WANNA BUY A DUCK?

Everyone knows (and hates) my favorite joke. Do you know how to sell a duck to a deaf man? The answer of course is to yell "DO YOU WANNA BUY A DUCK?" as loud as you can, preferably while seated in a nice quiet restaurant having dinner with your spouse's employer discussing his or her new promotion.

Well, we may have need to actually use that phrase a bunch. When we came home from Colorado, we were surprised to find a new friend in the garage. She likes to sit on top of gardening machinery surveying the territory.

I got her to dance a little jig on the trampoline for me. It was really a lot of fun to watch, but -

She does have a nasty habit of squawking at 5:55 AM just outside our window. We have no idea where she came from. She hopped the fence to visit the other Phillips family, but came right back when the big dog came out. She is visiting next door again. Hopefully she makes a couple of new friends.

Taking a walk on the wild side

We are back from an amazing walk on the wild side - the wildflower side of the Continental Divide. Janene got this super deal for us to stay at the Sheraton Hotel in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We left Friday after work and drove as far as Vernal, where we slept out in the desert and then continued to Dinosaur National Monument for a short hike to see dinosaur bones in the Morrison, and then it was off to Steamboat. Our first day there, we went on a hike to a place called Fish Creek Falls and then continued another 2-1/2 miles to an upper falls. It rained on us, but it was a gorgeous canyon ( not meant to be a pun).

We took off to Rabbit Ears Pass where we found these wildflowers alongside the road. As we did this small loop drive we also got to see an old coal mining town, Oak Creek, and even spent about an hour with one of the locals, a man whose family emigrated from Croatia. He was trying hard to preserve the history of the town and it's immigrant families. He seemed drawn to the work and didn't know why.

On our last full day in Steamboat, we took another hike crossing the Continental Divide that traversed a lot of high meadows in the shadow of Rabbit Ears Peak. The rule seemed to be "primary colors only". We thought the flowers on the road were incredible, but the meadows were full as far as the eye could see of huge patches of wildflowers. We got to see healthy lupine, indian paintbrush, columbine, sweet pea, asters, and many, many more. We hiked to two different lakes one of which was our grandson's favorite - Elmo Lake. We could have walked for a week with a new burst of color over every ridge.

A Day at the Beach

Redondo Beach - Los Angeles County, California
Laura could not stay out of the water, the whole day we were at the beach. She played in the water jumping through the oncoming waves, screaming every time one came onshore.

She even kept playing when the lady who was next to her got swept out by the current and had to be rescued, Baywatch style. I had suggested that we play right in front of the lifeguard, thinking it was safer there. Turns out the lifeguard station was placed there because of the riptide. So much for a landlubber's thinking about oceanic things.

Michael is planning on being a talking head on CNN. He decided to practice at the beach. He didn't seem the least bit worried that he would not be able to get out of the hole he dug for himself. He looks like what I imagine Stephen must have looked when he was that age.

Sam was not to be outdone when it came to playing in the sand. Brooke showed him how to find horseshoe crabs and he caught a whole bucket of them. Overall, it was a lot cooler at the beach than it had been at Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm - plus we didn't have to wait in any lines for this. Believe it or not, Stephen, Laura and I waited about 2-1/2 hours for a 20 second ride at Knott"s called the Perilous Plunge. The Ghostrider was quite the trip as well, Stephen and Laura even getting to ride it twice. Other than the long, long ride in a car with a couple of kids, it was a fun trip for all of us.

A Letter from Sarah Thompson

Today we got a letter from our old friend Sarah Thompson. She used to live several doors down from us, and she was close to a few of our kids including Dave. Here is what she wrote. I wanted to share it with the whole family.

Dear Robin and Janene,
The month of July will never pass without me remembering Dave. I will never forget him or the childhood memories I have of him. July is the perfect birthday month for Dave... a month to celebrate, watch fireworks, catch bugs, dig in the mud, run through the sprinklers, ride bikes and mostly to enjoy life... that's how I will always remember Dave. Every memory that I have of Dave involves fun and adventure. I also remember laughing a lot.

I have 3 little kids now and I always find myself relating childhood memories to them. They love to listen to stories about my childhood, especially when the memory involves an adventure with Dave. They love to hear about how Dave dared me to eat a mud pie and when I wouldn't do it, he showed me how it was done. They love the memory of the swimming pool full of tadpoles that Dave caught and then he was nice enough to send me home with a Dixie cup full of them! My favorite is the morning that Heather and I were walking to school down the "truck road" and here came Dave... running as fast as he could ( I remember he had a piece of toast in one hand and his backpack on his back) he stumbled over a rock and somersaulted down the dirt road, he never missed a beat landing right on his feet... he just kept running. When he passed Heather and I he said "I'll race you". I remember Heather and I laughing and saying we would see him at school. The best thing about Dave was the never-ending grin on his face. When I picture Dave I always see that smile. My childhood is filled with memories of Dave. I will never forget him.

Love,

Sarah Thompson Pattison

When I read this to Janene,(well OK, when I tried to read it to Janene) there was a little catch in her voice as she said " What a treasure!" It is a treasure to have these memories recorded from so many people. Sarah's letter reminded us of how many people have not written anything about Dave. Every one that we have is a priceless jewel. Each one reminds us of fun times, and some, like this one, tell of a memory that we never had.

The Hum is Gone - The Light is back!

Walk into our kitchen and what do you hear? The answer to that question used to be that you thought Janene had left the wheat grinder running - with pea gravel inside. The sound was the hum of the ballasts in the old fluorescent lights going on the fritz. It used to be that if I was upstairs in the other part of the house taking a shower, I could tell when Janene turned on the lights in the kitchen. Thanks to our good friend Larry Gerber, now you hear crickets outside on the patio, but nothing in the kitchen.

Larry replaced twelve 40W light fixtures (480 watts total) with six 28W bulbs (168 watts total). We are now using about one third of the energy we used before the repair and we have have more light (maybe 1-1/2 times as much light). Not to mention much less heat - and noise. This is going to take some getting used to. Larry's company sells these kinds of drop-in replacement lights and I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is taking so long to catch on. People should be calling him all day long and ordering this stuff, but they haven't been. I am sure sold, so consider this a shameless plug for Larry's company.