Go Prowlers!!! 6-1 With One Game To Go!!

Long Day at the Office...

Prowler Homecoming With Jonathan

A Blast From The Past...

Chillin' With the Peeps...

Back to School 2007

It's Gettin' Chilly Around Here...

We are well into the fall season here with temperatures frequently dipping into the low 40s and high 30s on a regular basis. A good 90 percent and more of the leaves have fallen from the trees with some very nice yellows, reds, and browns. I finally took an hour this past week to rake up the leaves on the front lawn and get them to the curb (TRF comes around with these yellow utility trucks that suck the leaves up very neatly for us). We actually had snow this past week, though I didn't see any of it, knock on wood...

Fall activities snuck up on me so fast that before I knew it, over a month went by before I realized I hadn't updated this blog yet. It's hard to remember what came first or when, but suffice it to say we've all had a few irons in the fire at the same and various different times since school started. Of course I have choir practice again, though I've added the task of full-time Sunday school teaching whereas last year I only substituted. Aaron started playing the string bass this fall and the boys both are involved in the weekly youth group at the Free Church down the street. Add to those activities my recent endeavor or rehearsing for a "madrigal" singing group, which is set to perform at the community college for a "Madrigal Dinner" at Christmas with four or five other musical groups. I practice with that group one day a week, though I now get a few weeks off this month before heading back for a half dozen more practices.

Just when I started wondering about sports schedules, Aaron brought home his sign up sheet for the TRF Backcourt Club basketball registration, so both boys have been signed up for that and I'll likely be roped into coaching again for the 3rd and 5th graders this season. I'm looking forward to another fun season for the boys as they continue to learn new skills. Speaking of sports, we've taken in our share of Prowler high school football games out at the community college's field and watched Brett Drevlow play his last game at the old Franklin practice field. We're really looking forward to another great hockey season and regular Tuesday/Thursday nights out to the Ralph Englestad Arena to watch the games.

In other news, Trinity will be holding its annual Lutefisk Dinner come November, I think, so we'll be involved in running and cleaning up after that this year I figure. That will be a busy week what with basketball practice, madrigal rehearsal, and everything else that week. I've also had a busy week this past week with school lunch. It was some kind of special "voting for school lunch" week and the way my schedule was, I ended up having lunch there an unprecedented four out of the five days last week. Out of all the lunches, I'd have to say it was a tie between the chef salad and the meatloaf, with the meatloaf edging out the win in my book.

I've been trying to watch out for my own well being lately with all the stuff bombarding me from all different directions so the other day I picked up my first acoustic guitar ever from Kezar's and I've already managed to learn to play four different cords, though I have a long way to go. I'd love to be able to play along with the old folk hymnal we used to have in Luther League years back, as nobody really plays guitar for music at Trinity. Aaron has been more interested in his guitar too now that I have one of my own. At the least it is a fun way to blow off some steam after a long day of work and other stress without having to drag my cello out of its case, rosin a bow, and spend an inordinate amount of time just in preparation. I can just pick the guitar up off the stand and start strumming some chords. I'm also looking forward to just sitting out front of the house on the park bench come spring and summer next year and playing whatever comes to mind. I can see now why brother Bill likes the instrument so much.

I've finally gotten on the stick and started to send the boys' school pictures out to everybody this week and next so hopefully I'll have that done soon. If you don't get a picture and you want one, please send me an e-mail or give me a call and I'd be happy to send you whatever I can. I didn't get too many pictures, but I do have plenty of wallet pictures, I think. They turned out pretty good this fall.

Sugar beet harvest is in full swing over here and I'm now looking forward to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the first real snow storm of the early winter. With this being officially our fourth Minnesota winter, I think we now know the drill pretty well and the boys are as excited as I am to experience some fun in the snow, though we could do without the colder temperatures.

Hopefully I've shared enough news to update everyone on our latest goings on around here. Like I said, when I let too much time go by, I end up forgetting most of what happends, but hopefully I covered most of the major bases here. Take care everyone...

