Follow up on Non-Fiction....and an update!

• So, long story short, I (Olivia) was the large blue and purple female creature Mr. S.H. Rew ran into in the garage. I was wearing jeans (blue) and my winter jacket (purple) and the big black stick was a MAG flashlight!! I was attacked by the shrew a 2nd time the very next day, so we cleaned up all the stray pieces of dog food we could find, bought and set two traps and to this day have not caught, but also not seen hide nor hair of the shrew. It warmed up, so we believe with the rise in temperature combined with our taking away all his food, he has decided to hit the road and find another place to live! Thank God...disposing of rodent carcasses is not my idea of fun!!

• Also, Jer and I leave for Maui 36 hours from now, so Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, enjoy the cold while we get tans, we won't even check our email while we're gone, although we will have our cell phones on us in case of a dire emergency!!

Aloha!

A short piece of Non-Fiction

I was going about my day, organizing my home, gathering food for dinner...you know...normal every day duties. As I went about my daily routine, I thought about the warm home that I have and the abundance of living necessities I've recently been blessed with. I try really hard not to complain about the cold and the fact there is no snow on the ground yet, making some parts of life more difficult. Instead I choose to focus on what I do have.
As I pondered the goodness of life, with no warning, my routine day took a turn for the worst!! My house shook, the roof was blown off my house and appeared above me, a great white light!! My mind scrambled for an explanation! Was it aliens? An earthquake or perhaps a hurricane?
I ran out of my house to a safer part of my neighborhood and waited, my heart pounding. I could hear strange noises that sounded like words...perhaps it was the aliens! Then the noises stopped - I waited a few more moments...nothing but silence.
After several more moments of silence, I made the decision it was safe to go back to my house. I began to run as fast as I could toward my ruined dwelling, when suddenly "IT" appeared! A huge white, blue, and purple female creature with a huge black stick in one hand and it was bending down to look inside my roof-less house!!!
Before I could decide whether to turn back or keep running towards my home, "IT" saw me!!! "IT" let out a horrifically LOUD noise and propelled itself into the air!! I was sure it was about to pounce on me, so I bolted back the direction I had come and didn't look back!
Now...you all read correctly the title of this blog...and I can honestly say it is a work of non-fiction...all of the events described above, did actually happen, just as I said. To put it in proper perspective however, let me introduce myself: My name is S.H. Rew and I live in the Wolf's garage.

Party Fun!!

We celebrated Kendra's 30th birthday today. We first went to Chili's and had lunch and then we had a Photo Scavenger Hunt! It was the MOST fun any of us have had in a very long time. We had two teams and list of 20 photos that we had to take.
Here is one photo of our divinely connected group of young adults as well as a sample of the BEST of the photos from the scavenger hunt!


Each Team crammed into a small space:
Team One in the kiddie gym at McDonald's
And Team Two all in one shopping cart!
Each Team Playing On the Play Ground:
Team One:
Team Two:
Needless to say, we all had a BLAST! We'll definitely do this kind of game again!!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we had the pleasure of having dinner and fellowship with our pastor and his family and some friends from church. The food was outstanding, we had a blast playing Cranium and Taboo, and then finished off the evening watching "The Last Samurai". We have so much to be thankful for!

Saturday ramblings

We finally woke up to snow this morning! Last year, we got our first snow (and by first I mean the one that was a lot and stayed for good) early in the 3rd week of October. So, this year we were blessed with a few snow-less and oddly-warm-for-November weeks! It was 43 degrees yesterday; 47 the day before. That's really, really not normal for this area. Actually, as I look at the window at this moment I see the snow has turned to rain...perhaps I'm being hasty in calling this our "first snow" as it well may be gone by the evening at this rate!

Also, last night was another "first" and could have only been experienced in Alaska!! Two male moose were fighting in the neighbors yard across the street!! They were circling and clashing their horns and making these really odd whinny noises that I had no idea were moose noises. I attempted to get a picture, but being across the street and in the dark (and believe me, I was NOT going to get any closer than that) made it difficult to capture, but here it is anyway! in this particular shot they look like they're both walking away, but what actually occurred is the moose that is farthest from the camera was actually trotting away but then right after I snapped the picture he turned and ran towards the other and clashed horns!!Our neighbor across the street got a lot of it on video as they were right off the side of his house, so his upper deck was the perfect place to film from. My understanding was that he was alerted to it because one of the moose had thrown the other one against his house and he went outside to investigate the noise!!

