Birdhouse painting with Benjamin

Slowly but surely I'm going to try to fill in the gaps about things we did in Alaska since much went unposted with our limited internet access.

This is one of the rainy day activities we did in September. (Whether it was actually raining, I can't remember.) I spent a fair amount of time at JoAnne's craft store while we were in Juneau, which the boys were thrilled about. (Can you guess how thrilled they were?) During one of our visits, Benjamin was rewarded with a $1 wooden birdhouse to paint since he had behaved really well that day. Unfortunately, the birdhouse ended up in the trash as we were leaving for the airport on our way home because it just would not fit. But it filled some time quite nicely, as you will see below. Here, Benjamin tells it in his own words (with some help from me).

I love painting my birdhouse.
Why did you love it?
'Cause I did.

I love painting the roof and the sides.
I love painting the orange and blue.

I love painting a castle.
Did you paint a castle?
No.

Bye bye! I love my birdhouse!

(Rhett was a good sport, too.)

September 25, 2009

First birthday photo of the day. Benjamin, 3 years old

I wanted Benjamin's birthday to be special (memorable) this year because, well, he might remember it. I remember my third birthday still, even after more than twenty years.

Fortunately he didn't care that we recycled the balloons from my birthday.

Benjamin jumping in Rhett's balloon-filled bed

I had been asking Benjamin often during the past couple of months what kind of birthday cake he wanted, and it didn't take him long to announce enthusiastically,

"I want Lightning McQueen!"

I think I have some history of trying too hard to make amazing-looking creations out of cake and icing (and usually ending up disappointed), and I contemplated a couple of different ways to create a Lightning McQueen cake, including building the race car out of cake, drawing him on with icing or, rather simply, making cupcakes with some sort of Cars party toppers. Fortunately for us all, I ultimately decided, the simpler, the better.

I think it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. In any case, Benjamin loves his new cars! His new Lightning McQueen has hardly left his sight in the past two weeks, and he generously allows me to play with Sally and Rhett with Chick Hicks.

Happy birthday, Benjamin!

25 and counting

We ate a lot of cake during the last two weeks of September. And it wasn't because we were depressed at still being in Alaska. We had birthdays! I turned 25 on September 16, and Benjamin turned 3 on September 25 (a post which will follow later).

What was the best part of my 25th birthday?

The surprise balloons brought home at lunchtime...

the sunny flowers bursting from a pickle jar...

the (voluntarily) self-made chocolate chip cake...

or something else?

It could have been the two little boys who must have known it was my birthday and who would often climb into my lap that day with no other apparent reason than to sit a while and snuggle.

It could have been the husband who, despite his busy work day, tried extra hard to make it a special day for me.

It must have been all of those things.

I can't belive it! We're back!

It's true! We arrived home in Bellingham on Friday, October 2, and oh boy, did it ever feel like coming home!

After waking up in Juneau at 4:00 a.m. and flying for five hours or so (up and down three times), the scent of our front porch told me that we had finally arrived. It smelled like home.


And now it feels like a dream. Did we really spend over four months in Juneau, Alaska, living in a (rather smelly) single-wide trailer with peeling paint, moldy windows, and purple-flowered wallpaper?



Yes, we did.

The truck packed full (and I mean packed full) of our stuff should arrive on the barge in Seattle at the end of the week and hopefully we'll be able to spend the weekend unpacking. (Hello, Kitchenaid!)

August 1, 2009

The first Saturday in August Paul was able to take most of the day off of work, so our whole family was treated to a day out!

We decided to visit a tourist attraction near our house called Glacier Gardens. Basically, a decade or two ago a guy who was cleaning up some of his recently purchased acreage had the idea to replant some dead trees (from a mudslide) upside down, with their roots hanging over the top, and plant flowers in them. The result is pretty interesting to see and we enjoyed our tour of the gardens.

Inside the visitor’s center

An eagles’ nest up in a tree

Our little treehugger
View of part of Juneau from boardwalk at around 600 ft.



The main attractions






After lunch and a rest for the boys we drove out to Echo Cove for some salmon fishing! Paul had had a couple opportunities already to go fishing, so I took a turn. I was disappointed at first because the only thing biting was the seaweed, but after a few minutes the fish started biting like crazy!


Benjamin and Rhett were troopers while I was catching fish. We spread a blanket on the ground, but despite having no shoes, Rhett preferred to walk around the rocky, barnacle covered beach, filling his mouth with rocks as he went. Both boys were captivated by the fish splashing in the bucket after they were caught.



After an hour or so I came away with my limit of six big salmon, and a bit of a sore arm!

