The Texas boys in Oz

I've started going back through some of the pictures I have handy and thought it would be nice to share these photos of Shawndra's and Paul's sons. The are posing with members of the Wizard of Oz cast during a not-to-recent church festival. Shawndra and Paul live in Fort Worth, Texas.

Nick, age 9, is in the left picture (he's the one not in a costume}. Austin, age 7) is in the middle picture, and not particularly pleased about it. The right picture is Ryan (age 4) with the Scarecrow. Perhaps he'd rather be in Kansas. [Click a picture to view larger image]
 

Cool Advent tree
Yours Free!

Tandy has created an advent Christmas tree calendar for her daughter Courtney and is offered it to you for free. You can view and print the page-sized tree by clicking below.

Click on the picture view the larger image. The picture file size is 58K.

After you open the image, you can print it directly by clicking on your browser's printer button. (Click you're browser's back button to return to this page.)

You can also save the image on your computer's hard disk by right-clicking on it and choosing the Save option. Then you can open the image in a graphics program to print.

The object is to print the tree on heavy paper, let your child color it, and then glue small wrapped candies to each of the ornaments to be removed each day leading up to Christmas.

Thanks Tandy.

Across the river and through the woods

A couple of years ago, Douglas and Jessica Rupp (Jessica is our oldest daughter) decided against the city life and moved to the country... the real country.

The place they bought is somewhere in a mountainous region of the Pacific Northwest.

The Rupp dog, G'narl, helps Jessica fill in a trench for their TV satellite cable. [Click the picture for a larger view.]

For more pictures of the Rupp
homestead, click here.

The trip to their house requires that you drive into the forest, leave your car behind, and then cross a large river (via a private cable car). You have to make arrangements beforehand so that they can bring the car across to meet you.

Their home is worth the effort, however. Nestled in the lowlands next to the river, with a towering cliff behind them, they have found a very cozy and quiet neighborhood (one without neighbors). There is certainly no fear of salesmen or even tax assessors. They generate their own electricity and pipe down wonderfully cold, gourmet-tasting, mountain creek water. Their heat (and hot water) is from a large wood stove in the living room.

Because Doug's computers require more power than is available, they are in the process of upgrading their hydro-electric system and they have installed new pipes to direct their mountain stream to a new, more efficient hydro plant. Once everything is hooked up, they will have tremendous water pressure to drive the blades and churn out the power they need. The new system will also allow them to bypass the huge bank of old telephone batteries that they are currently using for electric storage.

The electric system is but one of the many projects that Doug and Jessica have been, and still are, tackling. Their home was without telephones because the phone lines ended several miles from their house. Doug, with some help from brother-in-law Eric Imhoff, built a "phone bunker" to house transmitting equipment that connects the end of the phone lines to an antenna they mounted to a tree 90-feet off the ground.

The phone signals are beamed across the valley and river to a second antenna, and from there to the 45 foot (from the ground) antenna on the top of their house. Unfortunately there is still a bug or two to work out as the line goes dead in wet weather. Doug thinks he knows why, wet trees seem to like their signal frequencies and sort of gobble them up before they can reach home. He's hoping topping an intervening tree will do the trick.

Eric sails the Atlantic

It was late August, and Eric Imhoff, husband of Tandy, was as fidgety as a hedgehog in an ant pile. He was packed and ready for the adventure of a lifetime—to sail the Atlantic Ocean in a tall ship, and he couldn't wait to get started.

Eric, a sea, fishing, and boat buff, had signed up for Sea Trek, a voyage to honor the efforts of 85,000 early European Mormons who traveled halfway around the world to help establish The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Utah.

This is the Statsraad Lehmkuhl, the ship Eric chose to sail on, and Norway's largest and oldest square-rigged sailing ship.

[Click on the picture to view  a larger image]

(Eric isn't a member of the Church, so it was great fun to rib him about being crammed into a sailing ship for more than a month with hundreds of fanatical Mormons.)

Sea Trek 2001 began on August 7, 2001 in Esbjerg, Denmark and hosted maritime celebrations in Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Oslo, Hamburg, Greenock, Liverpool, Hull, Portsmouth, Las Palmas, and New York City. To Eric's delight, eight of the world's most magnificent tall ships participated in the events.

To start his trip, Eric packed everything he could in a small duffel bag (he was only allowed 50 pounds of luggage on the flight to England. That's fifty pounds of clothes, grooming gear, cameras, rain gear, and other necessities that were to last for more than 35 days—there were no shopping malls onboard.

After the flight to Portsmouth, the intrepid sailor met and spent a day with his brother-in-law, Douglas Rupp, husband of Jessica. Doug had been in France on a business trip and came to England to see Eric off. He joined the "cruise" in Portsmouth, England on August 28, aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl, a three-master steel barque. The first stop was the Canary Islands, then he sailed to Bermuda, and then to New York, arriving October 3rd.

Once aboard, Eric soon found out that every participant (called a "trainee" once aboard) was given the opportunity to scrub the decks, polish the brass, climb the rigging, hoist the sails, splice the ropes, and every other imaginable chore. The trainee's were divided into three watches with specific responsibilities each day.

The Mormon trainees were quite a puzzle to the ship's regular crew, who were not used to family nights, prayers with every event and before every meal, parties (at least not the kind the new trainees planned), no coffee, and lots of games that looked pretty silly to hardened sailors. However, before the trip was over, crew and trainees were dancing and playing together. At trip's end, they went their separate ways with kind words for all and more than a few tears of parting.

On arrival at the Canary Islands, the ship's captain announced that the remainder of the trip was cancelled and everyone was to disembark. However, due to the generosity of some Sea Trek supporters, the necessary funds were found to complete the voyage.

It was, of course, during the trip that the September 11th disaster struck New York. There was very little communication with the rest of the world, so the crew and trainees had to wait until they arrived in New York to learn anything more than the the bare essentials of the attack.

Eric, however, arrived safe and sound, full of sea chanties, new knots to tie, and canvas to sew into hammocks, duffel bags, and the like. He made quite a hit with the Norwegian crew and was invited to sail with them anytime, and was specifically invited to join them as a crew member next summer. Now he is home, busy building a cedar strip canoe. He hopes to someday make a living building boats and if his first attempt is an indication he might do very well indeed.