Fluorescent is Back in Vogue...

A Great Day of Fishing

End of a Great Summer...

August is drawing to a close and I find myself facing my 40th birthday (tomorrow), though I find that to be far less interesting than all the fun we've had this past summer with sports, a trip to the lake, more sports, lots of time of the boys playing with their friends, barbecue after barbecue, and a visit by mom and dad. The boys caught several fish with Dad when he was here and the resulting fish fry that evening was delicious...

Now that the leaves have started falling on the front lawn, I am beginning to prepare myself mentally for the oncoming fall and winter. I'm crossing my fingers for a long fall and a short mild winter. We had our share of severe late August weather on Sunday night. We ended up with three tornadoes that touched down between here and Grand Forks, one of which was just 18 miles north of us. There were 80-mph winds near Crookston, about an hour west of here. We just had a ton of lightning and thunder in our immediate area of Thief River.

For my birthday, I elected to buy myself one gift I've sort of held back on for some time due to the stuff I've gotten the boys and finally got myself a "grownup" game for the desktop computer that although the boys can play is really more exclusively "mine." The game is Microsoft's Flight Simulator X, which allows you to put yourself in the cockpit of some 30 different aircraft including a tricycle ultralight out of Friday Harbor, a Kenmore Air float plane out of the Seattle area, a Lear Jet out of the Thief River Falls Regional Airport, and a 747-400 jumbo jet (the Thief River runway is a tad short, though, for that one...). It has airports all the way from Vietnam to SeaTac with incredible graphics all the way down to a rain soaked flight tarmac in a thunderstorm. It even downloads "realtime" weather for your local area every 15 minutes so you can fly literally in the weather you see out the window. If I sound excited, it's probaby because it's my first genuine professional flight simulator game I've ever owned since the earliest versions of the program back in the 1980s and the difference between then and now is nothing short of breathtaking. I guess I'm also happy to have something I don't have to fight the kids to play (at least for now). And for $30, it's more than worth the splurge. Now if I can just find enough time to actually play it with all the work on my plate and everything else we have going on as school begins.

The Challenger open house is tonight, so we'll be heading out there to say howdy to the teachers we already know and love from Aaron's past years, Mr. Schafer and Mrs. McGeary. Aaron already scoured the house for the books he didn't return to Mr. Schafer last year and I'll be bringing back one of Daniel's books that eluded me for the better part of last Winter. Although the summer has been fun, I am looking forward to the boys learning some new stuff in school and continuing the regular lunch engagements with Aaron on Fridays, though I'm going to try to get more days in with Daniel this year, as he's growing so fast and he always has so much to say when I see him at school during the day.

Aaron is only about three and a half 500-shot days from achieving his goal of 10,000 basketball shots to earn his 10,000 Shot Club t-shirt, thanks largely to his Nana's help when she was here this month. He has shot well over half of the 10,000 total in August alone and will hopefully have it all done by the early part of next week. It has taken a lot of discipline and confidence in himself to get this far and I have no doubt he'll make it. He has really done well in improving his shots too, especially when he takes his time to set up each shot. He hasn't said anything yet about participating in fall flag football, but we'll do it if that's what he wants to do. Daniel still has another year before football opens to him so he has some time to think about it himself, but other than that, it looks like the boys will play basketball again this year.

It's about time to head out for the open house at school, so I'll sign off at this point. I at least wanted to get two blog posts done for the month so people that read this don't think we've fallen off the flat edge of Minnesota... Happy Labor Day to any and everyone reading this.

Aaron, Daniel, and actor Ned Beatty...

The 2007 Baseball Season Has Ended...