Curing Cabin Fever

I have to admit that it has been a challenge for me to keep the boys (and myself) sufficiently occupied this summer. Paul is working six days a week, leaving before 7:00 a.m. while the boys and I are usually still asleep, and coming home close to 7:00 p.m. Fortunately he comes home for lunch every day, which is the only thing I missed about his old job before he started with Dawson.

However, despite a few tedious days here and there, I think we’re doing a pretty good job of warding off the cabin fever.

First off, I wish I could say that this is a daily occurrence:
It’s not even a weekly occurrence. Or bi-weekly.

I think there are about 20 hours of daylight in Juneau right now. I’m just guessing based on the amount of sunlight coming through our windows when I wake up to fetch one boy or another (usually Rhett) out of his bed around 4:00 a.m. and the time the sun seems to have finally set around 11:00 p.m.

This is not conducive to naptime or bedtime in our house.

Granted, bedtime for our boys has always been later than is traditional for most families I know. Still, when it’s sunny and bright at 9:00 p.m. it’s pretty hard to convince a 2-and-a-half-year-old that it’s time to put on pajamas and brush his teeth.

We haven’t had a single scheduled nap take place in our house this summer, but on occasion I will get lucky and Benjamin will konk out on his bed or on the couch later in the afternoon. Most days, though, Benjamin won’t take a nap so we have many hours to fill.

The library has been great for us this summer! The people at the Juneau Public Library were nice enough to issue me a permanent resident library card when usually they give people who come for the summer a 90-day card which grants access to fewer resources. I should have started keeping track of all the books we’ve read this summer because there have been a ton! Benjamin has been a lover of books for a long time, and it has been really sweet to see Rhett start to discover books as fun things to look at. So we go to the library about once a week and bring home as many books as I can carry (including a few for me). Benjamin loves it because the branches that we go to have stuffed animals and puzzles for toddlers, and the main branch in downtown Juneau is above a parking garage so we get to ride the elevator up to it.

When we can’t/don’t go to the library but have to get out of the house we often head to good ol’ Fred Meyer and look for a race car cart to wander through the store in, or to Costco where they’re giving out samples just about every day. And, mercifully, Juneau has a JoAnn craft store! I just finished sewing a little tote bag and I’m working my way through some gift projects.

But back to the boys.
Benjamin and Rhett are pretty good buddies, as brothers should be, although if you could see Rhett’s head/face at any given time you’d get a glimpse of how much he gets knocked around by his big brother. His new means of mobility is also contributing to some bumps and bruises. Rhett has decided to become a climber, too. He recently figured out how to climb on the windowsill (which is pretty low to the ground), and any day now he’s going to make it out the other side.

Speaking of windows…
Aren’t these boys so sweet looking out their bedroom window for their dad to come home from work? This is an every-day thing.
A few weeks ago I was washing dishes or something while Benjamin was playing in his room. There was a backhoe loader working on the road right outside the house and Benjamin was watching it. As I’m cleaning I start to hear Benjamin yelling out the window.

“Hey! Marshmallow boy! Hey marshmallow boy! HEY! MARSHMALLOW BOY!!”

I went back there to check. Was he yelling to an empty street? Was he shouting to a noisily working tractor? No. There was a presumably nice man out there, the backhoe operator, working on the road while the loader stood still and quiet. And there’s Benjamin, yelling at him.

“HEY MARSHMALLOW BOY!!!”

Where on earth did he get the name marshmallow boy?

I didn’t know whether to be ashamed or amused. At first I was horrified and embarrassed. I rather too sharply told Benjamin to stop yelling out the window, but when he looked so ashamed and dejected at my reproof I realized that he wasn’t yelling at that man at all, just at some imaginary game he was thinking about while watching the tractor outside. So I just asked him to say “marshmallow boy” a little more quietly and not shout it toward the nice man outside, which he did.

I realized a few days later that marshmallow boy is a phrase he picked up as only a two-year-old can from an obscure line in a movie, his (current) favorite movie, Monsters, Inc.

When they’re not looking/shouting out the window, the boys love to play with the vacuum! And with the three of us cooped up in a single-wide trailer away from everyone we know and without a car of our own, am I going to tell them not to play with the vacuum? Sometimes. But not as often as I probably should. (If only they knew what to do with it when they spilled Cheerios on the carpet for the hundredth time!)

And speaking of making messes (can you tell I’m trying to tie everything together here? Just work with me), Benjamin loves to help in the kitchen! He loved to help in the kitchen in Bellingham also, but now I have a new appreciation for letting him help (which I’m usually reluctant to do) since we have about two square feet of food preparation space in our current kitchen.

