Family Night

I love the sunny days in Kodiak!  We don’t see the sun often, but when we do it is almost magical.
Tonight after Connor’s soccer game, we hung out at the park for a little while; with the camera.  Here are just a few of the pictures from that night. 





Everyone got in on the fun with the swings.


Afterward, we came home to try out a new treat. 

Chocolate waffles. 
it is really simple, make your favorite cake batter, from a box works great.
Then cook in the waffle iron, as you would a regular waffle.
Top with some homemade ice cream (because that is how we roll)
And Enjoy!

Believe me, we did!

March 20

It has been a few weeks since I tried to sit and gather my thoughts to put them down in writing. Not much has changed in our day to day life. We are still trying to sell the house, although it is not very promising at the moment. Every once in a while we get a call for a walk through and we spend a day or two frantically cleaning everything, just to have them call at the last minute to cancel. I guess I may that sound like it happens frequently, but in reality it has only happened twice. One such occurrence was today, but the positive side is now I have a clean house which we can hopefully enjoy for a couple of days. (Most likely not.)

Tomorrow I start a new job. It is very part time, a couple of days a month. Bishop got a call last week from a third party merchandiser who likes to hire through the church employment office. We don't have an employment specialist here, nor do we have many welfare cases. So when he was thinking of people in the ward for this job he called me. Now tomorrow I start at Safeway, just rotating product. I also get to work with bishop's wife, Shelly. To be honest, it was the idea of working with her that got me to take the job. I love Bishop and Shelly. She is also my secretary in Relief Society. I am kind of excited to spend the day working with her for the next two days, and the money will be nice too.

This week is Alyssa's spring break, which has been really nice. She still has some work to do over the break, but we have been able to get other things done around the house. The kids still have their paper rules to do. I consider paper routes to be P.E. class and budgeting all rolled into one. They learn hard work, often in unfriendly weather, and the value of money. It still spends pretty quick, but they are excited to see how much they have saved. We make them put half of what they make into a saving account, and they can keep the rest after tithing. Connor was very proud of the cash he has in his piggy bank. He wanted to count it the other day, he has over $420. As I was tucking him into bed he asked me to hug my rich boy. The girls have saved up a good amount too. Even Kaylin has started helping Connor in his route, and is earning $10 a month. What a joy it is to see the kids have a desire to work.

That is all for now, another day gone. We will see what new adventure tomorrow brings.

March 3

This year I wanted to take a page out of Amy Quinn's book. Chad's sister has been emailing a weekly letter to keep the family updated on their family happenings. I really enjoy reading her email every week, but it has made me realize how out of touch with everyone I have become. I started this blog a few years ago as a way to share pictures and news with family who are all very (very, very) far away. The last year or two I have got out of the habit.

As I have tried to think of exciting events each week, I have come to the conclusion that our life is fairly routine and boring. However, while it may seem mundane to me, you may still enjoy our small adventures.

One big thing we are working on is selling our house. For the past year we have been looking for a bigger house. Around the first of February I got a call from the father of Sam's friend Morgan. They live right behind us and had mentioned last summer that they would be trying to sell soon. We looked at the house last summer and let them know we wanted it, but didn't hear back. We knew they had another friend also interested, so when we did not hear back we figured it was gone. With this news we have been frantically clearing out and getting the house ready to sell. Part of that has been renting a storage unit to be able to move some things out that we don't really want to get rid of yet. Hopefully this will help with the moving process when it finally happens.

That brings us up to this last week. Chad was up in Anchorage for a couple of days at a work conference, meeting with all the other IT managers from around Alaska for the Alaska Native Cinsorsiom. How is that for a title? I am sure that he had a good time (he did get to eat a Wendy's jr bacon cheese burger after all), and sleeping on uncomfortable hotel beds. He was also able to get to the temple for a couple of nights, for which I am very jealous.

My project was a little bigger than his trip. While he was gone I tore the kitchen apart and began the process of stripping and painting the kitchen cabinets. I had attempted to paint a section of cabinets a couple of months ago, but learned that I had not prepped as well as I thought. I hadn't sanded everything, but scrubbed it good and painted. Now the paint has begun to peal off. So I had the wonderful experience of stripping the paint off and sanding everything down to begin the process again. Ignorantly, I thought I could do this step Wednesday night in a few hours between dropping Chad off at the airport and taking the kids to young women's. by 7:00 it was looking hopeless as we loaded everyone into the car to run through McDonald's for dinner before getting to the church at 7:30. The paint stripper was bismal disappointment. It did work well to reduce the paint to a gummy sticky mess, and there we had to leave it as we ran off for the night. We found later that the paint came off so much better with out the use of painter stripper. One lesson learned this time, and a process I never want to do again.

