Sisterly Love

She still can't get enough of her little brother.

This is Where We Live

Melayna arrived in Alaska on her birthday, barely. There was only an hour left of her day to celebrate with her, so we headed to the Chena River in Fairbanks, where the airport is, and enjoyed some Raspberry Delight and the Midnight Sun. This picture was taken between 11:30 and midnight, just to give you an idea of the daylight we enjoy around here.

We spent the next few days showing Melayna how we live here in Delta. This is a pretty good view of our new "cabin." From the outside, the corrugated metal may give it more of a shack feel than a cabin feel, but the wood and angled ceilings inside give it an Alaskan cabin ambiance. We liked that. And we really liked the fact that rent was almost half the cost of our other place, so we moved just a couple weeks before Melayna arrived.

Of course we had to show Melayna our new-found skills of authentic ravioli making.

We enjoyed the gorgeous, drawn-out sunsets just after midnight. Then there's a really light dusk/dawn for a couple hours before the drawn-out sunrise. The light in the summer is just surreal. I'm still not used to it and do a terrible job of getting my kids to bed at any kind of reasonable hour in the summer.

Clearwater Creek is a beautiful spot in Delta, especially when the wild roses are blooming.

Hazel insisted on hiking the path next to the creek herself. It was more of a stroll than a hike, so we went at a toddler's pace.

After a gorgeous sunny day, we headed to Donnelly Dome just south of town for a hike, at which point it began to rain. Gratefully we brought the hiking backpack (and Aaron) along for this hike. When we arrived and weren't sure which dirt turnout was the best for hiking, Melayna accused it of not being a real mountain or a real hike, just because it didn't have signs and official trails and real parking lots. Yeah, this is just a hike for locals, I think, not tourists!

Being novices to this trail, we unknowingly took the more difficult, nearly-straight-up-the-incline path. When wet rocks were sliding beneath our feet, we decided that it was a hike not well-suited to a 3-month-old hanging out on the front, so we sent the little mountain goats ahead and waited. Just after we stopped, the "trail" was even steeper so they wisely chose to return to us.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed a beautiful view and the rain passed and we were all happy hikers. The next evening at baseball practice, which happened to be summer solstice day, we were chatting about Donnelly and how to get to the more family friendly trail when we discovered that the Delta tradition is to hike Donnelly on summer solstice and to get to the top around sunset (at 12:22, I believe). Next year.

Here's our yard, covered in the rare wildflower known as dandelions. Just behind that forested area is a path cleared over the buried Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It's a cool spot and a great place for walks.

The Buffalo Center Drive-In is our only fast food restaurant in town, and it is only open in the summer. Yes, you can eat buffalo there, raised on local buffalo farms. We also have a heard of wild buffalo that roam in our vicinity, I've heard tell, but never seen 'em with my own eyes.

And here's where Aaron has been spending most of his time since moving to Delta.

Xander LOVED playing little league baseball, coach pitch. He is hands down the most enthusiastic kid out there, and it makes him so fun to watch. He is also a really consistent batter, even as one of the youngest on the team. He made us proud!

Our new place is just a couple miles from Quartz Lake, so we headed over for a picnic one evening. We were running a bit late for dinner and didn't even leave the house until 8:30. I tell ya, the midnight sun messes with my mind.

Yes, Xnader is holding a fish head and skeleton, but don't worry, he assured me he wasn't actually toughing it, just the line that was connected to it. Ugh. Dontcha love the kids mud boots? An Alaskan must, I tell ya.

We were moving on Aaron's birthday, so I wasn't able to make his standing birthday request then, especially since we haven't been able to find Gyoza wrappers in Alaska. We had to whip out our pasta cranker and make our own wrappers, adding another step to an already labor-intensive cooking project. With Melayna and Xander to help, we were able to crank out a mean batch of potstickers sometime between sunset and sunrise.

Those are some of our favorite things to do in and around our little town. Wanna come visit?

Denali: The Journey

Good thing Melayna came to see us. We needed a reason to take an explore-the-Last-Frontier vacation. Our first destination was Denali National Park. We decided to take "the scenic route" (as if every route in Alaska isn't scenic) along the Denali highway, 130ish miles of mostly dirt and gravel. The whole region is gorgeous, so we stopped plenty along the way to enjoy the journey. Aaron wanted to show us Rainbow Mountain where he had enjoyed a campout and hike with the scouts. Unfortunately, the hike was a bit longer than we'd bargained for on a pitstop, so we didn't actually make it to rainbow mountain.

