School Days -Ready or not!

Dylan, Steve and Lyndsi at the Baker's


Teachers have officially started back to school - whether or not school is ready for them! We had some major remodeling going on this summer at both schools and had to postpone school opening by 3 days due to the construction being late. The middle/high school is still a mess but habitable - as of today! We weren't sure it would pass inspection but it did so school will start on Tuesday. It's been crazy! Teachers were not allowed in the building at all until Wednesday and then could only be in their classrooms. Absolutely no one else allowed! There was a thick layer of dust everywhere and classrooms that had to be moved into. Students were trying to register and the secretaries had to set up camp outside the front doors. It's been interesting!



The elementary school is in a better state but construction workers are still remodeling the office and working on some outside details. The custodians for the district had all been moved to the other building until yesterday so our building was in serious need of cleaning - green slimy sinks, cobwebs, cement spattered windows - eww! Plus, lots of desks, teacher's belongings, etc. were missng and had to be found. Needless to say, everyone has been working their hineys off for the last couple of days and probably will be working over the weekend, also! It's looking better but not how a school should look at the beginning of the year. Craziness!



We took a little break from school prep to go ride horses on Wednesday. Mrs. Bakere, Dylan's first grade teacher, invited us over to get the kids on some horses. Dylan hopped on JR like an old pro and Lyndsi shyly climbed onto Sally. Both kids had a ball and it was fun to watch them. Dylan would love to own a horse and has been gorging himself on Go-gurts to try and win the $10,000 prize they are claiming to have! While watching the kids - I got stung by a bee! They hurt!!! It's been a while since that has happened!

Anyway, thank you to Mrs. Baker for allowing the kids to be cowboys for a while!

Steve has a soccer jamboree tomorrow so we'll be watching the games. Dylan's friend is spending the weekend while his parents head to the gorge for the Dve Mathews concert. We'll also go to some friends' house for a pizza bar-b-que tomorrow evening. Otherwise, I'll be trying to get the house in some sort of shape and Steve will be working on the deck. Busy weekend!

New Deck

The beginning of Steve's project.

Halfway there!

Our deck was in very sad shape when we bought the house and in even worse shape this summer - so... Steve is building us a new deck! I am loving the way it is turning out. I'm pretty proud of Steve as he has never taken on a project of this size and yet never doubted that he could do it! Our neighbor has been a godsend and has been Steve's support in the whole building project. Mike is a whiz when it comes to working with wood and he owns every tool imagineable. And - he told Steve where the key to his shop was hidden! Poor Steve is coaching 2 soccer practices a day and trying to build the deck in between. We start school next Thursday so his time is crunched. He's determined, though, and figures he has until November to finish (if he needs it). Hopefully he'll finish in the next couple of weeks.

We have our staff back to school "kegger" this weekend. Sounds funny but that's basically what it is! It used to be and end of the year party but we started getting together prior to the start of school a couple of years ago. Steve will miss the party this year as he will be in Spokane for fantasy football draft. I'd like to be able to go with him but I don't want to miss the party either. The kids will be my dates!

Wow! Html!

I'm learning! I was told that in order to be able to view my whole slideshow I should widen my margins (Thanks, Lisa!). But in order to do that I had to know some Html language. Ugh! But I did it! I researched and edited my html and ... poof!...my slide show is fully visible! Did you know there was a Dummies Guide to Blogging? I have also changed the song on my slide show so for those of you who turned off the sound so you wouldn't have to listen my music anymore, it's safe to turn it back on!

The kids are back from Spokane and are sleeping soundly. They had such a wonderful time! They couldn't wait to show us their new shoes and their huge new suitcase full of goodies from Auntie Erin's yard sale - yippee! I'll write more and post some pics tomorrow.

We Survived!

We survived Stampede Weekend! I'm wiped out. After one night at the rodeo, two nights carousing with friends and two parades I'm ready for life to get back to normal. Not sure I know what normal is, however, so for now I would just like to get some sleep!

Erin and 4 of her friends came over on Saturday and pitched a couple of tents in the backyard. They let me hang out with them as they explored Rawson's and The Rusty Shovel here in Okanogan. We then dropped the kids off at the Cheeseman's and went to the Stampede Grounds to spend the evening in the beer garden. It's always a great people watching opportunity as well as a cultural experience in the Omak Stampede Beer Garden! Many of the Okanogan and Omak classes hold their class reunions on Stampede weekend so that friends can reunite - I think they all do it in the beer garden! There wasn't even standing room! I talked with my dentist, some co-workers, some parents of my past students and even some students themselves! Yep, I've been here long enough that my past students have turned of age and are hanging out in the beer garden! Not many, mind you, but a few! I've been teaching in Okanogan for 11 years and when I started I worked with kindergarten through third graders. It's those third graders I'm beginning to run into! It was quite a shock when Gordon stumbled towards me and told me that it was OK for him to be there because he was of age! Yikes!