After a slow start to the Park & Rec baseball season here in TRF (lots of rained out games and practices), the season ended with a bang, so to speak. This week was the final week otherwise known as "tournament week." Daniel's Reds team went down quickly in the tournament, dropping two games to the Cubs. They didn't go down without a fight in the second game this week, though. It was a real homerun derby of sorts with each team scoring high. There were two very funny plays in that game to say the least. I was sitting next to Sam Mosbeck's dad as we watched the game and Sam came up to bat and got on first base. Then the next play, Sam took off first to steal second. They had overthrown second, but were throwing it back, so Sam went into his slide, but unfortunately just a smidge too early. He disappeared in a cloud of dust on the baseline and when the dust cleared, there was Sam sitting on his butt with his feet stretched in front of him about 10 inches short of second base. The really funny part is had he had his wits about him before the Cubs second baseman, he could have just gotten up and touched second with his hand, but as he stayed where he was, the second baseman put two and two together and tapped Sam on the helmet with the baseball tagging him out. His dad and I were really laughing at that one... :) Then when Sam was out playing third base on defense, he appeared to be somewhat bored standing in his position and at one point, he stretched his arms out to his sides like he was just working the kinks out. He's a lefty and it just so happened as he was stretching his right arm with the fielding glove out to his right side on the third base line, the Cubs batter hit a line drive to left and the ball landed smack dab in his glove. Sam just kind of looked over at his glove with the ball in it as if the ball belonged there the whole time and it didn't even phase him until about 15 to 20 seconds later when he went into a little dance laughing and shouting at how he caught the ball. Daniel did well in both of his games, hitting at least a .300 average and scoring a few runs in the process. I think he was happy to have the tournament week end early for his team, though, so he could play more with his best bud from school.

Aaron's Twins team had a rocky tournament week, as all the teams in their age group had a tough time coming up with enough players to field a team. Apparently some parents decided to take a vacation right at the end of the season, so the Twins forfeited at least one game and Yankees forfeited around three games for lack of players. In fact, the Twins were supposed to face the Yankees this afternoon at 4:00 and had to beat the Yankees in order to get in the championship game tonight at 7:00. The Yankees again came up short of players, though, so the Twins were in the championship game by default. We had dinner at the church for Vacation Bible School tonight and while Daniel stayed with his buddy for the rest of VBS, I drove Aaron out to the college to play the championship game, which was supposed to last until about 8:30.

While the Twins had enough players to avoid forfeiting again, they were still three players short of the Dodgers team who had 10 kids to the Twins' 7. They had wide open holes in the field with Aaron playing center field and nobody in left or right field and then just the basemen, catcher, and pitcher and shortstop. Aaron got at least four balls hit way out to center field where he was, so he was busy hustling after the ball a fair part of the game and did a good job. He was walked with one of his at bats and managed to score a run in the latter half of the game. His team has really been supportive and cheered him on every time he came up to bat. He was smiling from ear to ear the whole time, so obviously was having the time of his life. Toward the end of the game, the lights came on, as they played well past 9:00 p.m. and Aaron looked up at all the bright lights on the field and mentioned something about "being in the big leagues" now with the lights and everything. In the last inning, I filled in as announcer over the PA system at the ball park, announcing the new Twins pitcher when he took the mound and at one point I announced the score, which was 18 to 12 Dodgers going into the last inning. Right after I said, "The score is 18 to 12 Dodgers," I snuck in under my breath "Go Twins!" and about a half dozen Dodgers parents looked over at me from the bleachers and smiled or laughed. Then in the last inning, the Twins had a player on second that tried stealing home and was thrown out by a razor's edge and that was the game. When they announced the Dodgers had won the game, I grabbed the PA microphone one last time and announced, "Twins win the pennant!!" :) I was actually hoping I'd have a chance to announce Aaron when he came up to bat in the last inning, but he didn't get a chance to bat thanks to the throw out at home plate. Oh well... It was a great season topped off by an exciting final game. Now we'll have our Monday mornings free and all the afternoons free until school starts again a month from now. I'm sure we'll find something else constructive to fill in the time like Aaron's 10,000 basketball shots he has to catch up on.

