What Chelan Means to Me: Heather Smith-Mateo #lovechelan #chelanfire

The #lovechelan logo was designed by Rose Weagant Olcott,
known as @dinmutha on Twitter. It is being used to raise funds
and awareness for Give Naked, a non-profit org which actively
raises funding for individual "gives" to meet the needs of those
who need assistance within the Chelan community.

This post is part of a series I will be running in the coming weeks, called "What Chelan Means to Me." It is my hope to share the stories of the grown (and growing!) children of the Chelan Valley, and its current and past residents, in order to raise awareness of the devastating fires which have ripped through our valley, and to help promote a beautiful, meaningful fundraising effort.

Visit http://bit.ly/lovechelan to view our fundraising progress, and to contribute. When you make a donation at any of the listed levels, you will receive a unique and heartfelt gift, contributed by someone who has their own connection to our peaceful community.

All funds will be donated to Give Naked, a non-profit organization which actively raises funding for individual needs through Chelan Valley Hope.

You can help by:

• Sharing this post through social media. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram... However you connect with your people, please feel free to share.
• Using the hashtags #chelanfire and #lovechelan in your posts, to help us trend and to raise awareness and participation.
• Making a contribution to the Indiegogo campaign, linked above. Even donations as small as $25 are rewarded with a heartfelt gift!
• Praying for our community, in whatever way is sacred and meaningful to you.

Today's post is by Heather Smith-Mateo, a 1993 graduate of Manson High School, located on the shores of Lake Chelan. She currently works as a graphic designer in San Francisco, California.

I sat down to write this several times. I kept having trouble finding the words, not because I don’t know what it means to me but because it means so much. I could tell you about my first kiss, my first love, my first heartbreak, my first everything, really.

I could mention riding in the parade when I was a little girl, thrilled to wave at the crowd from the float, that same thrilled feeling when I was honored to ride in a float as Manson Apple Blossom Princess in 1993, and the wave of nostalgia I had when I rode on the back of a convertible with Heather Jeffries Coe and Amy Griffith Allan at the ten year anniversary of our time as princesses and queen.

1993 Manson Apple Blossom Royalty, left to right: Heather Smith-Mateo, Heather Jeffries Coe, Amy Griffith Allan

I could describe best friends, my parents, cousins, proms and homecomings and my first car (a totally 80’s Datsun 310 tricked out in black with hot pink stripes), playing on the softball team and yelling “Good Eye, Good Eye, Good Eye, Good Eye, Good Eye” when someone didn’t swing at a ball, learning ballet and how to swim from Pat Beratta and just a million other things but what they all come down to is: Home.

Heather, learning ballet in Pat Beratta's class

Manson is home. Chelan is home.

Heather, as a baby, with her father

I’ve lived in Moscow, ID for three years, went to college in Pullman, Washington for four years and lived in San Francisco, CA for the last 15 but no other place resonates in my heart the way Lake Chelan does. I feel like I’m my most authentic self there. I’m more relaxed and more completely in my skin.

Heather, enjoying the sun during a summer visit to Lake Chelan

Every time my dad considers selling the Cabana (his home on the lake) I have a complete meltdown. I want the best for him but most of what I envision for my long awaited future child revolves around teaching them to swim off the same deck, taking them to opening day of Lakeview Drive-in, showing them where I grew up and went to both grade school and high school, introducing them to local friends and family, watching the fireworks over the bay, tasting an apple picked right from the tree and, of course, their first Manson Apple Blossom parade.

The lake view from Heather's father's dock

I have traveled some since graduating Manson High School: Home of the Trojans, but the Chelan/Manson area is still the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.

Home.

A panoramic view of Lake Chelan, from Manson

And no fire is ever going to change that.



***Cross-posted at SexyVeganMama.com



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What Chelan Means to Me: Christina-Marie Wright #lovechelan #chelanfire

The #lovechelan logo was designed by Rose Weagant Olcott,
known as @dinmutha on Twitter. It is being used to raise funds
and awareness for Give Naked, a non-profit org which actively
raises funding for individual "gives" to meet the needs of those
who need assistance within the Chelan community.

This post is part of a series I will be running in the coming weeks, called "What Chelan Means to Me." It is my hope to share the stories of the grown (and growing!) children of the Chelan Valley, and its current and past residents, in order to raise awareness of the devastating fires which have ripped through our valley, and to help promote a beautiful, meaningful fundraising effort.

