My Chaco plug

Let me tell you how much I love my Chaco sandals. But last summer on my Grand Canyon trip the soles separated from the foot beds and by the end of the trip the duct tape/superglue/gorilla glue patch job had made them pretty ratty looking. So I sent them into Chaco still covered in glue and sand asking if they could reattach the soles, and while they were at it if they could put a different sole on with better traction. And they did, plus replace all the webbing because I had gotten glue all over them. Basically a new pair of sandals minus the splotches of glue embedded with Grand Canyon sand and grit (but that's a war-wound souvenir). Thanks Chaco.

Avery's butterfly

Last summer, I think it was about middle of August, the girls found a caterpillar in the garden and Avery, loving all things crawly, set up a caterpillar jar to keep it in. After about a week it turned into a chrysalis and we waited and waited for the butterfly to come out. By the end of November we thought it had died and so we emptied the jar and put the chrysalis up on a shelf and kind of forgot about it. Then last night as I was getting ready to go to bed, this big swallow-tail butterfly sails by my head. This morning I woke up Avery and showed it to her, and half asleep she asked where did it come from, did I leave me window open or my door open? I then told her it was her caterpillar from last year and her eyes got wide open and she took a deep breath and was so excited. Now we just need to find some flowers to keep it going until spring.

Sledding

The other week we went sledding up on the hill

behind out house.

One of our better wipe-outs

Fishing on Upper Klamath Lake

Amy, Avery and I went fishing out on the lake... well I paddled the canoe and Amy and Avery fished.

Amy caught this 22" redband

Here it is, finally got it to the surface

Avery netted it

Good day fishing

and then we let it go