Attic Video

Finally the attic project is done and Katie and Casey have a home instead of just a room. Anne took a video- if you don't get sick from the fast movement, you'll see our new attic apartment, they have 2 bedrooms a large living area and a small kitchen area and a nice sized bathroom( the best in the house!) Seems like we have spent all our time (and money) on this project so it is very nice to have it done- the painting on the stairway got done yesterday- still a few details left to do but as Elsa says she has walls!
Thanks to Erik for being our all around handy man and doing so much of the work, he was everyone's all around helper and main man. Casey did a large part too along with various hired helpers along the way.
We took Anneleise to Paris for her `13th birthday and fought the crowds everywhere, but still had a good time. We stayed with a friend who works at the embassy there and she gave us the inside view of living in Paris. Thanks Mugs! We got home in time to celebrate Elsa's 2nd birthday, she loved her presents and had a great time opening every one. She also enjoyed the fireworks (from the house) for her birthday too! We had a low key celebration with less people here to help set off the fireworks. Happy New Year to all-

Attic

gingerbread houses

Here's our annual gingerbread competition- We had Grandma and Grandpa vote for the winner, they liked the african village made bY Rich and Erik, but the rest of us dont think Grandma realized the the village is a cannabal village and those are skulls rolling around the ground and they are cooking a cute black cat on the fire! Curt and Stephie took us to new heights with their light house with a real light, that lasted til the next day! Curt tells me just wait for next year- maybe we will have to make rules for the engineers in the group. Katie and Casey made the house from UP, Anne and I made the Eifel Tower in anticipation of our Paris trip, The Johnsons made a very cool Stars wars ships. All in all they were all great and we had a fun time, made messes in 2 countries and we still love Grandma and Grandpa even if they like the cannibals!

Stars wars by Scooter and Liza and Nathan and Daniel

The Wengel Lighthouse

The eifel tower by Mom and Anne

The Cannibal Village by Dad and Erik

The UP House by Katie and Casey and Elsa

Family happenings

Alot of excitng news since our last post. First of all Katie and Casey added a new baby girl, Leah Jo Kennington, to their family. Katie had her at the German hospital and all went very well. Rich and I were able to be there and it was a really wonderful experience. Leah is a wonderful baby and we are having so much fun having 2 beautiful little grandaughters here with us. Casey has been working very hard with Erik on the attic over the last few weeks and it is almost done, the plumbers and electrician are finishing up their part and then we'll be almost there., then painting and flooring and then Katie and Casey will have an attic apartment to live in for the year. The guys have done an amazing job, I have been very nervous about trying to do all ourselves (meaning Erik and Casey doing all the hard work with Rich and I buying supplies and giving directions and cleaning up as they go!) but it is shaping up quite nicely!

The last week of September was the Berlin marathon, this year was Rich's 10th berlin marathon, which means he can now join the jubilee club, they give him a number for life, a cool t -shirt and membership in the elite club of dedicated runners. I guess this means we'll keep showing up in Berlin every fall for a long time. This year Elizabeth and Scott and Erik ran with him so it was quite a party. Liza and Scott and their boys had quite a trip, they went to Greece for a week and visited Scott's parents and then met us in Berlin. It was Nathan's 4th birthday so he arrived in Greece on his birthday and then had celebrations in Greece, Berlin and in Utah, quite a birthday for one so young. The marathon was eventful in that Rich ran off a curb and hurt his ankle at 5km, kept on running for almost 40km more and found out it was actually broken when he got home. That is dedication! I think he deserves more than just a cool t shirt and a number for that one! They had a good time and all finished together and enjoyed laying in the sun in front of the Riechstag after. Hopefully Rich will give a more detailed account on his runners blog. ( He won't tell you about the broken ankle!) Anne and I had a marathon day with Nathan and Daniel. we took them to legoland and then tried to met up with the runners at the half way point. That was quite a feat with 2 tired boys, a stroller and alot of stairs and escalators and trains to get to where we could see our group running by. I'm very proud of them - it was a great accomplishment for them all.

Elizabeth came home with us and we had a great week or so with all the grandkids here. It was baby central, Elsa had to adjust to having other kids to play with her toys and sit in her high-chair. Daniel started out by over whelming her a little but by the end of their time together she was holding her own quite well. I had a friend come over and take pictures, we didn't quite get all four together and happy ,but got some cute pictures of each one individually. Just going out was an adventure , just trying to get 4 kids all ready to go and buckled in the car, we were tired out!