Visit http://bit.ly/lovechelan to view our fundraising progress, and to contribute. When you make a donation at any of the listed levels, you will receive a unique and heartfelt gift, contributed by someone who has their own connection to our peaceful community.

All funds will be donated to Give Naked, a non-profit organization which actively raises funding for individual needs through Chelan Valley Hope.

You can help by:

• Sharing this post through social media. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram... However you connect with your people, please feel free to share.
• Using the hashtags #chelanfire and #lovechelan in your posts, to help us trend and to raise awareness and participation.
• Making a contribution to the Indiegogo campaign, linked above. Even donations as small as $25 are rewarded with a heartfelt gift!
• Praying for our community, in whatever way is sacred and meaningful to you.

Some of you know (and the rest of you will, now) that I grew up in a tiny little village on the most beautiful lake in the world, Lake Chelan.

My graduating class was 24 people, and at the time, we were a "big" class.

Lake Chelan is a resort and vacation destination, and people from all over the world flock to its shores to enjoy the water, the mountains, the slower pace of life, and the local love.

Fresh, local apples

It's the sort of place where the village really does raise each child... As kids, if we were out misbehavin' in public, if our parents didn't catch us, some other vigilant mama or daddy would. In a matter of moments, we'd be appropriately corrected, and our parents at home would be waiting, with a stern lecture.

Curlytop, daringly climbing a display of pumpkins at a local business six years ago

It's the sort of place that inspires creativity. I don't know if living in the Chelan valley drives folks to create, or if creative types naturally end up here, but I count among my fellow grown children of Chelan numerous painters, sculptors, poets, authors, musicians, actors and more. It's as if the beauty of the valley comes spilling out through our pens, clay, paintbrushes, keyboards, vocal cords and brains. So much glory is impossible to contain.

View uplake from the deck of a house on one of the valley's smaller lakes

I've spent years in the cocoon-like sanctuary of Lake Chelan, learning to swim in the clear waters, eating apples fresh off the trees in my grandparents' orchard, sledding down the mighty mountains, sunbathing in the glorious rays with Sun-In streaked through my hair... It is where I had my first loves and inevitable heartbreaks, my first kisses, my first broken rules, attended my first "keggers," and delivered my only biological child.

There, too, I suffered a devastating miscarriage, and fell into the comforting arms of my "family" -- the friends, neighbors and co-workers I'd come to claim as my tribe.

The Chelan Valley is where I was encouraged to boldly pursue a love of poetry and writing, thanks to teachers like Mr. Korsborn and Mr. McClure. It is where I met Mr. Wright fifteen years ago, and began a new life with him that is beyond anything I could ever have imagined for myself.

Mr. Wright, the week we met in 2000

It was where my Princess truly became a princess, serving as Miss Lake Chelan royalty.

Celebrating Princess's election to the Miss Lake Chelan royal court

And the community? We take care of our own. When my brother was diagnosed with erythroleukemia, he required countless blood transfusions. Members of the community organized a blood drive, which offset the costs of his transfusions.

When individual families fall on hard times, their neighbors are there, to help them recover and get back on their feet. But... what happens when the loss is so great, we need to look outside our benevolent community for help?

That, my friends, is where we are, now.

Fires have ravaged our community, taking with them homes, memories, business, and... lives. So far, we've lost three heroic firefighters. Businesses have burned to the ground, leaving little but a scorched sign to mark what was once a thriving merchant-place. Houses have been destroyed, the photos and mementos of the families who once felt safe within their walls nothing more now than ash and dust.

We need help. As much help as possible. And so, I am asking all of you to please do what you can to help my home. Please see the introduction of this post for ways you can help, and come visit us, if you can! We'd love to welcome you into our family.

*cross-posted at SexyVeganMama.com

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In Case I Don't See You for Another Ten Years...

My senior picture, alongside a snap from our 20-year reunion.
Senior pic by Parson's Photography, reunion snap by young Azalea Solari.

High school reunions are—in my opinion—the key to proving to the misfits of the world that who you are in high school does not define who you are for life.

My twentieth reunion gathered a decent percentage of our 24-person class, along with spouses, significant others, and families. We gathered at a classmate’s family home—the location of many high school parties—for swimming, watercraft activities, potluck and barbecue.

