And the Volcanic Pops

Mt. Redoubt has finally popped it's top. There has been a total of 7 burps of the volcano since late Sunday evening. The most recent 2 just happened this morning. They are saying this can happen for months. Air traffic is going to be hit and miss. Yesterday they had some traffic, today all flights from Anchorage were canceled because ashfall this morning was blowing toward Anchorage. Here's a couple of pictures of the ash clouds from the eruptions today.
Both of these pictures are courtesy of the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Mt. Redoubt is about 400 miles southeast of Bethel. The closest reports of ashfall have been about 200 miles upriver almost directly east of us in a little village called Crooked Creek.

Spring?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Well, I think today is suppose to be the first day of Spring, but that sneaky Mother Nature has different plans for us here on the YK Delta. Does this look like spring to you?????
Yes, that says -10. I'll try to get a picture later today and update this post with a picture of just how "springy" it is not here in Bethel!

Stampin for Skyler

Last Sunday we had a Chili Cook-off and Silent Auction fundraiser for Skyler Twitchell. He is the son of co-workers of Eric and mine that was shot over Christmas. He's doing remarkably well. He's currently in Seattle for physical therapy and they are trying to get him to Denver to a center that specializes in spinal injury therapy. They need help financing the therapy, the home remodels and for the wheelchair.

I was impressed with all of the people that donated their time, chili, desserts and silent auction items. I decided that I would put together a little box of Thank You cards. Winning bid was $23 and the lady that bought them said she was willing to go alot higher if she needed to.

What do you all think? What would you have paid for something like this? It's all Stampin' Up stuff except for the brad looking things.

Overall it was a good day. Last I had heard was that there was about $8,000 raised. This will help greatly. The wheelchair itself is around $27,000.

On a side note, I made my first official sale as a Stampin' Up demonstrator on Wednesday. Granted it was for my Stamping Group, but still I was a sale!!!!!!

1 Afghan Down, 2 to Go

So I think I have finished the afghan for the Ducks Unlimited banquet. I haven't backed it yet, but I don't know if I'm going to. It's going to be really hard to find material to match the burgundy that I used. I'm excited about how it turned out.
Next I'll start working on the moose in the plane afghan. The third one will have to be a suprise until it gets mailed to my newest little nephew when he's born. Since my sister reads this blog, I can't let her see it this way. Also, she really hasn't given my any good ideas on what she's doing in the little guys room. I may just do something I think is cute and suprise her.

I've Started a Business

So, anyone out there that reads this thing interested in Stampin' Up?????? I recently have decided to become a demonstrator for the company.

Need some new stamps - I can order them.
Need some cardstock or Designer Paper - can do that too.

Want to become a Demonstrator yourself - I can sign you up for that too!

I haven't been able to do any workshops yet, because I'm still waiting for my starter kit to show up in the mail. Should be here early next week. I'm so excited. Hopefully this will be a nice little side business for me. Any of the Bethelites that are reading this, if you would like to book a show please give me a shout and I would be more than happy to set something up.

Now that I'm a demonstrator, I can offer you a sneak peek and earlier ordering of a few new stamp sets from the new Occasions Mini catalog that will be available starting April 1. If you are interested in ordering any of these stamps let me know and I would be glad to order them for you.

Another Muskox Bites the Dust!

The freezer is once again full with muskox. Eric went out to Nunivak Island last weekend for the big hunt. He got out on Saturday morning after a snow storm came through (we got a few good inches!). His flight was the only one of the day out there (the other companies decided to cancel their flights). He had a day of hunting on Sunday and got halfway back to the village of Mekoryuk where he was staying when another system hit. Luckily he was only about 15 miles away and had GPS. He was able to get out of the village on the only flight late Monday afternoon that came from the village. We've had really strange weather patterns come through here the last couple of weeks.

For those of you questioning the size of the muskox, here is a picture of Eric starting to cut up one of the front quarters. It's the top of the shoulder bone to the elbow joint. We still have 1 quarter left to cut up.Eric is out today possible getting us a caribou. He wanted to get all of his snares from upriver pulled out this weekend and if they ran into some caribou they were going to try to get one.