We also had a fun time last Thursday evening when we had a nearby celebrity pay Thief River a visit. Ned Beatty of stage and screen (father of Rudy in the movie of the same name and star of the movie "Deliverance") was here playing the guitar and singing gospel music in the park across from Danny's Pizza just down the street from us. Since one of Aaron's games was forfeit that night, we drove over and took in the show. He of course looked different in person than on the big screen. He had a full white beard and none of the makeup of Hollywood. He was every bit as genial as he appears in his movies, though. I introduced hte boys to him, as they had seen him in the original Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, Rudy, and a couple other movies, one of which in just the previous week so his face was fresh in their memories. He shook both their hands and talked to us for some time about a movie he did with Rupert Grint, the boy to plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. He called Rupert one of his good friends. After the show was over in the park and most of the crowd had gone, we raced home and grabbed our copies of the Superman and Thunderpants DVDs and drove back to the park and had him autograph them for the boys. I got him on video with the camera with Daniel helping him open a DVD box he had trouble opening. He asked Daniel at one point if he had the "secret code" for opening DVD cases. I'm posting a picture of Ned with the boys here even though most of you already have the picture already via e-mail. I'll also be posting a picture of the Twins after their final game tonight at Northland.

That's all for now as we start to look ahead to another year of fun with back to school shopping and more fun school activities. Speaking of school, I was tapped this year to teach Daniel's Sunday School class at Trinity (last year's class was so huge they decided to split in half this year with me teaching one half and a couple of high school girls teaching the other half). So rather than the occasional substitute session, I'll have to make sure I'm there every Sunday or else... I'll have to also be on the ball with choir, as I won't be able to practice anymore betwen services. We've just got VBS for now, though, which ends tomorrow night with a pizza and ice cream party. Mom and Dad will be out here to visit on the 11th, so we're looking forward to their visit.

Another Fun Week at the Fair...

The Pennington County Fair has come and gone again and even though we didn't enter the animals this year, we still had a great time with the rides, food, and exhibits. The boys got their cartoon caricatures drawn together this year and they looked as funny as ever. The caricature artist took Daniel's front Chiclet teeth and exaggerated the gap in them to captured Aaron's famous smile very nicely. I'll have to take a picture of the final result and post it on here, as it's far too big to scan.

Trinity put up a food booth this year thanks to Jeff Liden who cooks at the local American Legion in town. They sold barbecue sandwiches with chips, pop, ice cream, and 1919 Rootbeer floats. We were repeat customers all three nights we went to the fair. I think the booth made over $1,000 a day, so it was a good fundraiser for the church.

The music was great this year, as we watched the Trinity Trio, which now is more like the "Trinity Strings," as the pastor's wife, Julia, is now playing her lute or mandolin and singing with the group. I couldn't talk them into playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," though... We had quite a contingent of Trinity folks there for moral support.

I got the boys unlimited ride passes this year and they made good use of them this time around, though for the most part stayed off the "scary" rides. Aaron did go on the Himalaya ride, which in my day was called the Matterhorn and I think had white knuckles the whole time. He may have gone a second time, but refused to go any further, as he thought he had to hold on too hard to stay in the seat. The Goldsberry's grandchildren were here from Florida a couple of nights there at the fair, so the boys also got to ride with them and other friends. The Drevlows had several exhibits this year in the old arena with Brett making a life-size sculpture out of nothing but baseball cards and the other kids submitting drawing/artwork.

Guy Drevlow won several contests with his and his wife's horses and had some fun apparently with the kids who walked through the livestock barn. He attached a small handheld radio to the underside of one of the horse's manes and then stood around the corner with another radio and waited for a young child to approach the horse and then would whisper to the boy or girl as though the horse were talking to them. One of the boys went running to his mother saying, "The horse wants to come home with me, Mom!!" One of the families from Trinity made up almost half of one of the livestock barn displays with several goats, pigs, and sheep (the Kilen family).

The fair wound down with fireworks on Saturday night (see pictures). I tried the new "fireworks" feature on the camera and the few posted here really turned out nice.

