Dog photos

Fresh Flowers

Rose











Iris








Pansies








Pansie salad

Flora's on the couches

Lois calls the dog 'Flora'. I like the name 'Co Co'. From these pictures i think she should be called 'Coucha'.







Any suggestions on an easy way to keep the dog off of the furniture?








Christoffer came down and did some wiring at the cabin. I think Labs are bred to lay on couches.

Painting

Lois Ann is taping the windows in the entry for painting.








Co Co and i are fixing the floor.








I am watching an important World Cup Soccer game and supervising Lois at the same time.







She did an OK job! We only have one entrance to the house so it took 4 days to do 2 coats of floor paint.

Post-Charismatic

Found a great website about the history of the charismatic movement and about much of the churches' history for the last century. There are 40 webpages. The first 20 give the history and the second 20 show a good 'praxis' (practice). If you click on the above title you will go to it. I have seen a lot of what he describes.

"Broadly speaking, there are four major areas that come up repeatedly as reasons for post-charismatics pulling away from their Pentecostal, Charismatic, or Third Wave roots. The four areas are:

1. Abuses and elitism in prophetic ministry, coupled with a "carrot and stick" approach to holiness that many find legalistic, manipulative, and repressive

2. The excesses of Word Faith teachings (health and wealth, prosperity doctrine) which clash with the emerging generations' concern for a biblical approach to justice and ministry with the poor

3. Authoritarianism and hierarchical leadership structures that exist more to control people than to equip the saints for works of service

4. An approach to spiritual formation (discipleship) that depends on crisis events -- whether at "the altar" in a church service, or in a large conference setting -- but either neglects or deliberately belittles other means of spiritual growth

Post-Charismatic -- this phrase should not to be confused with being NON-charismatic, and certainly not as being ANTI-charismatic. The process of separating what is truly of the Holy Spirit and what is needless -- and often harmful -- baggage is the whole idea behind developing a post-charismatic understanding of how a supernatural God works supernaturally amongst and through the mystical gathering called the Body. In other words, post-charismatic, but not post-Spirit."

There are also many great photos, some by Wendy McAlpine, the authors wife.

Good Stock Book and Blog

Rule #1 by Phil Town is one of the better books i've read about picking and buying stocks. He uses fundamental analysis and teaches you how to find ROIC, Equity, Sales, EPS, and Free Cash on the internet. These should all be growing 10% or more per year. He talks about figuring out the 'sticker price' and paying only 1/2 that price when you buy a stock. Chapter 13 shows a summary of all these steps. There is also a very good chapter on studying charts using MACD, Stochastics, and Moving Averages for buy and sell signals. Maybe it is possible to retire with less money if you could get a 15% return per year. His blog has lots of links, and his
webpage has some good web broadcasts.

PS If anyone has some good #1 stocks to check out let me know.

Planting potatoes

Our new puppy is not very helpful in the garden. She broke my string line in two before i was able to use it to get the potatoes straight.















She loves to sit in this chair to watch what is going on in the yard, or to sleep.

Rhubarb ready to eat

These photos were taken at 9:28pm. In less than a month from the time we shoveled off the snow, the rhubarb is ready to eat. It will grow to about 2-3 feet in another month. This year we will have to freeze more because we ran out in the middle of winter. Made too many rhubarb cakes at work. Here is a great Rhubarb Sauce for pancakes:











1 or 2 cups of rhubarb
1/2 cup strawberries
1/2 cup raspberries
1/2 cup blueberries
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Boil it all together and mash it
Add about 1/2 cup of brown sugar
Tastes great on crepes, waffles, or pancakes.

Spruce hen and rooster

There was a Spruce Hen rooster (i guess he's called a rooster) in the yard. In the top photo you can see the hen on the end of the log along with the rooster. I have seen lots of hens and not too many roosters over the years. He waves his tail around, moves it sideways, and flicks it open and closed like a fancy Japanese fan.

Chocolate Lab

Here is our cute new puppy. We took lots of photos to remember how small she once was. If you think of a good name let us know.

More Rhubarb

Here is the rhubarb about 11 days later. Notice there is snow still around the edge of the plant. The baby leaf is opening nicely.

Lois' sister Donna

We had some fine pictures of Lois and her sister Donna in the 2002 rolls of film. Also a good family photo. The one sad thing about living in Alaska is that it is so hard to visit relatives in the lower 48.

Lois Ann, Aunt Margaret, and Tim

Been spring cleaning recently and discovered 5 rolls of antique film from 2002. We sure like the convenience of digital photography.

Rhubarb growing under the snow

I shoveled the snow off the rhubarb plants so they would grow quicker, and this is what was there.

Easter pictures for Holly

Holly, here are some photos of Abigail and Grace for you. Perhaps this can be a little happy birthday greeting for you. By the way, is your birthday tomorrow (AU time) or the next day (AK time)?

Easter Email

Dear Family and Friends,
We hope you are all doing fine this Easter. We just arrived home from a good church service and are going to the Tauriainens for dinner later this afternoon. It is kind of cool out today, even with the sun shining it is only in the high 20's. Much of the snow has melted with only about 2 feet left to become liquid.
The first weekend of April we were in Kirkland, Washington visiting Heidi and John. They were doing fine and the weather was very nice. They called it SPRING! John and i played several golf games while Lois Ann and Heidi shopped. We could only afford 9 holes with the ladies shopping the same time we were golfing. On the 3rd and 4th of April we took a ferry ride over to Victoria. There are some photos on the blogs of Butchart Gardens which were beautiful.
On our arrival back in Alaska it looked like spring had arrived here although it was a little cooler. Just as i was thinking our second spring was here it snowed 2 more inches over everything that had melted. The second spring will come soon....
March was a very busy month. They had the Arctic Winter Games here on the peninsula. Young folks from many of the northern countries come to compete in many games like hockey, basketball, soccer, volleyball, badminton... and also lots of native games as well. Lois Ann and a lot of the secretaries and teachers volunteered with helping out. They have been having these events every couple of years for about 20 years now.
Hockey season ends in March so the Bantam hockey team i help coach went to Fairbanks for the final tournament. They finished in second place out of nine teams. So that was a good ending to a very successful year. In three other tournaments this year we had two firsts and one other second place finish. Some of the boys had not skated on a team before.
Holly is doing fine in Perth, Australia. She is applying for a visa to stay longer. Amy Stynsberg is also over there and Karen Rose Tauriainen is going over soon. That will be nice for her.
Christoffer is up in Anchorage electrifying the docks for now. He has been praying that the snow keeps coming so he can keep snow machining on the weekends.
We hope you all have a nice SPRING!!!
God Bless You,
Mark and Lois Ann

Taxing Times

This is not my favorite activity of the year. In fact it is the least favorite thing to do and therefore it gets put off until the last minute. I did get taxes sent in on the 15th even though we had until the 17th this year.

A few years back there was a contest somewhere online for the messiest computer office space. At tax time i could come close to winning the prize. If anyone knows the web address of the messiest home office space let me know.

Some family portraits

This is a great picture of Heidi, John, and Johns Dad Chuck.
This was taken just before we left for the airplane. The camera was sitting on a glass table.
Can you see Lois Ann, Heidi, and John in this photo? This is not Alaska unfortunately, but Victoria, BC.
Almost looks like Christmas.

The Coffee Photos

It was amusing to see about 10 'coffee cup photos' of John and Heidi when we went to Butchart Gardens. It was cool outside as you can tell by the jackets and the coffee helped to add some warmth.