A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE

Don't you always wonder why the government

never has to "cut back" like the rest of us?

WHO HERE LIKES SWEET & SOUR CHICKEN?

This was SO good! Tastes just like what you get in

the Chinese restaurant except there is no MSG

unless you add it and it costs very little to make

with ingredients you probably already have in

the door of your fridge.

We like sweet and sour sauce, so next time 

I make this I will double the sauce recipe to

serve some sauce on the side.

I stir fried chopped cabbage, carrots,

cauliflower and broccoli lightly, sprinkled

a bit of soy sauce and some garlic with it

and served it on the side. We ate this with

white rice but fried rice would be very

good too. Delicious!

Sweet and Sour Chicken

-Makes 4 servings -

Chicken Ingredients

3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup vegetable oil

Directions

Cut boneless chicken breasts into chunks. Season with salt and pepper.

Dip chicken in cornstarch and then in egg. Fry in a little oil until brown 

but not cooked through. Place in a single layer in a baking dish. Mix 

sauce ingredients (below) together and pour over chicken.

Sauce Ingredients

¾ cup sugar

4 tablespoons ketchup

½ cup vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon garlic salt

Directions

Bake for one hour at 325 degrees. Turn chicken every 15 minutes. If 

you like extra sauce, make another batch of sauce and bring it to a 

boil on the stove top. Stir constantly and let cook over medium heat 

until thickened and reduced - about 6-8 minutes.

I AM STILL HOME

The plan has been changed a bit from my last post

about my Mom. The surgery has been delayed and

my sister and niece are traveling to be with Mom

for a couple of weeks. After that I will most likely

be going down for a couple of weeks to help out.

It will be interesting to go from highs in the 60's

to upper 90's. WA state is having record heat and

very little rain this summer.

We went out in the boat after church yesterday.

We were planning on taking a hike since it turned

out to be such a nice day, but after talking to our

pastor we decided to take he and his wife and

their grand daughter that is visiting from CA

out on the water. The grand daughter leaves

this Tuesday & they really wanted her to have

done some fishing before she went home.

We went out approx 12 miles to an amazing

island called St. Lazaria. You can read more

about it here

It was incredible out here--reminded me of pictures I

have seen of the Galapagos Islands, all primitive and

ancient looking. This island is a bird sanctuary and 

home to thousands of sea birds. The photo above

shows the waves exploding out of one of the caverns.

It was spraying so hard it looked like a geyser!

There were people in a raft that were from a

large boat anchored nearby. They are looking

up at hundreds of sea birds nesting in the rocks.

It was really loud with all the bird noises and

the water to the left was pouring in from

the cave. The swells here were getting pretty

big so we went back around to the other

protected side of the island.

The volcanic rocks are layered like shale and the grass

and moss are hanging down to the water. It reminds of

the island from the book Where the Wild Things Are. It

didn't help that fog was creeping in around everything...

Another awesome cave...

One of these times we will see if we can go ashore. I know

it is a protected island, but people are allowed to walk

around carefully and observe the birds. We had to get

back at this point because as you can see by the pictures

we had a pea soup fog bank roll in off the open ocean

(which is right in front of this island) and everything

was disappearing fast. At one point we were totally

surrounded by white fog. There were no landmarks

in site and without the GPS it would have been easy

to go the opposite direction you wanted to go.

Well the fog bank cleared temporarily and we 

stopped about halfway back because the sun was 

shining and the ocean was flat again. We spotted

 a group of birds gathering on the water, which 

means there are feeder fish at the surface, which 

means there are bigger fish eating them! Here's 

what my husband hooked just a few minutes 

after stopping. See the fog in the background

showing up again? It was weird how quiet it

was out there.

And here's our pastor with a large Black Bass, one

of about 15 he caught in one spot. I fried a few

as soon as we got home and they were really 

tasty delicious filleted and fried with just a

bit of seasoning.

Their grand daughter had a great time once she

got past the initial screaming whenever a fish

was brought onboard. The first time she did that

I almost jumped overboard it scared me so bad!

I was totally unprepared for an ear splitting

scream out in that quiet.

Here she got brave enough to hold a small 

one for a picture before it was tossed back. I

think her favorites were the immense

jelly fish that were swimming continuously

under the boat. Some of them had tentacles

that were 8 feet long flowing behind them.

She saw a lot of amazing sites yesterday to tell 

her family about back home. We were fortunate 

enough to see sea lions, seals, sea otters, eagles, 

too many types of water birds to count, puffins, 

loons, jelly fish and the best of all--a Humpback 

Whale surfaced and blew right by the boat!

My sister's latest yard ornament. She filled the front

basket with flowers--kind cool, huh? 

Now wait a minute--

isn't that the bike the wicked witch rode in Wizard of Oz?

But if that's her bike, that means my sister....

Naw. Couldn't be. My sister has blonde hair.

And she doesn't wear a black hat.

