Summer...finally, well...because I am lazy.

We bought a house, so we have been busy working on the house and on the land. We had a lot of work to do in our garden, not to mention Kacy built a moose fence to protect it.  We had a late start and bad dirt but we managed to make the best of it. Oh we have plans for next year!! We also have been busy painting as well (Ashley is painting a mural on the kids wall & ceiling), putting in trim, building/painting furniture and making art for our walls, and sewing our own stuff. Our goals are to make with what we have, buy second hand, or build it ourselves.

 Katy and Kacy our digging our fire pit so we can spend our nights outside in our forest roasting marshmallows. 

Family!!! We were very lucky to have family come to visit us this summer. We showed them around Anchorage and the Matsu-Valley. Then we headed to Homer and enjoyed the sites along the way. We didn’t have to convince them how cool Alaska is. When we got to Homer we were all pleasantly surprised to find it a unique town that was fun and full of life. We enjoyed the beach, art, little shops (as you can see the boys were thrilled to go shopping), and stayed in a fun house with a garden full of teacups!  Perry and Kacy went Halibut fishing and brought home the goods. It was definitely worth it! We enjoyed every minute of it.

Cheers to a wonderful family, vacation, and halibut!

We were excited to be able to go dip netting for salmon this year. We went to the Kenai and Soldotna and caught 22 fish…Kacy 21 and Ashley finally gave it a try in the end and caught 1. We are now both hooked. Definitely will become a tradition.  We did some camping as well while we were there by a beautiful lake.

 Konrad turns 3!! He was a little reluctant to be three, but by the end of the day he was ok with it.  We always seem to be relocating around his birthday. I am glad we celebrated his first birthday with a party, because we have now decided no on parties every year…especially when we are in the middle of moving. We used his Dr. Seuss hat from his party when he was 1…it still kinda fits. We never knew he would actually love Dr. Seuss so much, but he does…and it fits his personality. He wanted watermelon cake for his birthday. I could see a Seuss book about watermelon cake.

 Kacy turned the big 30!! We had friends over to celebrate and cooked up a nice yummy meal. It was a historical event for sure.

School Started! Konrad is doing pre-school at home, we have his friends come over to participate. Katy is going to the public Title-1 pre-school since she can’t start kindergarten. She loves it! She has started Kindergarten curriculum with us at home and loves that too.  

Here we have our bountiful garden that the root maggots enjoyed just as much as we did. Never mind the moose fence…we saw one moose, I think our enemies were smaller than we expected. Our celery, potatoes, carrots, and greens survived. We even got a handful of tomatoes.

You can find berries just about everywhere come August in Alaska. We had high bush cranberries, rose hips, and fireweed  on our land that we made into yummy jellies & syrups.  We went up to Hatcher’s pass and picked 4 gallons of blueberries and 1.5 gallons of crow berries. We froze some, made jellies, jams and syrups. Ashley has discovered that canning is actually really fun. Konrad discovered that if you eat blueberries all day your poop is a really cool color. 

We went to the fair. The animals were a hit as always. We are planning on chicks joining the family in the spring!! 

 We have had our share and yours of rainfall this year, it has also been a cool year.  At least the mushrooms are enjoying the weather! We had a mushroom forests in our yard, too bad they aren’t edible. The grass loves them, see how green it is around them.

Well to wrap up one of the longest posts ever. After a winter with record snow fall we had a record summer of rain. This summer Kacy and I were actually  missing Idaho. Yup Alaska is trying really hard to boot us out. We do love Alaska though, it is beautiful and full of fun things to do...but we also love the sun and our family. We will see how we feel after this winter. Bring on the snow and Ice-skating!!!

Spring

Ok, we are just a little behind on the blog. Last post we wrote, there was still snow on the ground! The snow has finally melted!! In fact we thought we were headed for a crazy spring with flooding and icky roads and we had a pleasant spring. Spring in Alaska isn't warm, it has no flowers blooming on the trees, and  it is muddy and brown, but it could be worse. Our apartment did have some flood damage by the front door. It is common in Alaska to have roof damns. There was mold up and down one of our walls, but it was a small section, and because we rent...it doesn't matter beyond inconvenience. We were lucky to not get hardly any rain while the snow melted, which could have made the damage much worse.

Speaking of homes and renting, over spring we started looking for homes to buy. I took a home buyers class, and we began to realize that buying a home is really complicated. There were many factors to consider, but we still felt good about buying a home in Alaska. One huge consideration was that we could buy something outside of Anchorage that fit our families needs, and pay less than what we are paying now in  rent for Anchorage.  Anchorage doesn't really fit our family, nor does the rental we are in, so we looked in Palmer and Wasilla for something out of town with some land.

