For those of you how know Terra, you know that she doesn't like pets. Well, I say that in the normal sense of pets. When we were first married in Tucson, we tried our hand at a pet turtle. She eventually took it to her school class and they named it Roofus. I think that is the only pet that Terra has ever remotely liked. So last Saturday when I went down to the church to pick up the boys and take them on a hike to Cane Creek State park, I found this little turtle trying to get into the church building. I naturally picked it up and took it home to Terra and the boys to play with while we went on the hike. As it turns out, Terra was once again very happy with a pet. You will remember that when Karren and Jim were out here we picked up a turtle on the road and Terra wouldn't touch it. I think that she doesn't like turtles, but rather tortoises. She was rather fond of this one as well, and proceeded to make it a little pen to stay in.

I don't have the details from the rest of the story, when I came home the turtle (or tortoise) was MIA. It had fled and its wooden enclosure lay empty and had a nice little hole underneath one corner. Apparently they had built it a nice little cage and then put it in there with some food and water and they talked to it, petted it, and played with it (as much is possible with a turtle). Then when I came home it had already made its escape and was no more to be found. With all of the vegetation around here it is not hard to see why they can just vanish. As I had taken the camera with me on the hike, there isn't much to show of the short duration the turtle spent as a resident of 410 Spring Branch Dr.

The hike was disappointing as far as hikes go. Here there is lots of nice scenery to look at, but there is not much in the way of elevation changes - and when you are hiking, that is what I am used to. The state park did have lots of trees and vines. I have never been around any vines before, so I thought that I would see how strong they actually are. When I couldn't pull this one out of the tree, I climbed up it and once I had achieved a height of about 15 feet, I decided that I had enough and then came back down. The hike was a 2.5 mile look around in the forest next to the lake. There was a longer trail (15.5 miles) that went around the entire lake, but the boys were not to excited about going on that one this time, so maybe we will have to try to do it another time.

The boys are still as energetic as ever. I don't know where they get their energy, especially since they don't eat anything that we make. They are the small personifications of perpetual motion machines. I keep waiting for them to slow down or to take more fuel into their systems, but neither happens. Then when night comes, they don't slow down, but rather get really hyper and run even faster. I don't pretend to understand this phenomenon, but am told that eventually they will slow down. I am faced with no choice to let nature work its course and see what happens.

In other news, we have finished the dresser that we started working on back in Arizona. The odd thing about wood working out here is that the humidity has its effect on making the moisture content of the wood drastically higher. When I was putting the drawers together with some 1/4" dowels, as I would tighten up the clamps I had to be very careful of not letting the dowels bend over. Twice I had to stop and take the dowels out and re do it because I didn't see that two of them (one side of the drawer) had in fact bent over and not broken off. The angle that I am talking about is close to 90 degrees. It was frustrating especially since I had to dig out the glue, but that is the price you pay I guess.

Terra has to be credited with all of the work required to do the staining and applying polyurethane. I don't like to do that type of stuff, and she is good at it, so it falls to her. Since she likes to pick the color of the finished product it actually works out pretty well. When we started this dresser I asked her if she wanted to stain it or paint it - I was trying to decide what type of wood we would use, and they preference was to paint it while - just like the other dresser of Ethen & Kyle's that I was patterning this from. We ended up making it out of pine, but it looked so nice that we stained it in the end. I hope that the pine holds up under the abuse that small children can subject it to. Maybe next time we try to build some piece of house equipment we will use a hard wood and see what happens. maybe then we will paint it. The dresser that this one replaced was definitely in need of replacement. It was one of those walmart specials made of sawdust and glue, with a plastic vainer to make it look pretty. This dresser was obtained when Kyle was first born, and this last move did it in. So far Terra has been fond of its replacement and she is wanting to build more items such as this in the future.

One of the real fascinating things about living here is that you really appreciate the key to life. There are basically three differences between AR and AZ. Here there is no family, lots of water, and no elevation. Family and elevation have very little to do with life, so that leaves the water. Since there is a plethora of water here, there is lots of vegetation, and lots of insects, bugs and small life. That leads to lots of things that eat the bugs, and on and on up the food chain. In short the more water you have the more life you have in all categories present. This is manifest everywhere you look. In fact last night we were sitting here talking and looked out the back door window to see a frog sitting on the screen door eating the mosquitoes that were buzzing around the light. It was a little green tree frog. After looking at it Ethen wanted to keep it for a pet, but no action was put forward on our part to make it so.

In addition to the green tree frogs, there are also fire flies here. They are fun to watch, and even funnier to watch the kids try to catch them and play with them. It is also fun to be driving down the road and to see airplanes in your side and rear view mirrors. This is common due to the fields around and the crop dusters that spray insectaside and fertilizer on the different fields. They and neat to watch, but all of the crop duster aircraft are new planes. This makes you think that this is probably not the best profession to be in. This picture here of Terra and I was taken in our back yard, but it looks like we are in the middle of a jungle - I guess that we kind of are. Well this letter has made it up and just in time for us to leave and make the trek back to Arizona. We are leaving tomorrow and should log somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,700 miles over the course of the next 12 days.

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