5 Years!!

The title of my post reminds me of Grosse Point Blanke when Jeremy Pivin's character was smoking pot and telling John Cusack's character how he couldn't believe it had been "10 years...10 years...10 years...10 YEARS!!" since they had graduated high-school!! He hilariously emphasized every word differently each time he said it...I don't know, maybe you have to see it to know what I'm talking about.

At any rate, it has been FIVE YEARS since Jeremy and I were married, and boy what a 5 years it has been!! We usually do something pretty upscale (our 1st we went to Seattle and had dinner at the space needle and then drove the limo that Becky rented for us back to our hotel) but since we're going to Hawaii in December, we kept it pretty low key and just went to dinner and then watched some of Seinfeld season 6!

There are SO many things I could list, but here's the hi-lights of the last 5 years:

• We've moved five times.
• We've owned two houses (sold one).
• We each inherited one sibling-in-law and have two nieces and one more niece/nephew on the way (congrats Becky and Stew!).
• We've owned two VW camper Vans (sold one).
• We've had seven room-mates (Jenn, Stephanie, Sam, Kendra, Jamie, John & Barb), not all at once of course!
• Since Anchorage we've each made one job change.
• I (Olivia) has started her own business (I do scrap booking, custom greeting cards, wedding invitations, birth announcements, you name it! Currently making Christmas cards for this year if anyone is interested, just email me).
• We've had three pets. One cat who tragically ate himself to death (no kidding, but that's a long story for another time) and two dogs.
• We've come into a great church family and have inherited too many wonderful relationships to count!

I am sure I could come up with so many more things worth mentioning if I had the time to really think them out...however I'm on my way out the door to a massage client's house (oh yeah, I do that as a side business, too!) and so I have to go.

In short, God has been SO good to us; we have greatly enjoyed and cherish all the blessings and memories we've made the last five years and are eager to see what good things God has in store for the next five! Thank you to everyone who loves, supports, and prays for us ~ we love you!

Hallelujah Party!

Our Church had their Hallelujah Party (alternative to Halloween) for the kids on Tuesday the 30th and Jer and I volunteered. I ran the craft table (we made little blue whales!) and Jer ran the bean bag toss. Afterwards we went to Jenni's house and had our own little costume party!!! My family never did this kind of stuff growing up, so it was fun. I think next year Jer and I will either be Mulder and Scully from the X-Files, or Jack Bauer and Audrey Raines from "24"!! We have a whole year to decide! Here's Kendra & I.

The next day at work we got to dress up, too. My friend Jennifer and I dressed up as twins!! We got blond wigs, but then blacked out one of our teeth...you know...hot from behind, "oh I was mistaken" from the front!! Hahaha! People who don't know us well actually couldn't tell us apart!

Hot.......

Or not...!!! :)

The full effect!

Update

Quite a bit has happened since our last post - I think an update is in order!

• John & Barb left for Ketchikan the first week of October. The first few days without them were strangely quiet!
• We've been asked by our pastor to start hosting our church's young adults group, which we've agreed to do. We are going through a curriculum by John Bevere called The Bait of Satan. It is about staying free from the bondage of offense. It's a pretty hard core, grow up in spiritual maturity study; we're excited to see the growth it is going to spark.
• I've volunteered to help out with the Children's ministry at our church; I will be helping with the 5-12 year old's two Sunday's a month.
• Jeremy has been laid off for the next two months in order to attend the classroom portion of his apprenticeship. This was his first week; he is currently at the top of his class - I am very proud of him!!
• We are going to Hawaii for two weeks in December as sort of a Christmas/Jeremy's Birthday/our 5 year anniversary treat to ourselves. We're very excited. We are going to be in Maui. We will be renting a VW camper van for one week and driving around and camping Maui, and then we'll spend one week in a condo.
• I've been working my "real" job at full steam and also doing a little massage on the side as well as some scrapbook, card making projects in my spare time.

We've been getting little bouts of snow here and there but nothing has stuck yet. Mostly it snow/rains and then freezes as night, which makes the roads dangerous in the mornings. Thank God for studded snow tires! All of the above have kept us pretty busy. Hopefully something a little more interesting/picture posting worthy will happen! :)

Surprise!!

