliver packages from the time that they get them. I called the 1-800 UPS number and tried to get the Anchorage UPS Hub phone number and was told that they couldn’t give that out so I explained to the UPS agent my situation and gave her my tracking number and asked if the package could be held at the terminal. I was told that UPS has to attempt delivery at least one time before you can pick the package up at the UPS Hub. Knowing that this could be a few days I explained my situation again and was told there was nothing that UPS could do. I told them that obviously the only thing I could do was make sure to use Fed Ex next time. I was able to find out the name and number of the courier (UPS will not give you this information) and talked to the courier and they were more than happy to let me meet them outside of Wasilla for a pickup.

Around 2:00 I met the courier and had the fittings in hand and headed for home. I got home at about 2:45 and started we finished hooking up our last four connections and pressure tested the loop. Once the loop pressure stabilized we bled off the pressure and connected the loop to the header. Our next step was to pressure test the whole ground loop and it takes a fair bit of time to pressure up 500 gallons worth of piping and the clock wasn’t slowing down any. After the system pressure stabilized and we were convinced that we didn’t have any holes in any of the pipes we were ready to fill the system. First we had to put 90 gallons of Ethanol in the system and then fill the rest with water and circulate the water into a trashcan to get all of the air out of the system and mix the water and Ethanol to get the right specific gravity. We started adding water to the system at 4:00 pm and finished getting the air out of the system at 6:45. With Al needing to leave at 7:00 to make it to the airport by 9:00 we were feeling the pressure finish up. Luckily we didn’t run into any other problems and were able to start the system. Al entered all of the parameters that were required but I didn’t get the first hand instruction on the controls I was hoping for. Since I am able to read a instruction manual (however not without trying unsuccessfully three times as described in the Men’s Code of Ethics) I did figure out what I needed to navigate through the controls. My next step after the water in the system came up to temperature was to turn up the thermostats in the house to the temperature that I want them to stay at. This has been a life long goal of mine so I was really happy to wake up to warm floors this morning.

Finally, Geothermal heat! Now let’s see how it works over the winter. The nice thing is since we won’t have the barn connected to the loop this winter so we will get a whole winter to see how the unit works with just the house on the loop. This will give me a good idea of how things will be after we add another 3400 square feet of barn space to keep warm.

After I was satisfied with the system I got my Dad’s loader and started the tedious job of covering the exposed piping. I didn’t get all of it but I did get the header covered and all of the easily accessible piping. This however is not to be confused with the monumental task of making our property look less like a war zone and more like a small farm. That is on my list for next time home, along with running water and power to the barn as well as putting all of the wall panels and cupola on the barn. All of this is an easy task after this geothermal installation.

After running the loader out of fuel at 11:30 I had had enough fun for one trip home and decided it was time to get ready for bed so I could come back to work and get some rest.

Summer Pictures....

Since I haven't posted any pictures in awhile here are a bunch from our summer.They aren't in any particular order because it is pretty hard to organize pictures when uploading them to blogger. All of the pictures are either our spring/summer at home, which included Thane's sixth birthday party, winning the first annual Willow 4th of July Pet Costume Contest, a trip to Homer, and our our trip to Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, for my Dad's family reunion and Sandi's Grandfather's 90th birthday. Although they aren't in order, each has an explanation.

We spent two days in Gunnison with Sandi's friend Becky Barkman. Becky has horses and sled dogs. She spends the winters giving sled dog tours and the summers playing with horses. The small structure in the background is a straw bale guest cottage that we stayed in. It is a very cool structure.

Becky and Sandi talking about horses I'm sure...

Thane on the way from Durango to Silverton.



When we were in Silverton Thane wanted to go to the mining museum. Here he is sitting at a really old school desk.

The door to the Silverton Jail. The Sheriff and his family lived downstairs and the prisoners were kept upstairs. I bet his family didn't sleep too easy.

Thane in front of an ore bucket.

While we were wandering around Silverton we stopped at a shop called Weathertop Wovens. The shop is owned and run by Gary Davis and his wife Linda. We must have spent at least half an hour in their shop while Gary taught us how they weave all of their own fabric . The shirt he is wearing was just woven and made the day before! It is pretty amazing to watch someone take a bunch of spools of cotton and turn them into a whole sheet of fabric. While Gary was teaching us how they make their fabric, Linda was sewing a beautiful purple shawl. Their products are amazing and all of their fabric colors are made from color combinations they find in nature.

This was our day trip to White Sands National Park. We took sleds and all had fun sledding down the dunes. We had a competition to see who could make it the farthest. I ended up beating Sydney for the title but only by a few inches.


Thane in the pool in Las Cruces. His swimming has improved tons since he got his goggles.


After his swim he decided to work on his tan.


Sandi wasn't there for our first trip to White sands so a bunch of us went for a night trip. There was a lightning storm in the distance both to the north and south. It was amazing. My mom is in a wheelchair and couldn't see the sunset and lightning sitting by the car between two dunes so I carried her to the top of the dune to take in the view. Luckily it was a lot smaller than the ones I was climbing in Algeria or I might have had a stroke.


Sandi and Thane at the peak of Molas Pass between Durango and Silverton.


This is the Miracle Staircase in the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe. It is an amazing feat of carpentry that made a spiral staircase that is completely unsupported. Thane didn't want to leave, he was really impressed with the whole chapel. This chapel was the first Gothic style building west of the Mississippi River. It reminded me a lot of the churches I saw in Italy.