We did watch the grand parade this morning and then spent a leisurely afternoon around the house, though I did take a walk with my good friend, Julia. Lyndsi went out to the desert in back and came in with these flowers. She likes to arrange flowers in my small bottles. I caught her in her creative moment!

Lyndsi with a couple of her bouquets

The act of enhancing beauty!

This was Lyndsi's response when I told her to smile for the camera!

The finished product. These now decorate various locations in our home!

Tomorrow, our dear friends Cheryl and Travis are stopping by on their way through town. I'm looking forward to spending some time with them and showing them around Okanogan and Omak.

Now We're Home

OK, so - now we've made it home. My poor mother, I have't even called her! She's probably either worried or miffed. Sorry, mom! We're home and doing well. I was already to sit down last night and download all our pictures to my computer and ... no pictures! They somehow got deleted from the memory card! No worries, though, I had already sent them to Costco.com to be developed into pictures. Whew! So, I have photos but no link to send to you all. If I can figure out how to get to my pictures at Costco online I'll post it to the blog. Otherwise, Robyn is going to burn my pictures from her computer and send me the CD. I listened to my instinct and asked her to save my picture file on her computer until I got home. Hmmm ... sixth sense?

Meanwhile, it's Omak Stampede time! The popluation has tripled and there are a bunch of drunk cowboys hobbling around! Not really. The population has tripled due to the tourists but most cowboys keep their drinking in the beer garden at the rodeo grounds. We took the kids to the rodeo tonight, along with Louis and Reily and the Cheeseman family. The excitement of the bull riding and the Suicide Race kept the kids entertained all evening. Dylan will be in the kid's parade on Saturday with Cub Scouts and then we'll probably hit the grand parade on Sunday as well. If Erin comes over, I'll hit the beer garden also! Are you coming, Erin?

We're Home - sort of!

We're not actually home yet but we are in the state of Washington again. Our 12:35 am flight was cancelled so we had to wait at the airport for the 1:50 am flight out of Anchorage. Not a bad wait. Anchorage has a pretty airport and it was incredibly busy so there was lots to watch. However, waiting for 5 hours at any airport gets a bit old. Especially in the wee hours of the morning! The kids both slept on the flight but Steve and I had trouble getting comfortable. So..we decided to stay on at Robyn's until tomorrow morning. Steve crashed immediately and I snoozed a bit later. The kids only took catnaps! We had a wonderful dinner at the Tamarind Tree, a Vietnamese restaurant in the oriental district. Yummy!

But let's get back to Alaska! On Friday we met Loi, a friend we met through a friend in Omak (Thanks for the intro. Cathy!)for lunch. It was fun catching up and getting her advice on our trip into Denali.

Friday afternoon we drove north to Denali National Park. This park has only about 90 miles of one road that goes into the park, If you want to go further, you have to hike or be flown in. I can't tell you how big the whole park is but it's HUGE! Mt. McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America, is located in the park. We checked into our hotel, which was on a pretty little creek called Carlo Creek, and bought tickets for the Tundra Wilderness Tour for the following morning. Sleeping that night was a challenge as we were all 4 in one room and we really noticed the light nights. It didn't get dark until well after midnight.

We got up bright and early to take our tour into the park. You have to take a tour bus if you want to go further that 13 miles into the park. The tour we took went about 60 miles in. Steve stayed behind but the kids and I rode our bus for about 8 hours. Sounds long but we weren't disappointed! We saw lots of caribou, ptarmigan, snowshoe hares, mew gulls, a gyr falcon, Dall sheep, Artic Ground Squirrels, a hoary marmot and best of all, grizzlies! We thought we were going to leave Alaska without seeing a single bear!

Our first sighting was of a mother and her cub walking along the river's edge. The cub was splashing in and out of the water as the mama lumbered along. We then saw a young grizzly that was a bit to far away but still exciting to catch a glimpse of! Our final bear was so close to us that, had we not been in a bus, I could have taken about 5 steps forward and cuddled with him! He was like a huge teddy bear! OUr bus driver stopped the bus so that the kids and I were right along side him. He was completely uncaring about the huge schoolbus next to him as he ate berries. Then he did a most amazing thing. He stretched out and fell asleep! The starting of the engine startled him as we left but then he lay back down and fell fast asleep again! What an amazing experience for the kids (and for me!).