But we had a great time finding cool rocks, some small enough to collect and others big enough to lounge on.

Just at the end of the pavement on the Denali Highway are The Tangled Lakes. Again, we barely dipped our toes into that vicinity and we're excited to come back and explore it more thoroughly someday.

Wanna come visit next summer so we'll have a good reason to do the Tangle Lakes justice? Don't forget your mud boots. They are a must around here. I was wishing I had a pair. (Now I do!)

The views from the highway were breathtaking and impossible to capture in a snapshot.

We stopped to whip out the trusty camp stove and cook up some Bou Stew when a little rain came our way. Good thing Max is a real Alaskan. Arguably the only true Alaskan among us.

Xander, Melayna, and Elodie enjoyed skipping rocks on the raging Clearwater River. And I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that no one fell in! Whew!

Back in the car, we wre entertained by cute faces in the back seats. He was smiling when Melayna took this picture; oh, the camera delay. She swears she never saw him make this face, but I'm glad she caught it. It's a real winner.

Whoops, it looks like she also caught a certain young man bopping his dear sister on the head. Good thing she's being a good sport about it! Really, they are best friends and I am so glad they have each other.

Look, Hazel can do it, too!

Then, we camped at this gorgeous place called Brushkana Campground near another raging river and had delicious food and excellent company plus THOUSANDS, possibly MILLIONS of mosquitos which apparently prevented all picture taking. None of us had ever seen such SWARMS of mosquitos in our whole lives, and most in our company decided to lock themselves in their tents for the duration. But we learned from our experience and Aaron went wild the next day buying mosquito tennis racket zappers, more deep woods bug spray, repellant candles, and (eventually) a mosquito net for his head. Here's a view of Denali National Park right by the entrance.

My favorite part was hiking together as a family. It was so funny to be hiking there after living in the interior. A lot of our hike through the subarctic taiga looked like hiking at home, except with real, labeled, well-maintained trails and lots of people from lots of different countries. And we crossed train tracks and heard trains--come on, that's pretty civilized, right?

I found it kind of odd that Denali National Park, which has the reputation for being such a remote wilderness, felt so much more civilized than hiking back home in Delta. Aaron wasn't nearly as worried about "bear protection" because there were people everywhere! Of course we were on the family friendly hikes right at the entrance to the park, not backpacking deep into the unknown. Speaking of family-friendly, check out this real man. What a dad! One of the best parts of vacation was getting to all that time with this guy, relaxed and in his element.

I am so impressed with these hikers. Yeah, they occasionally need a dum-dum (lovingly selected at the store by Hazel who managed to open the bag and eat one while I was distracted) to find their happy hiker selves again, but overall, when the terrain is interesting and tough, they are go-go-go way ahead of the "grown-ups," as Elodie was wont to call us. "OK, grown-ups, watch out, the path is kind of steep right here." The hardest part was often getting them to wait for us!

Oh yeah, just check out The Denali Dahle's. We are at least as tough as we look.

The hike down to horseshoe lake was great. Then at the bottom, we get an added bonus: there was a really cool beaver dam to explore. We didn't see any beavers though, so Xander filled in for us. Although as we were walking back up the trail away from the lake, we thought we saw a beaaver way down below in the water, but it turned out to be a moose's head.

Such a fun group!

I'm pretty sure hiking is my favorite form of exercise.

That night, we opted for more sleep by renting two of these cute little cabins.

This moose mama and her baby were kind enough to pose for a photo shoot. We were kinda hoping to see a bear, while we were in the car, but I'm glad we never did because then maybe we would have felt more hesitant about getting out of the car.

Max was such a trooper, just hanging out on another hike.

The kids love hikes that end in water. Elodie loved searching for skipping rocks and Xander and Aaron loved throwing them. I was pretty impressed with their skipping skills, sometimes even skipping over a gravel bar into the next channel of the Savage River.

