My husband and I got the idea that tonight would be a good one to see if the thimble berries were ripe at the shooting range. This is where we go every year. Now normally we take a gun with us when we go out to pick berries. Note, we have never seen any bears while picking berries. Unfortunatly tonight, we forgot the gun. So, here we are picking berries,walking along, deciding that the berries are not that ripe and we need to wait another week. The older kids saw some berries, so we stopped. I heard some twigs and stuff getting broke to the side of me, thinking that the 14 yr old was doing it, I did not look. Then we heard the growl. This was not a "checking you out, and these are my berries" kind of growl, oh no, it was " you people need to leave now" growl. Turning to my husband, I was like "what was that??" As I am saying that the second growl came with a little more force. It was then, that we all started to run to the van. Of course, the van was up a hill and around a corner. The 14 yr old took the lead, and I told him to get to the van and open the doors. Our youngest girl -12-was right on his heels, then came my husband, 5 yr old, and myself. The 10 yr old is running but not very fast-- asking " why are we running??" At that point I am grabbing him. We made it to the van, the bear did not follow, figure that he was in the bushes having a fit of laughter watching the dumb humans run. Remember the commercial with the squirrels getting the car to wreck and then laughing??? After we catch our breath, we then drove out of the shooting range. We did not stop to see if we could see the bear on the side of the road. Bears are not noted for having a sense of humor, and can take out a car. Not an experiance we wanted. Ok now I have a confession--all the time I have been here, my husband has told me over and over to wear tennis shoes when we go out in the wilds. I like my flip flops and have ignored him. Not 5 minutes before the whole bear thing, he gives me the "shoe" talk again. While I am running, I am thinking--if I get eaten by a bear because I was running to slow in the flip flops, I am really going to be mad!! Of course, when we got to the van and drove off guess what my husband said??? Oh yeah you got it, the "shoe" talk again. Now I will wear my tennis shoes when we go out no matter how hot it is. Lesson learned.

The last week in review

Wow, this has been a busy week. I retook most of my pictures for my etsy. My youngest daughter and oldest granddaughter were my models when needed. They did such a good job, both are very pretty and enjoyed the picture taking. That took an entire day. Then the 2 days, I put them on the website. All in all I think that the light was better this time. The pictures were taken in a different room with lots of windows. If it had been sunny, that would have been better too, but then living in Southeast Alaska sunny days are not always when you want them. Let me know what you think of them--www.thegoldenthimble713.etsy.com--

Right now I am in the middle of some new projects for my store. I will let everyone know when I put them on. I was going to open up another store for just my baby things, but decided not to. Geez, it is hard enough keeping up with one, and all the marketing for it, so scrapped that idea.

My family and I drove out to the south end of the island last Saturday morning. It was so pretty out there. That is when I took the waterfall picture. We saw two black bears. The first one was a baby. Just kept on going, as we did not want his mama to have a fit. The second one was a 2 year old. He was on his own. Unfortunatly, both were to fast to take pictures of. It was still cool to see.

Yesterday morning we had a unusual thing happen. The neighbors friend landed a helicopter behind our houses. That was alot of excitement. The first thing I thought of was --alrighty who is going to get arrested, then of course, I thought--maybe I won the publishers clearing house--naw- knew that one would be to good to be true, but was very happy the first thought was not there.

For this week and next-- the younger 2 kids have swimming lessons. There are 6 levels here to pass. It is great for the kids, with all the water around here. There are two sessions in the summer and then during the winter, there is a program in the school.

Speaking of school, trying to get ready for that now. The new thing is for the first time in our schools history, we are going to have hot lunches available in all 3 schools. Now, I know that for all the people down south, that may sound very wierd, as you guys have had school lunch programs forever. The island is small, and the problem as always been how to provide the food. This year the funding came through-money is always an issue--so one of the local diners is going to do the cooking and delivering. Not sure how much this is going to cost us. Funny that part was not in the local paper when the article came out...makes me wonder how expensive this will be.

I did figure out how to fix the whole--2 blog thing--when I write, I will paste and copy so both blogs have the same thing on them. That way not one gets left out. Another exciting thing is that I was able to put Sarah Palin on my blog and my twitter yesterday. For some that might not be a big deal, but for most Alaskans, it is. And we are very big Palin supporters.

Well on my way out the door for swimming lessons.