On day two, we started early trying to sand the gum off the doors. Seven hours, and many sheets of sand paper later, we set up the doors out in the shed and the girls went to work painting. While they were busy outside, I remained busy sanding and stripping paint inside. This process did indeed go much more quickly with out the use of the chemical paint stripper. By that evening we had a first coat of paint on everything, and I had some incredibly sore muscles. I took the kids out for Chinese food (which they actually wanted and ate), and let them rent a couple of movies.

Day three, Chad was due home that night. My hope of having the kitchen put back before Chad came home was vanishing. I knew the doors would not be back up for several days, but I had hoped to reclaim the kitchen table and the floor. At this point the best I could hope for was to have the last coat of paint on the cabinet boxes. The day flew by and before I know it, it was time to run back out to the airport. Thankfully it is only 9 miles away, so I pushed it up to the last minute, and then threw on some clean cloths to go out and meet Chad. The kids had a wonderful dinner of mini corn dogs and taquitos, with soda to wash it all down. (All part of the I am too busy to cook diet plan)

Now we were up to Saturday morning, and another busy day. Somehow last fall we got involved in the 4-H program, and became leaders for the baking/cooking group. This has actually been kind of fun. We are able to meet in the culinary arts room at the high school and we have divided the kids into two groups. Chad has taken the middle school/high school kids, and I have the elementary kids. Our plan for the year has been to teach cooking from scratch to show kids all the possibilities with food. Today it was macaroni and cheese, not a terribly healthy dish, but still from scratch with food that they are familiar with. Last time we did breakfast foods and they all made pancakes from scratch. The older group also did fresh hash browns and eggs. we have had a total of about 13-15 kids, and they have all been great to work with.

4-H was another great lesson, however the pileup in my kitchen hung over me, between the long hours and the crappy food, my body was not as cooperative as I would have liked. Thankfully, somewhere through the afternoon my second wind kicked it and I found the table again. By the end of the day everything was back in it place, and every room of the house had been cleaned and photographed to send of to a potential buyer. I was so ready for the Sabbath and a day of rest, if only it was a day of rest.

It has been a busy month, but the house is starting to get cleaned out, and hopefully that much closer to being sold.

The weekend alarm

It is seven o'clock on a Sunday morning, and the cat just woke me up. He is our weekend alarm. During the week we are up much earlier getting ready for seminary and work, and getting the kids up for school. On weekends though, he is usually up roaming the halls just before seven, calling for someone to get up with him. Summers are even worse, because it gets light so early, that he thinks everyone should be moving with the sun. He is a strange creature, but very patient with the kids. He is a social animal, always needing to be where the action is, but staying apart from it too. He wakes us up in the morning to come and sit in the kitchen while he eats. He DOES NOT like to eat alone. Most days this means I automatically toss him outside. There are time when that is all he needed, for just a couple of minutes. He does not have a little box in the house. We used to, but there have always been little children running around. Once, before a friends visit, we took the littler box outside and never brought it back in. The cat, who has been know by a dozen different name since coming to live with us, almost instantly adapted and has done his business outside ever since. One of the best things about our cat is his ability to adapt.

So now he has eaten, been outside, and is back just sitting on the floor A few feet away. He doesn't often rub up against people, he does keep a little bit of distance, yet he also stays near. Even with tons of kids running around and trying to play with him, he prefers to stay close rather than running off to hide. As much as I sometime complain about him, he is really a pretty good part of the family.

Little love notes

Have you ever had days where all you do is put out fires? No, not real fires, but the little emergencies and problems that you deal with everyday as part of raising kids. That seems to be my day everyday. Someone always needs something, always wants a little bit of time. Most days that is not a problem, but yesterday was one day when it felt like I was needed in too many places as the same time. I was overwhelmed and felt under appreciated.
Last night one of the kids asked Kaylin why she was wearing two shirts. I was only half listening, and therefore the answer didn't make any sense. She said "because mom is allergic to rabbits."

Yes, I am. More than any other animal I have been around. I don't even have to touch them, just being around them is more than enough. My eyes get red and itchy, my chest gets heavy, and it is hard to breath. My kids know that. Connor has to collect from a lady on his paper route that has a bunch of rabbits, and I stay in the car. Just one time I stood at the door with him, not even inside the house. Wen we got in the car my eyes were burning and it hurt to breath. As a kid I spent the night at a friends house who had baby rabbits. We spent a lot of time playing with them, and they were I. The room with us as we slept. In the morning my eyes were swollen shut. That was my first experience with rabbits, and I have learned to stay away.

Now back to Kaylin. Her response only made sense when we saw what was on her bottom shirt. In her innocent little world, her bunny shirt might hurt Mom. She had covered it up to protect me, and once again I am reminded why I do all things I do for them. I love getting love notes from that girl.