Moonrise Over Bear Mountain

As I drove up the hill from the mailbox yesterday evening, this was my view of the moonrise.

Sorry I never seem to have my camera with me when a moose is munching nearby. (I think any time we see moose at this point, they're munching. Although, Stephen said he saw one lying down near the gate to Elmendorf AFB the other day. Must have been taking a break from munching.) I did hear on the traffic report last night that a bull moose was causing a backup on 36th Avenue. By the way, if you're a moose fanatic like me, I saw an article in the mainstream news today regarding our Anchorage moose.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070131/ap_on_sc/snow_urban_moose

Interesting fact for nonlocals... Streets in Anchorage are laid out in a grid similar to NYC. They are numbered north to south. And lettered or alphabetically named from west to east. Downtown is 1st Ave through about 9th Ave. My office building is on 7th Ave between E & F Street. The highest Ave I've seen is 142nd Ave in South Anchorage.

Lotta Bit

Here's Bit, getting a little exercise in the driveway. She may not seem heavy to you folks... but her normal shape is closer to a greyhound in the rear quarters.

Believe me, she uses this physical attribute to her full advantage. She used to take off when we lived in the village of Groton, NY. We'd almost always find her down by the ice cream caboose being fed softserve by people who felt sorry for the poor, undernourished, skinny dog...

Well, she can't do that given her current physique. So I guess it's just as well that we no longer live within trotting distance to an ice cream stand. Now when she "takes off", she's lucky to make it to the edge of the yard. Plenty of ice... not much cream.

Family Updates

Stephen: Still dealing with headaches… mostly on weekends when he spends a lot of time with the family. Could be related… He’s also working on joining the Alaska Defense Force. He’s got the paperwork started. He was in the Virginia Defense Force and really enjoyed it. I think the ADF operates a little differently. But I’ve been told by my boss that they are a good group and are pretty active.

Tricia: Making plans for my conference trip to San Diego in June. Still haven’t decided if/how I’ll be getting to DC at the end of April. Money’s tight, but then again, I have been trying to get this meeting for 5 years… Hmmm. At work, I’m busy facilitating and developing GIS training for the masses. I’m hoping to take some of the training on the road to Fairbanks and Juneau later in the Spring.

Donald: His basketball team won the tournament this weekend. They are undefeated. I said in an earlier post that they’d lost one game thus far… but apparently I was mistaken. They’re 12-0. And at this point, they’ve played all the teams in their league. Saturday’s championship game was a very close game, but they finally got a decent lead in the 4th quarter and won by around 12 points or so.

Tess: Her ankle is fully recovered. She wears ankle braces for all basketball activities and has been having her ankles taped for games. Her team is also doing very well this season. She has a French competition (poem recitation) this coming Saturday as well as a basketball tournament on the 1st-3rd. She’s also involved in a few other academic competitions including one in math and one in English (again poetry recitation).

Alicia May: She is now 2 and has been coached on answering folks correctly when she is interrogated regarding her age. She has yet to master the holding up of 2 fingers, however. So she’ll tell you she’s two, but hold up all five fingers. An overachiever already! Potty training is going okay. She’s used the potty a few times over the weekend. But only for peeing. Pooping is done by squatting in the corner of the living room with a concentrated look on her face. Maybe she’s a third-world baby after all and would prefer a hole in the floor to her Winnie-the-Pooh potty seat with sound effect flush lever. (“All done!” –whooosssshhhhh)

Little Bit: Changing name to Lotta Bit... exercise regimen being increased.

Elmo: Appreciating efforts by humans to maintain pristine litterbox. Still hiding from Alicia May.

Happy Birthday Alicia May!

Guess who's TWO today!

So far we've made the cake and covered it with gummy bears. We made a few extra mini-cakes to tide us over till "Party Time".

We'll be having our party after she wakes up from her nap. Cake, ice cream, presents, balloons, and candles. We're taking the balloons for a test run as we type this blog. We've blown up two pink balloons which we're bopping around the living room. They are almost completely covered by pet fur and other dust due to static electricity.

After the birthday party here at home, we'll be heading to the waterpark! Yippeee!!

[Footnote: I've added some photos to the Dropshots page of the birthday festivities.]

Moose & Milestones

Before we moved here, we had only seen one moose in person and it had been a young one near a road in upstate New Hampshire on one of our summer excursions. Even on our Alaskan honeymoon, we had not spotted a single moose. Lots of grizzlies and caribou, but not a single moose.

