Alaska2

Tuesday was spent doing final wedding shopping. I was in charge of decorating, and there were a few things I needed to pick up in Anchorage. We also went to the Kobuk, which was a favorite shop of ours when we lived there, and visited Town Square, where we used to ice skate in the winter. We decided we were going to need a rental car after all, and so picked that up Tuesday after we finished the shopping.
Then we headed over to the airport to meet Nancy, Loei, and Walid. It was quite a big deal for them to be arriving, since they had worked so long and hard to get Walid his “green card”, not to mention the 27 hour trip from Cairo. Molly had gotten them buddy passes and worked really hard to make sure they were able to get there as smoothly as possible. All in all it was a huge deal for them and we were thrilled to be there when they arrived in Anchorage. I wish I had taken pictures, but we were all just too busy meeting and greeting. ;-) Poor Lolo was pooped, but in good spirits nonetheless and my boys were so happy to see him. Walid brought Gil an Egyptian drum that he had carried all the way. It is beautiful and Gil loves it. Mom and Molly were both there to drive the family and their luggage to Wasilla, and we stayed one more night in Anchorage.
Wednesday we finally drove out to Wasilla and then to Willow to hang out with Bonny and Jim. He’s a great guy, I could tell Bonny was happy, and they live at this awesome property with a cool house. Bridgette and Hatcher were so happy to see us and Hatcher even went over to the car looking for the boys, who had stayed in Wasilla with Uncle Benny. We had a great visit and I was wishing everyone lived closer, so we could’ve been hanging out there most nights!
Thursday and Friday were spent getting ready for the wedding. On Thursday we took a couple of hours out to meet up with some dear friends of ours, Kellee Ball and her children. We hung out at Wasilla Wonderland Park and then came back to the parent’s apt. building, where we all visited some more. I can’t believe I didn’t get a picture of all the kids together! That really disappoints me. Sigh. Just can’t do it all. At least we got to visit.
Thursday evening, Bonny and Jim came over for final wedding plans and we got most everything planned and organized. Friday was spent doing all of the final preparations, with Nancy and Molly helping me make the final decorations, a group of us going to Target for wedding presents, and staying up until 3 in the morning helping Benny (bless his heart!) make fudge. :-) I’ll include a wedding picture of the table decorations in this post.

Alaska 1

Bonny and Jim got married on June 20, and we wouldn't have missed it for the world! We hadn't been back to AK since we moved away, so the whole trip was a huge thrill for the boys, and bittersweet for me. I say that because while I am happy to live somewhere much warmer, I do miss Alaska and I miss my family up there like crazy. I of course cried all the way home!
The wedding was beautiful and we all really like Jim, so couldn't be happier for Bonny. An extra treat was that Nancy, Walid, and Loei flew in from Cairo. Yay!!
We only had 8 days, so it was a whirlwind tour and none of us felt like we were there long enough. I know that's normal for most vacations, but still...anyhow...here’s a brief recap. I will at some point add photos at Facebook, so will only include a few here.
We arrived around 1 am on Sunday the 14th, stayed up later talking to Lupe and Jessica, then slept some. We got up and headed out to the Three Baron's Renaissance Fair, which we had faithfully attended every year when we lived in Anchorage. Benny and Molly met up with us and we all had a great time. When we got back to Lupe’s, she drove us to Elderberry Park and we hiked the Coastal Trail, arriving back at the park just before midnight. Since Monday was Ealom’s birthday, we counted down the remaining seconds until he turned 13 in the midnight sun. I took some very nice pictures of his last minutes as a 12 year old and a very funny video of him counting down to 13. :-)
I arranged a party at the Imaginarium (our old Science Center) and invited friends and family on Monday. Since everybody on my side of the family was working and/or getting ready for the wedding, it was just Gil’s side of the family and some of Ealom’s friends. He had a pretty good time, but since we used to have huge blow-out parties at our home in Anchorage for the kids’ birthdays, Ealom felt a little let-down. I did my best, but I think it was like a lot of things in life, especially birthdays. You get all worked up for this “huge” event, but you don’t feel any different really, and it’s kind-of anti-climatic. Oh well, life goes on. We went back to Lupe’s for dinner and then headed over to our old neighborhood. It was really emotional for all of us to see the home where we had built so much of our lives for 9 years, but we were glad we went and hung out in the street with our old neighbors chatting until nearly midnight when we could stand the tiredness and mosquitoes no longer. It never gets dark of course. ;-)
Maybe this is why I don’t blog much – it takes me too long! I think I will break these posts up into a couple of days at a time, and add a couple photos each.
Here’s the boys at the 3 Baron’s Fair:

Ealom's last minutes being 12:

The final countdown to 13:

Ealom's birthday party:

Aidan's baseball

Aidan was so excited to play baseball this spring and he did very well, as well as met some other great kids. Here are a couple of pictures taken at a game in Washougal.