While Liza was here Erik got his official eagle scout stuff so we had a Eagle family night- what a cute guy. He got his misson paperwork this week so we are excited about that. He has been going out with the missionaries here alot and is ready to get going.

Attic Project

Here are some photos of our attic renovation project. Casey and Erik are working hard and doing a great job so far, they are awaiting the delivery of more materials so they can keep going. It seems to take a long time to get stuff ordered and delivered, we thought it would be easier than many van trips, but certainly not faster. Here's one wall for a future bedroom, they have put in the insulation and then the sheetrock, now they just have to go up up up to the whole ceiling which is basically 2 floors up. I'm a little worried about how to do that with our limited scaffolding, but the manly men seem to think it is nooooo problem. So far they have been right , so my confidence is building daily!
Another wall almost done, they have a done a great job working around all the exposed beams, and with all the strange angles and crooked walls, there is nothing uniform about building in an old house! This will be the bathroom in this corner with the big beams on/in the exposed wall as you come up the stairs.
This wall has the insulation and plastic sheeting and is ready for the sheetrock, whenever we get some more.
The other side of the room, as yet, with only some basic flooring.

Now we need to add the pictures of the beautiful children who now live at our house! Katie, Casey and Elsa got here in July and it has been a constant joy to have them here. Elsa is so happy and entertaining, she plays with Jack constantly and walks around singing "happy, happy, happy" which in turn makes us all - Happy! Casey is doing everything needful before we even think about it, building the attic rooms, doing a lot of yardwork and computer work and mentoring Erik too. Katie is keeping busy with Elsa and waiting for the baby to come, She toured the german hospital with Rich and is excited about the whole experience to come now. She is cooking alot- YEAH! ( I love having someone else cook) and helping Anne occupy her summer time too.

