Ethan's news anchor debut

After Julie Sanders Keymer interviewed Ethan, Carrie Fernald and me to promote the ALS candlelight vigil April 23, Bill Colson set up Ethan with a teleprompter and played "news anchor" with him. Made Ethan's day--I think this may have been even more fun than the actual TV appearance!

We got home to find the ALS vigil on the front page of the U-B. Sheila Hagar rocks! (She did even before this, but especially now.)




June update: April 23, 2009, was our third ALS vigil, and I really wanted it to be good, because Carrie was starting to slow down a bit and I felt like she needed the rest of us to step up to the plate more than ever. One wish she had was for a band to perform the unofficial ALS anthem "Learning to Fall," and because I have genius co-workers like Kevin Stauffer and Eric Turner, and they have incredibly talented friends like Bob Shafer, Adam Kirtley and Jerry Yokel, we had our band! (This was good, because I was prepared to learn a few chords and sing it myself if necessary, probably accompanied by Ethan on the kazoo. Not pretty.) Dave Warkentin, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, agreed to speak about losing a close friend to ALS (and it probably didn't hurt our publicity efforts to have a local public figure on board!). Carrie's friends went crazy putting up posters all over town as fast as I could print them (courtesy of Coffey Communications, my employer). Coach Carter and the WA-HI baseball team hosted the event as always and did an amazing job of handling the candles, introductions and other logistics; they presented the facts about ALS, and one of the players wrote a great speech about Lou Gehrig. The best part, though, was probably the sharing time. We put our favorite extrovert, Julie Sanders Keymer, on the mic, and she roamed through the crowd so anyone could share ALS stories. Ethan couldn't resist a shot at the microphone to share about his grandpa, and he always manages to get a laugh, even with a sad subject. It was wonderful hearing so many people talk about their love and appreciation for Carrie, the kind of speeches that we too often save for when it's too late.

So I guess this is a blog post with a message. Whatever it is you need to do...do it today.

The shower

For everyone who's been hearing me go on endlessly about the shower project, here are some pictures. The tile is done. All that's left is some drywall repair (Jon the handyman), wiring so the floor is warm (also Jon) and painting (which it looks like I'm stuck with). The paint color will be similar to the towel hanging on the wall. By the way, it doesn't really show in the pictures, but the mosaic tile stripe in the shower is the same colors as the floor tiles.

I'm thinking about a glass door and losing the shower curtain. Maybe next month.

A trip to England

Some killer ticket prices and a sweet tax refund convinced us to blow the budget and head for London (and York to fulfill Cliff's bucket list--inside joke!). We stayed a mere six nights to keep costs down, allow me to keep some appointments, and not use up all our vacation time. TOO SHORT! (Though many more nights on the concave bed in our ultra-cheapo $120 room, and I would have to move into the chiropractor's office permanently.) A short trip, but we succeeded in giving Ethan a taste of the country and a burning desire to return some day.

Cliff posted quite a few photos on Facebook, which you can view by clicking this link. Hey, while you're there, why not sign up and become our friends?