Bones in the Woods

We were checking out a property just up the road that's for sale and we came upon these bones. Not knowing what they belonged to and being the curious folks we are, we wanted to find out. Being the amateurs that we are, we were worried lest they be human bones. They are small, so the possibility of that made us concerned enough that we took a couple of photos and tried to figure it out from our anatomy books at home. I became fairly confident that they weren’t human based on how long and narrow the pelvic bone is, but I wasn’t positive, so we brought the photos into the sheriff's office. The officer there said we did the right thing, but that they aren't human. He's not trained in identifying animal bones, so had no clue what they did belong to.
Being the investigative homeschoolers that we are, we took the photos to the Parks Dept. and they didn't know what kind of animal they belonged to either, however, they said that it's likely they belonged to a member of the cat family. Bobcat? Cougar? Rather neat discovery either way. It’s impossible to ever learn everything there is to, but finds like this sure make me want to learn more. Nature continues to amaze me.

Christmas cookie baking

In my attempt to post more often and keep my blog more updated, I figured I'd share these silly cookie making pictures. Leave it to my children to create appendages and digits rather than traditional gingerbread men. We did make lots of people, hand-cut birds (inspired by Tasha Tudor, may she rest in peace), trains, airplanes, stars, trees, etc. If I feel like it later, I'll post some of those pics, along with some Christmas shots.

At the feeder

Some of the less frequent visitors to the suet feeder: Downy Woodpecker, Western Scrub-Jay, and Northern Flicker. Birds we see daily or quite often are: the Red-breasted Nuthatch, European Starling, Oregon Junco, Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadee, and some of the finches (American Golden and Cassin's). Frequent visitors to the seed feeders are some of the above plus Spotted "Rufous" Towhees, sparrows (house, song, etc.), Steller's Jay, and once in a great while; the Varied Thrush and Mourning Dove. We also have a Pileated Woodpecker that visits the Holly tree in the yard once in a while, a few Hummingbirds that come by in the summer, and Turkey Vultures that hang out in the pine trees across the street during the summer.
I'm sure there are others, and spring brings the Evening Grosbeaks in large numbers, but these are what we've identified so far. Of course, down by the cove and the river is a WHOLE other story I'll have to post about later. :-)

Artist

I decided to make our artist study more formal, so I created an "Artist Corner" with the featured artist and his/her art. This term is Botticelli, and I feel that after one picture chat and having our display next to our study area, we are already starting to "know" "Fortitude". It seems like having a nice display like this shows us all the importance of the artist and their works. Since our study area is also the dining room table, we are visiting with our artist constantly and it's involving dad more. Like all these types of things, I only wish I'd done this sooner! Next up, "Primavera". :-)

Arthur Rackham

Just thought I'd share this wisdom from Arthur Rackham, an illustrator of fantasy art that lived from 1867-1939.
"I can only say that I firmly believe in the greatest stimulating and educative power of imaginative, fantastic and playful pictures and writings for children in their most impressionable years - a view that most unfortunately, I consider, has it's opponents in these matter-of-fact days. Children will make no mistake in the way of confusing the imaginative and symbolic with the actual. Nor are they at all blind to decorative or arbitrarily designed treatment in art, any more than they are to poetic or rhythmic form in literature.
And it must be insisted on that nothing less than the best that can be had, cost what it may (and it can hardly be cheap), is good enough for those impressionable years when standards are formed for life. Any accepting, or even choosing, art or literature of a lower standard as good enough for children, is a disastrous and costly mistake."