We are back home in cold Germany. The Nathan quote is" it is too cold in this country" as we sat outside in our sweaters eating our last baguettes (total tally for the 2 weeks was 100!) with the fresh cinnamon and egg beaters. It was not the same as on the beach wearing speedos!Anyway, we had a great gathering for Erik's graduation from High School. Class of 2009! We did not leave as usual on Friday night, but not until Saturday night ca 2300 after he had an ice cream party for selected friends at our house. We did not have the burning of the books bonfire as we did with Stella's graduation. I guess boys do not read books? Just kidding....We had Liza and Scott with Nathan and Daniel (Erik came up with a nickname of Lavern and Shirley....which was not well accepted by Nathan Scott the Knight. We also had Curt and Stephanie (Stella) for the occasion. That was 10 total people, which would not fit in one automobile, so we rented a 9 seater van, put the back seats flat in our van and took them both. We had as much room as we wanted really and took every needful and not necessarily needful thing, but had some lovely comforts there that were pace setting for us--chairs for everyone, lounging chairs back at the cabins and we had TWO cabins, which was also cool. We did not have to have anyone sleeping on the hide-a-bed, which was really great. We still had the oblitgatory tent which housed the youthful couple of Stella and Curt. Weather was just a few degrees shy of perfect, but was really nice. Some days of some clouds, but no days that we could not have sat the whole day at the beach. We were in the first and second trailer of Robs, which we have stayed in now for 11 years. So, we knew just how to do it. We took our electric toaster oven and fans and and many, many books. We kept track of many items for posterity. To quote from our Travel Vacation Journal:Nathan: "Is this a great beach or what? A What...." . "What is your address? I do not wear a dress."High Points: All boys got a toenail painted. Long tradition usually during sleeping to surprise the wearer of the toe nail polish. Stella had razor burn in her arm pits. Mom gave twice a day shots in the behind to a doc friend of ours who was two weeks post-back surgery and should have stayed home instead of drivinig for 11 hours. We also got to visit an ER during the night by Geant store with him--very interesting. One of the 14 children with this family, a 4 year old, literally sailed to Africa as Mom is apt to say on any given day that she wants to float on a noodle in the ocean. Nathan and Daniel joined in my favorite beach attire--nothing. We could not keep any swim suits on Nathan. He stripped constantly and hung out with the family of 14 constantly. They were cool and did not really care. We read collectively 30 books, ate 100 baquettes and ran 149.9 miles. Nathan and Daniel frequently spent quiet time at the park multiple times per day, especially at 0600 when Daniel gets up EVERY day no matter when he goes to bed in the first place....We bought lots of quilts (5) and tableclotthes (10). Our favorite beach food--curry was had 4 times. Our only mishap happened on the way home at 0630 in the AM when a van broke off the mirror on the rental van that I was driving. He zipped by, did not stop, and I got no license plate number and could not catch him as he was going so fast. Interesting to see how much that costs me--we had a 1000 Euro deductible on the rental van, so that will be out of pocket. Maybe USAA will kick in?We went to the Sandy beach once each week, or as Nathan called it, "Playing water beach". It is Le Estrognol, or Estrogen beach as I call it. I find many of lifes items revolve around estrogen anyway! We made two trips to Nice airport to deliver son-in-laws at 0600 in the AM, requiring a wake up call at 0305! But all we do is read, run, eat and have naps on the beach, so it was well tolerated. We were happy to have them for every bit of time we could have them. Only thing that would have been better is if EVERYONE could have been there, meaning Katie and Casey. They should be able to join next year, but the rest of the crew likely not, although Curt definitely accepts a free trip back on old Dad. We will have to check that out and see about it....it is very tempting to get everyone here again, just do not know how reasonable! We may have to search out someplace a tad closer--although it would not be as warm, but maybe Holland? Would have to be later, like August to be warm enough.....then airline tickets would likely cost more though. Tradeoffs!!As I mentioned, we had some wonderful runs--total 149.9 miles in a group of smallest 4, but generally 5: me, Erik, Scott, Liza, and Curt. Our longest run was just over 13 miles, or a HALF MARATHON with no water. We did stop a few times. We actually took a scenic shortcut back from St Tropez on a road "Val de Rian" we thought may go through, which it did, but turned into a dirt road up and over the hills and came out in a Private ritzey place behind a gated community fence. Good thing there were not Dopermans roaming around or we would have scaled a tree rapidly to escape. We had no cell phone. During that same run, we also ran around the Citadel on a trail between the Citadel and the cliff down to the ocean. I have never been there before to see the sights and found it fabulous. I usually am driving people up and dropping them off and driving around the loop to pick them up again as it is quite steep. We were studly and ran up the trail, of course, and were rewarded with great pictures. We are planning on sending it into Runner's World, so you may all see it as a Rave Run. I will let you know if that happens, but we have pictures of use running with St tropez town with the church and port in the background. Very,very cool.Now, depression and real life has arrived. We all feel somewhat jet lagged. I am on call tomorrow and have some VERY challenging cases to do in the OR along with 2 weeks of back e-mail and collected problems. So, it will be tough. Always is. At least I will start it with a lovely state of melonocytic activation with my brown skin tones! I need a vacation from the vacation and then start back to work. Anyway, to all who were there with us, we were so happy to spend time with you away from the world, electronics and stresses and thank you for making sacrifices to spend time with us. Every day on the way home from the store in my swim suit-let with the particular meals warm baquettes in tow, I would close my eyes and suck up every bit of yellow, sunny warmth that I could to store for the coming year and love to see the memories in pictures, yellow-blue table clothes and quilts that we get to sleep under which could only have been better with more of our loved ones there!

family update

We have been too busy to blog for awhile, but things never seem to slow down so I'll add a quick update and add some pictures later since I'm at work and picture-less. April started with a wonderful cruise to the Greek islands. Kathy and Ken come over and joined us and we had a wonderful time. We started out by staying a couple of days with our good frined Donna in Vincenza, we took Kathy shopping for leather purses- and made her a buy a couple. Then we spent some time in Venice before getting on the ship.We made several stops , Athens, Santorini, Mykonos, Olympia, and Dubrovnik, it was a great week. The weather was perfect, the kids had their own room with a balcony so we all had a great time. On the way home we stopped to see the Swiss temple, spent a night in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, and stopped at the largest military cemetary in France, so packed alot into 1 trip!
Rich and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary with a trip to our favorite castle/hotel over-looking the Rhine river, it is so beautiful and romantic, we have been there a couple of other times for our anniversary , but each time we get a different room so it's fun to see how each is so unique.
Right now we are getting ready for Erik's graduation and our trip to the beach!!! We missed the beach last year so are more then excited to get back this year. Elizabeth, Scott, Nathan and Daniel are coming as well as Stephie and Curt so we'll have 2 trailers and 2 weeks of fun. Just wish Katie and Casey and Elsa were going to be there- but they are coming on July 13th for a YEAR!!!! Casey will be going to grad school in Saarbrucken and they will be living with us, it is too good to be true, we can't wait to have them here. Katie is having baby #2 in August so we will be having alot of excitment. In preparation for the Kennington's arrival Rich and Erik are working on the attic, we are hoping to finish some bedrooms and a bathroom there so they will have somewhere to live. We'll have to take some before and after pictures of this adventure.

