A Day in the Life...

...of George....My front door.  Doesn't George sound nice and friendly as far as possible names for your front door?  Not too stuffy like Edward but not too carefree like Pete that you would worry that he wouldn't be there when you need him....but here is a day in his life....I was going to start earlier in the day (6 am as opposed to 7 am) but I have kept forgetting to take pictures at that hour....

So here it is....

7 am

8 am

 

9 am

 

10 am

 

11 am

 

12 pm

 

1 pm

 

2 pm

 

3 pm

 

4 pm

 

5 pm

 

6 pm

 

7 pm

 

 

How was the day of your door? 


**Now I don't know why 6 pm shows up so red.  I don't have any problem with it until I put it on here... 

Well Happy Halloween everyone!  And I hope to have pictures of the monsters fairly quickly...

Bear hunt, Birthday Party and Boo yah!

I know, I know...don't those three things just go together in your mind too?

Well we do have a bear in the woods around here.  It hasn't been a problem...well unless you are one of the few unfortunate people whose homes he has decided to see the insides of...but otherwise no problems yet...

They are keeping an eye on him, and hopefully here in the next few days he decides to move his traveling bag of tricks on the road before you get someone who is a bit more ambitious after him.....at least he has been polite about his tricks and waited tell it was dark and late to do his B&E.  Between the boys (who would willingly want to venture into their noisy world?) and all of our neighbors bringing their dogs up and down the boardwalks to all the homes we will most likely have an extremely high dose of bear repellent active at all times...

And NO!  We don't go walking out in the woods once it is dark...and we never venture out alone on the boardwalk either Mom, so don't worry too much about it.  The boys are really cute and very adamant about praying for our safety as well.  So I think we are covered.

 

 

We did have the opportunity tonight to celebrate a birthday Alaska style with a good old hot dog cookout with all the expected and not so expected particulars...hot dogs...marshmallows....potato salad...chili....hot coco....chicken fajitas....birthday cake...cookies....sparklers....roman candles....and fire works..

Guess which part the boys will probably remember the most?  Raiden and Judge enjoyed the roman candles...although nobody enjoys fireworks like Ender.  I think he has a bit of a pyro waiting for the golden opportunity to pounce out of that six year old body of his....I do believe he might think...all it will take is that box of matches and the world will be mine!  What should I burn first?!


And Jenner has proven himself to be quite the lady's man...and boy does he like the younger girls.  This girl is a whole year younger than him and he gladly kept her company during the fireworks....all too gladly!

 

So there you have our BOO YAH!  Hopefully you all are doing well.  I can't wait to update you with school pictures (personally taken mind you) and Halloween shots too...

Serenity

Nothing sets the mood better...

Than looking out your many windows at the ocean and having it be so calm it is glassy.  Add to that a nice delicious cup of coco....then maybe throw in seeing a sea otter float out in the bay just enjoying the weak sunlight making it through the cloud cover....

It just makes you go...aaahhhhh and sigh a little....

Yesterday started this way.  Makes you not mind being up earlier than you want hustling the kids off to school so you can enjoy this moment....

Then...

The phone...

RINGS....

And a fellow parent is calling you to inform you that they....

have...

LICE!


That will effectively put an immediate end to your feel good moment....

Thankfully I buzzed the boys hair on Saturday and I like to think I would have noticed any little hitchhikers they might have brought home.  We did a check anyway, even though their hair is less then 1/2 inch long.

I think I would rather deal with a run of strep through our family than a case of lice....it would be easier to deal with anyway...


So now I am waiting for another morning so I can have back my serene moment in time.....and hopefully the sea otter or maybe even the sea lion will be there too!

BINGO

I wish I could say we have been doing some amazing stuff and that is my reason for lack of writing...but it isn't...

The kids have been testing all week and combine that with a baby who doesn't believe she has too sleep after 4 in the morning for some reason....we have just been getting by....

We did get the chance just yesterday though to participate in the first fall bingo game.  The boys have only been able to play this at school so far, so this was an eye opener for them.

We were lucky enough to win the first round so that got them all excited about winning...unfortunately we didn't win again until the blackout round at the end...so that can tell you what type of grumpy faces I saw for the next two hours...

But it was a lot of fun to be out in Bear Hall (the town center) with most the people and all the families...the kids enjoyed having the games and getting to snack on some chocolate treats while they drank some pop.  

Raiden and Judge are already planning their strategy for the next bingo games...

OHHH yea...

We did get a glass out finally to measure the amount of rain falling.  We have had several great storms come through but kept forgetting to get a cup out in them....

