Alaskan Animals

Here are some shots of the animals in Homer Alaska taken from our last trip down to the ocean. The eagles and seagulls are in abundance down there. The eagles love to perch on the light poles which makes taking their pictures very easy. You can usually spot a few sea otters too. This one was floating around the boat harbor and posed for a picture.

Here's an eagle checking out the food left from low tide and a boat waiting for high tide so it can come into the dock.

And a seagull doing the same thing, checking out the food from low tide while another boat waits to offload.

Summer Reading Camp

The boys' school hosted a summer reading camp for 1/2 a day for 6 weeks. They enjoyed it, it gave them some extra time with real teachers and it gave Mommy and Katie some quiet bonding time. This was the last week of it, I truly miss it, I think it was a FABULOUS idea!!

Darkness

I forgot how dark it gets. We've had so much sunshine and light for the past few months and now we're slowly on the downward trend of losing hours. It's really dark between 1 am and 3 am now and dusky on each side. The boys were complaining about the dark so I had to replace all the nightlight bulbs. I'm going to buy stock in those companies the way we go through them.

Katieisms

Katie's vocabulary is starting to take off. She's really big into Thank You right now. And if you don't say your welcome, she keeps saying thank you until you do. It's cute! She's also putting words together for some sentences. Go to Nana and Pappy's Home, Alex and Sammy go to school, etc. She also knows both routes to Nana and pappy's house and makes turn signal noises when it's time to turn on their road either way!

She's still my fastest kid to get ready too and stands at the door patiently and waits for the boys, then beelines it to the car. She loves to go places... I have about 1 1/2 weeks until I'm back to work, ug... But the weather has turned rainy here, so it is definately time for school to start again!

First Salmon!

We headed up to Montana Creek for a quick fishing trip and to play with all the pink salmon in the very shallow creek. The boys each caught their first salmon. (The fish were really thick, making it good kid fishing!)

And Katie had a blast with her little fishing rod, she reeled her butterfly in everytime. She wanted a fish though, she'd see it in the water and yell FISH!

It's Official-A US Citizen

After many phone calls, the very overdue piece of paper has now arrived. I have Katie's Official Certificate of Citizenship!

And as Katie's words of the week are "I Don't Know" why it took so long!!!

Family

My brother flew up to Alaska from Texas to spend a week. My parents took off work and rented a camper so we travelled down to the Kenai Peninsula. Even though it was overcast and drippy at times it was a great trip. We saw lots of wildlife and I'll post pics of that for another day. It was a great family time.
Here is Katie with her Nana showing off in Homer. Katie and Nana at Potter's Marsh in Anchorage.

I call this one runaway toddler... As Katie tries to outrun her Pappy and the camera!

Wandering the beach on a very low tide...Hanging with Pappy in Homer at the ocean.Wes, Alex, Nana, Pappy, Sammy and Katie at Potter's Marsh in Anchorage. It's a great walking path to give the kids some exercise and before the windy roads heading south.And family shots at a barbecue we had for Wes's birthday. Here are grandparents and grinadkids. Getting 5 happy faces was difficult!And last but not least, my family all together finally complete!

Mirror, Mirror

I sat a mirror on the ground for Katie to look at herself. She sat in front of it for over an hour. Putting her hair up, making funny faces into it! I'm afraid of the trend I started though. She runs to it all the time now and shouts Pretty and twirls around.... Oh what kind of teenager is she going to turn into!

I'll be offline for a few days, family in town. Have a great weekend!

Pooh

I had a shirt on today with Winnie the Pooh on it, Katie said "Bear". Then she went and grabbed her Winnie the Pooh Matroyshka Doll from Russia and said Bear and then climbed into her brother's bed and grabbed his Pooh stuffed doll. Smart little cookie as she lined them up together and knew they were all the same bear!

Paperwork-updated

We've been home 107 days, yes I counted... Katie's certificate of citizenship still has not arrived! This is supposed to take about 45 days! I contacted our local USCIS office in Anchorage and they said they don't issue them. They did tell me it was in the computer system and should ship soon?? Hmm.. Wonder what soon is? I have checked with the folks that adopted the same time as us and those after us and they have received their COCs??

So Anchorage USCIS directed me to Washington D.C.... Now if you've ever tried calling a bureaucratic office in DC you know my frustration. They have a first rate computer that will not let you past any option to talk to a live person without receipt #s. Ug! I've tried several times but am not having any luck. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them. I'd really like to just send an e-mail to someone to inquire where it is.

The Anchorage office did tell me that I can get her social security card without the COC. I didn't know this... They tell me it's all in the computer. So I'm going to head into Anchorage soon and wait in the long lines to try and apply for the Soc. Sec #. I cannot get her passport without the COC, so there are several reasons I'd like to have it.

And I'm not sure if I've complained about it or not, but my health insurance is threatening to drop Katie without a social security #, as it's a bureaucratic rule that each person has to have one within so many days of enrolling.

The paperchase just goes on and on....