In my usual fashion, I was hours late due to parenting distractions and saw a few people for only a moment as they were leaving. I hung out on the deck with Mr. Wright, wishing I hadn’t been so terrified of my own cellulite I’d failed to wear a swimsuit. The lake was lovely and warm as we kicked off our shoes and walked at the water’s edge.

Dinner for the adults followed, and our significant others were treated to stories from school. Assuming the statute of limitations had run on our high school misdemeanors, the tales of sneaking out, drinking in the student parking lot, skipping school and weekend parties flowed freely.

I must say, I was shocked to learn who cheated on the senior Spanish final. ¡Increíble!

There were head-shaking moments, like when we talked about the sixth-grade teacher who molested girls in our class and lost his teaching credentials years later, after more victims, but was never criminally charged and remains engaged in the community.

We relived class pranks, memorable school assignments, sports highlights and more. That night, high school wasn’t the scary, lonely place I remembered. It was, instead, a vibrant reminder that I am who I am today because of my past—and parts of it weren’t quite the train wreck I’d assumed they were.

Nobody talked about how weird I was back then; how I always had my nose in a book, how I wrote truly terrible poetry, how I always wore the wrong thing, how I adopted a devil-may-care attitude to hide how insecure I was. No one remembered how skinny and gawky I was—even though we all remembered spiral perms and “mall bangs,” with much embarrassment.

Stories were shared, and I was part of them (except senior English, because Mr. McClure sent me out of class for the year, told me to write a book, and check in with him before graduation). Girls I admired back then told me they envied how I was never afraid to “do my own thing” in high school. If only they knew how terrified I was, how “my own thing” was a feeble attempt at not caring that I didn’t fit in… Maybe we weren’t so different back then, after all.

The truly miraculous part, of course, is how none of it really mattered—and, at the same time, mattered so much. I was a writer in high school, and today I’m a published, best-selling author (okay, so my book topped out at number two on a genre list on Amazon, but it still counts). Sometimes, deep down, I still feel like that awkward, skinny girl who couldn’t dress right and for the life of her couldn’t figure out what to do with makeup. Now, I can take comfort in the fact that no one probably even notices.

To the class of 1992:

Thank you for remembering me, and for reminding me.

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The Unhappiest Place on Earth and Other Vacation Tales

Curlytop is NOT down with Disney.

For children with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), Disneyland may not be the carefree wonderland promoters would have parents believe. In fact, for some SPD kids, it may be something closer to one giant house of horrors.

We weren’t thinking about that when we forked over a month’s worth of grocery money at the hallowed gates of the theme park. We were thinking about the memories we were creating with our children.

Memories, indeed.

I’ll never forget Curlytop and Snugglebug screaming in terror at the sweet face of the wooden puppet who came to life during a gently ambling journey through a darkened ride which featured a blissfully beautiful good fairy and a kindly old man. Snugglebug reviewed the Pinocchio ride with carefully-crafted restraint. “It was scary, and I hated it.”

Next up was a ride so sweet and mild, adults dread it and children adore it. After all, it really is a small, small world, and if the syrupy song doesn’t give you a toothache, the angelic faces of children from around the globe certainly will.

Unfortunately, our mid-November visit meant the ride was outfitted for Christmas, and played not only that most-dreaded song but a Christmas carol in alternating blasts—and sometimes in tandem. The usually charming children were all but hidden behind blinking, glimmering, aggressively-featured holiday decorations. Add all that visual and audio busyness to chilling blasts of air to simulate snowfall, and it’s the perfect recipe for SPD meltdowns.

Oh, yes. We were “that family” on the Small World ride. The family with the shrieking kid who just won’t shut up? That’s us.

I got Curlytop to agree to board a carousel—on the condition that we’d sit on a bench, not a moving horse—only to have her burst into tears as the music started, resulting in an emergency disembarkation.

The crowds, smells, larger-than-life cartoon characters, noise, lights and general chaos of Disneyland must have felt like the equivalent of a straight-to-video horror flick for my girls. I’m ashamed to say I drank the Disney kool-aid, and never considered my children would be anything but thrilled to see Mickey’s stomping grounds.

The next day of our vacation was exceptional, by comparison. We hit Knott’s Berry Farm, with its old-school, carnival-type rides and games. The park lacks the hologram-filled adventure rides of Disneyland, but Curlytop and Snugglebug loved “driving” race cars and semi-trucks around a tiny track without sensory assault, and were perfectly content to hang at Camp Snoopy for hours.

