A R C H I V E S

It's July as I type this and it's been slightly more than 5 years since I began the monthly family news page known far and wide as the "Williams Gazette". The last couple of years I've had trouble keeping it up on a monthly basis and often ended up spanning 2-3 months per issue. With that in mind, I thought I'd try my hand at a more flexible format - that being what you see before you now. I harbor no delusions that I'll be updating more often now that I have something new to play with, though one would hope that I won't take advantage of the fact that since it is now a yearly publication, I technically only have to update it once a year. Since this will be a work in progress, I intend to append to it in a top down manner rather than a "newest first" format as is seen in most weblogs and such. I'll continue to point out additions on our "What's New" page and I'll be sure to annotate and/or date the additions in some way so it should be easy to tell where the new content begins. Another plus of this new format is that there aren't narrow columns or set margins. Whether you view the page in 640x480 or "big as Kansas" resolution, it should expand to fill the screen. Of course, this may result in utter chaos or merely a charmingly cluttered mess. Time will tell. I'm sure everyone knows by now that we took a trip up to Illinois back in May but since the last Gazette ended in April, I figure I need to fill in the gaps between then and now. The trip up and back went smoothly, if expensively, by without issue. Traveling in the Ridgeline is a joy compared to every other car I've owned. It's so smooth and quiet and roomy. It's as pleasant at 90 as it is at 60. Considering it's a truck, that's saying a lot. We enjoyed the whole trip. We got to see relatives, do some sightseeing and visit the family farms. I'm sure Jackson's favorite part was the cows. He was afraid to go in the barn where they were milking but he got to feed the calves from bottles outside. Dean's Mom and Grandma drove over from Indiana to visit and meet everyone. They quickly became "part of the family" and I think they had a good time. Dean found a couple of geocaches in the area, one of which was located near the entrance to some caverns that were briefly famous back when the World's Fair was in St. Louis near the turn of the century.

Not much happened in the month of June. It was hot and dry, with the exception on being brushed by tropical storm Alberto. We did make a trip down to St. Mary's to attend a birthday party for Chris, but other than that, I think we mostly stayed inside and cool the rest of the month. Since I was trapped in the house, I took that opportunity to add some new content to the o'website. Six new slideshows are now available as well as all of our Christmas Newsletters from the past 5 years. The newsletters can be found on our "All About Us" page.

Looking back, it would seem that July was another eventless month around here. At least, there's not a batch of photos from that month to prove otherwise. It was very hot so we didn't spend much time outside. We didn't even attend any July 4th events this year. We saw all the late summer movies, Angela went to a scrapping event, Jackson had a sleep over and we got some new furniture. That pretty much sums up the month.

August was the month we'd been waiting on for 3 years. We finally found the time and money to fly out to Washington to see the younger kids and visit friends. Not much has changed out there, a new building here and there but otherwise it was just as we left it. Since it was August, the weather was great. I always tell people that if they ever visit the Seattle area, do it in August. If the weather was more like that all year, we might never have left. We got to spend lots of time with Laura and Alex, which was our primary reason for going. It had been so long that I'm sure Jackson really didn't remember them. We have pictures on the walls and tell him who they are but what does that really mean to a 4 year old? I'm sure the fact that they're so much older is confusing for him too but he doesn't seem to care as long as they're willing to play with him. Alan came from Tacoma to see us all but didn't get to stay long because he had a trip that was planned before we came. We'd seen him and Sarah last summer when they came to SC for a visit so he looked little different and Jack knew him on sight of course. We had a late flight, so we didn't arrive until around 11 pm or so. The lights were out but when I knocked on the door, there was a pause, then a rapid thump, thump, thump, thump, of someone running through the house. The door was flung open and I was hit full in the chest by 100+ pounds of airborne teenage girl. Good thing I had a second to brace myself or we may have toppled backwards off the porch! Both Laura and Alex have changed a lot. Well, Alex looks pretty much the same, just a lot bigger. Laura of course is a different story. She looks a lot more like Sarah now. Enough so, that Jack kept calling her that. Both of them are healthy and doing well. Laura is miss popularity as always, which is still amazing to me since for the first 7+ years of her life, she was a shy blanket toter. Go figure. Zan might not be much different physically but wow, what a difference in his behavior! I was impressed. He's so improved, he's going to classes at the Jr. High this year. He, Jack and I had fun working on the old playhouse out back. It's still sturdy and in good shape, it just needed a new roof and some paint. We left Silverdale and headed up to Bellingham for the last couple of days of our trip to spend time with Sarah and meet her boyfriend Kyle. We'd never been that far north in WA before. There's a long stretch of road with pretty much nothing along it then about the time you think you're going to hit Canada, this big town pops up. There were three towns in the area back in the day but they all consolidated into one. The downtown area is nice and the main part of town sits on the bay. The other side of town climbs up on a ridge and down the other side. From the top you can see for miles in all directions. It's kind of a cool place that's managed not to fall into decay like so many other old towns. Between her job, the university and Kyle, Sarah seems a happy girl. It was great to see our old friends again too. There was a dinner at Azteca that several people showed up for and a more private party at Liz's for "the girls". We also made it a point to visit all our old haunts and our favorite restaurants. The one thing we'd planned but didn't make it to was the casino. Not for the gambling, for the all you can eat prime rib! We can't thank Skip enough for the afternoon of fun on his boat. We went from Port Orchard to Seattle then nearly to Silverdale before turning for home. That boat can scoot! Though a little rough at times, somehow Angela managed not to turn green. One of the highlights was finding sea lions on several of the buoys. Unfortunately, our trip home was not as uneventful as the trip out. We were delayed for 3 hours while they made repairs on the plane. They wouldn't let us off, then didn't serve beverages and had to power down the engines several times which left us in the dark with no A/C for long periods of time. We missed our connecting flight so had to catch a different one to Jacksonville. Surprisingly, they made up time somewhere because we didn't arrive 3 hours late. If things had gone as planned, Jack should have been asleep the whole time but he was wound up the whole trip. We were so worn out by the time we got home, we had to take another day off to recover.