The Jackson Family Takes to the Sea

We have no handy internet connection—actually, we do, but it costs 30 Euro/ hr, neigh unto $50/hr, so that is steep. Therefore, the thought is that we will write a document with several days happenings on it and connect and send from somewhere, or even when we get home. It will have to suffice.

We are currently at port in Bari, Italy. We got here at 1230 after a fabulous first night at sea. We left Germany on Thursday at 0450 for Italy and had a very nice trip—it went much faster than usual with Kathy’s entertaining stories. We have many stories, it seems, which we have not been privy to from routine family happenings which we are sheltered from being 6000 miles away. So, the miles flew by. We stayed two nights in Donna Cole’s cat infested house. The cats have waged war on Donna for leaving them alone while she went to Germany for a month in the hospital getting herself humpty dumbtied back together again—it was bad before, but now it is untolerable. We vowed never to stay there again as long as they are living….anyway, we had a nice two days there shopping for purses and eating pizza at the pink restaurant and other places. We left for Venice on Saturday PM and stayed at a lovely place close to the main train station. Really nice rooms x 2 for us. Kathy and Ken’s were in an older part of the hotel—the whole thing is ancient, but less recently re-done. Anyway, we got up on Sunday early, all excited to get on the boat, MSC Musica. We got to the port at ca 1030, which was when check-in was to start, only to be told that we could not check-in until 1200. So, the crowd thickened and thickened. It was a two part process: checking in and then getting scanned and x-rayed like at an airport. The check-in finally occurred, but the scanning did not start for 1.5 hrs with the crowd getting thicker and more unruly as time went on. Several times, the crowd broke out in spontaneous booing, clapping, etc to let the people at the port know that we were getting upset with the Italian way of doing things. Turns out, it was one of the first times they had used a new building for boarding. People did not finish getting off the boat until about 1430, starting at 0800 because there was only one way off for 2,400 people is not very speedy—or it was just Italian; we do not know which. Anyway, at one point the crowd stormed the x-ray machine, which did not help. Once we were finally on board, we settled in and were quite happy. Turns out the children are in a balcony cabin 3 floors down and at the front end of the boat, when Mom and I are at the back end of the boat. Before we left port, we got to have a sinking drill where we heard the siren blast seven times and got to muster to our assigned area. The kids, unfortunately, and uncomfortably are assigned another area. We have visions of the Titanic and Mom says she will go to the kids if we sink. I told her the life boats are counted out for the letters of the alphabet, which are written on our life vests. There are 20 boats, which hold 120 people each—so that is enough for 2,400. Problem is there is the staff. I do not know how many there are, but about 500-800 for sure. There are numerous other small blow up life boats too. Let us hope we do not get to find out about that. Good thing is that there are no icebergs in the Mediterranean Sea, so we should be safe. Erik said there are great white sharks in the Med, so we may have issues if we did not get into one of the boats.

The food is nice by my thinking. Kathy and Ken say not up to snuff to American cruise lines, but this is Italian. The food is Italian and wonderful by me—lots of fish to be had. We have had octopus for every non-breakfast meal so far. What could be better?

Our cabin has a private balcony which is made for nudity. I had a lovely sit this morning after we did our run (Erik and I). We vow to run every day. Tomorrow, the plan is to run first thing after we get to Corfu, Greece. We are to arrive at 0700, so we think we will go in and figure out the lay of the island to fill the rest in. We did Bari by ourselves today—no cruise tours, which are pricey and so far, not too cool by my thought. We are doing Athens tour, but likely will do the rest on our own via taxi or just walking.

More later…….

Later……8 April 2009, Wednesday enroute to Mykonos after Santorini.

After Bari, we got back on the ship and chilled for a bit, went to the second dinner and had a much better waiter this time. Food was much the same as before. We went to the La Scala theater that night also and watched a Kahn Kahn show called Bizaare. It was pretty good, especially a couple of girls doing acrobatics on a ring and a rope, very amazing and made me fear for the cervical spines.