So when the one we are currently in ends...cause yes it is raining....I promised the boys we would post how much rain fell since Friday, October 18th at 4 p.m.

Row, Row, Row

We had a nice hike today after the groceries came in and everything was put away.

We started the hike off with a little of row, row, row your boat...

And that was an adventure.  It took us (I should say Kale since he did the rowing) two trips to get across since there are so many of us in our "little" family.  It was only a minute to get across but the whole trip over was, "look at that star fish", "will we sink", "don't hit a rock" and "where is the treasure?"...(the last was my favorite).

And then the hiking....you know the saying, "If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear it?"  Well if we are around that would be a no!

 

Anyone who thinks that girls jabber has never met our boys.  I do believe Nia was the quietest of the bunch....but those boys do love to talk, A LOT!

 

We didn't make it to the lake today...hopefully there will be good enough weather tomorrow, or in the next few days that we can make it over again...but we shall see.  We did spend a good 2 1/2 hours or so exploring on the other side of the bay.  It is amazing to see the different cabins and views of the bay. 

 

I will say I do have to retract my information about the ice in the bay....I have found out that it isn't ice...it is giant, and yes they are giant...gobbs of FOAM.  We found several huge chunks of it today while exploring... From a distance you would almost think it was big chunks of Styrofoam.  The boys were mesmerized by these.

 

I think the best part was the boat ride back.  One of the fishermen, George is his name, was down on the beach with his dog Rory when we came to the beach...they actually call it the parking lot because it is a wide expanse of beach where several of the families pull up their boats...and he helped us get the boat back into the water since we had to get the little kids in it.  The boys asked him his name again...I don't know why they have met him several times.  He said it is George...you can call him Captain George...you know like Captain Jack Sparrow...and the boys wanted to know if Captain Jack Sparrow is his cousin....we all had a good chuckle over that one.

 

We did manage to get a few pictures of SUN fish...not star fish cause they have more than five points...and look like, well a sun....

 

There was a giant Jelly fish floating around but I didn't manage to get a picture of it...well at least a clear picture of it...those suckers are hard to capture on a not so great camera. 

While waiting for the second boat to come over the little guys got tired of waiting...so my great helpers (Jenner and Ender) volunteered to take the back packs and life jackets home while I waited for Kale.



You got to love a willing volunteer when he smiles and looks like this....    :)   !

Rainbows, Cookies and Conference

Not a bad day when you consider all we managed to accomplish.

 

We started the day off with a beautiful double rainbow.  The boys wanted to go across the bay to the end of the rainbow...since after all you could see it right there, and who knows there might be a pot of gold....

 

 

Since coming to Alaska Nia has made the awesome discovery of one of my many loves.  Well I guess it would be two of my many loves.  Lickin' beaters and cookie dough.   She makes a beeline as soon as I am done using the beaters cause she KNOWS what time it is.  Out of all the things I have made she prefers chocolate chip cookie dough.  I think between the taste, and the fact that more remains on the beaters she is a FAN!!!

 

And conference was different.  We were planning on streaming the video, but for some reason it was an hour behind to stream the video live, so instead we just listened to it live.  Makes for an interesting time trying to get the kids excited to "listen" literally to conference and not just "listen" to the speakers.  It is nice not to have them asking questions about things like why is the speakers tie a certain color, or who is the bald prophet or things like that....

It's all Chemistry!

For a family activity yesterday we did a little "science" experiment.  Surprisingly enough my oldest boys love themselves some chemistry.  So we asked them questions about liquids, solids and (of course their favorite) gases.  I was pleased that they can go into what I consider great detail on these subjects for their respective ages of 11 and 9.

 

 

Of course when we finished with the discussion I asked them if they think something that could go very quickly from a solid to a liquid in Nevada would stand half a chance here.  They said of course it would cause it is much cooler.  I asked them to name a few things that could do that....they said the obvious ones.....so I asked them one more time if they were sure something that could be a solid would stand half a chance here and they were quite sure of themselves....so I said I guess we didn't need to do our little experiment since they were absolutely sure of themselves....

 

They very much wanted to know what I had been hiding in the bag the whole time...so I said well they didn't need to know since they knew it would remain a solid....but then they started to change their tune....so I let them see that we were going to see if the ice cream would stay a solid or if it would melt....

It did melt once we started dishing it up, so they started eating it right away... yum, yum...

 

 

 

Oh, and of course!  Then answer to the unasked question, Does ice cream taste as good in Alaska as it did in Nevada?  Is an "You Betcha!"  ***** from the kids...