Good News from Iraq

A bit off of the family events topic...If you're interested.

As a follow-up to the last post on our Iraqi visitors, the headline link takes you to a blog that summarizes some of the good news out of Iraq that reflects the hopeful spirit of Taghreed and Surood. The good news happens as broad stream of small discrete events that don't make an easy headline like a car bombing. Perhaps the stream can become a torrent that will wash away the terror. I hope.

Mr. Ambassador

Congratulations to our friend Craig Kelly, his wife Kim and their children Cameron and Evan. Yesterday Maria and I were privileged to attend the swearing in of the United States' new ambassador to Chile, Craig Kelly. Cameron has been one of Ana's soccer mates for the last three years. During that time Craig was Executive Assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell, whom you see in the photo giving Craig and his family a send-off. I've greatly enjoyed living vicariously through Craig's adventures around the world for the last few years. It certainly encouraging to see someone of such intelligence, integrity, and humour represent our country and succeed in the high levels of our government.

Hopefully the next time I see you I'll have retired!

Evil Eye
For those of you with an entomology fixation, our visiters from Brood X have come and gone. It turns out they are favored, and plentiful, dog treats. Crunchy! Photo credit to Maria.

Dead Animal Parts - I

Deerfeet
Our family friend Ed Rankin helped Sam with a fun project to add more animal parts to his bedroom collection which currently includes snake skin, cattle skull, petrified fish, dog testicles, and what else I'm not sure since I haven't looked under his bed lately. Last fall Ed contributed four deer paws from his hunt so Sam could make a deer paw coat rack. (I know, it sounds like we've moved to West Virginia. But as of yet that hasn't happened.) After the paws spent the winter and spring tied into shape buried in rock salt, they were finally ready for mounting last week. So Sam worked with Ed to fashion a backboard out of a walnut plank harvested from Ed's yard. Ed is a first class wood worker and so was able create something beautiful in an hour that would have taken me weeks to do poorly. However, I did provide moral support by sitting in a chair and consuming an ice cold imported beer.(Now its really starting to sound like WVA,except for the "imported" part.) So we'll look forward to your next visit when you can hang your hat on Sam's newest furnishing. Thanks Ed.

Climbing at Red Rocks Redux

Climbing at Red Rocks 

As many of you know, last fall I spent two weeks climbing at Red Rocks just outside of Las Vegas. I just received this photo from Dave Anderson, one of my instructors who is also an outdoor sports photographer and an extraordinary adventurer. Its the best picture I've seen from the trip. I'm teaching the kids to climb this summer! Additional photos from the trip can be seen at Ofoto by clicking the above heading for this post. Thanks Dave.

Launch of The Clements Family Weblog

Family and Friends:

http://smmgclements.blogspot.com

This is another of our feeble attempts to be hip and to use technology to maintain contact with our far-flung family and friends. We've tried the website ( http://home.comcast.net/~smmgclements/ ), and we did get thousands of hits, but I think they were all from me maintaining the site. So, we thought we would give this a try since its easy to update by any of us(SAMS - Sam, Ana, Maria, Scott), its more dynamic, all of you can participate with feedback comments("Cool", "You're Nuts", etc), it can be updated from anywhere(e.g. on vacation, and you will automatically be notified when there is something new to see.

So in effect, this is like one of those irritating Christmas brag letters(which we do like to get), except that it comes year around! Sort of like family SPAM.

Now for the good news. We'll probably tire of this in a matter of days, weeks or months; so that pain won't last.

So, here we go. We'll try not to bore you.

P.S. I think the system will send you email when there is a new post and I don't think you need an RSS/ATOM news reader, all though you can subscribe to this blog if you have one. Also, this is a private blog so it can't be viewed by anyone that we haven't invited. Let us know if there is someone else we should invite.

Link