Next morning we got to Corfu early in the AM. We did a self tour through the town. We took off on our own walking through some definitely non-tourist areas but did finally find our way into the old Center of the town, which was very interesting, narrow streets with marble surface. A high light was finding a grocery store and buying between us 6 six-packs of diet coke. Erik had a 6-pack of regular coke the day before. So, we all got one. It was a joyous occasion for sure! We high tailed it back to the ship in time to secure a deck spot and sat for a while there on the deck as we took off towards Santorini, which took until the next morning. One could tell we were on a ship for sure. During that afternoon, we had a nap, played a game of Risk—winner was indeterminate, but was for sure not myself or Kathy. I knitted some. We went to a good show that night, which was a Italian tenor, Enrico Scotto. He was OK, but we really liked it—at least people whose synapses are all developed. We had skipped the Gala meal as we did not bring dress clothes, but decided we could improvise for the second one later with some ties which Erik bought, or maybe buy another one or two! The young one and I stayed up for the midnight meal—we needed more calories for the day for sure…..it was deserts and was it every fancy and good. Then, we went to bed and woke up in Santorini.

Santorini is our clear favorite so far by far. We were dealt numbers to get off the boat by—it was via some little boats called “tenders” that took us over to the port—maybe a half of a mile. There we had a choice of a huge line to the cable car or walk or take the donkeys. We decided to walk and crowded past the large crowd waiting to mount the beasts wading through tons of donkey doo-doo and made it about half way up the first switchback and quickly changed our minds. It cost us 5 Euro each to take a donkey which was an absolute blast. Anneliese’s donkey did not know which was to go, mine was also similar. They kept on turning around and going back down, so a young kid had to accompany us up for a ways. There was a mass of donkeys coming and going up and down the rock switch back trail up to the town on the top. It was really a blast. One lady was thrown off her donkey into a large pile of poop. She was thrilled to be sure! We all stayed on the donkeys and made it to the top. There we had shop and shop to go through including a bakery with some wonderful delights—like baklava from Turkey but different some, made with walnuts and other nuts with honey. They were very good. I went a bit crazy and bought a boxfull for 11 Euros. We had very sticky hands and it was great. We ate with hands communially contaminated from holding onto the donkey harnesses during the assent. Hopefully, no virus will have endured it? We walked around, took many pictures and had a wonderful time. The way down was via the cable car. All in all a wonderful day so far and we still have a whole other island to see today—Mykonos. So, we are really living the life. I just ran on a tread mill. One can only run for 25 minutes to be fair to others. There were large lines trying to keep up with all the food. Soon, we will meet again to eat again so we can be ready to get off tonight. We are to be in Mykonos from 1900 to 0100. Athens tomorrow!

13 April:

I am now retrospectively catching up….Athens we did with an excursion. We had a great tour guides called Poopy. She opened with telling us her name and said, yes, she knows what it means, but you would be surprised what some of your names mean in Greek. She was very interesting and we had a great time. Our first stop was at a Olympic stadium—from the past which is where the Olympic flame is passed from Greece to whatever country is doing it that year. It is actually started from the sun each time in another Olympic stadium in Olympia, which was the next day, but where we did not go. More on that later. Next was the Acropolis, which is absolutely cool. The Parthenon is but one temple up on the top. They are restoring to a certain extend all of the temples on the top. It will be a 20 year project. They will not be made to look new. The replaced marble is lighter and easy to see where it has been redone. After that, we came down and did some shopping and went back to the bus via a city tour. Athens is big and aside from the Acropolis, not that interesting really to my thinking.

Next day was to a port around a large peninsula at a port called Katakalon—or something close. It is 38 km from Olympia. We did not do a tour of that, but did rent some mottos (mopeds) and tripped around the port somewhat. The initial plan was to drive to Olympia, but we got about 10 km into the trip and decided I was terrified of driving on the back of Erik in a city, so we turned around. I had left my wallet on the boat and you had to have a driver’s license to rent the mopeds. We got two of them. Erik and Ken drove. Anne and I road shotgun for the initial, then we switched for Mom and Kathy. The shops there were interesting, the leather very cheap. I was tempted to buy a man-purse, but did not—reason prevailed. We had some mosaka and some more baklava at the port there. All in all, it was a very interesting stop and rates second on the list behind the donkeys of Santorini in the kid’s minds.

