Happy New Year

It’s that season when it seems every radio program (we don’t have TV) is streaming programs summarizing news highlights of the past year.  It’s a good time since so much energy devoted to past events must mean that not much that is newsworthy is happening during this season.  It makes us wish we were celebrating New Years Day every day.-- that people from all cultures, religious denominations, ethnicities and political persuasions could follow Jesus’ message to simply love one another.  Imagine how different our daily feed of news would differ with that one change.  Toss in being good stewards of God's creation and imagine the new world order.

Not wanting to break with the trend, this seems like a good time to begin 2014 with some of our highlights of 2013 as "spoken" through a few of our photos. 

 2013 was the year of the squirrel around here -- a family of them in the attic -- followed by hours of entertainment by these acrobatic rodents on our deck (AFTER the attic eviction).

We had far fewer Sitka Black-tailed Deer around our house in 2013, so Karen ventured around our neighborhood to capture images of these rather tame neighbors.

2013 may well be remembered as the year of the whale in Petersburg.  Karen took this photo of a breaching humpback whale from the shoreline right here in town.

Another humpback, this one a salmon, also known as pink salmon, seemed to invade streams around our island -- again in numbers we've never seen before.

Our daughter, Tamia, becames Mrs. Cash Philo in July at a ceremony in Hatcher Pass officiated by her other dad, Ken Fallon.

True to form, Tamia had to try a little fishing on her way between the wedding ceremony and the reception.

Former college roommate Karl Schneider and his wife, Mary, visited us and lured us out for several outings -- here at Shakes Lake, up the Stikine River.

A side tributary into Shakes Lake proved to be one highlight of that trip with Karl and Mary.  Here Karen photographs something -- maybe flowers, maybe the roaring falls above her.

Another excursion with Karl and Mary led us to Anan Creek to see the brown and black bears catching and feeding on salmon.

An autumn road trip took us to Washington's Olympic Peninsula where Karen (pictured here at Ruby Beach) filled our car with wonderfully colored and shaped rocks.

Another highlight of our road trip was Cape Meares, Oregon, where we were joined by our daughter Mandy and her, Mike -- oh, and Gigi -- for a week of daily sorties to savor the thunder of incoming surf.

And so, as 2013 slides into 2014 our prayer is that you all have good health, happiness and find Peace in our often crazy world.  Dream big and may all of your dreams come to fruition.