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!!!