Melayna got a little taste of mushing. Hazel LOVED the dogs. Hands down her favorite part of Denali. "Ma doddies, ma doddies!" (Translation: more doggies!)

Lava was not a nice dog. After fighting with his partner when he was teamed up, I was trying to catch a picture of his evil stare, but he whipped out with this rude little stunt. Yikes, don't cross him!

We felt like we did everything we wanted to in Denali, except see Denali! Blasted localized cloud cover. Denali is the "real" name of Mt. McKinley. You'd think it's be easy to see a mountain that big, like you couldn't miss it. Oh, we missed it, and we tried diligently. Well, we didn't take the 12 hour bus ride to Wonder Lake down the 90 mile road that requires all children and infants remain in carseats the whole time. There is no look apologetic enough to give all the retired couples trying to enjoy the journey of a lifetime as you traipse onto the bus with four wee ones in tow. We're going to enter the lottery some year for the privilege of driving our own vehicle all the way down the park road. Oh yeah, you know you wanna come visit that fall!

I'd like to give a final thanks to The Beast for making this trip possible! We love our Alaskan Adventure Mobile!

Summer, anyone?

I’ve noticed a weather pattern and I’m hoping it continues. November was really cold. December was somewhat warmer. January was truly Arctic. Locals said it was one of the coldest on memory. February, by comparison, was quite pleasant. March seemed chillier than February. Besides a little dusting of snow on Easter morning, April felt nice, sunny, and warm. Locals reported it much warmer than average, melting all the snow sooner than usual; they said snow patches often remain throughout May and into June, but not this year. May seemed chillier than April because there were so many chilly, rainy days. Cold, warmer, colder, warmer, colder, warmer, colder, … So if my pattern continues, June will be warmer than May was! And I am ready for some warm! But I do hope the pattern stops there because I’d love a nice warm July, too.

I’m sure hoping that the weather on June 1st did not set a precedent for the month. I woke up to the sound of rain on our tin roof. After a cup of cocoa and oatmeal for breakfast, we still weren’t feeling warmed up so I broke down and turned up the heat. For dinner, I made us a nice warm pot of chicken noodle soup. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Yeah, maybe in NOVEMBER, but it’s JUNE! I’m ready to sit in the shade and sip lemonade and watch as the clouds roll by. Is that what YOU do? Not me, I sip hot cocoa and snuggle in a blanket. I brought popsicles when it was our turn to bring a snack for Xander’s baseball team last week and the assistant coach politely declined and said she’d rather have a cup of cocoa. I had to agree with her, but Xander convinced me to pretend it was summer. I thought that we were done freezing on the sidelines when hockey season was over, but Elodie was so chilly at practice yesterday, even though she came prepared with her blanket and sweater, that she sat it out in the car.

Kickin’ My Trash

Some people say that the transition from 2 to 3 kids is the hardest, when you have more kids than hands, more kids than parents. For me, going from 2 to 3 was no big deal. But going from 3 to 4? Yikes, it’s kicking my trash! Aaron and I both agree that 4 kids feels like a lot of kids, whereas 3 felt like we were just a little starter family. And Max is a really good, easy-going baby. Yet adding that one more feels like a lot more. Maybe if I just had to take care of kids and not keep the house even remotely clean I wouldn’t feel like I was just barely staying afloat everyday. Poor Aaron has had a lot of slack to pick up! There just seem to be so many needs. It’s good to feel needed, right? So I should feel really good all the time!

Yesterday was going really well. Aaron was home and working on moving loads of stuff to the new house while the kids and I were doing Saturday cleaning. Hazel and Max both took really long afternoon naps at the same time, so I was getting things organized and truly clean for the first time in way too long. I didn’t quite finish getting the piles of grown-out-of shirts and toys put away when Max needed to eat (it had been 4 1/2 hours since I last fed him so he deserved it!). Then of course Hazel woke up, it was time to make dinner, Elodie came home from the birthday party, Xander needed encouragement to finish his big raking job, the girls needed Saturday night baths, we ate dinner, Max needed to eat again, we had family scripture time, I held Max and tried to get some bills paid on the computer while the big kids were supposedly getting ready for bed, and finally I went back to the kids room to tuck them in. What did I find when I went downstairs? It appeared that everything I had done during my productive afternoon was undone. Oh, the Law of Entropy! It seems especially fast-acting with a one-year-old on the move. And those big kids? They had “forgotten” to brush their teeth and put their clothes away and get ready for bed because they were too busy playing with the things I had been trying to organize and prep for the move. Aaargghh! Those feelings of discouragement, incompetency, frustration, and utter exhaustion tried so hard to take over. Before I knew it, everybody was in tears and I felt like a terrible mother. Everybody except Hazel, that is, who helped me regain perspective with her kisses and general sweetness. Aaron got back and tried to help Max calm down, but to no avail; Max just needed Mom so Aaron tackled the dishes. With some prayer and repentance and forgiveness we all got back on track. I reorganized and finished cleaning and studied scriptures and finished preparing my lesson for Sunday School and fed Max again and went to bed (after 1:00) feeling good about life again.