My cousin Rob is a police officer for the Las Cruces PD and was a hit with all of the kids at the family reunion. He let them all turn on the lights and sirens on his patrol car. All of the kids were much more impressed than the neighbors.


My Aunt Shirley, Dad, Aunt Jean, Uncle Buddy, and Aunt Kay with the Organ mountains in the background.


The view from the top of one of the dunes at White Sands.




Sandi, Thane and Barley (our Australian Shepard) in Homer before we went on our trip.


Homer is set in one of the most beautiful locations in Alaska.


A public checker board in Santa Fe.


The front door of the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe.


The alter in Loretto Chapel, very European.




In early June we had a cow moose get into Sandi's arena. I tried to get Sandi to saddle her up but the moose was a little wound up since she had a calf with her. She ended up jumping the fence rail to get out.


All of my parents grandchildren in one place.


This is Aubrey, my sister TJ's little girl. Thane loves to read to her and she really likes it.


We got Thane a bike in May and this picture was when he was first learning. Now he is riding all over and always on the go.

Along with his bike Thane is working on becoming a good horseman. I bet it won't be too long until he is jumping on both a horse and bike.

I was sitting with all three of my aunts and Thane came in and sat down. I was explaining to him that my Dad has three sisters just like I do, and just like him I have three aunts that are all sisters. Then I realized that all three of my sisters were in the room also, so we decided to take a picture. Here is Thane with me and all three of my sisters and my Dad and all three of his sisters. Rachelle is behind my Aunt Shirley, TJ is behind my Aunt Jean, and Jana is behind my Aunt Kay and my Dad is hiding in back.


The top of the dune at White Sands. I was very happy at this point that it wasn't any higher.


Sandi, myself, Mom, TJ, and my cousin Becky on top of the dune.


Me and my parents. It looks more like snow than sand.


I was wondering if we were going to make it back down without me passing out.

On the 4th of July we went to the local parade which is pretty small by most standards. Afterwards we went to the community center for kids games and hamburgers. While we were there I saw this reporter and her camera man from the local NBC News in Anchorage and I was harassing them about not having too much to cover since they were in Willow for the 4th of July. It turns out that they had come out to cover a pet costume contest. I decided why not go home and grab an alpaca and throw something on him just to make a showing. On the way home I came up with the perfect costume. I think I can honestly say that Sue our white alpaca is probably the only alpaca on the planet that has ever worn a rescue life vest, spray skirt and kayak helmet. It turns out that we won the whole contest! I felt a little bad since some of the people put a lot of effort into their animals costumes but it was too funny not to do.


Sue in the camper van on the way to the contest. He wasn't too excited about the whole experience.

Thane with Sue's ribbon.


Sue before the judging; he got over his fear of the camera pretty fast and was signing autographs right after the awards.

Thane's pony Red.


He likes the attention and doesn't mind a little modeling.


Little Miss Aubrey likes to model too! Ever seen a Valdez Heli Ski Guides hat look that cute on anyone else?


A little swimwear modeling.

Thane in a gallery in Santa Fe.


Sandi (on the right) and her cousin Paige.


Baby Hayden

Sandi's sister Stefani and her husband were the only ones that didn't make Jims 90th birthday because Hayden arrived a short time before the celebration and he wasn't up for the drive to Cheyenne.

After Thane's birthday he had two of his friends spend the night and the next day we went to Talkeetna for Moose Dropping Festival. This is what happens when you combine boys with cotton candy and rain.


Grandpa Jim at the park.


Thane and Rachelle in Santa Fe.

Thane and a couple of sleepy Santa Fe bears.

Thane unwrapping his loot at his 6th birthday party.


The presents just kept stacking up. Luckily the weather cooperated with us and the day turned out pretty nice.


This is Tumbler, he is our new livestock guardian dog. He is a four month old Maremma. I think he is going to be pretty big.


Tumbler lives with the horses and alpacas and has a doggie door into the little barn.


Thane did a little rock climbing at Moose Dropping.

Right before I came back to work TJ and Aubry, Thane and I, and a couple of friends hiked down to the creek. This is the first time in years that I have been down there without a kayak. I'd rather paddle down the creek than hike back up the hill. This is the last waterfall at the bottom of a class V box canyon that starts about a mile upstream.

TJ and Aubrey.


Thane and I.

This is my favorite spot on the creek.

We went to the Denver Zoo the day we flew home from Colorado. We made it about an hour and a half before they closed so the elephants were heading in for dinner when we made it to see them.

Eklutna Lake the night we flew home. This is at 1 am in early July, note Denali and Foraker in the distance.


Thane was a trooper at 2am as we rode the shuttle to the parking lot.


This was a wasp I saw eating a catipillar. I tried to get a close up but I am alergic to bee stings so I figured it wasn't worth risking death no matter how cool it looked.

An 11pm sunset on one of the last non-rainy days this summer.

Tim and Hayden. Thane says that Hayden looks just like Tim without the glasses and beard.


Thane and his Great Grandpa Jim. I really like that they get to spend time together every summer.


A peacock that took an interest in me at the Denver Zoo.


I'm pretty sure this was the elusive two humped rasta camel.


The peacocks liked Thane too.

In Casper Wyoming we stopped at a gas station next to a restraunt that had all of these dinosaurs out front. Thane loved them.


NEVER put your head in the mouth of a T Rex!


Baby boy and baby tricerratops.


Hanging out with a stegasoraus.

TJ and Aubrey on our hike to the creek.