Lots More Alaska Pictures

Here’s a lot more pictures from Alaska.  I’m working on the video too.  These things take time.  I have graduation stuff to post too.  Please bear with me.

Alaska Cruise

Here is the first set of pictures from our cruise to Alaska.  This is just a sampling of over 200 pictures we (mostly Karri) took.  I shot almost two hours of video.  I plan to spend the next couple of weekends cutting and posting just about all of it, but this will do for starters.

Approaching Sitka

Lighthouse near Sitka

Sitka

Ice sculpture in the main dining room on the Mercury

Hubbard Glacier

Iceberg at Hubbard Glacier

Our Northernmost point

Scott and Karri at Hubbard Glacier

Sammy

Wyatt Earp's gun at the Red Dog Saloon in Juneau

The Red Dog Saloon in Juneau

Juneau

Scott in Juneau

Mendenhall Glacier outside Juneau

Close-up of Mendenhall Glacier

Scott at Mendenhall Glacier

The Lumberjack Show in Ketchikan

Room service aboard the Celebrity Mercury

The Casino on board the Mercury

The (something) Nightclub on board the Mercury, Deck 7 Aft

Midship on the Mercury, looking down from Deck 7 to Deck 5

The Celebrity Theater on the Mercury (Incredible!) 7 Forward

The Navigator Club on the Mercury, 12 Forward

Meet My Family

I got the coolest email from my sister Sheri yesterday! She saw my blog and wrote me a long letter. She lives in El Paso, Texas, so I don’t get to see a lot of her. I really miss her sometimes so it was great to hear from her. This is one of the main reasons I started this blog, and it appears to be working! Karri and I have family spread out from Southern California to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The mission of this blog is to glorify God and bring us all closer together spiritually, since we’re so far apart geographically.

Sheri sent me a couple of pictures of my awesomely handsome nephew, Clayton Allen Harmonson. I like this one the best:

He’ll be two on August 3rd. My daughter Emily spent a couple of weeks in Texas last summer and took some pictures at his first birthday party. Here’s Clayton and his mom Sheri:

And here’s one that shows my ruggedly good looking nephew’s dad, Clark:

My brother Keith was there too. He’s a musician, but that’s for another post:

And since I haven’t formally introduced my immediate family, here is my oldest, Todd. He’s 20:

My younger son Carl, 18:

and my princess, my introverted little girl, Emily. She’ll be 16 in a couple weeks!

Our youngest, Christian, was introduced in an earlier post, The Plaza vs. City Hall.

The newest member of our family came along in January. This is Riley:

Her full name is Riley McDoodle Hunton Anderson. She’s Irish. She’s a sweetie girl! Yes she is!!!

And here’s one of me and my gorgeous wife Karri. I love her very much!

There. Don’t I have an excellent family? I think so. I am absurdly blessed!

Coming soon… Meet the Parents!

A Nearly Perfect Father’s Day

So, I had a great Father’s Day. Karri almost got me a box of John Wayne ammo (see my very first post on May 26), but she wisely chose the John Wayne Century Edition DVD collection instead. She says it lasts longer, and she’s right. I love Karri! She’s so smart.

It has 14 of The Duke’s best movies. Giddyup, pilgrim!

The kids got me a hand crank radio with a built-in light. It has an AC adapter so you can plug it in, or it can run on standard batteries, or, and this is the cool part, it has a dynamo, so it’s useful during a power outage. You just crank it up and off you go. AM/FM and short wave. You can charge your cell phone with it too. Sweet!

We went to church, where they passed out to all the fathers an ice cold Dad’s root beer.

After church, Karri took me to my favorite restaurant, ¡Caso Ramos!, which I’ve been meaning to blog about for some time now. This place is becoming a habit. I know Mexican food, and this stuff is mui sabroso! I’ve been stuck on the Carne Asada y Mas for about eight visits now.

Thanks Karri! Thanks kids! I love you guys! And thank you to our Heavenly Father for such a wonderful family. I am ridiculously blessed. My cup indeed runneth over. Happy Father’s Day God!

The Plaza vs. City Hall

My son is a punk. I know he doesn’t mind me calling him a punk, but I hope he doesn’t mind me calling him son. Technically, Christian is my stepson. Anyhow, I’m proud of him. He runs with the non-conformist crowd (I tried to explain to him how oxymoronic that is, but he doesn’t care), just like I did when I was a young man.

A few weeks ago, a new all-ages music venue opened up in town about 200 yards from our apartment. He loved it because all the local hardcore bands finally had a place to play and he could walk there in about a minute. His mom Karri and I loved it because if anything went wrong he could get home, or we could get there, real quick.

The Plaza was open for a couple, three weeks, I don’t know, and then the “authorities”, the “powers that be”, pulled the plug. The city’s position was that they had first approved the business license and zoning approval and all that, but then, well, mistakes were made. You see, there were other citizens who weren’t happy with the situation. There was a lot of back and forth about why, and who was at fault. Christian was one of the punks who emailed the city in protest. And the city responded. Well, just watch the video…

This is part one of five parts. We posted the entire meeting on YouTube. If you want to see the rest of the meeting, just go to youtube.com and search on “scottkarri”. I’ll update this post as the story develops.

My Testimony, Part 1

I was born in a small town in Texas in 1960. I was raised in the church. My parents had me “baptized” as an infant. From the time I started school I served the Lord. On Sunday mornings I wore red and white vestments and carried a small torch up the center aisle at the beginning of the service and back down at the end. It still amazes me that they would put a kid so young in charge of an open flame. It’s a miracle I never burned the place down.

My parents and my older brother and I all went to church together pretty regularly. I went to Sunday school. I learned the Gospel and the ten commandments and the Apostle’s Creed. I was blessed with a good foundation early on. Then, when I was about nine or ten, I remember my parents going to church less often. Dad would drop me and my brother off and go back home. Even when my parents started to fall away, they made sure my brother and I got that firm foundation. One day, my mom took me and my brother to spend the weekend in Houston with my grandmother. We skipped church that weekend, and when Sunday evening rolled around and it got dark and we weren’t getting ready to go home, I asked mom why. That’s when she said we weren’t going home again. After that weekend, the only time we ever went home again was every other weekend for visitation with dad.

My parents divorced and mom got an apartment for us in Houston. Everything changed. I don’t want to cry too much over spilt milk here. Suffice it to say I was confused and devastated. I never saw it coming. My parents were careful never to fight in front of the kids, which made the split even more of a surprise. I didn’t know they were having problems. Anyhow…