Just some random photos to share.  This first one is of our cat, Tripper. 

Actually, I’m stretching the truth to say that Tripper is our cat.  I think Tripper rotates living with several families in our general neighborhood.  He’ll stay here for a week or two and then disappear for weeks or months.  Then he’ll show up and stay here another few weeks.  We feed him whenever he shows up.  Not long ago, RT saw him at a house about a 1/4 mile down the road from us. 

Tripper got his name from his habit of walking right in front of us.  I’ve come close to falling as a result of his tripping me up several times.  He does it to everybody.  This photo is of Tripper on the rafters of the porch - his favorite place now because it is safely out of Jake’s reach.

The next two photos are ceiling photos.  I love the ceilings in several rooms in our new house.  Two of the upstairs bedrooms have modified cathedral ceilings.  Then the master bedroom and the master bath both have double octogonal tray ceilings.  Here’s the framing for them:

This is in the master bedroom.

This is the ceiling in the master bath.

And I’m including this next photo because it shows our picnic table which is in the side/back yard of our house and the photo shows the snow on the ground and the house - and on the picnic table.  That picnic table is very special to us.

Today was another snow day.  This time there was some significant snow, and the roads were hazardous later into the morning than yesterday.  Wow!  Two snow days in a row.  It has been very nice!

This first picture was taken from the front porch.  This is when snow is prettiest, I think.  Not a heavy snow - just enough to blanket the leaves and the ground - looking  soft and white. 

One of the weather guys on TV this morning was out in the snow with a TWELVE-FOOT ruler measuring the snow.  His conclusion: we got ONE INCH of snow during the night.  Glad he had that 12-footer - just in case.  The funny thing is that he was so serious about measuring the snow.  Don’t you think you could just look at it and guess that it’s about an inch deep?

Another view from the front porch - looking out across the road to the farm on the other side.  Snow on the branches of the trees, and RT’s solitary set of tire tracks going down the driveway.  I don’t plan on leaving the house today.  Here it is, almost noon, and I still have on my jammies.  I built a fire in the fireplace, and it is too cozy inside to venture out.  I started dinner in the crock-pot a couple hours ago, and the house smells wonderful.

This view shows the pond in the front yard close to the road.  I liked the contrast of the dark tree trunks against the white snow.  Even though it’s a color photograph, it looks black and white.

And the best thing: Today is Friday.  I still have two more days before I have to go to work again.  YEA!

I visited my mother earlier this week, and I took photos of items she wanted catalogued. She said I should also take pictures of the photo displays of the seven of us siblings because, she told me, “After I’m gone, no one else will have photos of all seven of you grouped together on one wall.” I took the photos:

This is a display on the family room wall of the seven siblings as babies. From left to right: top row is Janice and Joan (Daddy’s Roses),middle row is Terry (Alone on a Limb), Debi, and me - the one standing. The bottom row is Beth (Blue Star Chronicles) and David.

This display of the seven sibs as children is in the foyer. Youngest (top left) to oldest (bottom right). The top row is David and Beth (Blue Star Chronicles). Middle row is Debi, me (in the middle in my “Thinker” pose) and Terry (Alone on a Limb). And the bottom row has Joan (Daddy’s Roses) and Janice.

This is the wall in the hall - lots of pictures of everyone including sibs, in-laws, grandkids, and great-grandkids.

I’m glad I took these photos. They bring back lots of happy memories. My mother has had the first two groups of pictures in every home I can remember.

I saw this photo of my mother and me - taken around 1952. (I look about 2 or 3 years old, don’t I?) I thought it was a sweet picture of both of us, and I wanted to post it here for posterity. Old photographs so often get put away and are seldom enjoyed.

It’s interesting looking at old photographs like this. I look at the little girl’s eyes (mine!) and try to see if there is anything in them that looks like me now. I don’t know. It’s me, and yet she seems totally removed from me. Strange, isn’t it? I also look at the picture to see if there is any resemblance to my grandgirls at that age. I can see some similiarities, but nothing that I could claim looks just like Sweet Stuff or Sunshine now.

And my mother looks wonderful, doesn’t she, to be the mother of five young children (at that time)?

Here is a photo of RT’s and my wedding at McHugh Park outside of Anchorage on September 5th. Don’t you love my wedding gown? I TOLD you it was very casual. However, it was beautiful and meaningful, too. There was a waterfall behind us -the ocean (actually a bay) in front of us - and the ceremony was incredible.