Firemen cookies I donated to the annual 

fundraiser for the Fire Department Saturday.

And finally, a bit of humor from my Mom.

Do you know anybody like this? I do.  LOL

I THINK MY HEAD IS ON BACKWARDS

O.K., not really backwards, but it sure seems like I

meet myself coming and going sometimes.

Friday night was my daughter's graduation party.

We delayed it since she went down south for a

month after graduating. We had a great time

with 45+ people showing up to wish her well

and share in the celebration.

Today I made lunch and delivered it to the

city employees for a meeting. Homemade

bread with turkey, ham, cheese, tomato

and lettuce, pasta salad and a chocolate

chip bar. One lady has allergies, so I made

her chicken salad, baked potato chips

and an apple.

This is our neighbor that lives here part time. He has a

nice boat, all the best fishing gear, & LOVES to fish. The 

thing is, he doesn't eat much salmon. Lucky us, he is a 

generous man and gives us all the fish he doesn't want,

including this 20 pound beauty!

Before...

after...smoked salmon!

If you put your nose up close to the screen you may be

able to smell the delectable aroma.

I had a visitor this week. Nathaniel came with his

mom so I could help her decorate his big brother's

birthday cake. He is such a good baby, very happy

and lots of smiles all the time. Plus he did a lot

of this, which helped since we were quite busy

with frosting and sprinkles.

Here is the birthday boy's finished cake! He

loves Jack's Big Music Show, so that's who we

put on the cake. I made the image from royal

icing and the notes are made of fondant.

My little Min Pin hates to have his toenails

clipped. In desperation we tried the dremel

tool last night because I had heard from a

groomer that dogs sometimes will tolerate

it better than the clippers. It seemed to work

well by grinding the nails instead of cutting

them but as you can see by his face he still

hates to have his nails messed with.

Pictures from the graduation party...

my little niecie-poo with a Jesus

fish cookie.

I made a small 6" cake for my daughter since 

there were so many other desserts to eat.

She asked for a lime green zebra cake, so

that's what she got. The butterflies on it

were made of rice paper, so the whole

cake was edible.

Dessert table on the right, appetizers on the left. In the

round dishes on the very right of the dessert table were

chocolate maraschino cherries--YUM.

You need to use the cherries that have the stems on.

Simply melt different types of chocolate in a double

boiler, drain the cherries on paper towels and then

dip them in the chocolate. Set them on waxed paper

to set up, use the fridge to speed the process.

They were very easy and a big hit with everybody.

Special Request: I would appreciate your prayers

for my mom. She is going through some health

issues and will soon be having surgery. My sister

and I will be flying to be with her and I surely

would appreciate your prayers for everything

to go well, for very little pain for my mom and

for an extra speedy recovery.

Thanks so much and I will be updating as I

can from WA state.

I LOVE ACAPELLA

Wow--what an amazing performance! Thanks to my 

mom for sending me the link.

Oh, be sure and turn your sound up, they are recreating

an African rain storm in the beginning with just their 

hands and it's awesome!

No instruments except the ones God made.

A LITTLE TRIP & MORE PROGRESS...

My husband and I had the opportunity present itself, so

we jumped on the fast ferry to Juneau for a couple of

days. I had 2 cake orders moved to a different day

and time, and he just finished 2 large jobs, so we 

thought this would be a great time to get the rest 

of the supplies to finish the kitchen.

We only have one place in town to purchase flooring

and their machine is broken with no projected fix

date, so we really had no choice but to find another

place to buy the linoleum. Without it we were stuck

as far as continuing with appliances, etc.

It was a very fast trip because we have to catch the

ferry on Thursday at 12:30 and the return ferry

leaves Saturday at 8:00 am. That pretty much

leaves Friday to do the serious shopping that we

needed to do.

Did I mention that I hate shopping?

Here is a picture of the Governor's mansion in Juneau

from our hotel. Boy, just think how much money I could

make with this picture if I leaked it to the media! I could 

tell them that Sarah Palin lives there sometimes and 

they could invent even more stories about something 

terrible she had done there!

Ahem, sorry, I've been reading too many newspapers 

this weekend.

I took this picture on the ferry when the captain announced

that there was a large, male Killer Whale on the left side

of the boat. Everybody ran to the windows to see. There

was a large group from Oklahoma on board and they

were rabid to see any kind of wildlife at all.

Back home again-really tired-but we needed to get the

flooring down so we can move the appliances out of the

bedroom. Here we are prepping the floor by scraping up

the little bits of paints and glue that were left behind and

pounding down any high nails so we don't have little 

bumps in the new flooring. I even used the vacuum

to get the tiniest bits of stuff.

This was difficult because the flooring just naturally wants

to bend and tear. Good thing it was really warm outside, I

think it made it easier to manipulate the vinyl.

The stinky glue...

Ta da! Doesn't it look nice and clean? That's

what I want, nice and clean, not designer colors.