Plus? It’s half the price of Disneyland.

While the little girls played with Mr. Wright, the older girls and I embarked on a quest to ride every rollercoaster in the park. While Princess loves a good ‘coaster, she’s a bit more selective than the rest of us—no vertical drops, and no rocket launches.

That put her on snack patrol with Curlytop and Snugglebug, while Mr. Wright begrudgingly agreed to be my seatmate while Pepper rode with GirlWonder on the Xcelerator—a ‘coaster which starts like a pinball machine, pulling the car back, then launching it at 82 miles per hour in 2.3 seconds to a height of 205 feet, then drops essentially straight down before hitting two overbanked turns and gliding to a stop. To top it off, it’s pink. It looks for all the world like the Barbie Dream ‘Coaster—not an encouraging thought.

Xcelerator at dusk.

It was amazing, and no one soiled their pants.

The coup de grâce was the notorious GhostRider wooden rollercoaster, which my fellow junkies and I waited two hours in line to board, due to a sudden cloudburst. Apparently, the ride can’t be run in the rain and, while we love a good shot of adrenaline, we’re more than happy to leave such judgments to the professionals. We’d like to stay on the track, and make it to the end in one piece, thank you very much.

It was dark by the time we finally boarded our car. Riding the rails in the dark made the experience even more exhilarating, and sealed our status as Knott’s devotees.

The drive back home to Washington featured a near-brawl in a supermarket parking lot, a highway flooded with spilled port-a-potties, sing-a-longs to Fleetwood Mac, carsickness, drive-thrus, and 1,100 miles of memories I wouldn’t trade for a month of Disney.

Eat your heart out, Mickey… The happiest place on earth is where is my family is.

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Mighty, Mighty Mountain Goats! Yeah, I Said "GOATS."

I live in the best place in the world. It's a small community, but one that believes in its kids and goes all out to support our school sports teams. I have to admit I don't watch many sporting events unless my kid is playing. (The exception, of course, being hockey, because hockey kicks puck!) As you can imagine, I still get my fill of venues... The Dude is wrestling, Pockets plays football, GirlWonder started middle school volleyball this year, and - even though Princess's four-year varsity soccer career ended with her departure to college - we now get our soccer fix through Curlytop.

As you can imagine, this mama is constantly running from one gym/court/field to another. Maybe that's why I didn't get a chance to see the Lady Goats in action during this year's volleyball season. Looking back, I regret missing all the action, though, because our high school girls took state this year!

Today, we're off to the football quarterfinals against our nemesis, the Connell Eagles, who knocked us out of the playoffs last year, after a nail-biter of a game last week against Goldendale. This year, I'm betting our fierce Mountain Goats (Yes, I said "goats" - we're terrifying, no?) will dominate.

GO GOATS!

Logo by 7seasscreenprinting.com

Photos from Chelan with Corbin Lewars

My first book signing was fabulously fun and was made even more delicious by the presence of my super-talented and hot mama pal, Corbin Lewars. Check us out!

Thank you, LakeChelanOnlineNews, for the awesome photo!

Thanks again, Riverwalk Books, for hosting us! (Riverwalk still has a few signed copies of our books in stock, so don't be afraid to click on over and order!)

The photo was taken at our post-signing dinner at Chelan's hot new restaurant and bar, Tin Lilly, owned by my friends, Jhen and Tony. Awesome, awesome food, drinks and service. What more could a hot mama ask for?

A Little Privacy, Please!

The Gonzos have recently moved into a bigger home. With the exception of the additional space, my favorite feature is the locks on the bathroom doors.

Confession: I haven’t gone to the bathroom or taken a shower without someone coming in for at least ten years.

While I grew up with just one sibling in the house, Mr. Wright came from a large family and developed different ideas about privacy than I did. In fact, if I ever start to feel lonely, I know I can hop into the shower and Mr. Wright will appear in the bathroom within seconds, citing a pressing need to discuss matters so crucial they can’t wait until I’ve washed, rinsed and repeated.

The first few times it happened, all those years ago, I was startled. “Hey, I’m in the shower,” I said. “Oh,” he replied. “I’ll speak up so you can hear me!” In my sheltered pre-Wright world, taking a shower meant ten glorious minutes of selfish solitude. Now, it means having a conversation about which days Mr. Wright will be out of town while coincidentally standing under a running stream of water.

