December Weather

Our winter weather took a big warm up the past few days and went above freezing. Which is not always good, as it starts the melting and leads to ice. Ug! We have had about 40 inches of snow so far (November set a record) but today the sky gave us RAIN! So we built snowmen in the rain...


Between the record cold and record snow, November was a big weather month. December is starting out mild that's for sure. We've had so much changing weather this is the first time in 15 years that I went out and actually put snow tires on my AWD subaru. The roads have been terrible the past few weeks...

9th Birthday-Sammy

Happy 9th Birthday to Sammy! His love of Legos continues and Heroica was by far his favorite present. He's growing up fast and is constantly thinking of something... He loves to write and his new goal is to become a writer or maybe open a restaurant that he wants to call Rocks on Fire... :)

Basketball Update

Last game of the season and Alex scored a basket. Priceless picture of his face when the ball actually went in! :)

Gingerbread Houses

A bitter cold week this week brought illnesses to each kid and a very long week. The temp was -18 on Saturday... Sammy had a ruptured ear drum, Alex strep throat and Katie is struggling with croup. So to help with the cabin fever, we did Gingerbread Houses just a little earlier this year.
This is the CandyMan's House. He had a different face on each roof. I should have taken a sideways picture...
Alex did a candy train :)

Beauty Shop

This pic is a little blurry but I couldn't resist posting it. Sam and Katie were playing Beauty shop. I have a feeling this picture will be worth a lot when he's a teenager!

Snow

We had our first snowfall at the beginning of November. We have about 2 feet on the ground right now. The first 2 weeks of Nov. were beautiful with lots of snow and temps in the 20s that led to great outdoor play. Here's a nice shot of the kids' playground that Mark built this summer. He's hanging all the Christmas lights on it now so the kids can play on it all winter long. It has 4 towers with a ball pit, cabin and a castle with a drawbridge too...

2 kiddos that love to sled together....

Basketball

Alex is finishing up 4th grade basketball. His team is the Knik Kings (Salmon). He loves sports so much, his natural aggressiveness helps him "have the ball" a lot. He hasn't actually made a shot yet but he sure likes to dribble...
And always wants to have the ball... He didn't have his white shirt for this game but stands out nice in the picture with his yellow cross country shirt.

Halloween

A little late, but finally hooking up the pictures from Halloween. It was a perfect Alaska Halloween with a little snow and weather in the 20s. Here's the 2 jesters and the Minnie Mouse...A little Jack'O Lantern fun...

Fall @ the Pumpkin Patch

We headed over to the Butte and the Reindeer Farm for their Pumpkin festival. The kids loved feeding the reindeers. It was combat feeding though as those monsters were starving!


Katie and Alex loved riding the horses...

We took a hay ride to the maze. The Hay Maze was the highlight of the boys. It was tough! They ran after the tootsie roll bandit (if you caught him you got a tootsie roll). Katie like the lollipop fairy, who gave out lollipops and helped those in trouble.
Pretty morning in the Butte, around 30 degrees and sunny and clear... Beautiful location with lots of great views. The kids liked how they opened up a field and "planted" lots of pumpkins for kids to choose from...

October Happenings

Alex-School is going well this year. He's showing a new maturity, a large part of which is due to sports. We have a rule that he has to act like a 9 year old to do the sports and he's doing a good job of stepping up to that role and getting his homework and chores done. Cross Country finished in September and the new sport is Basketball. He goes to practice 2 mornings a week and has 1 game a week after school.

Sammy-For the first time there are activities for 3rd graders this year so Sammy is busy 2 afternoons a week. He's more into academics than sports. He's doing Lego Robotics and Battle of the Books. He's really turned into a reader and his report card is great in all areas!

Katie-Kindergarten is moving along, we've picked up a few bad habits from the kiddos in the class, but we're also moving along on our learning and the alphabet and numbers are coming right along. I think it was the right move to put her in so young. Her weakness is her writing skills but she'll get there as she gets older...

Alex-Cross Country

In September we finished up cross country at the big (and I mean) big district meet. Lots of kids!! Alex ran in the 4th grade 1.5 mile race and finished 8th overall and 1st in his school. I was impressed that he could truly run the whole race at that speed. Shocked me watching him dash over the hills like they were nothing. All those mileage club runs from his K-2 school recess days really have built him some muscles!
After the meet, we celebrated at Red Robin :)

School-moving along

We are up to our necks in Fall in Alaska. The temp this morning was 36 degrees and while it was a beautiful sunny day, the leaves are halfway down and the flowers have died. We're also moving right along in school with no issues so far... Here's the recap...

Alex-is so excited to have sports after school. He's into cross country running right now and runs 2 miles every day rain or shine outside. He loves to run and is very competitive. He's getting praise from the coach for listening to the coach's comments on style and technique. The big meet comes up in 2 weeks and he's very excited about it! He's definitely tired at night and getting homework done is a chore, but so far he's managing. He really wants to do sports...