We had the honor of hosting Kathie Elenberger's 60th surprise birthday party!! I will let Kendra post all the juicy details of guests, etc, but I wanted to post a few pictures of the food. Our friend Amanda from church came and catered and Jenny was her sou chef...needless to say, it was OUTSTANDING!!!

Jenny and Amanda!
Crab & Avocado Salad and Mussels on the Half Shell were the appetizers.
After this we were served a chili based shrimp and rice soup, which I don't have a picture of
For the entree, we had a choice of either....
Halibut Enchiladas
...or Beef Steak and Salsa
We also had 3 dessert choices which I do not have pictured.
Here's a picture of the table all set with appetizers ready!It was a lot of fun to have a formal party complete with a fully catered 4 course meal!!

September Camping

We (Jeremy & I, and Geoff) decided to take an impromptu camping trip last night; we underestimated the amount of people who would be camping over Labor Day and upon arriving at the camp ground we chose, found NO open spots. However, the Lord is good and our neighbors (the ones who bought our original camper van) "happened" to be camping at that same campground and warmly invited us to share their spot. We got SO many "cool, dude" comments from other campers about having 3 vans in one spot, and miraculously, no teenagers came and asked us for weed! :) Anyway, we had a fun time! We took just Audrey and left Jo home with grandma & grandpa. Audrey did very well...she's turning (however slowly) into a very, very good, obedient, loving dog!

The 3 vans!!

Audrey, myself, Jer, John, Laura, and Belle.Audrey with her inquisitive face!

She's huge and still only 8 months old!!

Another update on John

We are happy to report that John is doing better 1 week post surgery on this hip than he was this time with his first hip!! Praise the Lord!

The big catch!!!

During our trip to Homer last weekend, most of the gang spent the entire day Saturday on a halibut charter. According to the tide-books, it was indicating the smallest of smallest fish would be running that day. And true, a lot of people brought in chickens that day.......but not my husband!!! He caught the biggest (in our group anyway) of the day! 85lbs that baby was and now she sits in many pieces in our freezer! I love the look on his face! :)

Update on John

Ken & Bonnie, I've decided your question via comment deserves its own post!! :) John has recovered brilliantly from his first hip replacement and on that side of his body he is absolutely pain free. What began to happen however is that as his first hip healed and his spinal column and pelvic cavity began to realign into their correct positions, it pushed (or pulled?) his other hip back into place and began causing pain in his other leg, which was frustrating to say the least!! So they went back to Dr. Kavanaugh, took another round of x-rays and discovered that with the realignment shift, his other hip is now bone on bone. For a variety of reasons it was decided they will just stay and have his 2nd hip done now. His surgery is scheduled for this Friday the 17th at an undetermined hour of the morning and he will be here in Anchorage with us until October 1st-ish to complete his 2nd recovery! We all value everyone's prayers and support and look forward to the time when John will be completely pain free! Being as healthy as he is, his first recovery went beautifully according to his doctor and we have faith the 2nd will be accomplished with God's grace as well!

Oregon City meets Anchorage

Carol, J. Pat, and Jason came to visit from Oregon City. They've been here for the last two weeks. We all can't believe how fast the time has gone!! As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words...I'll also give you a spoiler alert for my next blog...FISH!!

Here's everyone enjoying dinner at the Cattle Company their last night here...Oh such good food!!

Jeremy & Jason fishing Ship Creek:

Barb & I at Sourdough Mining Company:

Here's an awesome picture of the clouds covering the water in Homer. Normally you would see the ocean, but with the fog, it was like being on top of the clouds!

Jenn and I on our drive back from Homer. You can't really see it in this picture, but the fields of fireweed were just astounding!

First Friday and Goofy Girls

Kendra and Tifiny and I went to First Friday; it's every first Friday of the month and all the art shops, etc stay open late and serve appetizers and things...it's very cool. Anyway, we went to the museum and had salmon mouse and listed to live jazz. After that we walked downtown Anchorage and got a little goofy with the camera!

Here's Kendra the Victim dead outside FBI headquarters......and Tifiny the Agent chasing Olivia the CulpritHaving fun...hanging outTifiny and I hiding in the art piece outside the museum.Kendra hanging from a tree!

We've decided to make First Friday a tradition for just us girls! Good memories!

My Celebrity Look-alikes!

What do you think??

Productive Saturday

We decided this weekend that something was missing from our front yard...

So, we took advantage of the lovely warm day and decided to work up a sweat by doing some landscaping...