I've been telling you about the wildlife we encountered but we were also some of the lucky 25% of visitors to the park who get to see Mt. McKinley. Usually the mountain is in a shroud of clouds. On the day we were there, it was visible to about 2/3 of the way up. We were given hot cocoa to enjoy as we took in the beauty of Denali.

While we were out, Steve had some adventures of his own. He came across several moose cows and cubs as he was exploring the park. Saturday afternoon was spent in the visitor's center and hiking around the area.

I've talked about the wonderful weather and let me tell you, we were lucky! Yesterday it poured and I am so thankful we hit the typical Alaska rains as we were leaving and not as we were hiking and sightseeing. I say typical but we found the weather to be extremely unpredictable. Skies could be clear and sunny one minute and blustery the next with sprinkles following.

We are all looking forward to going home tomorrow. Lyndsi is dying to see Ruth and Dylan can't wait to play with Karina and Max! Steve and I are a bit more realistic about what the next few days hold - deck building, laundry, grocery shopping.... all in 100 plus temperatures! But we also are eager to be in our own bed in our home. We are truly thankful to Steve's dad and Teresa for providing us with the opportunity to make Alaska our vacation destination this year. And we are thankful to Robyn for providing our resting place in between legs of our journey. We thank our wonderful friends Amy and Julia and their families for taking care of our plants and animals and Lisa for keeping an eye on our house for us. I feel like I am making an acceptance speech for an Oscar!

The Last of Day 5

We finally got out into a bit of the wilderness of Alaska. Not the backwoods by any means but definitly out of town. We headed up Hatcher's Pass (don't know the highway) towards Independence Mine and stopped a couple of times to enjoy the beauty of the Little Susitna River. This river starts at the Mint Glacier so it is icy cold and that pretty blue grey color I am beginning to think would be a pretty wall color. There were huge boulders all through the river and Dylan enjoyed doing a bit of rock climbing. Of course he had to do it while hearing my yells of, "Dylan, be careful!" I didn't think I'd be able to dive into the frigid water to save him as I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to cold water!

While at Independence Mine we took a self guided tour of the mine and then explored the alpine tundra a bit. We followed a trail around the mine and another one up to a lake. Lyndsi and I waited for the boys at the bottom of a very steep rocky hill so we never actually saw the lake but not for lack of trying! We had fun singing in the rain - to scare away the bears of course! I was intrigued by the little plants that grow in the tundra as well as the many little streams that make their way down the hills.

Independence Mine is fun just in itself. This was a working gold mine in the 20's, 30's and 40's. Many of the original buildings remain and those that aren't still standing are piles of wood. We could explore as much as we wanted as long as we stayed out of the "Danger" zones. They do offer guided tours that take you a mile and a half into the mine but they were done for the day when we got there.

We didn't get home until after dinner again. Just in time to pop in another load of laundry in preparation for our weekend in Denali. We were lucky to find a reasonably priced hotel that had two nights available and a tour bus with seats available to take us into the park of Denali - no cars allowed beyond a certain point.

Tomorrow we meet Loi (a new friend thanks to Cathy) for lunch and then head to Denali. It's our 11th anniversary tomorrow and I am feeling a bit nostalgic as I think back to our honeymoon in Alaska. Who knew we'd be back 11 years later!

So... the pictures above - The first shows the hill that Lyndsi and I gave up on and decided to wait at the bottom of. The second is Independence Mine. Dylan found the dragonfly at the Little Su River (we took the picture because there are so many dragonflies here and they are so big!). The last 2 pictures were also taken at the river as the kids were crawling around the big rocks.

Still Day 5

I had so many pictures to share that I had to do another post - I couldn't stand it! I took an unreasonable number of bird pictures so I won't bore you with those! The picture of the kids in the fireweed was taken at Ninilchik, a Russian settlement. Got pictures of the Russian Orthodox Church also. Then you have a picture of the ugly Ling Cod and my friend the puffin. Enjoy!

Alaska - Day 5!

