Living It Up in the Great Land

We have reached that time of year when the energy level in Alaska really starts to ramp up.  The sun is shining for well over 15 hours each day.  And folks are ready to make the most of those daylight hours! 
The bright blue sky is so vast and brilliant, you can forget that the ground is still carpeted in white in many places.  Each day, another patch of lawn can be seen peeking out from beneath the drifts.  Soon, the snow will be a distant memory. 

It'll be another couple weeks at least before the world magically turns green overnight.  But for now, the gorgeous blue sky that can be enjoyed late into the evening hours is good enough.

We have begun taking walks around the neighborhood in the evening hours before Alicia has to head to bed on school nights.  So far, we head further up the mountain for a little ways.  I need to work up to being able to walk down the mountain and then still make it back up the hill to get home!  Baby steps... 

Alicia and her girlfriend auditioned to be in the elementary school talent show in May. They will be doing the salsa. The school is a Spanish immersion school. So, their teacher taught them to do the salsa last fall. They are really cute to watch. Maybe I'll see if I can upload a little video here after the show.

This past weekend was full of Girl Scout activities. Our troop visited the Alaska Aviation Museum and learned about women in flight from our friend, Mrs. Alaska.

After that, we threw a birthday party at the local family homeless shelter as our annual community service project. Everybody had a great time!

In other great news, we have finally located our wheelbarrow which had been missing since November.  Who knows what shorter treasures we'll find once the rest of the snow melts away!

Bears, Birdies, and Squirrels, oh my!

I use this photo as my desktop background.  I took it in San Diego a couple years ago.  It's a nice reminder that warm sunny beaches still exist despite the condition of our local landscape...

Now that our temperatures are venturing into the 50s during the day and only barely dropping below freezing at night, we are all walking around in shorts and flip flops, pretending we live someplace warm.

Alicia rides her scooter around the driveway, banking off the ridges of ice that line its sides.  There is still a very thick blanket of white stuff covering our entire yard.  But, I find if I purposely do not look at it, I can pretend it's not there. 

Alicia has begun what she hopes will be a yearlong bird study for next year's science fair project.  Each day she logs the birds that dine at one of our birdy strip mall of assorted feeders hanging above the back deck.  There's a slingshot hanging near the back door which Stephen has used to do battle with his nemesis, the squirrel.  But, then he figured out that there was no way the bird population was going to get through the 30-lb bag of sunflower seeds before the bears arrive, so the squirrel is now welcomed to dine at his leisure.  Generally, this includes a maniacal snicker at Stephen through the window pane as he munches away, perched on top of a feeder.

As soon as the bears come out of hibernation, we'll need to take down the bird feeders to avoid attracting those unwanted dinner guests.  Stephen says the bears are rude.  "They can't be content to just show up and eat all the bird food.  No, they feel the need to smash the feeders all to heck in the process."  So, down come the feeders.  Of course, we won't know for sure when the bears are awake until we come home to find smashed feeders on the ground.  It's a catch-22 situation.

I'm not sure how the lack of feeders will affect Alicia's study.  But, better safe than sorry.  We live in bear territory and they just don't play well with others.

Easter Weekend 2012

We had an eventful, but enjoyable weekend. 

On Saturday, we awoke to what will hopefully be the last snowstorm of the season.  This succeeded in breaking the record for the all-time snowiest year in Anchorage history.  I believe we are now up to 134.6” of snow that’s fallen since October.  Here’s a fun graphic put together by the local news media regarding snowy years past and present.

http://community.adn.com/?q=adn%2Fnode%2F160670

Most people were actually completely bummed to see MORE SNOW falling from the sky.  Stephen, in particular, was disgusted as he’d hoped to ride his bike to the annual bike show in Anchorage.  He was able to take one brief ride earlier last week after digging a trench through the ice in our driveway.  But, Saturday’s new snow foiled his weekend plans where the open road was concerned.  So, he drove the truck instead.

Alicia, Tess, and I joined the throngs for the Easter egg hunt at the church on Saturday, after our final ice skating lesson.  The girls had their photo taken with the Easter Bunny.  We colored eggs when we got home in preparation for Easter Sunday.

On Sunday, we attended the 10am service at our church.  Tess actually attended all 3 services as she handles the 2-3 year-old Sunday school room each Sunday.  After church, we returned home, whipped up a ham dinner which we shared with family and friends.  The little ones hunted for eggs in the snowbanks outside.  And, Stephen finally got his bike ride on a sunny, blue sky, Easter Sunday. 

More photos:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150689662933159.409522.523908158&type=1&l=d517229167

Easter Picnic -- Alaska Style

We started our Easter Picnic tradition when Tess was 2 years old and we lived in Chapel Hill, NC.  Every year, on the Sunday prior to Easter (aka Palm Sunday), we would invite our friends to join us for a family picnic and some Easter festivities at a local park.  This worked really well in Chapel Hill.  The day was usually sunny and warm with green grass and flowers already in bloom. 

Then we moved. 

At first we moved a little further south to Charleston, SC.  This was still pretty conducive to hosting an Easter Picnic… a bit warmer, but even more flowers in bloom.  Soon thereafter, we relocated north to NY state and the Easter Picnic logistics started to decline.  No more warm spring breezes and grassy egg-hiding spots.  Instead, we had slush and mud. 

Looking back, this wasn’t all that bad.  Because now we live in Alaska; and, chances of hosting an Easter Picnic that doesn’t involve full snow gear are slim to none. 

We hosted this year’s Easter Picnic amidst a mix of snow and rain this past Sunday.  After a brief thought about postponing the picnic until Monday evening when the weather was supposed to be better, we decided to just ride the horse we’d already saddled.  No point in bucking tradition. 

We had about a dozen kids in attendance.  They enjoyed some great sledding.  I was afraid the hill would be an icy slope.  But, really, the terrain was perfect for sledding.  And with our near record snowfall this winter, we had plenty of snow to go around.  This was less useful in the Easter Egg Hunting Grounds.  But, we made it work.  In addition to the sledding and egg hunt, the kids also partook of the Bunny Parade and the egg-shaped piñata. 

No one complained about the weather.  We learned years ago that you can’t let the weather dictate your activities in this neck of the woods.  But someone did mention that folks in other states would never dream of holding a picnic in those conditions.  I agree with that, but also believe those folks are missing out!

You will find more photos from this event here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150681885178159.408354.523908158&type=1&l=cb389e3d1d