Now I know what you're thinking...one tree...how hard can it be? And you're absolutely right...one tree isn't that hard....

...eight on the other hand...

Right now they're about 6' tall and 2' around. Their full size is 15' tall and 4' around. They're supposedly very fast growing trees and with the sunlight we get here in the summers, I can only imagine how tall they'll be this time next year! I'm not sure we'll let them grow their full height...we'll see!!

My "little" Audrey

So, as you all know, we added Audrey to our family on February 17th, 2007 at which time she was exactly two months old. Well, she is now 7 months old and as you can see, just slightly bigger than our 2.5 YEAR old, Josie (English Springer Spaniel)!! I knew when we got her that she was a German Shepherd/Cocker Spaniel mix, but in hind sight "knew" could be classified as "those are not foreign words to me" because I am still amazed at how big she is! And she's only 7 months old!

She's a very good natured, sweet dog...very smart...almost calculatingly! During her crate training she would howl and yip and bark, so we got her a soft muzzle. She only had to wear it about 30 minutes one evening and every time after that when she'd go to her kennel, all you had to do was show it to her, say "be quiet, it's bedtime" and she wouldn't make a peep the whole night!!! She knows "sit", "stay", "lay down", "leave it", "potty", and "go poop" and has since the first 3 weeks we had her! We are still seeking the Lord however on how to get her to stop urinating in fear/submission. Most people I've talked to say it is a common Cocker Spaniel trait and she'll just grow out of it. Needless to say it has made house-training quite challenging. But, God is not silent when sought, not even about dog potty problems!! :)

Rain Clouds & Door Springs

NOT on my list of favorite things.....

So, the clouds are back with rain, as are the 55ish temperatures...*sigh*...July is supposed to be HOT. Oh well...at least it keeps down the forest fires.

As I type this Jer, Isaac, Geoff, and John are replacing the extension spring to our garage door. I had come home two nights ago, pulled into the garage and then pushed the button to close it...just as the door reached fully closed, there was this incredibly loud *SNAP*...scared the peewadens out of me. During my initial search I couldn't find anything wrong...next morning (Sunday) I tried to open the door to let the dogs out and it went up about 2 inches and then back down and then attempted on its own to open again by two inches and then went back down, then up 2 inches and down...I had to finally unplug it and release the emergency lever to get the door to go all the way back down. And this is a fully insulated double car garage door, so there was no way I could lift it (Jer was out of town camping) and my car was stuck inside. But, thankfully Jer parks his truck outside the garage, so I was able to make it to church on time!! Aha, I hear the door opening and closing...Praise God, sounds like they fixed it!!

Finally.....

....some sunshine and temeratures over 55!! Praise the Lord!!

A Sunday hike

Kendra and I have made a tradition of taking a hike on Sunday afternoons. This last Sunday we hiked up the Upper Huffman trails, which quickly became one of my favorite spots in South Anchorage! We found a perfect spot in the woods for a fort and we climbed a tree!!! Young at heart we remain!

My Sister and I

I had the most wonderful time with Becky during my last visit; she has become more than a sister to me in the last few years. It was SOOOO hard to leave!! Here's a few pictures of us at our best....high on caffeine and having blast!!

"Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship." ~Margaret Mead

"When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us?" ~Pam Brown

"I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at." ~Maya Angelou

Ta-Da!!

So, I finally did it...the well known "layered bob" recently made re-famous by the lovely Katie Holmes (aka:Mrs. Tom Cruise). Following that vein, I thought I needed my own "driving in the car being photographed by the paparazzi" shot, which when taken by ones self is actually vain.....is that at all a Derek Linder-esque joke?? Considering I opted to bold "vein" and "vain", I'd say amateur effort at best......hahaha!! At any rate, it's short, it's cool (literally) it's easier to maintain, and as the majority of the public said when voting: "It'll always grow back"!

My beautiful niece!!

My Trip I

I returned last night from a 2 week long trip outside Alaska. I spent 4 days in Salt Lake City, UT for a work conference, 6 days with Becky in North Bend, and then 4 days traveling with Becky and Stew to Idaho for our cousin's wedding. There were a LOT of pictures taken, so I plan on showing them over several posts!! To start, here's a few of my Utah pictures. I stayed at the Snowbird Lodge in Little Cottonwood, which is in the hills just outside Salt Lake. It was absolutely beautiful!!