We're back from our Seward-Homer sidetrip. Wow! Does it ever take a long time to get anywhere around here! Don't let the maps fool you. Things look close but they are miles from each other! It took us a good chunk of the day on Monday to get to Seward, though we did take a few side trips to Whittier and to Portage Glacier. Didn't see anything in the form of wildlife on the way to Seward but the scenery is breathtaking. I love the flat, silty rivers with high, snowcapped mountains behind. Pictures just can't do it justice! Everything is so green and beautiful right now, also. I'm sure I mentioned the flowers and plants before, but, again, I'm so amazed by their beauty. They are 10x the size of anything I have and with 10x the blooms!

In Seward we went to the Sealife Center. It's kind of like a mini aquarium. The exhibits are very well done. The main purpose for the center is research and rehabilitation but they make some of their money off of educating the public. The kids liked the seals and the stellar sea lion. My favorite were the sea birds. I was even so lucky as to have a puffin hop onto my shoulder from a rock I was standing on! Even better - he left me a present! It was pretty cool to have him grooming my hair and ear for a minute or so! The keeper was walking over to get him off of me but I was hoping she would take her time! I posted a picture of my friend for all to see. Unfortunately, I couldn't twist around to get a picture of him on me and none of my family was with me - how disappointing!

After the Sealife Center we walked on the docks where the fishing charters were coming in with their catch. What funny men you have out on those boats! They were all so proud of their fish! Women, too, but they were a little less boisterous about it all. The ugliest fish there was the ling cod. It looked like it had a belly full of salmon but it was just...guts!

I was so wanting to take a wildlife cruise but it was looking hopeless as Richard wanted to get an early start in the morning. I just happened to walk into the office of one of the companies offering the tours and they just happened to have space available on their evening cruise - leaving in an hour! It was the only evening cruise offered! I was so excited! So we hurried to check into our hotel and hopped aboard - with 1 minute to spare! They surved a buffet prime rib dinner with dessert - all you can eat. Yummy - but the best part of the tour was seeing the thousands of birds in their natural settings. The boat took us beyond the end of the road so the only way to get to the locations we were at was by boat. I was impressed that several people had built cabins way out there! The park ranger on the boat said that several years ago, the state of Alaska sold 5 acre sections in an auction. THey sold for $300.00! I would buy it just to have it! Again, the only way to get to your property was by boat but still...

Like I said, we saw birds in their own environment. We saw bald eagles, kittiwakes, murres, grebes, horned puffins, tufted puffins, oystercatchers and on and on. My favorite was to see the nesting kittiwakes feeding their babies on the sides of what look like sheer rock cliffs. We also saw some baby stellar sea lions (I didn't hear when the ranger told us where the adults were) and some harbor seals. The kids were impressed with how close the boat would get to the sides for us. Within about a foot in some places - Steve wasn't too thrilled with that! We were also able to see bright colored jellyfish and schools of salmon ready to spawn.

Richard rented our hotel rooms for us in an army R and R camp. Pretty cool!

We drove to Homer on Tuesday. Again a long day of driving but lots to see. In Homer we saw our first moose! We took a side road by the airport and came upon a cow and her calf. They were pretty nonchalant as they ate their dinner on the side of the road! On the way home yesterday we also saw a bull in a swampy area but there wasn't anywhere to pull off and take a picture. Bummer!

The spit in Homer is definitely right up my alley. Our hotel was at the very end of the spit and appropriately called Land's End. The little tiny shops were fun to poke through and we had great fish and chips for dinner (I don't think I'm allergic to halibut! Yippee!) The fisherman at "The Pit" were fun to watch. They were trying to "snag" the salmon who were spawning. Big ones! Dylan even tried his luck with a hook and some line he had found. Not sure what we would have done had he caught one! The water in this little area would just ripple with the schools of fish coming through! Homer also boasts the famous Salty Dawg Saloon. Unfortunately, I didn't get to drink a beer at the bar but we checked out the hundreds of dollar bills posted on the walls. Looked for yours, Robyn, but couldn't find it! Do you have one there? If I remember right, the Salty Dawg survived the 1964 earthquake that destroyed so many businesses. You can see by the picture that it is a bit sunken!

Today we are back in Palmer and heading off to the musk ox farm and Independence Mine. I'm sure we'll get more pictures! Tomorrow we head to Denali for 2 nights so hopefully I'll have an update before we go. For sure when we get back.

I'm looking at the 5 pics I was able to add and then looking at the other 200 I would like to add! I can't wait to share everything with you all! The first 3 pictures are from Homer - Salty Dawg Saloon, Dylan trying to snag a fish and the cow moose. The flower picture is an example of the flowers we see and the birds are the feeding kittiwakes from our cruise.