The toddlers have no concept of, nor desire for, separateness from Mom. My hips have grooves worn in them from toting kids. They’re like two built-in saddles at this point. I haven’t eaten a meal without someone sitting on my lap since Curlytop arrived. These days, I sneak bites in while refereeing shrieking matches over who gets to sit on which knee. Is it asking too much to feed myself without having contortionist abilities?

What’s more, Snugglebug and Curlytop are compelled to barge into the bathroom every time I sit down, and provide running commentary. “Are you going potty on the big girl potty, Mommy?” “You’re going to get a sticker, Mommy? ‘Cause you didn’t go potty in your pants?” “You need to get the paper, Mom, and don’t forget to wash your hands, okay?” I really hope they don’t write my biography.

I’ve trained the older kids to knock on any bathroom door that is closed, and they’ve learned compliance. They knock and wait for permission to come in. Mr. Wright has learned to knock, too, but he uses it as a warning system. Once I hear his distinctive knock, I know I have about half a second before the door opens. “I’m in here!” I cry. “I know,” he says. “I knocked.”

The locks on the new bathroom doors work like a charm. I go in, lock the door, and start my shower or do my business. I ignore all knocks on the door. The knocking party figures it out when they try the knob. By the time I finish, my entire family is standing outside the door. It’s a beautiful thing.

I know the day is coming – years from now – when I won’t be able to make it to the bathroom or shower by myself. At that point, I suppose, privacy ceases to be a reasonable expectation. Maybe I shouldn’t get too used to those locks, right?

I hate to cut this short, but someone is knocking…

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ritman/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Upgrading Our Space, Downsizing Our Housing Payment

We've outgrown our house, as families do - well, like OUR family does. When we bought our groovy three-bedroom-two-bath-postage-stamp-sized-yard home, we only had five kids.

I know. I say that like a guy might say, "It's ONLY fifty baseball caps." What can I say? Some people collect cars. I happen to collect kids.

After the babies got too big to stay in our room, the boys left their bedroom and "walled" up a room in the garage. They liked the privacy of being able to play video games and watch movies without anyone bugging them, and we loved them for it. That's a big sacrifice for a pair of teen boys to make. Giving up their room for their tiny sisters was selfless and... well, sweet.

Even with Princess gone, there never seems to be enough room. We're still a family with six kids at home, three dogs, two cats and a 75-gallon aquarium filled with um, some fish. I can't be sure how many, exactly, we have swimming around in there because Mr. Wright has been slacking on his tank cleaning duties. It looks more like someone threw some moving "things" into an oversized punchbowl.

When we bought our home, the real estate market was booming, and I settled into a comfortable pace of editing the writing I'd done over the past ten years to see what was salvageable and what wasn't. The idea was that I was going to write my novel, or produce a volume of poetry, or an anthology of short stories or whatever happened.

That plan worked for a while, but when the bottom fell out of the real estate market a couple years ago, we were hit hard. Extremely hard. We've been through market slumps before, and the fact is that business always picks back up. It's cyclical. The problem is, we can't wait it out anymore. I started doing more freelancing, but I hardly think I'm going to earn enough doing that to make up for the loss of real estate income. I can't tell you the number of real estate professionals I know who have lost their homes or are in the process. The industry was hit HARD. It's really opened my eyes to how so much of the economy is tied to housing. Anyway, our mortgage payment went from "manageable" to "a stretch" to "completely unrealistic."

So, we move. Have I mentioned how much I hate moving? Or how much it sucks?

Perhaps I have. *ahem*

Anyway, this time is different. This time, I LOVE our new house! The kitchen countertops suck, but I can get over that. It has a huge deck! It has 2.5 bathrooms! It has an area where I'm going to put a library! It has walk-in closets! The boys can live INSIDE the house!

What's even better? Oh, yeah. It's just a couple miles away. No moving over any mountain pass for the Wrights THIS time. Aaaaand, it's cutting our housing payment considerably. More space for less money? I'll take it! We're renting, but maybe I'm ready for it to be someone else's job to fix a broken step or a busted water pipe.

Seriously, this house is perfect for us. For now, anyway. Until and unless we grow again. The owner is interested in selling it. I told Mr. Wright to get busy getting the market back in shape so we can buy it - for CASH. Wouldn't that be nice?

Has the economy caused your family to make changes in your lifestyle or budget? Tell me how... You may, of course, comment anonymously on this post.

