April Fools ~ Again

April fools joke 30 days late!

Snow this time of year is not out of the normal as life in Alaska is unpredictable at best, it is just a bit disheartening as I really could see myself standing in the warm spring sunshine.

Love at First Sight

Below from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables~

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in.  Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other.  Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards.

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Very nicely said!

Wheels on the Bus

Everyone needs a good bus driver.  Someone who knows all the perils the road has to offer up and dish out. Someone who can effortlessly round every corner and miss every pothole along the the way.

On this great day and every day may your way be guided by the best bus driver there is and may HE also guide your heart.

Amen!

Bittersweet

Bittersweet:Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way 

by Shauna Niequist

Prologue

“What I didn’t understand until recently is that he wasn’t speaking to me as a theologian or a pastor or an expert, but rather as a person whose heart had been broken and who had been brought back to life by the story God tells in all our lives. When you haven’t yet had your heart really broken, the gospel isn’t about death and rebirth. It’s about life and more life. It’s about hope and possibility and a brighter future. And it is certainly about those things.

But when you’ve faced some kind of death – the loss of someone you loved dearly, the failure of a dream, the fracture of a relationship – that’s when you start understanding that central metaphor. When your life is easy, a lot of the really crucial parts of Christian doctrine and life are nice theories, but you don’t really need them. When however, death of any kind is staring you in the face, all of a sudden rebirth and new life are very, very important to you.”

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Sounds like an inspirational read and fitting for our lives right now. Have any of you read this book? 

Helping Others

Helping others usually starts with all the best intentions. Sometimes we help too much as there is a fine line between helping people and helping people learn how to help themselves. Guiding someone towards the path that reminds them they have the power to help themselves will become a valuable key in their pocket and will unlock infinite doors.

Ownership in their own destiny, choosing their own goals, and finding the resource with which to make this goal a reality are the fundamental building blocks to living a happier healthier life.

So if this is true why do we continue to give handouts without the expectation that the recipient should then learn to better their own life?

There is one organization that seems to have the right idea.

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Medical Ambassadors International 

What We Do

Medical Ambassadors International (MAI) does not do development. Instead we teach Community Health Evangelism (CHE, pronounced chay) to local individuals, who teach their neighbors, in some of the poorest places in the world. CHE is a plan for individual and community development through physical and spiritual teaching. The people do development for themselves.

• Local people do it for themselves by:
• Choosing their own people to be in charge
• Choosing their own priorities of what to change
• Choosing their own people to be trained to teach house to house
• Finding their own resources, and
• Accomplishing their own goals when and where they choose. Local people own and manage their own plans. We just teach their teachers.

Empowering people to do things for themselves. This liberates locals from the bondage of the welfare mentality.

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So if they are using this school of thought around the world in some of the poorest regions what is keeping you and me for implementing this in our own back yard? How can we empower ourselves, our family members or our neighbors?

High Five Friday for Birch Trees

Photo taken at the Chena Flood Project

Birch trees are probably one of the best reasons to live in the interior of Alaska.  They provide green shade in the summer and golden rustling leave in the fall. In the winter they stand as tall sentinels in the woods neither light nor dark. One can easily see through them and they can simply hide you among their texture and shadows.

Simple and complex at the same time.   High five for trees of all shapes and size.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Shooting Range

There is a lot of talk these days about gun laws and our Constitutional rights. To tell a truth that we all know there has ALWAYS been a lot of talk about our unalienable rights since the Declaration of Independence and beyond and as Alaskans this right rings clear in our ears. Yet it is more than a right or a privilege, it is a necessity when you venture out of suburbia and into the bush of Alaska.

In the Alaska bush there is wild along the rivers, by the lakes and on the tundra that will eat you if you give it a chance. My family and I are not about to give it that chance and we always venture out aware of our surroundings, prepared, and are ready to defend ourselves against an angry bear or disgruntled moose. Also if there were ever a need to hunt to feed ourselves in the case of an emergency if Alaska was to be cut off from outside world I would need to be all practiced up and ready to put supper on the table.

 It was a nice afternoon at the shooting range.  Go team us!

P.S. The guys had hearing protection also just the kind that fits in the ears.

Play Time in the Snow

Okay winter we get the message you are still here with your cool temperatures, piles of snow and frozen rivers.  Which means there is still time to get out and have a bit of fun while we do a little bit of work.

 

We spent the day helping out Uncle & Aunty move rocks down river to their cabin that is on an outside curve and has been losing ground to the river for the past few years. 

It was -5 F. and when we got moving on the river it was breezy with the snow sifting around but it was oh so much fun!

Thanks Uncle & Aunty for letting us help you!  

You are always there for us so it is nice to return the favor plus the play time in the snow was good!

High Five Friday ~ for Less Photos

What you are looking at is a stack of photographs almost 14 inches tall. These photos are headed to the shredder as they are duplicates, out of focus or someone in them just does not look their best. These are all from the pre-digital age when you had to develop the film. So why did I keep them in the first place? Good question and perhaps only the shadow knows the real reason but what I can tell you is that they are out of here!

There were 16 photo albums filled with some great photos and some not so memorable shots. It took me two weeks to sort through them to cull out the bad and keep only the best photos. Now there are four photo albums that represent four great trips and one & a half boxes of photos labeled and dated.

Less is more and organization is the cat’s meow!

Happy Friday everyone!

Happy Birthday

Today is a GREAT day to have a birthday!  

Happy birthday to the oldest son!

Always do you best.

Live up to YOUR potential.

Remember that just because you can does not mean you should but if you truly want to achieve something then give it all your might.

Love you always son!

We are so very proud of you and all that you have accomplished ~ keep up the good work and that smile on your face that seems to be there no matter what!

You truly are AMAZING!

...

Ode to the Boreal Chickadee

Photo by Ten Common Birds of the GTA

You are a constant companion in the woods no matter the season. You hunker down and brave the long cool winters of the Northern night and in early spring your merry song cheers my winter weary heart.

May your chick-a-dee-dee always fill my ears with joy.

High Five Friday for Spring

Oh happy day in April ~ we appreciate you!

The New Dream

The Center for a New American Dream

Discover ways to rethink your relationship with "stuff," better balance work and life, avoid advertising, protect your children from marketing, and become more self-reliant.

Below is just a snippet from an article on their website that hit home for me.

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PATHWAYS INTERVIEW: Wendy Philleo – Redefining the American Dream

by Daniel Redwood, March 12, 2013

“Advertising really took off in the last 50 years, but it has spread into all facets of our lives in just the last two decades. We have to understand that so much money is put into research on how to manipulate us, on the psychology of manipulation and persuasion. The first thing is to recognize that this is happening, that we’re being taught to feel that we are lacking something by all of this marketing directed toward us.

…Everywhere we look now, we see messages about what constitutes “success”—making a lot of money, owning a lot of things. So it’s really difficult to get away from that definition of success and the idea that shopping is vital to who we are.

When the sky’s the limit, it’s very difficult for a person to feel like they have enough. “

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Okay so they have a lot of good things to say and a ton of ways to think about the way we each are choosing to live our lives.  Does this new American dream fit for everyone?  How does it change the long term goals for businesses trying to increase their profits and contribute to the investment opportunities for our retirement plans?

Where is the balance and how will it effect the lives of our children?

While I agree with most of what they have to say about stuff and not spending your hard earned money on inferior products that are not made to last.  I have to wonder if we all quit spending what would be the true economic impact?