x marks the spot, a neat contrail over fort simpson

Coleman lets fly with a wicked right cross!

he hauls back.....

and BAM! he knocks the S#$% out of that heavy bag!

boom, short right uppercut, there mister punching bag,

I already put my big sister in a wheelchair, don't mess with me

or I'll knock yer hook right out of the ceiling. (he did)

Miranda's auntie Bella bought this for our house at willow

Wave cloud crashing over the mountain, it's just like a cloud waterfall

The infamous HAIREATER I believe I may have mentioned these before. It's a pine bark beetle and nasty bcuz they actually do eat hair.

This is a small one. I know. GROSS! and of course there millions of them. they fly up behind you and velcro themselves in your hair and chow down.

get any better than this?

Weekends at willow, of course. way up top it's miranda to the rescue, as she had to pull charlie brown from a ditch, she got her quad down in there and couldn't get out. Coleman uses his granma's binoculars. charlene used to call them binoscopes. our cucumbers are doing good. charlene practicing with her bow.

Last weekend miranda and I invited Carl and Derek from work down for some fishing, that's Carl and the ol' lady in the boat. And a whitefish that I caught.

I'm tired as hell so that's all for now!

Steven of the burnt legs came home for holidays from the army. Harley and Charlene were duly impressed with a real live army man. Steven camo'd their faces and put them thru some PT it was pretty good. Steven also proved that the army can teach anyone to shoot- come on now steve-o you know you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn before! god the excuses! something wrong with the gun, I never used one like this before...i heard em all. NOW on the other hand he picks up a gun that he's never used before and scores on every shot. I was impressed(not easily done) All photo credits go to harley this time cuz my camera battery was dead.

miranda caught some nice pickerel down at willow on the weekend, about six or seven pounds.

charlie brown and harley built a lean-to, and almost had us convinced to let them sleep in there...almost. instead miranda decided to move one of the log warehouses and fix it up into a little cabin for the kids. we'll probably wait and do that in the fall when it's cooler and no bugs.

I'm taking duane from work and one of the local pilots fishing down there tomorrow.

and sis i detest asparagus but miranda either likes it or just likes to grow it. anyways most of it bit the dust(literally). I snuck up on the kids when charlene was reading to her little brudder.

Charlie's weekend for sure. She climbed a tree, drove the truck and her corn came up like gangbusters. We start 'em young driving in our family. rebecca learned when she was four and was quite good at it. Charlene did ok too with mom's help. and I didn't catch a thing, although I only fished for about 20 minutes. We re-built the fire pit, but I'm not happy enough with the design yet, so I didn't cement it in. ya gotta find just the right rocks, it could take some time.

we didn't start on the gazebo either, but miranda put up a temporary tee-pee a temp-pee if you will. If a tee-pee is made just right(this one is) they are awesome, no matter how bad the mosquitoes are outside there are none inside, and if one comes in, the thermals from the fire shoot them right out the top. I might make it two years in a row with out using bug dope. I hate that sh#$ worse then the bugs. Our corn, cucmbers and watermelon are doing ok as is the asparagus...asparagus? what was she thinking?

Another willow weekend in the books. It was very hot, 30c on saturday 29 on sunday. Half the corn survived. oddly all the watermelon made it and asparagus did as well. nothing else made it.

On the off chance that nothing would make it, I started another batch of super-speedy corn, so I can have my corn on'a cob before summer is over. Miranda wants to build a gazebo where our teepee used to be and we are going to make a permanent fire pit with local stone and mortar.

I 'm looking forward to all that hard work in that hot sun.
The moon coming up thru the trees was pretty cool.

our first trip of the summer went off without a hitch, that's Lone Mountain way in the distance looking downriver. Next is me on the cultivator and last but not least, getting the garden ready is a family affair and even coleman got in on the action. We planted corn, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes and watermelons. we started most of the stuff in the house at home and gambled that we wouldn't get another frost(i think we may have lost that bet as we had a frost here in simpson sunday night).

I knew mike was getting married again and was toying with the idea of crashing it, but ultimately decided not to. Thanks to sis for putting up pics it was great, I literally haven't even seen a pic of mike since i left- so it was cool. Congratulations bro! second time seems to be the charm in our family. As far as me coming down to new scotland it's gonna happen either this year or next, gotta be before 2012, you know the whole end of the world thing- Frank, batter up!