This week's Randomness

Nothing special to report this week so I thought I would just post some random items that I found interesting.

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The first picture is of Dave Mahon. He is a Baker, MT native and grew up next door to my mom with his other 12 brothers and sisters and my mom's other 8 brothers and sisters. So yes....half the town's population was on one street corner. Okay....back to the picture!! Dave is the Superintendent at the Huntley Project High School in Worden, MT. Their school was burned to the ground by 4 troubled young kids (ages 19, 16, & 2 14 year-olds) on Thursday, September 18. This picture is so powerful to me in the fact that no matter how hard government tries to take religion out of schools, you just can't. In their hour of desperate need, the first person they turned to was GOD. Amazing!!

**Huntley Project school superintendent Dave Mahon starts a morning meeting off with a prayer in the Huntley elementary school as the Huntley Project High School burns next door Thursday morning. Firemen, teachers and the public attended the meeting.**

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Next......back in July Karlee had a stubborn mosquito bite on her elbow that decided to don an infection a month after she was bitten. Well, not to be outdone, she has another infected bug bite to end the summer with.

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Next......Random pictures of the week.....

Hope everyone had a great week and is having a great week!! :-)

On the Move

On Saturday, Karlee & I along with some of my family members participated in the 2008 Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk in honor of my Grandpa Everett Knipp who is suffering horribly from the disease and in memory of my Grandma Bertha Koenig who suffered from it before her passing.

Alzheimer's is a horrible diesase that has had a huge impact on my family. Grandpa had a bad episode at the end of March and has not been the same. We all knew that Alzheimers had already started with Grandpa before March as he would forget things and would get confused often. Although all this was happening, Grandpa still had his sense of humor, smile and his willingness to always help one of us grandkids or his kids. Grandpa also did all of the yard work and snow removal and most of all the driving in town and short out of town trips. Things are very different in just 6 short months. Grandpa cannot walk very well as he has a slow shuffle, he is very weak and shaky and so he needs help going up and down stairs. Grandpa does not talk very much anymore and you can tell he is struggling to put words together. He cannot remember much of anything, but does still remember who we all are, but I am sure that will be going soon. Grandpa hardly ever smiles; he has totally lost all of his great personality. It is very hard to see him struggle with this terrible disease and it is very hard to see the toll it has taken on my Grandmother, as she helps him all that she can.

I know that all we can do for my Grandpa now is support him and my Grandma but hopefully we can make a difference for the other generations of my family and other families by finding a cure. I don't want to have to worry about Karlee being inflected with this horrible disease.

Here are a few photos from the walk where the Knipp Krew team won an award for the most money earned for a team!! It was quite an honor to know that we will be making a differenceL-R: Karlee, Myself, Renee (My Uncle Jeff's Daughter), Rachel (Karen's Daughter), Aunt Karen

**Click on the pictures to view it larger**

My Grandpa in June of this year--The one thing I will always remember about my Grandpa no matter what is his smile!!

Jeep Videos ...

Okay..finally!! Here are videos of Karlee with her jeep that she got from Aunt Kodi aka Kookie!! :-) I had to split it into 4 vidoes as blogger doesn't allow a big video!!

Video #1

Video #2

Video #3

Video #4

Karlee turns 2

Karlee had her 2nd birthday on Saturday!! It was a lot of fun and she got alot of GREAT gifts. We started with a yummy bbq, then opened gifts and then stuffed ourselves with a great JoJo Circus cake!! Thanks to everyone who was able to attend the bbq...we really appreciated it!! Here are a few pictures from the party! Hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!! :-)