While I was downstairs at the hotel in Anchorage writing the previous post, RT was upstairs in the room on the phone. When he puts his mind to it, the man can get things done! And that’s what he did. Within a couple hours, we had a minister, a location for the wedding, a professional photographer, and new wedding clothes - since by that time the only clean clothes left were our absolutely least favorites.

I firmly believe that God works things out in His own time. Neither RT nor I felt “right” about how things worked out at Camp Denali. They said they could still do the ceremony, but it sounded like it was questionable as far as being legal. Someone was going to make it look like the copy of the marriage license was received prior to the wedding - or something like that. Who wants a wedding of questionable legality?

So we didn’t get married there. And it really wasn’t a big deal because neither of us felt that it was the thing to do.

RT found a minister in Anchorage who was happy to perform the ceremony. NOT a Methodist minister because the one he talked with didn’t even ask any questions, just very stiffly said NO Methodist minister would perform a wedding without a minimum of three counseling sessions. He wasn’t interested in any details of our story. I’m glad he was so obnoxious, though, because otherwise things wouldn’t have happened the way they did.

The minister - Michael Mitchell - was perfect! He’s a retired minister - Methodist turned Catholic. He basically used the Methodist wedding ceremony, but with his own “sermon” added to it - which was absolutely wonderful! Even though he met us less than an hour before the wedding, he personalized the service and made it incredibly meaningful. RT and I had also written out things we wanted to say to each other, and the service ended with that. I, of course, cried through my vows. I tend to get quite emotional at times. It was good crying, though.

RT and I got married yesterday afternoon at McHugh Park in Anchorage - outside with Michael and his wife, Nell, and our photographer, Govin, as witnesses. Govin is another good story. We met him at Camp Denali. He’s a retired physician and currently a professional photographer. He was a part of the photography workshop with us, and we left Camp Denali, he happened to stay at the same hotel in Anchorage. I saw him in the business office when I was writing the previous post - so we knew he was there and that he didn’t have any pressing plans for the rest of the day. We asked him if he would take pictures at the wedding, and he was delighted.

I’ll write more details later. However, I HAVE to say that the wedding and the whole day was just perfect.

We’ll have most of the day to sightsee around Anchorage. The day is unplanned. We want to do a little shopping. We have a friend who wants some salmon jerky made by the Algonquin. I figure we’ll look around for that whenever we’re in a store during the whole trip.

Tonight (Tuesday) we’ll head back to the airport for our flight to Chicago. It’s an overnight flight - getting us to Chicago on Wednesday morning. From there we’ll take a flight back to Nashville.

Tomorrow (Thursday), it’s back to the real world of work and responsibilities.

We’ll spend all day Sunday at Camp Denali and then leave for that 90 mile trip back to the entrance of Denali Park on Monday morning. I hope we get to fly, but if the weather’s bad, we’ll take the bus again. We’ll get in at least a couple hikes on Sunday, and we might even do some bike riding. Actually, I can almost guarantee we’ll go bike riding. The scenery is spectacular.

Once we get back to the entrance of Denali Park on Monday, we’ll get our rental car and head back to Anchorage. It will be our last night in Alaska. Sigh!

Somewhere and sometime today RT and I will get married! As I write this, I don’t know the details yet. It’ll be an informal ceremony, but it’ll be nice. The location (Denali) is special to both RT and me, and it will make for a wonderful wedding. We’ll be staying in a cabin like this at Camp Denali.

We’ll honeymoon with the photography group on a hike planned for today. I hope to get some great shots of a moose, Dall sheep, grizzly bear, beaver - whatever wildlife we happen to see. I also want to get some shots of fall in Alaska. The colors of the landscape is supposed to be beautiful. We’ll most like go on a hike of our own, too.

We’ll be up early this morning to make the four hour drive to the entrance to Denali. Once there we will take a short plane ride to take us the 90 miles to Kantishna. If it’s too stormy or foggy for the plane ride, we will ride a bus the 90 miles which will take about 6 - 8 hours.

We took the bus ride last year, and it was phenomenal even though it was a LONG trip. We saw several grizzlies with cubs (similar to the photo above except the grizzlies we saw weren’t on the road).

Once we get to Camp Denali from Kantishna we’ll start scouting around to determine exactly where we want to have our wedding the next day. Maybe Nugget Pond:

Maybe Wonder Lake:

Maybe North Face Lodge:

We’re staying at Camp Denali with a photography group led by a reknowned nature photographer, and most likely the group will get together tonight to see what all is planned for the next couple days.