We were able to purchase complete counters at

Home Depot that were on clearance. They were

regularly over $100. each and they were marked

down to $24.00. Yahoo! That left more $$ to buy

 a hand washing sink, which has to be installed

apart from the 3 dish washing sinks.

And we got a brand new stainless oven that was

on clearance as well. It was $1200 marked down

to half that and it matches the oven we already

purchased for the kitchen. My husband is going to

install them at my chest height, so no more

bending for my bad back everytime I use the

ovens.

Our bedroom.    Sigh.

Just a little bit longer...patience, patience.

HIGH FIVE THURSDAY

Did I tell you guys that we flew United Airlines this year from

Florida to Denver? Did I also tell you that they broke 3 of my

headvases that were wrapped in layers of bubble wrap and 

layers of tissue paper inside a hard sided suitcase with metal 

edges that was lined with 2 inch thick foam? I also registered the 

case as FRAGILE before we flew and covered the case with 

FRAGILE stickers. My other suitcase had TIRE TRACKS

down the middle of it and a SLASH in the back.

Thank you to Cori for the video--it kind of says it all.

High five to Sons of Maxwell!

Thumbs down to United!

IT FEELS LIKE PARADISE

So after all the fun activities in town we all loaded

up and went out to my brother and sister in law's

cabin. They had already spent the night out there,

came in for all the 4th of July activities, then headed

back out with their 3 kids. 

The views heading away from town...

Here we are pulling into their beautiful bay. We have a

drop bow boat, so the front drops down and we can go

right up to shore to let people and supplies out.

My husband and I went out in the kayaks to look around.

Here we are paddling between everyone's anchored boats.

The water is like glass!

The newly painted Alaska Airlines contest plane took off 

and flew right over us.

This is so much fun! We were able to just float along quietly 

and paddle as we felt like it because the water was so calm.

Here is a beautiful bay we pulled into. The water was

crystal clear and filled with starfish and sea anenomes.

The reflections were amazing! And talk about quiet, all

we heard was the birds in the trees and the lapping of

the water on the shoreline.

There is an eagle's nest right in this area and this guy

didn't mind us floating along out here. It took off after

this and snatched a fish right out of the water.

Ahhhh, the good life. This is only part of our tribe, the

rest couldn't make it on this trip. I am roasting the

marshmallows, my sister in law is making the s'mores,

kids are playing with sparklers, people are talking.

We were treated to freshly caught salmon and

halibut perfectly grilled on the cabin porch.

Does it get any better than this?

Just as we were pulling away at 10:00 pm to head home

the full moon decided to show his face. The perfect ending

to an incredible weekend!

INDEPENDENCE DAY WEEKEND

I hope everyone had a fantastic 4th of July weekend!

We had a wonderful time with gorgeous weather and

many fun activities. The fireworks show is put on

here on the 3rd of July instead of the 4th. The man

that runs it lives in another town, as a result our 

show is on the 3rd so his town's can be on the 4th. 

He does an amazing job with spectacular colors

and state of the art fireworks.

The show didn't start until 11:30 because it

just isn't very dark until then. The next day

we had the annual parade downtown, which

is always fun because pretty much the entire

town shows up.

The Coast Guard outdid themselves this time with a

triple fly over the parade crowd.  3 helicopters, 3 times!

After the parade the Coast Guard did a water rescue

demonstration for everybody. They hovered low over

the water...

dropped one person out...

then dropped a rescue swimmer to get him...

Got him!  Pull up, pull up...

...and into the safety of the helicopter they go! 

It's amazing how strong the spray was from 

the rotor wash, even where we were sittting.

Then we went over to see the water fight

between the Coast Guard and the Fire

Department. The weather was perfect for

getting wet, about 70 degrees.

It's pretty funny because it starts off with them trying

really hard to win, spraying the barrel and the crowd

is cheering them on.

Next thing you know the hoses are turned on the crowd

and everybody is running and screaming. I have learned

to stay back from the crowd because even if you don't

get wet there are always a few folks that realize they

are getting sprayed and they take off at a dead run and

will flatten you.

Uh oh. A casualty in the crowd. My poor little niecie-poo

is soaked to the skin. Looks like Grampa is pretty wet too.

Big brother looks wet too. And mad. That's how my face

looks when I get sprayed with cold water.

My sister is a firewoman helping to hold the hose.

I notice she stayed away from the end that was

spraying. In fact, she's the one that always tells

me to stand up front. Hmmmm....

Another annual tradition is the jumping off of the dock at

the harbor. Kids were lined up and some were doing

back flips off, fully clothed. I have never done it, but I

heard you better wear shoes because you don't realize

until you are in the water trying to climb out that the

ladder is covered with barnacles LOL!

We couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather for

such a fun weekend.

After this we still had a full day left with a trip out to

my brother's cabin. Tune in tomorrow!