Sammy-is more academic and volunteered to be a Conflict Manager at recess. If you know Sammy well you'd be laughing at this one. But he studied and took all the tests and received his badge and key and is one of just a few third graders that volunteered. He loves having power to let kids into the building to go bathroom and loves to walk them through problems. He claims it's a little boring as not enough kids get in trouble to need his help :)

Katie-in Kindergarten they are all about filling buckets (being nice to others). So she's constantly filling buckets of others. It really fits her personality because she loves telling people I like your shirt, can I help... She's well known by many kids and staff in the school because of her adorable personality...

I'm a BIG girl now!

August brought us many big events this year! Katie turned 5 and we made the decision to send our smallest sprout to kindergarten. (Literally, she's 1% for height!)... Here's the big girl on her first day of school... Riding the bus with the bus driver. He's waited 2 years to get her on his bus. He loves Katie and begged us to take a picture..
So excited to be waiting for the bus. And after 3 days of school a little girl joined Katie at the all boy bus stop.. That really made her day, now she has a best friend!

Back to School

Summer flew by fast and we've been back at school for a week or so. Alex is now a 4th grader, wow I remember his first day of Kindergarten! His favorite things are still football, birds, and airplanes. He's become quite an artist and loves to draw pictures of birds that he sees. He is developing his responsibility and maturity. Sammy is entering 3rd grade. He has a male teacher that he really likes. His favorite things are reading, legos, legos and drawing lego batman characters. Sammy is a sponge for information and is always asking "what does this mean" and it's usually a word I have to think about or look up! Katie just turned 5, (birthday pics soon!) and was very eager for Kindergarten roll in today. She's very social, happy and eager to have friends. She is excited to ride the bus to school and stay there all day. I'm still at the high school and it's a break working with a different age group of kids. Maybe I'll have all the secrets by the time my own kids become teenagers, yep that age will scare me for sure!

Disneyland Vacation

Thanks to a great last minute deal from Alaska Airlines, we just got back from a week at Disneyland... We took the boys down about 4 years ago, and they are still of an age where it was exciting to go. I didn't tell them what was going on, until I woke them up in the middle of the night to catch the plane. The day prior to the trip, I gave them a writing assignment to see if they could guess a big surprise, as a reward for filling their reading logs. Alex actually guessed an airplane trip to California. Sammy guessed a Lego toy day, where he could buy all the legos they wanted...

Our last trip was in April, where fireworks were weekly and characters few and far between. Wow! In August there are 2 parades a day, many shows at night, and characters at every turn...

Katie loves Princess Tianna and Minnie Mouse was her favorite.

Alex is a big Donald Duck fan..The boys are now tall enough to ride any ride, and they each had their favorites. Sammy loved the Haunted Mansion and Fantasia, one of the nightly water shows... Alex was roller coasters all the way....

It's a buggy life....

We did one character breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen and it was well worth the money as we had characters at our table the entire meal... Katie was treated like a princess and had a dance with Aladdin.

The kids were a great age to truly enjoy all the park had to offer. Truly glad we had the chance to go before the boys got too old to not think it was cool...

Days of Summer

We're in week 3 of swimming lessons, the kids love being in the pool. It's complicated with 2 of them with ear tubes but we do the best we can to make it work. The boys are in the same class together so that makes it easier. Above is Sammy getting ready to enter his class and below is Alex on the diving board in the 9 foot section. Hard pics to see as the lighting in the pool area doesn't help me take pics!

Katie jumping into the 3.5 foot section, she has no fear this year. Last year she screamed and wouldn't go near the water. All the difference in the world, with a different teacher this year.

Katie listening to the safety speech...

We usually have female moose and babies around our house. This is the first bull moose that's been hanging around for about 3 weeks. He comes by everyday and he's a bit agressive so we're more watchful. My dad was working on our block wall towards the back of our yard and the moose fake charged at him, so we watch for him carefully. I'm not sure why he's hanging around here this time of year. He's young and needs to learn a few things!Lego Madness. We had a stop, drop and build day (i.e. rain!). The boys spent hours perfecting their perfect lego from scratch. Alex built a truck and bobcat.

Sammy is all about Batman this summer so of course he made a batmobile.

Brotherly love. Sammy stops riding his bike for a quick hug from his favorite sister.

Alaska Scenery

In random order, here's a few shots from Anchorage to Seward from our train trip....

Heading North to Anchorage...


Along the Seward Highway.


Around Portage
Spencer Glacier--The boys loved the story about how this glacier was named. Spencer died while hiking around the glacier and they found his body a year later, but his $$ is still rumored to be hidden somewhere in the glacier in it's metal box...
Train crossing a valley.
Glacier...
Seward Boat Harbor on a beautiful day!
Sea otter napping in the sun.
Sea Otter that wanted to play...
Train along Kenai Lake...
Black bear... We saw a brown bear, eagles, Mountain sheep, and a momma and baby moose, but this was the only one I got on film...
Climbing the mountain...