If this storm had hit any other country the United States would be sending all kind of aid, workers and supplies to the damaged areas. This is the perfect time for these other countries to pay us back. However, No other country is helping us at all. We will have to help ourselves on this one as usual. My wife tried to donate some money to the Salvation Army tonight. The phone lines have been busy all night. This goes to show that Americans will help eachother.

I heard a comment out of the German government stating that maybe America will pay attention to global warming now. Thanks for the compasion Germany!

Now, how about these idiots in the storm area that did not listen, and did not evacuate even though they had the means. These people should be treated similar to the Arizona stupid motorist law and have to pay the cost of their rescue.

UPDATE: OK, other countries are offering help. I retract my first paragraph.

My blog has turned into a photo blog. Oh well, we all like pictures. This was taken outside of my house. There is a weird thing here in Arizona. I heard it only happens at altitude. Even though this is a shot to the south, the weird thing is that during a sunset we also have color in the east. The red hue in this picture is not artificial. It really looked that way.

I am having trouble telling when pictures are pictues of me, or Anthony. I know I have a picture of Anthony in wrestling gear as well. What really cracks me up about this picture is that I am wearing knee pads and and a headgear, but I am in my underwear. I think this was taken in 1972,

I put out a request from the family to send in pictures of Woody Acres. Peter Pan has his Neverland, We had Woody Acres. Above I am painting the Nature Center, I’m sure that I didn’t do much painting, but I tried. The kids did a lot of work there. It was voluntary, but normally we could get a buck or two for painting, raking leaves, or picking beans in the garden. I don’t know why we did any work since we did not have to save for anything. If we wanted anything from the store, all we had to do was put it in Grandma’s cart and she would buy it for us.

OK, this picture was not taken at Woody Acres. Not that I remember, but I bet this is at our house in Carpentersville. This must have been near Christmas time. I am sporting my Woody Acres sweatshirt, and a sled. If you did not have your own sled at Woody Acres, you would be stuck using one of the camp sleds that were for the scouts. They were not as good. I do not think I had this sled for very long. Later I got a blue sled that seemed to be the fastest sled in the world.

Once again I am guessing…I think this is my cousin Ray with a Ewe named Emma. Grandpa got animals as presents. I remember when Grandpa got Charlie the lamb, but not Emma. One thing that I notice in this picture is a couch. That couch was never a couch though. Grandma called it the Davenport. I wonder if that is a brand of couches.

Here is Grandpa on the Davenport. He is wearing a Woody Acres T-shirt. Next to Grandpa is juniper the dog. We all called him Nipper. He was one of those RCA Music dogs. He followed Grandpa every where. However, every now and then Nipper would leave camp and be barking. Most of the time he would have some animal trapped in a tree. I can remember a time when he had an animal trapped in a tree and Grandpa took me with the get Nipper. I’m not sure if we came back with a raccoon or a Skunk. It may have been Rascal the raccoon, but I don’t think I was old enough.

Now, I think I can devote an entire blog to Woody Acres, but I would like some input from others that were there. Please let me know if you would like to contribute.

This was not the first picture of the six kids, but it is my favorite. Matthew was in town from Maryland for about a week, and Katherine is new to the world.

I belong to a group on Yahoo called Freecycle. It is a really cool concept. You post things that you dont want, that you think other people might like. It is Salvation Army type stuff, but I find that a lot of the stuff is things that the Salvation Army will not take. One guy was giving away chickens. The other day people were giving away peaches. As you can see, I found a guy that was giving away Aloe plants. He is having siding put on his house. He has about 5000 aloe plants growing in the way of where the siding is. He could dig them up himself and move them, he could just have them trampled, or he could offer them for free. So Chris and I did all of the work, but benefited with Aloe for free. I had 100 plants, now I have about 35. I am also a guy that is giving away aloe now.

Man are my feet sore. We were able to do the entire zoo in one day. It was a lot of walking! I don’t know what impressed me more, the size of the zoo or the landscaping of the zoo. I think I took as many pictures of plants as I did animals. Believe it or not, I only took 115 pictures all day. At disney world I took about 300 a day. However, I can download pictures of animals from the net and say that I took them. I took pictures of the plants with their names so that I look them up later and see if I can buy them. My favorite animal was the Golopogus Tortoise. I had never seen any before. That is probably why I liked them best. Anthony liked the Panda best. I think it is because he got a straw with a panda on it during lunch. Mary Catherine liked the camel best since it reminded her of her trip to Africa. Patrick liked the Lynx because they were chasing eachother all around. Michael did not let me know. I have put all of the pictures that I took in the album.

The trip that I planned a week ago happened today after work. I met up with Chris and we went to the San Pedro House in Sierra Vista. I brought my niece Allison, and Chris brought the twins. I was hoping to speak to one of the volunteers about the strange melon things that are growing on the side of my house; they are also growing near the San Pedro House. However, the visitor’s center was closed. Outside of the visitor’s center are a whole bunch of bird feeders. They are mainly thistle feeders and hummingbird feeders.

The place was littered with Gold ficnhes. There must have been 50-60 of them. The hummers were very shy. The closest I could get to them was about 15ft. Thank goodness for the optical zoom. I was able to get about 5 feet from the finches. The real challenge for taking the pictures was that Allison would scare the birds as soon as I got a good shot lined up. I deleted quite a few pictures of bird feeders without birds. There is a trail there that lead down to the san pedro river and back. The whole loop is about 1 mile. I thought that I would take Allison and give Julie a break. The trail was easy, but the walking was treacherous. Allison would stop about every 10 feet. She had to look at every hole, every rock, every ant. I lost my patience real quick. Not only did she stop often, but she walked so slow. That was until we go to the mud. I told her to stay by me, but she ran ahead into the mud and lost her footing. She fell right on her butt in the mud.

So, I was frustrated because she really tested my patience, and she was not happy because she was wet. We made a real good pair. I got her home as soon as I could after that. Next time I will just take her to the McDonalds with the playland and call it a day.