In April we bought a brand new 1999 Toyota Corolla CE. With Grace getting her driver’s license, we knew we would need two cars. She drives our 1984 Toyota Camry LE. She does more driving than we do since Don walks to and from work every day all year round, and I only work a couple days a week.

Don and I took a couple of little “road trips” in the new car to break it in. In April we drove to Delta Junction, Alaska, which is about 90 miles south-east, and on Labor Day we drove to Denali National Park 120 miles south-west and saw the most magnificent autumn colors. It was just spectacular! Autumn doesn’t last very long here, but it is a wonderful season to experience.

This year was a “moose” year. One January morning we awoke to find a cow moose in our garden, eating the frozen remains of pea vines and broccoli stalks. She had a young calf with her, but it stayed in a neighbor’s yard. The cow jumped our back fence, which is over 5 feet high, to get into our garden. She stayed long enough to eat most of the pea vines, then left to rejoin the calf. It was pretty exciting. I have seen moose in the neighborhood for years, but never had one come into our yard! I took lots of photos as well as video taping.

On November 8, we awoke to again find a cow moose in the garden! She was alone this time and stayed most of the day, laying down to take short “naps,” then up and eating the pea vines again. She stayed till the pea vines were gone, then went back over the back fence to another garden in the neighborhood. The next morning there was a picture of her on the front page of the newspaper! A neighbor called the newspaper when the moose came to their garden after leaving ours. It was more than likely the same moose that visited with the calf in January. The biologists at the Department of Fish and Game say that moose have a good memory about where they have found food before and will often visit the same gardens year after year. This gives me something to look forward to. I will be sure to plant peas in the garden again. I really like the moose. Grace doesn’t think it’s a big deal to have a moose in the yard, as she has seen them around here her entire life. But me, well, I will always be fascinated by these amazing creatures. (SMILE)

We had one little visitor that became a pest this summer… a red squirrel had been coming to a bird feeder on our deck for a couple of years, and in February 1998 had even gotten herself trapped in our crawl space for a couple of days. Well, this summer she brought two babies with her! One of the baby squirrels discovered that he could jump to the window of the room where our birds are. He tore a hole in the screen and came inside to get the birdseed! Well, then we moved the bird feeder off the deck and out to the trees! We had the screen replaced with metal mesh, and that little bugger tried to come through it too! We heard him and scared him away and then covered the screen with a steel mesh. He hasn’t been back in the house, but there are little footprints on the window….

Well I guess that’s about it for our busy year. Except that we also got new computers this year! We saved and got two identical Dell Pentium III systems for us and for Grace (her graduation present). We got a Hewlett Packard color printer and scanner, and, as you can probably tell, I have been using them! I really like this system. It is great for my Family Tree project. All I need now is for all you family out there, who haven’t already done so, to send me more information!! (SMILE)