I have figured out why this is. It goes back to the 1965 song by the Byrds… Turn Turn Turn. Okay, it goes back a little further because that song was adapted from some verses from Ecclesiastes. Here, I’ll sing a few bars… “To every thing… turn turn turn… There is a season… turn turn turn… And a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to see moose, a time to search in vain…” You get the idea. This song was used a lot in the movie Forrest Gump.

Okay, I digress. My point is, while moose are like phantoms in the summer around here, they’re EVERYWHERE in the winter. It all has to do with grub. The snows come and cover up their grub source so they go places where humans have conveniently stockpiled moose grub in the form of ornamental yard trees, shrubs, and other plants. So basically, they arrive in the neighborhood right about now. And lest you think they’re in a good mood because hey, they found your grub… think again. They’re hungry and mad. So we do our best to stay out of the way.

We saw a couple moose (possibly a mom and her teenage youth) munching on trees in a couple of our neighbors’ yards last Sunday on our way to church. We’re getting better at being Alaskans because we only slowed down briefly to admire their bulk. Earlier in our residency, we’d have been sorely tempted to do a quick U-ey and get the camera from the house.

I’ve been at a Training Workshop for the past 2 days on the UAA campus. On the first afternoon, a huge female moose ambled past the wall of windows. Her ears were flat back and she was very angry. I guess 3 years ago, an older gentleman was stomped to death by a moose on that campus. So while they are really cool to watch and admire, it’s best to keep things in perspective.

In other news, little miss Alicia May pee-d in the potty for the first time ever two days ago! She was duly rewarded with her little sack of gummies. Which, as you know, are her favorite. She’s started to be hesitant to want to sit on the potty at all these days, so this was a big breakthrough.

I’m off from work today because we have no childcare available. I’ve scheduled Alicia’s 2 year old doctor’s appointment for this afternoon. Other than that, I have a long list of things I want to try to accomplish today. But don’t worry… lots of it is birthday related (cake, gift wrapping), and then there’s the “Play with Alicia” task… :o)

Pookaboos is Almost Two!

Here's Miss Priss in her "new" Carhartts. Functional, yet stylish... We bought these off craigslist which is fairly active here in the Anchorage area. Turns out, the person selling these 2T Carhartts was less than 1/2 mile from our house.

Other recent craigslist purchases include a bunch of passes for the H2Oasis Indoor Waterpark which we intend to use this Saturday. Alicia May has her heart set on spending her "birthday in the water". I picked up some Little Mermaid plates, cups, and napkins today to keep with that swimming in the water theme. Plus, they're sparkly & shiny which just puts their appeal over the top!

I also got a pack of gummy bears which I intend to use on her cake somehow. She's crazy about gummies. She doesn't actually get many gummy bears. Mostly she survives on those gummy fruit chews that come in little mylar pouches, 10 sacks to a box. She likes the Hello Kitty kind especially. And as luck would have it, these were Buy One Get One Free at the grocery store today so we stocked up! Not that we will ever need to worry about it, but I'd be willing to wager gummies have a pretty long shelf life. So we may as well get them while the gettin's good!

I see sick people...

I come from the Land of the Living Sick. (or otherwise less than hearty...) We've decided Stephen has been suffering from migraines which culminated yesterday evening. He will be making an appointment to see a doctor today.

Stephen, Alicia, and myself have all had congestion issues for the past week. It seems like we've had more than our fair share of illness this winter.

Tess of course has her sprained ankle. We iced it (or I should say "snowed" it) all weekend. And she's off the crutches today. She'll be going to practice today if only to practice free throws and other shooting without so much ankle movement.

Donald's home from school today. He came down with a stomach virus of some sort yesterday evening.

So at about 11pm last night I've got Alicia in her crib with that congested snoring which she does in such a cute little way. Tess is in her bed with a freezer bag of snow on her ankle. Donald's heaving in the bathroom. Stephen's lying in the recliner in the dark with a cold, wet cloth over his forehead and eyes. He's afraid to move in case the nausea causes him to throw up the last prescription migraine pill we had in the house before it can take effect. The dog's been banished to the garage for poor doggy behavior and the cat's hiding behind the gun safe after puking in Alicia's mini-shoe.

Things are good. :oI

Sports and Grub

Both kids had Home games against West HS today. Tess acted as statistician due to her sprained ankle. But Donald played a good game. He's playing more aggressively than I've seen him in the past. And it's helping his game a lot. Here's a photo of his "foul" number up in lights... ;o)

The end score of both games was Us lots, Them little. Tess's team won 41 to zip and Donald's end score was like 72 to 32 or thereabouts. His team has had an awesome season. I think they've only lost one game. And that was in a pre-season tournament.

