The Plan

It's the Plan. An inconceivable Plan. A Plan that has not - will not - fail. This Plan has been set in motion since the beginning of time. A young virgin, a carpenter, fishermen, tax collectors, beggars, all common people. There are the experts in the law of God and the oppressive experts of the law of the land. You, me, your neighbor. We're all a part of the Plan that the one and only God above can execute.

This Christmas we celebrate the One being born into the world to live out this Plan that will save us all from the evil schemes of the world, evil, and ourselves. The Plan that starts with an angel saying,

"Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) the Lord."

Celebrate with us, your family, your neighbor, your world. Christ, our Savior, is born!

How are your plans coming along this Christmas?

Aloha!

I did my first trip to Hawaii this week. We departed Seattle for Lihue, Kauai. . . 6 hours, 50 minutes later we opened the door in Lihue. We were fighting a 170 mph jetstream for the first three hours. The time went by pretty quick. It was the first over-water flight for both the captain and I so we had a check-airman riding along showing us how it's all done. Flying outside the range of conventional navaids requires diligence in plotting our position. With 2 Inertial Nav units and 2 GPSs helping out, it's pretty hard to get lost these days, but we still have our trusty plotter and chart to ease the nerves when our plot lines fall right on track.
Kuaui is a beautiful island. Our layover hotel is right on the beach. Good food (take a look at the fruit plate in the pictures), good sun, snorkling, and the right amount of warmth. I'm looking forward to being there every Wednesday in December!

Check out the pictures here: Hawaii Layover
Aloha!

And now for Winter!

That was a quick Fall. . . it's wintertime now with temps dipping into the 20s at night and 30s in the daytime. We got our first snow last week and the kids suited up for some sledding in the back yard!

Are we ready for winter, yet? I dunno. . ..

Kyle's Birthday

Kyle turned 7 on October 16th. He's growing up fast! Amber and her mom put together a Dinosaur party with a fossil search, dino-races, and a dinosaur pinata. Family friends and friends from school were there as well as Uncle D from Denver and grandma and grandpa. Good times! Check out the pictures.

Autumn is here!

It's now late September and Fall is definitely here. Many of the trees have yellow leaves and they're starting to fall off. The green still outnumber the yellow. . . There's a chill in the air. We've had a couple frosty mornings and the "termination dust" (snow) caps the mountain tops all around.
School is well underway. Kyle rides the bus (which conveniently picks up and drops off at the bottom of our driveway). He loves 1st grade and has a wonderful teacher. Kyle goes to a wonderful school, "best in the valley," they say. Cougar Pride is top-notch!

Ashley is going to pre-school three days a week in her "little red school house." It's really a house, and it's really red! It was a tough for her to let go her first few times, but she's getting to where she's counting down the minutes. Now if we could just get her to let go of that blankey. . .

Avery is the only child some days now. "Um, daddy? . . ." We never realized how occupied the girls kept each other until they were apart!

Our longtime friends, Mike and Jeannie, just bought some land where they'll build their dream house. It's a beautiful location. We've been out there with them several times now, shooting model rockets and having a campfire with hot dogs and s'mores! There's pictures up on the picasaweb here.

I've been on reserve all September and have been to work all of three days so far! It's been great being home with the family all this time. I have six more days on call this month and I have a feeling I'll do some flying. Scheduling likes to "share the wealth" among the reserves. I'm by far the lowest time guy for the month.

So, that's about it for now. . .

East Comes North

Pictures HERE.
Mom, Dad, Sarah, Laurel and Allison all came up to Alaska to see the sights. We hiked to a glacier near Portage Glacier, picked blueberries on Hatcher Pass, toured the Independence Mine, plus more. See the pictures to see it all.

Best layover yet!

A layover in the airline crew world is a scheduled overnight in a location other than home. It's a normal part of a pilots' life. The airline picks the hotels, mostly the likes of Marriot, Doubletree, Hilton, etc. Usually it's near restaurants, stores, or access to town. Some are nicer than others. This month I've had a number of Juneau layovers. This is probably the best I've had. Juneau is a quaint town set in the mountains right on the shores of the Gastineau Channel. It's a HUGE cruise ship destination for the Alaska cruises. Every day 4-5 of these floating hotels docks in town saturating the narrow streets with rain-jacket clad tourists filling their digital cameras. Tour busses come and go taking people to their excursions: glacier tours, salmon bakes, nature hikes, city trolley tours. There are several helicopter tour operators that take people on scenic tours. One of them, Temsco Helicopters, offers free rides to Alaska Airlines pilots. It was a great adventure. The tour went up over and landed on the Mendenhall glacier. We walked around a bit, then rode back down to the airport. See the pictures HERE.

Alaska Summer

It's almost the middle of July already! The summer has been zipping by. We've had some good adventures this summer. The weather has been rather varied- cloudy/rainy in the 50's one week, then next, sunny in the, umm, well, upper 60's (today and yesterday were exceptional hitting 71 degrees). We've taken advantage of the warm days visiting and wading in Wasilla Lake, Nancy Lake and the Little Susitna River. It's a real treat for me to be sitting on a gravel bar watching the Sockeye Salmon drift in the current while a bald eagle soars overhead. We were met in the "parking lot" by a young bull moose scampering off into the woods. This is all within 10 minutes of our house!

We bought the kids little aquarium fish nets. Kyle is the pro minnow catcher. We tried bringing a couple home for the big fish tank. . . They didn't last much longer than an hour. My little blue freshwater lobster had a treat that night!

On the roads the toys of summer have replaced the trailers of snow machines (snowmobiles for you lower-48ers). Now it's nonstop RVs, four-wheelers, boats and wave-runners- sometimes all together in one large highway flotilla. The Alaska wildflowers are in full bloom. Reds, whites, purples, pinks. If it was like this year-round, I think we'd have a few more neighbors up in these parts.

We're looking forward to my family (the Benas: Gigi, Pop-pop, Sarah, Laurel and Ally) coming up in August. We're hoping to give them the real Alaska experience by heading out to Port Alsworth. I just hope the rain stays away. . . and I can get the time off.

I've added some pictures to the Picasaweb site. Take a look.

Thanks for stopping by!

New Pictures

We spent a couple weeks out at Port Alsworth. We went fishing a couple times, had a couple picnics, and just hung out at the house. Click the Picasaweb link on the right to see the newest additions.

First of all. . .

Welcome to the Benafamily Blog site. I've been trying to figure out a way to let everyone know when I update our photo albums without having to send a mass email every time. In my addictive endless tweaking of my computer and software, my email list has gone through several transformations. In the process I think I've lost some or left some out. I hope the blogsite will keep everyone up to date with our family.

Click on the Photo Albums links to the right there and you'll be transported to our pictures. The Picasaweb will have all the new pictures I upload. I've moved to that service because it's direct-linked to my Picasa photo organizer program. You can go to the PictureTrial site and see past photo albums. It's fun to go back and see how we've grown over the years.

I'm not much into journaling, blogging, I guess is the "wired" term, so I don't know how much I'll be putting on here other than, "Another photo album update." If you know how to do RSS feeds, you can subscribe and it'll show you when any new posts come through. . . I think.