The boys' baseball season will soon come to a close with tournament week approaching. Aaron's Twins team split their last two games Thursday night (we were there at the ballpark until 9 p.m.) with the Yankees and Dodgers respectively winning the latter and they're now #1 ranked going into the playoffs. Daniel's Reds team narrowly lost their last game against the Cubs. This next week is the end of the season party called the "Summer Hummer" in the Oakland Park at the edge of town with a picnic, carnival games, and dunk tank with lots of prizes for the kids and awards. That should be a fun couple of hours of fun this week. We've enjoyed very nice weather this past week or two with lots of sun, less rain, and some pleasant late afternoon breezes to keep cool at the ballpark. It was 81 degrees yesterday and it felt great. Finally got the lawns mowed, as I know it's gonna rain again tonight or tomorrow and then I'd really be hurting with grass up to my knees. Speaking of things growing like weeds, I harvested my back yard rhubarb plants for the second time this season and donated it to Daniel's friend's mom again who this time delivered us the most delicious dessert made from the rhubarb, kind of a "rhubarb mirangue" (sp?) pie with graham cracker crust and mirangue topping. It was the first new variation of rhubarb recipe I've had since the 1970s. My neighbor still can't figure out how our rhubarb grows like crazy in the shade of a large tree in the back yard. They have rhurbarb in their yard with more than enough sun yet it remains anemic in growth. I gotta get motivated next spring and clear out the back pea patch and plant some veggies, as I think I have some rich soil back there.

Aaron continues to diligently move toward his goal of 10,000 basketball shots by the time school starts up again in a month or so and I've gotten some good exercise shooting baskets with both the boys. The other night the boys had their friend Blake stay over and we all played HORSE the four of us and wouldn't you know it... Daniel won!

That's about all we've been up to since the last post. Hopefully everyone else out there is having a great mid summer. Feel free to send us pictures of your own adventures (Jeff and Katrina???).

Summer Marches On...

Hard to imagine how far we've gotten through summer already. We are well into another season of Park and Rec baseball and it won't be long until it's time to head back to school. We've been busy as usual with everything from baseball as above to movies, lots of visits from Aaron's friends (Daniel's best friend has been out of town for a couple weeks), and activities around town. Last week we all went over to Jim and Olive's house to set up their grandchildren's video game console on their old tv set (so old it doesn't have RCA plugs of its own). Their grandkids are up here visiting from Miami for most of July. We set up the console, but didn't spend much time playing on it, as we were invited to swim at the Franklin pool. It was a very fun learning experience for the boys. They have forgotten most of the lessons they learned at the Y, but they were pretty quick studies when I brought them both in the shallow end for some "lessons from Dad." Aaron was rather cautious about the whole affair given his past experience in Lake Sammamish and to start out, I was holding him most of the time as he got in and out of the pool, but by the end of the evening, he not only got in and out of the pool by himself, but also agreed to walk away from the edge of the pool with water up to his chest about 15 feet out from the edge to give me a hug. He was so proud of his accomplishment and couldn't get enough of it. He even started his own "exercise walking," realizing the resistance of walking through the water was indeed physical exercise. Daniel was rather cute, as he clung to me like Velcro when I brought him into the pool. I just about pried his fingertips off my back to get him back on the deck, but he too got rather comfortable by the end of the night and walked back and forth holding onto the pool edge and then walked out to me a couple of times leaving the edge about 5 feet behind.