Stephen went to a Men's Breakfast at the church this morning. They have that once a month. It's the first one he's been to. I think it's along the lines of a camp breakfast minus the tents. He said it was a good time and he met about 20 other fellas who attend our church. That reminds me, there's the monthly potluck at the church tomorrow and I haven't even thought about what to bring! Better quit blogging and get on that.... Later!

To make a short story long.....

It started really a few days ago when Stephen began feeling under the weather. Then I came down with the same affliction… full head, ears feel funny, overall blah.

I spent yesterday feeling miserable at work. I had gotten very little sleep the night before because the baby decided to cry at 2:30am. She quickly dozed off again, but I never did. I paid for it yesterday afternoon.

Then there was the accident at the Muldoon Rd exit on the Glenn Highway, just as I was attempting to get out of Anchorage on my way home. The problem with there only being one road in and out of Anchorage is that any accident has the potential to completely shutdown traffic. Such was the case yesterday afternoon. I sat for about 45 minutes in traffic, still feeling miserable.

By the time I got home, I pulled into the driveway, waited for 2 kids to pile in with basketball gear and drove back to the high school. Donald was 15 minutes late for his 4:30 practice, Tess’s practice wasn’t going to start until 5:30. I picked up the baby from daycare on the way home. What should have been a ½ hour commute had turned into 2 hours.

Tess called at 5:30 to say she only had one basketball sneaker with her. At that point, I had absolutely no desire to get back into the van. She was instructed to be resourceful and work something out. She did.

At 7:30 when Stephen picked her up, she hobbled herself and her sprained ankle out to the truck using crutches. They must keep a stash of crutches in the gym for just such occasions. She had worked out the loan of another girl’s sneakers which were a little small. Keep in mind that Tess’s own basketball sneakers are size 9.5 men’s. (I think they run small, but still…) Apparently, her jump stop wasn’t as smooth when wearing sneakers that don’t fit. So, she went from awesome game the night before to the injured list one day later. Sigh.

The good news is, Tess has always had a fetish for crutches but never the opportunity to officially use them. So here’s her big chance! And thankfully, it’s for something relatively minor. In addition, I think she’ll be able to turn this into an even more positive experience by using her new found frailty to gather the attentions of certain persons. Her attitude was good this morning and I’m thinking it’ll be a good day!

Team photo

Tess's current team photo. There she is... front and center, #24.

Alaska Hoops

Tess was on fire at her game last night. I should probably start keeping track of her stats. She made at least 9 points last night including 3 of her 4 free throw shots and the first 2-point shot of the game. She is really becoming quite the good player and is a lot of fun to watch. She has a nice smooth style about her play and a decent vertical leap. During the course of the game she took an elbow to the jaw and got scratched on the other side of her jaw. The score remained close throughout the game with her team falling short by about 8 points in the end. But not for lack of effort on her part. I was very proud.

Donald also had a game last night. His was Away at Bartlett HS in Anchorage. Stephen went to that one. Apparently, they trounced Bartlett and Donald made his first 6 points of the season. Aside from the wide gap in score, it was a really good game. Donald has a good stature for basketball and his coordination has vastly improved since the rapid growth spurt of the middle school years. He just needs to work on his aggressive play skills and get in there. I was glad to hear he made some points last night. And I know he was proud of that as well.

Barrow Photographic Essay

Stephen provided me with some photos from his recent excursion to Barrow. I'm pretty sure these were taken during the "daytime". One shows the airport which consists of an Alaska Airlines terminal.

Next, there's the Airport Inn which is where he stayed the night. He said the people in Barrow are all VERY nice. I'd think they'd all be depressed given the 24-hour darkness. But I guess the folks who can live in Barrow are used to the darkness and it doesn't bother them. I did speak to the receptionist at the Inn and she was very pleasant. Stephen said she's from Texas. Go figure.

The last photo, a self-portrait..., kind of creeps me out. It looks like something out of a Freddie Kruger movie. But Stephen claims he wasn't thinking much about fashion statements when he was rapidly dodging from one "inside environment" to another. The wind chill was -51 degrees during his stay. Brrrrrrr!

Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere...

We had a pleasant, somewhat productive weekend. Particularly, Monday, the holiday. I think that might be the key to achieving and maintaining a clean house with kids. I've often been frustrated by trying to clean a house and have it remain clean for more than 5 seconds with kids around. When Tess was little, and now with Alicia, it seemed like I was being followed around as I cleaned by a Tasmanian devil similar to the cartoon version.

