Thanks "Babe" and "Rosa" you had a good life and you are providing us with lots of great meat for the winter. Brenda and Harold bought "Babe" and came and helped us butcher the pigs. Reid was a little overwhelmed but is okay with it all now. These were great pigs and the kids enjoyed having them around this summer. They managed to escape twice but were so tame we had no trouble getting them back in the pen. Rosa weighed 275 pounds and we were able to get 150 pounds of usable meat off the bone and in the freezer. We thought they were expensive pigs but it came out to be only $2.16/pound. The pork loin is huge and will provide us with 8 large meals alone! A lot of work but really important for us to show the kids about life and death and where their food comes from.

OOps...this copied twice....maybe becuase that's how much of a mess it was! One friday night about a week ago we had a crazy windstorm and because the ground wasn't frozen the trees took a hit. We lost 11 trees that night. the roots were actually lifting up and causing the ground to move. We lost the roof of our outhouse and one tree fell on the snowmachines...we still haven't uncovered them but we think it just crushed the windshield. Some of the trees Lance ended up cutting down during the storm so he could better control where they landed. One had hit the shop but amazingly didn't do any damage. It took a couple days to limb the trees and drag them to the wood pile but thanks to the bobcat it was much easier than it used to be.......now the track on the bobcat is broken and we are waiting for a replacement that will be here in two weeks. Lance just rented a backhoe so he could keep hauling gravel. It is amazing that it is Oct. 6th and the ground isn't frozen and we don't have any snow.

Lance had been wanting to take us to a cabin that Ray has on a lake about 30 mins flight time south of Cantwell to go bear hunting and enjoy the nice fall weather we had been having. Of course the night we finally got a chance to go....the fog rolled in heavy about an hour after we landed. If we had been an hour later we wouldn't have been able to get in there so we spent a lot of the two days in the the thick fog but it did lift and we had a great opportunity to watch Lance through the binoculars stalk a few black bears with no luck! You can see in the photo above how thick the fog got..we couldn't see much! UNO has become one of our favorite camping games! the kids are both very good at playing.....Lance made Jiffy pop for a snack....THanks to papa Ray for sharing his awesome, cozy cabin! It beat having to crawl into a tent in the cold, damp weather!

Reid helping Lance tie down the airplane . The cozy cabin on the lake and the kids and I looking for critters....we saw 10 black bears during our two days there at the cabin....

Our little hunting man. He makes his dad proud! This was a nice fall hike we did south of Cantwell. It's a spot we try to go to every year to hunt grouse but Piper wasn't much of a bird dog this year and the only bird we saw she flushed too far ahead of us. It was a nice hike though! Amelia was climbing a tree.....

I really can't think of another explanation for this beauty than our Heavenly Creator......who else would you give credit to? You can't really tell because of the glare in the photo of Reid and Lance having lunch on the tundra in Denali National Park...but we landed on a bench of tundra and in the background is Denali...the great mountain of Alaska.....Reid has no idea how lucky he is to be here at this spot....

Just a few photos of a recent flight where Lance took Reid and I around Denali on a wonderful flight-see. We have had spectacular Fall weather this year. I still can't believe this is our "back yard"...how lucky we are....The glaciers and mountains are stunning in the high country that we hardly ever get to see...

one of the last things pulled out of the garden this fall was a huge head of cauliflower! despite all the rain the garden did well this summer and I learn something new every year!