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/from_linda_yvonne/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

All the Wright Moves

The homeschooling next-door neighbors with six kids and the homeschooling family across the street with six kids laid hands on the huge trailer attached to our Suburban. They prayed for our safety, and thanked the Lord that we were leaving.

Our northern Snohomish County community was nice enough, but we really were the freaks of the neighborhood. Back then, we only had five kids; all of our neighbors had six. We were irresponsible enough to send our kids to public school; our neighbors all homeschooled.

We were preparing to move to the Lake Chelan Valley, and I was protesting the entire plan. No one could understand my resistance, and many asked, “Isn’t your whole family there?” as if that weren’t enough reason for my unwillingness to return.

The truth was, I had a bad feeling about the move. When Murphy penned his famous law, I suspect he had our future move in mind.

Our new house didn’t close in time, but summer soccer practice started right on schedule. That meant getting up with Princess at 3:00 a.m. every weekday morning, making a pot of coffee and driving over Stevens Pass to get to practice in Chelan by 7:00 a.m. There were still a lot of things to be done at the old house before our renters arrived, so after practice we drove three hours home, where I boxed and scrubbed and wallpapered and painted until I fell unconscious.

Our renters couldn’t delay their move-in date, and we had to start moving things out of the house before we actually had a new home to move them into. Mr. Wright rented a storage unit in Chelan and borrowed a friend’s pickup truck to haul boxes and bins over during his inter-county trips between his new office and home.

During a late-night trip over the mountains, Mr. Wright was involved in an accident when another driver fell asleep at the wheel. He wasn’t terribly hurt, but I used the incident as further proof that we shouldn’t be moving.

I was frustrated at having to move everything twice; once into the storage unit, and again into our new house when – and if – it ever closed. Fortunately, someone broke the padlock on the unit and relieved us of many of our possessions, so there wasn’t quite so much to move in the end.

Two days before the renters were due I sat, teary-eyed, in the middle of the living room floor, a gallon of sand-colored paint spilled on the carpet in front of me. I’d only meant to touch up the window sills.

We loaded the last of the boxes into the huge trailer, only to realize there was too much weight, and the tires were beginning to flatten with the pressure. Mr. Wright pulled furniture and bins out, rearranging them, until the weight was more evenly distributed and not directly over the tires.

“The trailer’s too heavy,” I said. “We’re either going to wreck our transmission, bust a tire, or make it on sheer faith.” I called the homeschoolers. Everyone laid hands on the trailer and the Suburban, asking God to provide us with safe travels and mechanical miracles.

We cleared the top of Stevens Pass just after dark. It was all downhill from there, as they say. At the bottom of the hill, Mr. Wright glanced in his side mirror to see a wheel spinning down the road. It passed, crossed in front of us and came to a smashing halt against the guardrail.

“You don’t think…” I began, as Mr. Wright pulled over to the side of the road. I never did finish the sentence. I didn’t have to. We both knew where the wheel had come from.

As we approached the back of the trailer, it was clear that one of the center wheels had come off. We both broke into hysteric, unrestrained laughter that lasted far too long. (Think Tom Hanks in “The Money Pit,” when the bathtub falls through the floor.)

When he could manage words, Mr. Wright took my hand and said, “Let’s go find the lug nuts, Babe,” and we walked and walked up the highway, flashlights piercing the darkness.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rooreynolds/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Keep Your Holiday Dollars Local: IndieBound Makes it Easy!

As many of you know, I'm a huge advocate of supporting local economies by shopping locally. One of my favorite finds is IndieBound.org, which lets your order online from your very own local bookstores with just a few clicks.

I'm always looking for books for the loved ones in my life, and IndieBound helps me to buy from small, local bookstores instead of huge book retailers like Barnes and Noble. Nothing against Barnes and Noble - it's just that I'd like to see my retail dollars help my local economy.

Anyway, if books are on your holiday list this year, you can visit IndieBound, put in your ZIP code, and order from a bookstore near you. Use this link to get started:

Happy shopping!

Lord, Keep Them Safe

There are some pretty dangerous fires tonight in the Chelan Valley. GoLakeChelan.com is streaming video of the Union Valley fire and The Lake Chelan Mirror is tweeting about the fires here.

Many of our residents are being evacuated from their homes, and some have already lost their homes. Others, like me, are sleeplessly worried about loved ones who are firefighters.

May the Lord protect everyone tonight. Stay safe, Chelan Valley.