Anyway, I've found the solution... Don't bother cleaning anything until folks are going to be away from the house (i.e., the night before school and work starts back up). In this case, I had a whole weekend to enjoy doing nothing. And then the older kids slept in on Monday while Alicia and I tackled some cleaning tasks. I did rope the older two into getting their normal chores done and an extra thing or two. This included making a dent in the back porch shoveling. We're thinking of making a mini-snow playground for Alicia back there. In the photo, she's taste testing the idea.

To celebrate my clean kitchen bar area, we broke out the new Smores maker Santa gave us for Christmas. Yummy!

Walking the dog...

We're coming closer to perfecting our dogsledding technique. We spent the midmorning exercising Bit who has put some weight on this winter...

Alicia had a great time being whooshed up and down the street. In all honesty, I think Bit prefers the down-whooshing and is not as fond of the up. But she was cooperative.

We spent most of the day at the high school either watching basketball games or working at the concession stand. Both Tess and Donald had a game today. Both of their teams won. I'll put some photos (taken with our new-to-us digital camera :o) on our Dropshots page. Here's a photo of how Alicia spent her time at the games...

We've had some mighty cold weather as of late, but today was a very nice day, up around the low 30's. Very pleasant.

Alaska Geography 101

Stephen called me from Fairbanks. He had a brief layover there on his way to Barrow this morning. I've provided this map so you have some idea of where these towns are. As a bonus, you can see the location of that much spoken about oil pipeline... (It was the quickest map I could find on the state website that showed the right towns.)

Tomorrow when he returns, he'll have a layover in Prudhoe Bay ("pru-doe"). This is where most workers go who work on the "North Slope". They fly up there for a few weeks at a time, then have a few weeks off back here in Anchorage. The dad of the family Tess babysits for works up there.

In case you were thinking Alaska is just a giant island like Australia... that straight line and all parts on the right are bordered by Canada. Barrow and Prudhoe Bay are on the Arctic Ocean. The Aleutian Chain of islands juts out into the Pacific Ocean. The Bering Sea separates the Arctic from the Pacific. Geography lesson over for today. :o)

Up up and away!

Stephen's heading to Barrow tomorrow morning for work. He's looking forward to it. The temperature in this photo is warmer than the "high" he can expect tomorrow and the next day at the "Top of Alaska". The negative 11 is in Fahrenheit. I took this photo yesterday afternoon....
It actually gets much colder in the interior of Alaska around Fairbanks. Barrow is on the Arctic Ocean. And of course, it's 350 miles above the Arctic Circle, so the sun won't make an appearance during his visit. I'm trying to convince him to take a dogsled tour or maybe a polar bear watching tour... Of course, it'll be dark... so he's not warming up to my suggestions. But he is looking forward to the adventure.

How to have fun on a Tuesday evening...

Note to self: Don't let the baby play with the van keys if you hope to be in Walmart for less than an hour. Just to be on the safe side, let's not let the baby play with the van keys at all. She seems to have a fetish for hitting that panic button anyway.

We made what was intended to be a quick Walmart stop this evening. It wasn't until we were checking out that we realized the baby no longer had the van key she had been playing with a while back... Now I'll be honest, I am a big fan of Easter egg hunts. But van key hunts in a Walmart are not high on my list of favorite past-times... We (the other 4 members of the family, as Alicia May gave no indication of disclosing her secret key hiding place) scoured that store from top to bottom... Okay' mostly bottom as Alicia May is still under 3 feet tall.

Finally, and somewhat miraculously, Donald found the van key in the electronics section. What should have been a 15 minute Walmart excursion turned out to be over an hour of Walmart saga. But all's well that ends well...

Snow Much Fun

Here's the snowy mountain behind our house as seen from our driveway yesterday afternoon. Lots of nice globs of snow linger on the trees.

And here's a Snow Quiz: Where's the driveway?

Add together White Driveway with White Snowbanks and Minimal Shadows... it's no wonder folks spend lots of time ditch diving. Who can see where you're supposed to be driving? (Keep in mind that I back out of this in the dark every morning...)

This weekend was mildly productive, in a non-memorable sort of way. I finally got my dresser cleared off.

You know those carnival games where you drop a quarter in a slot and it lands on a surface piled high with many other quarters as well as other prizes? The goal is to have your quarter land strategically so that the oscillating sweeper bar uses it to push the rest of the teetering loot off the brink and out through a loot chute into your waiting hands!