****Updated... I found a wonderful lady in Buffalo who e-mailed me back very quickly and found the COC, it was mailed to an incorrect address. She is mailing it on Monday and I should have it by next week!! It's always nice to know there is a gov't worker out there who can do a good job! FYI... A very good e-mail address for USCIS and adoption is child-citizenship-act@dhs.gov

Wonderland

We have a wonderful playground in downtown Wasilla called Wonderland Park. It was built a few years back all by community members and community donations. It also has a bike trail, basketball court, tennis court, skateboard park, etc. I often take the kids their to ride the bikes and sometimes we head to the playground (if it's early enough that it's not too crowded). Today we biked the trail and headed to the playground for a bit.

Sam and Katie on the tire swing, a favorite of all 3. It's amazing that she gets motion sick in a car but not on this swing that goes around and around. 3 peas in a pod....

And a shot with Nana. Little gal was talking too much to keep her eyes open!

The weather is still beautiful in Alaska. It's cooled off a bit into the 70s and 80s and it's a bit more bearable with lower humidity. The smoke from forest fires throughout the state is still making it hazy. This morning there was even a smoky smell to the air.

Easy Toys

My kids all seem to have great imaginations... Here was their foray into boxes, again (and again)... They fight over boxes at home!

Dora...

A little over 100 days in the US and Katie discovered TV today. She was dancing away to Dora the Explorer.....

It will definately help her vocabulary!

Spelunking

We flew into Phila when we went back east which meant the longer drive to get to my grandparent's house. So on the way back we broke up the trip a bit by stopping for lunch and touring Indian Echo Caverns, near Hershey. The boys loved going 1000 feet underground. And they absorbed all the stories told by the guide, they still talk about the man that died because he didn't put out his campfire. Here's a shot underground of the boys with their Nana exploring

Alaska is HOT!

The temperature has been abnormally high lately, we've been hitting 80s and 90s at my house. Very rare for Alaska in the summer. The humidity is present too, which is also very rare and it makes the days seem a lot like the east coast. It's also very hazy from the wildfires up north. It doesn't seem to cool off until around 11:30 pm when the sun finally goes down and it's back again with heat around 7:00 am. It is stuffy on our 2nd floor that's for sure.

So to beat the heat, the kids have been in the pool each day and then I use the sump pump to pump the water out and water plants. I watered the grass yesterday and let the kids play in the water a 2nd time. It was Katie's first introduction to the sprinkler and boy was she tired when it was over!Of course at the bottom of our "water" slide is a small patch of dirt, and it turned into mud. Check out who was taking a mud bath!

The B Word

A conversation between Alex and Sammy....

Sammy..."Shh.. Don't let Momma hear you use the B word...."

Alex... "Okay I'll spell it... B-U-T-T"

Happy Birthday Pappy!

Katie is Pappy's little girl. Pa-kee as she calls him. Here's a shot of here helping Pappy put screws in the deck. He would drill a hole, she'd put the screw in the hole and then he'd drill it in. I was very surprised at her hand eye coordination that she could line those screws us with the tiny holes.
We celebrated Pappy's 66th birthday today with a barbecue at our house. This was the first time Katie even attemped to eat cake, but she knew how to blow out the candle, she's gearing up for her brithday next month!

Happy 4th!

Mark was working at the Homer Campus last week, so I packed the kids into the car and we drove the 6 hours south to the end of the road in Alaska. This was the farthest trip Katie has been on by car and definitely the most I've driven with the kids by myself. Overall they did great. The boys are always great travelers they love to look at new things and can entertain themselves very well. Katie suffers from motion sickness and got sick 2 times on the drive south but not at all on the return trip. After about 4 hours of driving, you can start to see the ocean and volcanoes. So every time the boys spied the ocean they would shout ocean. Of course little Miss Katie had to shout out o-ken too!

(Sorry I didn't get any ocean pics, I was going to do it on the last day and it was too foggy for the pic to turn out)...

The weather was beautiful all over Alaska this past week. Temps in Homer were in the 60s
with the afternoon tides bringing in the good kite flying wind later in the day. Temps at our house were in the 80s! Alex collected buckets of sea shells, Sammy found 2 whole dad crabs and katie collected every little treasure she could find in her bucket. (The first time the boys were at the ocean I let Sammy bring dead crabs (in bags) home to show Nana. Darn it this time that bag of crabs blew away so they were unable to make the trip back with us. Those kids don't forget anything!).

We camped on the Homer Spit, literally at the end of the road. We were surrounded by many seagulls and eagles. Katie was so excited to see all the birds she would even forget to eat. Here's a shot of an eagle for you, perched ontop of a building...
The boys are so much bigger this year. We road on the bike path next to the ocean. They made it 3.5 miles!!!! We were almost at the end of the spit and back. My boys are getting very big!!

We stopped many times on the return to try and keep Katie's belly settled. I never feel the pics do Alaska justice, but here you go. Here's a shot at Tern Lake.

And here's a shot of the valley and glacier behind them at Turnagin Pass, highest elevation we were at on this trip. It's a bit hazy so everything is tough to see!

And here's one more shot of Tern lake with the mountains towards Seward.