We played there at the pool with Jim and Olive's grandkids and a friend of Aaron's until 9:45 last Friday night and it brought back memories of all those hundreds of late evening practices we had for AAU back in the day. Speaking of memories, the showers had the exact same showerheads on them they did in about 1977. They took the record board down, though, in the pool area so not much remains of that era now. I'm excited for the boys to learn to swim, though, as they have a webbed rope that hangs into the deep end from the ceiling and they can climb that if they want for exercise. Aaron is also doing well with his "10,000 Shot Club" for school basketball. He has the summer to shoot 10,000 baskets and we continue to plod toward that target (I won't jinx it here, though, by saying how many he's got so far). We usually head to the back garage and shoot for a half hour to an hour and between 150 to 250 baskets, though the other night he set a record by shooting 312. He really is a good shooter, hitting six in a row with nothing but net. It takes a lot of discipline, as it requires extended attention and concentration, but if he can reach the goal, he'll really benefit once basketball season starts up again.

On the home front, we did end up losing both of our guinea pigs in the span of about two weeks since my last writing here. Rodney passed of what clearly appeared to be a respiratory ailment despite my best efforts to save him and then "Lucky" wasn't so lucky... Lucky was a lot tougher, though, and gave whatever the infection was a run for its money. We just haven't had much luck with the guinea pigs and although we did replace Rodney with a new guinea, I don't think we'll be doing any more after that one. I think Aaron wants to get a rabbit that stays small when its full grown to keep the newest guinea pig company.

The Pennington County Fair is back again this week and thanks to work, I missed the first few days of it. Daniel is walking there tonight with his buddy and Aaron and I will be meeting up with them later on. The new Harry Potter movie is out this week too, so we're juggling our different priorities as of course they want to do everything all at once. They aren't entering their animals this year, though, given the nightmare last year turned into with the loss of Funny Bunny and Snowball. I think we'll just visit the new building with the rabbits and see what Sandy's up to.

We've also gotten our share of sun having traveled to the lake to spend the day at a family friend's cabin and did some fishing (didn't catch anything) and worked on our suntans. Other than that and the above, I've done some song leading at Trinity a couple times so far this summer and I'm supposed to lead again with Carol this coming Sunday and the boys have had about a half dozen baseball games apiece. Half the season has unfortunately been rained out, which is just the opposite of last summer with the drought we had. We've had no less than a dozen thunderstorms this summer and more on the horizon. It was funny yesterday, though. The boys had three games at the college yesterday and I was really feeling guilty as I had to finish some work and couldn't watch their first two games. I dropped them off at the ballpark and came back to finish the work and about an hour later, I got up to walk into the kitchen and looking out the back door I saw water cascading over the window in the door and sure enough we were in the middle of another downpour. There was no thunder, so I didn't have a clue until I saw the downpour upon getting up. Of course it clicked right away in my head, "Uh oh! The boys are probably standing around on a muddy ball field!" I hopped in the Blazer and ran out there as quick as I could to find them wet, but nonetheless all smiles. Aaron advised me that it started raining actually in the very first inning and they called the game off in the fourth (saved by the bell, as they were losing against the Yankees). So I didn't have to feel too guilty after all, as they didn't finish their first two games and didn't play the third game at all. I've done pretty good so far, though, not missing a single game since the season started, though the weather has probably helped on at least one other occasion. The season runs through July and then I think tournament week is the beginning of August followed by the "Summer Hummer" end of the season event, which was at the city park last year just before school starts.

I know there's a lot more I don't even remember at the moment, but I wanted to get what I could on here while I have the moment before I go and get even more busy. Did I mention how nice central air conditioning can be? I have a feeling I'm starting to ramble, so I better sign off for now and head to the fair with Aaron. Until next time... :)

Spring Informance for Daniel...

When It Rains....Well...You Know...

We've had one soggy week, I'm afraid. The boys started their first week of baseball practices out at the college this week, but as of Wednesday, they were rained out and just today (Thursday), they canceled all three of their games (two of Daniel's, one of Aaron's). I've been so busy lately that the lawn in front hasn't been mowed in three weeks and whenever I get the gumption to go out and do it, it rains, which leads to a vicious cycle, as it takes only a light drizzle to set the grass growing like a giant flat Chia pet.

