easter 2009

it is very interesting watching my kids color easter eggs! kinley's usually turn out somewhat black:) and she is happy as a clam with however they turn out. riley is much more specific and wants his to look a certain way - smudges and mishaps bother him a lot more. i can say i completely understand how he feels!! there must be a better way to color eggs than to have your hands touch the eggs:) either way we have very colorful eggs and we have a blast hiding and rehiding them

i didn't have an easter dress for kinley this year, so i just thought i could go to the store and get one - well i was wrong! i haven't been to a normal store in so long that i about fell over when i saw the prices of girls dresses. i was looking at the 70% off rack at sears - i thought great, i should be able to get a deal here. well, even at 70% off the dresses were still $25. so i ended up buying a skirt at walmart. mom & renee, i need you to start shopping for an easter dress for kinley:)

happy birthday riley!! 8 years old

just as we were getting settled into our house it was riley's birthday!! he is growing up to be such a handsome caring young man. we are proud of you riley!

















his friends, isaac, adam and kayla were at his party (along with little clara):)






























































he wanted a cake with snow covered mountains, a river and moose:) i have never made icing moose before!

we quickly got settled into our new house. it was great to see our friends again and they were all so welcoming!!! it was really a wonderful welcome and great to see them again.
i spent about 10 minutes tearing out the carpet of the house - it was ugh! then about 3 days scrubbing the floor from the adhesive - one room was carpeted with little squares of carpet and each square had 2 strips of adhesive on it - the strips had to be scraped off then the adhesive had to be taken off - i think i went through 4 bottles of orange adhesive stripper - our whole house smelled like oranges for a few days. then we took out a wall that was in the kids room so they could have a bigger room. then we were ready to have fun! so we went skiing!

there is a little hill at hatchers pass so we went skiing there. oh my goodness! i never know what i'm thinking when i think of skiing with kinley! this ski hill is not really one to ski behind a little girl on. i'm just too out of shape to be doing that. but she loves it, so i'm sure i'll do it many times again this winter:)

we let here ski by herself on the sledding hill. she can't turn so we would just aim her across the hill and the deep powder on the side of the sledding hill would stop her. she wants to ski just like riley but doesn't quite understand that she doesn't know how to turn (she's our little girl who knows everything!)

on the ferry

we stopped in washington to see our friends, kara & scott & kinley and riley corley, and thad mccracken and his wife. it was great to see all of them and i have no pictures!!! i guess i wasn't in the frame of mind to take pictures. we hadn't seen these friends in a long time (except kara:)) and it was wonderful to see them.

then it was off to the ferry.

when we left denver it was warm - i don't remember exactly how warm, but i remember i had already gotten out my flip flops and had been wearing them before we left. then it just got colder and colder and colder as we went north. i knew it would be cold so i had our bag packed of hats, gloves, snowboots and snow suits, but it was hard to imagine wearing it all - it was too warm! well i imagined it real soon! we hit snow somewhere in washington, then on the ferry it just got colder and nastier until we got to haines and it was WINTER!! there was a couple feet of snow on the ground, it was snowing and freezing!!!!
jud had planned on meeting us in palmer but decided to meet us in haines and drive with us - it was a good thing he did. when we got the canadian/american border they asked where kinley's dad was (riley was in the truck with jud) and i told them he was with me in that truck. well, i thought that was a weird question and i started asking them questions. it turns out that if jud hadn't have been with me i would have needed a letter saying i could take his kids across the border!!! it never says that when they list the items you need to cross the border!!! if he hadn't have been there i would have been stuck waiting for a letter of consent from him. so, i'm glad we weren't stuck in haines!
we drove on the haines junction that night. when we woke up the next morning it was -35 deg!!! that is cold!! they had just had an ice storm a few days earlier and the roads were covered with 2-3 in of pure ice!! we heard they had closed a lot of the roads so they could scrape them (they scrape grooves in the ice). so all the way from haines to palmer we drove on 2-3 in of ice (but it was scraped and that made it not so slick).
when we left haines junction we let the car warm up for 30 minutes and when kinley and i got in we still had to wear our down coats! we shivered in our down coats for a couple hours until the sun came up and started warming us up. kinley got in the car and said "i don't like alaska!!" - it was toooo cold for us. well it stayed cold for the whole trip!

trip to alaska

the kids and i had a few day drive to get to the ferry. we stopped at a few hotels and swam for awhile, then were bored and what's there to do in a hotel room but jump on the bed!












it was a tiring trip:)

kinley is 6!

my little baby turned 6!!

stock show 2009 - this is right before we left denver

the kids got scraps of fur and riley made a mohawk out of his.

ALCAN HIGHWAY

A couple days after we arrived, we went and watched the start of the iditarod sled dog race to Nome. The start is just north of Palmer, where we live.

68 teams of 16 dogs each! This area will need plenty of pooper scoopers come spring!

Somewhere in Canada?

Approaching St. Elias National Park

Buffalo grazing in 3 feet of snow just off the highway

Camping spot in Haines AK.

Icy Road on pass into Haines, AK from Haines Junction Canada.

British Columbia

Get off the road please!

The 3500 mile trip up the Alcan in February was a lot of fun, even considering some major plan changes mid trip that caused some delays. The scenery was incredible, the wildlife abundant, the knuckles almost always white, and the conversation dull (since I was alone this trip)! I would do it again in a heartbeat given the opportunity, although next time without an over loaded trailer if in the winter, and preferably with a co pilot! This way the trip could be done in as little as two days with three drivers, or three days with two drivers. The winter time road was surprisingly in good condition, and the only traffic was around the major cities of Edmonton and Calgary, and occasionally in other areas where oil truck traffic was heavy.