Next stop was Dubrovnik on the second to last day. It is a lovely walled city, which has seen lots of wars, as recently as 1991, which is amazing. An earthquake destroyed most of the city several hundred years ago too. It is a warren of narrow streets, all very interesting. We had a lovely time there.

Then we got to Venice the last day, sad to see it end. We had a lovely time, played Risk twice, which is 200% more than ever before in my life. Ken is quite competitive with Risk and loves the game. I played the first time, getting out quickly and knitted. Second time, I went running. Running was sparse really. We did run about 5 times, mostly on a treadmill which is never very nice, but it was fairly cool to run at the very front of the boat looking ahead to where the ship was going. We also played multiple times a card game called “Golf”, which is very different from what we had also previously called “Golf”.

The food was good, I thought—lots of fish. The midnight buffets we went to twice were pretty fancy, with lots of vegetable carvings and ice sculptures. I am thinking my poundage will have increased somewhat and give me a project over the next weeks!

On the way home, Kathy and Ken were interested in going to Lauterbrunnen, so we swung over there and stayed overnight in a hotel, Hotel Jungfrau. We tried the Camping Jungfrau and Schuetzenbach first for cheaper sake, then started on the Hotels—we spent 240 Franken on a quad room for one night. Now, we have a 5 hr trip home in front of us. Then back to work tomorrow—very depressing I am sure. We got colds during the trip, which put a slight damper on the spirits, but it could have been worse. There was Purell equivalent all over the ship to put on your hands at every turn trying to prevent GI bugs from spreading around among the ca 2,400 people on board. It was amazing to think how many people were on the ship. The disembarkation went very smoothly compared to getting on. We were off and underway by 1030 in the morning, so that was great.

Sorry for being wordy

Rome Marathon--4th and 45th

Here's Anne standing on the balcony of our apartment in Rome, See the Coloseum in the back? We had a 2 bedroom apartment just blocks from the start and finish of the marathon. Rich post-marathon #45, not wanting to sight-see much today, so we are people watching at Coloseum, trying to guess where people are from. The Americans stick out by their white running shoes and clothes of every color. The Italians are the best dressed, and mostly wearing black. The Germans always have the worst colors and styles. (hope we don't look German!)

Anne and I took the hop on and off tour bus around town on Saturday, we saw the whole city, then stopped at the train station and got food and books. The guys went to the marathon messe and had their pasta party and bonded withItalian runners-who were on the look-out for women!
Anne and Erik stuck their hands in the Boca and came out whole. The interesting thing is that now you have to pay to take a picture here. In the past it was free, but with hard economic times I guess 50 cents a picture adds up!





Erik striking a pose to catch the attention of the cute Italian girls passing by!

Anne and I spent alot of the marathon day at the Trevi fountain watching people and runners and waiting for the guys to run by, unfortunatly we missed them on both sides, but we had some great gelato and enjoyed the sunny weather.

The tourists.
















Here's the guys resting up after the marathon, all wrapped up in their "warming blankets "they get at the finish, it's basically a thin sheet of tin foil!

Here's the look at the finish- a little pain, but very happy!

















Here they are at the start- crazy runners ready to take off and start running(ALL DAY!) We are proud of them! This week we are off to Venice and our Mediterrean cruise, so next time pictures from Greece.

commentary on "Turkish pants"

Rich went to Turkey for a week and brought us all back Turkish pants. I think the pictures are awful, we were trying to stand with our legs apart to show the pants, but it makes really bad pictures(unless you're just trying to see how the pants are made.) Rich had local assistance shopping the street markets this time and got the authentic stuff. He brought Erik a hat too. The pants are one size fits all and it really is that way -they have a huge waistline pulled in with a drawstring so any size can wear them. Rich says you can wear many layers under these pants and no one will be able to tell! I think erik should wear them to the next take dance and start a new craze.
Rich had a fun time inspecting hospitals in Turkey and being the visiting dignitary, he got his own COLONEL car and according to his own words was "somewhat a big whig" on his trip. He wrote a very discriptive letter that most of you already received, if not let me know and I'll forward it on!
In other big news Erik finished his eagle scout project and turned 18! He got all the right stuff done before the brithday and now just has the final review to go. He did a great job on his project cleaning up the skeet shooting range and when he went back to paintball there this week they gave him a free case of paintballs to thank him.
Let Rich know if you want your own turkish pants- he has contacts in the area! Katie they would be great pregnancy pants, they accomodate any size!

Turkish Pants

Christmastime Pictures