Yes, mothering four children is kicking my trash so far, but I’ve only been doing it for 8 weeks. This doesn’t make me want to stop having more and more kids or anything. I have hope that I will grow into this responsibility eventually. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said so well, “That which we persist in doing becomes easier - not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.” I trust that God will strengthen me and increase my ability as He has in the past. Yes, these past few weeks, I have had plenty of moments that have highlighted my weaknesses, but I won’t let that get me down! “And if men come unto me, I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” (Ether 12:27) I loved the two articles about the strengthening power of Jesus’ grace in the April Ensign that I read while feeding my sweet baby. They were just what I needed to maintain perspective and hope in Christ. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Phil. 4:13) Phew, good thing I don’t have to do this mothering thing all by myself! I have everything I need.

I feel can totally relate to what Sister Lant said in conference a few years ago, referring to one of her daughters: I am at “a wonderful place in [my] life where [my] greatest blessings are [my] greatest challenges (I have [four] small children).” Bring it on!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Land of the Midnight Sun

Last night I was driving home at nearly midnight from cleaning our new place (we’re moving into a cheaper, smaller rental home to save money for a down payment so we can be homeowners again someday). Of course, the sun was not actually still up, but it wasn’t completely dark yet, either. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a completely dark night sky in a couple weeks. Max often sleeps through the night (one Sunday morning he slept until 8:20 and I had last fed him at about 10:30!! He’s a champ!), and when he doesn’t, he generally wakes me up around 4:30 to eat, which is just before sunrise and it’s pretty much light by then. It’s almost 10 now and the sun still hasn’t set. And it’s only the beginning of May! Getting here just after summer solstice last year, I didn’t realize how early in the year the Midnight Sun comes.

An Anniversary to Remember

How do you do celebrate nine years of marital bliss? Stay home and make ravioli from scratch! Well, that’s what WE do, anyway.

We finally got to try out the hand-crank pasta maker that Aaron got me for my birthday over a year ago. We’d been meaning to make pasta for a date sometime, but never seemed to have the energy to start that kind of project after the kids went to bed, which is of course when most of our at-home dates start, since being kidless is pretty much a requirement for calling it a “date” when you’re married, right? I mean, going to the grocery store can seem like a fun date when you’re alone together! We dropped the kids (except Max, of course) off at a friend’s house so we could eat before midnight. As it was, we didn’t eat until 9:00 (and I had made the dough before Aaron got home from work so it could “rest!”), but the process was so much fun that we didn’t mind a bit.

As we were cranking out the pasta, we just kept looking at each other and saying, “This is so fun! This is so cool! Why have we never done this before?” We’ll be doing it again soon, for sure! We both found it strangely exhilarating and satisfying. Call us crazy, but hey, we’re unified in our craziness and that’s what counts! It was seriously the best anniversary dinner date we can remember!

When we finally sat down to eat our masterpiece, we turned on a little “Bella Notte” and savored every bite. Yes, homemade pasta is worth the taste! For special occasions only, since dinner at 9 doesn’t work too well for the kiddos! But if you come visit, we’ll declare it a special occasion and make you some mushroom or cheese ravioli. They were both simply scrumptious!

And the other exciting thing we discovered that night? We could use the pasta cranker to make Gyoza wrappers for Chinese potstickers! We haven't been able to find them here, even at the Asian market in Fairbanks! So if we start right after breakfast, we oughtta have dumplings by dinner!