Starting up the new school year

Wow. I haven't written or even checked in here all summer. I guess we've just been having too much fun. Summer has been full and beautiful. We had some days that were well over 100 degrees, which never happens in Anchorage, and while it's the natural inclination to complain, I knew better than that. I tried to enjoy it, knowing that I chose this. I'll take the few hot days in exchange for an extra 2 or even 3 months of summer compared to AK. March & April here felt like May in Anchorage. Here we are almost in September and it feels like July in Alaska. Woo-hoo! I am happy in my decision to leave Alaska. I miss it, and I miss my family horribly, but there will be a hard frost there within 2 weeks, and it won't happen here for another 2 MONTHS!!! Yes, doing a happy dance here, can't help it. :-)
I am currently reading, "Honey For a Child's Heart", and thoroughly enjoying it. I don't agree with everything the author, Gladys Hunt, writes, but so much of what she has to share resonates with me. It is a great book to inspire me as we start a new school year. I am so excited and ready to get back into the swing of homeschooling. Gil and I worked a lot this summer getting our ice cream business off the ground, and so we took the whole summer off of school work. I used to go back and forth in my belief of year-round school, sometimes doing some school work through the summer and taking longer breaks through-out the year, but this year I have absolutely loved taking time out to do whatever we felt like (and work!). I feel so much more ready to work hard on homeschooling now that we've had such a hearty break from it.
As to actually starting serious study, we have a sort of tradition, having done something similar since the beginning of our homeschool journey 8 years ago. Even when we did some "summer school", we always took August off. We have a big end-of-the-summer hurrah on Labor Day weekend and start homeschool the Tuesday after Labor Day. In Alaska we spent the entire weekend at the State Fair; this weekend we are going camping. Tuesday after Labor Day will start our "getting back to it" week. This week we have been talking about what we will be doing next week so the kids are prepped and are part of the planning.
Next week we will ALL together set up our study areas, put up maps, organize books and papers, and plan field trips and such. We will set goals and organize art supplies, packing away everything that will not be used this year.
We will do some copywork, one math lesson, and start a couple of our AO books. That's it.
More than likely we will be out berry picking some of those days!
On week 2, we will start our full load, or at least most of it. We won't start music lessons or some of the extra stuff until October. When it's a nice warm day out in September, I tend to say things like, "Forget schoolwork, let's go take a hike!" ;-) I don't like to be tied down too much.
BTW, the "planning and setting up week" was a cherished highlight of mine from gradeschool. I remember doing it in 4th grade with Ms. Price. Any wonder I loved 4th grade AND Ms. Price? She totally respected us, having us help her organize the classroom the way WE wanted. She was awesome.

We made it!

It's been over a month since my last post, and what a month it has been!
It's been exciting, hectic, frightening at times, thrilling at others, and all-around traveling nuttiness. But, here we are, settled into a new home, bird-watching from the kitchen window and preparing real meals again.
We left Alaska on March 19th and flew into Seattle, where we stayed in a hotel for 3 days and played tourists. One of our main destinations was the Seattle Art Museum, where they had an exhibit of Roman art from the Louvre. It was amazing and well worth the trouble of getting there, part of which was parking 4 stories underground. Heights freak me out, but being that deep in the bowels of the earth, especially in a man-made parking garage, scared the crap out of me, I think even worse than being on the Space Needle. No, it's about equal. Of course I had to put on my happy face for the kids, but the whole parking garage thing rather sucked. Oh well, got over it as soon as we got off the elevator at ground level and I could breathe again. Phew!
We also went to the Science Fiction Museum (very cool) and the Experience Music Project (not as great as I expected).
Then there were the visits to the places we always have to go to in Seattle: Pike Place Market, Pacific Science Center (we've never had time for the Tropical Butterfly Exhibit, but we did this time, and it was very neat), Broadway, The Boardwalk, etc.
We also took the kids to Volunteer Park, which they hadn't been to before, so that was pretty cool. We have a favorite picture of Gil and I at an outdoor concert there in the summer of '92 when we were first together, and the kids were pretty impressed to see the actual setting of the picture.
I'm going to have to sign off now with that first trip installment, since it's late and I really need to get some rest.
Next post: Yakima with Katy's and Danny's families and the cabin in Cle Elum.
One more note though; Gil and I had our 15th year wedding anniversary yesterday. Just amazing that it's been that long and we are still very much in love. Wow. I feel very fortunate.