Up until this weekend, my dresser top resembled this carnival game. Each evening, I’d empty my pockets and attempt to strategically slide the contents onto a small sliver of a spot on the dresser top. The only difference being that I was trying to avoid the oscillating sweeper arm of one carnie toddler pushing everything off the teetering brink into her waiting hands…

And well, the fact is, she’s getting taller. So something had to be done to avoid too much “winning” on my dresser top carnival game. She’ll just have to find greener pastures elsewhere. Maybe the shelves in the back of our closet… She can use Laundry Mountain to scale those heights…

Weekend Plans and Weather Report

It was 4 below when I woke up this morning. But don’t despair, we’re expecting to top out at 8 above sometime today! Tonight we’re looking at 10-20 below for a low and tomorrow we’ll only hit a high of zero. Technically, 0 = nothing. So how you can have a high of nothing is complicated. Seems a little like underachieving if you ask me. But once again, nobody has.

As for us here in our little neck of the snow covered woods… We’ll be having a fairly normal weekend. The teens are heading to Teen Night at the church this evening. I may convince Stephen to see a movie with me and Alicia while we wait to pick them up. Tess has a basketball scrimmage tomorrow morning. She may go to a movie (Freedom Writers) with her friend Becky. At some point tomorrow we plan to pop down to the Dimond Center Mall in South Anchorage to spend leftover Christmas gift cards and aid Donald in emptying his savings account to purchase a laptop.

I’m in birthday planning mode for Alicia’s big number 2 at the end of the month. Haven’t quite decided what we’ll do yet, but I’m thinking it’ll involve gummies and ice cream and grapes. As you’ve probably guessed, these are her favorite foods!

Fun Geography Facts

Here's this morning's radio quiz question: If Alaska is the westernmost state in the US, what is the easternmost state?


Here's a little map to assist you with your response... (The red dots are supposed to signify the extreme N, S, E, W points of the US.)

Thinking....

Still thinking......

Answer: Alaska! As you can see on the map, some of our outlying Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian putting them in the very far "east".

In case you had doubts, I want you to know I would've won if only I could have gotten through to the radio station.... Ah well.

Snow Advisory

We’re expecting up to 12 inches of snow today. Stephen couldn’t be happier. If you’d have suggested such a thing a few days ago, you’d have been met with a response of dread. But he acquired a brand spanking new snowblower on New Year’s Day and has been itching for a good snowfall to tackle ever since.

The “Road to Snowblower” experienced rapid acceleration on New Year’s Eve when he attempted to clear the driveway using the secondhand snowblower we picked up at a yard sale last summer. He’d ordered a part from Michigan or somewhere and got it to pseudo-working condition. But his efforts (struggles) on Sunday were enough to throw his back out and his towel in. We bit the bullet on Monday and headed for Lowe’s.

What made the whole snowblower purchase just that much more scintillating was the fact that he found an 8.5 horsepower/26” blade machine tagged with a price for a 5.5hp/24” blade blower. So what should have gouged us for $819, only cost us $649! Gotta love reaping the benefits of others mistakes… And, for the record, I don’t equate this to not correcting a cashier who gives you too much change… Everyone involved in this transaction was well aware that this machine was mismarked. And they were equally aware of the rules of retail which dictate an item must be sold as advertised. It won’t put a dent in Lowe’s bottom line, but it did put a grin on Stephen’s face and a skip in his (backache-slowed) step. God Bless America. With liberty and an electric start for all.

Happy New Year

One of the great benefits of living in Alaska is that the ball drops at 8pm on New Year's Eve and then you can just say "Happy New Year" and go to bed!

We watched the New Year ring in several times on Sunday evening, every hour as a matter of fact. By the time it was about to be our turn, I think they were gearing up to show a rerun of Chicago's countdown... So we succumbed to sleep at 11:30pm. Let's face it, how many times can you get excited over a 10-9-8.... countdown and a bunch of fireworks and confetti on a TV screen? At the time, catching zzzzz's seemed much more appealing!

As a matter of fact, I was able to catch a great number of zzzzz's over the past week since ending my employment at JCPenney. Finally! Back to the 7am-3pm workday with weekends to do with as I please! (Well... aside from running kids all over the place and attempting to put the house to rights...) At any rate, I've caught up on my sleep and then some... Ahhhhhh. Happy Relaxing Holidays.

If you too would like to experience holidays without stress or chaos, here's a tip: Move 5000 miles away from your extended family. And do it close enough to the holidays that you don't really have time to make many friends to clutter up your relaxation plan with parties and other stress-laden festivities.

There is of course, a trade-off, and it may or may not be worth it. But it's probably good for your health once every 5 to 10 years. If this plan is not an option, a strategically scheduled trip to Tahiti would probably also work well.