So the news is we are moving, and now when we have mold because our roof damns...well it is our mold. When you get to that crazy point where you would rather take on all the problems a house has, then I guess it is time to buy a house. I feel like this will be a great blessing for our family. I am very thankful.

I also finished up some classes this spring. I took Organic Gardening, Getting in Shape with Weights, and Art Appreciation. Just some fun classes to get out of the house and learn. I told myself that if I didn't get an A in Art Appreciation I was going to fire myself as an art teacher. My art teacher at U.A.A. kept telling the class to not be worried, she doesn't hand out very many As, so I stressed myself out to get one. If I could only have one minute to talk to the teacher and tell her..."I know you have no idea who I am, especially in a class of over 50, but I am a crazy worry freak...I don't know why, but I worry like crazy, so don't tell me not to worry because that makes me worry even more, and oh I am an art teacher, so anything but an A = inept art teacher!" When I handed in my final paper, she asked me my name...looked confused at my response, and said "oh ya, your Ashley, I know who you are, are you glad this class is over." My reply was, "yes!, I am so glad" and I just walked away...but then I felt bad, because it wasn't that I didn't like the class or her, I learned a lot, but I was just so tired of working my butt off and worrying in a stinking lower division course that I was taking for fun. Luckily I got an A and I don't have to fire myself...that would be hard to brake it to myself. My favorite class was Getting in Shape with Weights, it was easy, I just showed up, worked out, had an awesome personal trainer and I felt good afterwards. My Organic Gardening class ended up to be something different then I expected. I am not an auditory learner, so I was hoping the class would be hands on because it is all about dirt and planting, but it wasn't. I still learned a lot.

On that note, I started our garden for the year.  I learned to start celery in January!! What!! So we are a little behind, hopefully we get some good produce this year. Kacy built me a nice growth stand to start my plants...he says he is going to build me a greenhouse maybe this year, yay! I love plants. I made a friend in my Organic Gardening class and we would just laugh and laugh about our weird obsession with gardening. She would say something like, "compost, Yayaa!"...with her fist in the air. I was a bit more silent and I didn't believe in garden fairies, but my heart would still skip a beat and my chest would swell with happy excitement over microorganisms eating each other-making a bunch of dead crap into healthy food. I just think it is awesome to create my own food. Here is a pic of our budding garden...

Snow, snow go away, come again another day!

Snow, snow, go away, come again another day! (preferably next winter...not next week, or the next, or even in May, just go away!). The bitter wrath of winter seems to be loosening its grasp on Anchorage for the year. What a winter it has been. Just a quick few key bits of information from the past 5 months.

• October saw the first snow on 30, 2011, and a total of 3.4" of the white stuff.
• November saw a total of 32.4" of snow (19.3" above normal). The coldest temperature of the month was -8 deg. F on Nov. 19th, a new record.
• December saw a total of 31.1" of snow. December was much warmer than November, and was also the windiest month on record with several Chinook winds that brought warm moist air from the south.
• January saw a total of 25.2" of snow. It was the 4th coldest January on record, but didn't break any single day records. (Thank goodness we were in Idaho for the first third of it!). The coldest temperature was -13 deg F.
• February saw 27.8" of snow, and was warmer than normal.There were 19 days where snow fell. By this time we were the 5th snowiest winter on record already, and we were running out of places to put it all. 
• March saw 9.5" of snow, and was colder than February (seeing a pattern yet?). 
• April, well we aren't through it yet, but we have received 5.2" of snow. If you kept track, that is 134.5" of snow (11' 2.5" of snow, a new record! The previous record, set in 1954-1955, was 132.6". We broke the record on April 7, the day before Easter.) This month has been warmer than average, with daytime temps in the 40's and maybe even a few 50's, luckily the night temps have been freezing, otherwise 11' 2.5" of snow is going to melt really fast a make a really big mess. 

Needless to say, it has been an interesting, and extreme first winter in Alaska. We can say we survived one of the coldest, windiest, and snowiest winters in Anchorage since records were kept. If we can make it through this, I think we can make it through a few more. We are keeping our fingers crossed for an equally record breaking summer with warm, dry, sunny days. Just a side note, the previous record setting snowfall year (1954-1955) was followed the next year (1955-1956) with the next biggest snowfall dump on record. We hope that doesn't happen next winter. 

This chart shows the measured temperatures from the last winter compared to the average and extreme temperatures on record. It was a winter of ups and downs.

Katy and Konrad have traded the snow boots for rain boots and are in their own little heaven with .breakup. There have been muddy, mucky puddles galore, and looks like they may persist for a few more weeks. 

Who says the snow needs to melt to have fun? Even if it is here till summer, we will find a way to enjoy it.