This was entering British Columbia

Wild Wood Bison were all over the place in BC. The first one I saw was at night, right on the road and I could barely make out his eyes and a large dark shape, taller than my truck! There was a couple feet of new snow, and the bison were using their heads swinging back and forth to clear away snow to get to some grass to feed on.


About 800 miles of the trip were on entirely solid ice roads, but the highway department cut grooves in the ice about 1 inch apart, that provided for surprisingly good traction. I began staying at hotels, but got tired of paying for 7-8 hours of sleep, the same I got on the mattress in my truck for free, so I quit using hotels and took advantage of the 25 below sleeping bag I purchased for the trip. A wise investment, and some of the best sleep I have ever had! Each night when I quit driving, I would usually pick a parking spot at a hotel to sleep for a few hours, if it was super cold, I would plug in the truck, and hope I wouldn't get caught. I never did, I don't think any hotel managers ever knew who's car belonged there and who's didn't. A substantial amount of mental preparation was required to make the big move from inside the sleeping bag to inside of the truck cab each morning, especially one morning when I woke up to -40 degrees farenheit in Dawson Creek Canada! Long story short, we all made it to Alaska just fine, only one alternator went out along the way, and we ended up having the trailer brought up on a flatbed from Edmonton Canada because it was too heavy, and it's brakes were ineffective on the ice you see in the pictures. Summertime would have been fine. We will post picts of the house soon. Another adventure in itself!

snowmobiling

shoveling out the snowmobiles!

snowmachining

snowmachining with gramps. mom and dad have the perfect yard for the kids to drive around on the snowmobiles! the boys were driving the machines by themselves and loving it!! it was nice because all their yard is contained in fences so their was no traffic for the kids to have to worry about. by the end of two days there was no powder left anywhere!!! the kids just rode around and around and around!! their routine for the few days we were there was this: wake up and ask to go outside - then look at the thermometer and see that it was below zero and that no adult was going out with them until it warmed up a little bit:) then around 10:00 we'd go out and sled for awhile. then eat lunch and go snowmobiling. the kids had a blast!! thanks grandpa and grandma! oh, and all of this wouldn't have happened if we didn't have jud to start the machines for us:) thanks jud!

oh, and quinn's basket! quinn loves sitting the basket on the back of the wide track. if she was in her basket she was content all day! but she did not like to get out of it! she was ok sharing it - so sometimes fiona or kinley got to sit back there too:)

more sledding pics

sledding

here are more sledding pics - kinley, fiona, and riley

jumpin on the bed

riley got a camera for christmas and has been loving taking pictures. :)

christmas pics

here are some christmas pics taken outside at mom and dad's house. renee made the dresses for the girls - you are awesome renee! it was freezing when we took these pics - can you tell:)

more sledding pics

here are aj and riley sledding

sledding at grandpa's and grandmas'

around christmas we went to grandpa and grandma's house and they have a wonderful sledding hill right in their front yard. the horse (that you can see in the picture of kinley) stands right next to the top of the hill, and once he bit kinley's hat right off her head:) the first day we got to the hill it was all powder and by the third day it was all packed and very very hard:)

christmas 2008

christmas morning:)

cousins

these are renee's kids and ours:) it's always interesting when the three girls "sleep" together! they finally get to sleep after a couple of hours - after quinn settles down and kinley quits kicking the covers off (she's always in the middle so when she kicks them off fiona and quinn aren't happy about it)! then it's a few hours of sleep until quinn wakes up and then it's HELLO WORLD!!!!!! Quinn does not wake up with a morning voice:) oh my goodness, quinn is a fireball!

i'm sure renee could write a book about quinn. one morning she wanted an apple but she would never just ask for one. i was seeing how long she could talk (of course it's non stop talk) before she would just ask for an apple. she never did just ask - it was hilarious! here's how the conversation went: quinn - "ya sometimes i like apples in the morning. me and mom have apples in the morning. my mom lets me have apples. sometimes fiona and i eat apples in the morning. i like to eat apples. my mom gives me apples. (she goes and gets one out of the fridge) oh look, here's an apple. i found an apple. i like to eat these apples in the morning ..." i could barely hold back my laughter. she talked like this for 10 minutes!!!!! and it is non stop! i can't believe how she can think of so much to say:)

one day she was at our house and she was a yapping dog! and when's she a yapping dog you don't want to be around:) it was driving riley crazy so i told quinn that she was an inside dog and she needed to yap a little quiter. well, she didn't want to be an inside yapping dog so she just became a very loud cat! oh, she makes me laugh.

pics of kiddos

here are some pics of the kids from this winter.
there is a little sledding hill in the field between our house and the school. so when it snows the kids always go out there and sled. i love it because i can watch them from the window of our house!

one night i was playing with kinleys hair - twisting it around - and she said she wanted me to twist it for school. she looked very cute:)

it's official - we're moving

in case everyone hasn't heard yet - yes, we are moving back to alaska!
we will be leaving denver february 22. jud will be driving up and the kids and will take the ferry.

these are some pics of the kids and their christmas concert. the kindergartner's did a little concert and the rest of the kids did a "holiday hoedown"