A few weeks ago Benjamin and I were making pizza for dinner and I opened a #10 can of tomato sauce, leaving it on the counter while I prepped the other stuff. I turned around to find Benjamin dipping his hands into the tomato sauce and licking it off like candy. Finding it hard to object to him eating tomato sauce when some nights he struggles to eat much at all, I opted to get him a bowl and spoon and spare the rest of the can his germs.
Another time I left a bowl with a cup of flour in it on the counter overnight. I had started making something that I didn’t have all the ingredients for, so I left it for the next day, ignoring the hunch that this might happen:


He had shoveled in so much flour that it started turning into a gluey mess in his mouth and he could hardly make a sound. A nice drink of water washed it all down nicely.


Shortly after our arrival in Juneau Benjamin and I started making some alphabet pictures to pass the time and brighten up the walls in his bedroom. I also thought it was about time for Benjamin to get some experience with glue sticks, scissors, and the like. Benjamin picks out the colors for the letters and backgrounds, and helps me choose a word to represent pictorially alongside each letter. I’ve tried to use some words that have a sort of significance for Benjamin, but others are just the first things that came to mind. So far these are what we have:

A couple of things to note about the letters: Believe it or not, Benjamin insisted on doing “M is for Mermaid” despite my strong urging that we do “M is for Mickey Mouse.” Also, there’s a little friend in our jungle. Can you see him? My favorite letter-picture for a long time was “D is for Duck,” but I’m pretty pleased with how N, O, and P have turned out.

Another pastime recently has been “water games” out on the (filthy, cigarette-butt-strewn, paint-pealing, broom-resistant) deck. We turn on the hose and fill up an assortment of water vessels, and the boys splash away!

Early last week (the second to last in July) Rhett’s first tooth finally came through! It seems we have another excellent teether on our hands: Rhett also has another bottom tooth and at least two on top coming through the gums any day now, and he hasn’t shown any terrible teething symptoms other than a little drool. We definitely count ourselves blessed to now have two kids who pop out teeth without so much as shedding a tear (although they both took their time to do it).


All in all, we’ve had a good time in Juneau. As tedious as some days may seem, I wouldn’t trade being home with these boys for anything. They are so sweet and teach me so much every day! I’ve never had a more humbling challenge in my life than motherhood, but the challenge has definitely been worth the rewards that have come to me, often undeserved, in the past three years.


This summer has made me appreciate many things I once took for granted, and we’re excited to get back to Bellingham soon!

Alaska, continued

I'm not sure how to organize this post. With limted time to use the internet (we don't have it at home), I'm tempted to just throw on a bunch of pictures with breif captions, but that just wouldn't be right. So here's a little bit more of what we've been doing in Alaska.

Mostly, Paul has been working. He is being so dedicated, and I'm really proud of him for that (but not surprised). In the evenings, though, we still have several hours of daylight to work with (do you call it "nightlight" if it's 11 pm and still light outside?) so we head out in the truck most days and see what there is to see.

The first week we were here we were driving "out the road" and happened upon some local wildlife. (Driving "out the road" is what the locals call driving on the road that basically takes you to the farthest north point of Juneau that you can drive. You can't drive to or from Juneau to anywhere else, so driving up that road is as far as a car can take you.)

First we saw Porcupine Pat. I don't know why we named him that. He was just ambling down the road, which seems to be a habit of his, because he looked like he'd had a run-in with a fast-moving vehicle before. Or maybe porcupines all look like they've had their back quills rubbed off. The only porcupine I've ever seen was on "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey."

Anyway...

Later on our drive Paul saw a little black bear up ahead, also hanging out on the side of the road, but for some reason we had put our camera away! We pulled over and scrambled to get it out while the bear sort of stared at us. Just as I was trying to focus the picture he decided he was tired of us and sauntered back into the woods. This is the best picture we got, of his backside.

Aside from animals, the scenery is just amazing! This is a common view from our house:

I love it when the clouds are hanging low and mingling with the trees in front of the mountains. When I was coming home from a walk with the boys last week and looking up at Thunder Mountain ahead of me, I had major deja vu of the mountains in Honduras. It's so beautiful.

No more than a mile away from our house is Mendenhall Glacier.


When Paul first showed me pictures of the glacier after his trip to Juneau in March, I wasn't sure why it was so cool. Then I looked at it on GoogleEarth, and I became impressed by its size. Seeing it in person is so different. It's huge. It's majestic. It's beautiful. And, no pun intended (well, sort of intended), it's really cool!

We went for another walk out there last week and took some trails around to a spot on the other side.

As we stood on the shore admiring the view I noticed that a hunk of ice was slowly making its way inland. We waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally! We dragged this huge, heavy piece of glacier onto the sand.

It was like touching a piece of history, which sounds lame. But to us it was awesome. Think about it: That chunk of ice had been frozen for over 200,000 years! And we touched it! Rhett sat on it! (And, okay, I licked it.)

We've had a great time to far. More to come, including the two bears Paul saw tonight while I was writing this post, bald eagles, and what the boys have been up to with me all day.