Speaking of Chia pets, we've got another sick guinea on our hands, which one being Rodney, our longest lived pet along with the rabbits we got last year at the fair. Rodney has been quite dehydrated the past few days and we brought it over to Sandy Drevlow yesterday who showed us it was having some respiratory problems going on with some wheezing, so after watching it pretty much lay listlessly in the cage, I figured we should at least try to feed it more aggressively, so we hopped in the car tonight and headed out to Wal-Mart to get some fresh carrots and celery to run through the juicer, then mixed that with ground up food pellets and loaded up a couple syringes full. Rodney obviously wasn't pleased with the concept, but with sunken eyes and difficult breathing, he really needed hydration. I think we got at least one of the syringes of food where it needed to be with the rest down the chin, so hopefully it will help him rebound a little, but I'm afraid he might not make it through the night. With this one, though, I think we at least have a fighting chance, as we know in advance that it's not feeling well, though it takes so little time for a cavie like that to go downhill and if you're not really paying attention you can miss the important signs. It's kind of educational for me, as I'm finding myself drawing on my experience in animal physiology lab at Washington State. We're hoping for the best, as we haven't had the best luck with the really small pets (though the bunnies are still going strong...

The fair is coming up in Pennington County again next month and Aaron is already making sure we don't enter the pets again (as that was when the guineas started dying). He's been a great help with Rodney as we try to nurse him back to health as best we can.

Other than baseball and an ailing guinea, not much else is going on besides work for me. I'm scheduled to lead the congregation in the hymns and liturgy again this Sunday, this time with Marilyn accompanying, and starting next week will be spending a lot more time hopefully out at the ball park with the boys. We might even get a chance to get some fishing in...

Thank you to our fallen soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen this Memorial Day.

A Time for Remembrance...

As this month has come and gone so quickly, I find Memorial Day is almost already arrived again. We've been quite busy with end of school activities, the school carnival, music informances, end of Sunday School, starting summer activities, etc. As I drive out to Challenger several days a week lately, though, I find myself glancing off to the side as I pass Greenwood Cemetery here in town and just noticed today the many wooden crosses placed in honor of local fallen veterans for Memorial Day ceremonies next week. It got me to thinking of all the many people I've known over the years that have left this earth, many before their time, and others who lived long and rich lives and for whom it would never have been a comfortable time to say goodbye. I thought of how people visit their friends' and loved ones' gravesites to remember them on this holiday, but obviously I can't do that for everyone, so I thought I would acknowledge them here in at least some small way.

There are so many people who have touched my life in one way or another, large or small, long or short, but these are the people I miss, that I wish I could have met in person while they were here, or could have stayed here a bit longer in the journey we call "life" so I could have gotten to know them (not necessarily in order of importance): Grandma Judy and Grandpa Paul, Great Grandpa Oscar and Grandma Mary, Great Grandpa Ole and Grandma Odel, Grandpa Ed, Great Uncle Ed, Helen and Doug, Marjorie, Aunt Sue, Ray Mosbeck, Adrienne Sanai, Sarah Villien (CAP), Sandy Heidinger, Ms. Czerkownak, Mrs. Poole, Mr. Fugleberg, Mr. Solsten, Mrs. Desrochier, Mr. McLeod, Mr. Hess, Rayton "Bubs" Dargon, David Cota, Stuart Thompson, Leland Mott, Sr., Kristi Dyrdal, Warren Peterson, Mary from Ida Culver, Iris Nicola, Annie Van Winkle, Lisa from Stevens, Mr. Krause, Dr. Davidson, Jim and Perry (30 years ago this December), and Axel and Louise Stark. Thank you to all the above who have played a role in shaping who I have been, am, and will be in the future. You are all dearly missed, particularly those who died without the opportunity to live your lives to the fullest.

"Requiem eternam dona eis, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat eis." (Grant unto them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.)

Thank you also to the many veterans who have died for our freedom in previous wars and and the men and women who continue to give the ultimate gift in sacrifice to our country in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world.

Spring Planting Is Finished....

Aaron's Good Buddy, Brock...