Moose amore

This big guy finally came to eat the pumpkin innards we threw in the yard for him and his friends. Bob beat him to to the punch the first night and ate his fair share of pumpkin guts. Surprisingly, I didn't wake up to the charming sound of him regurgitating the latest treasure he ingested onto my carpet as I usually do. I'd read that pumpkin can be soothing to a dog's stomach and it seems to be true in this case. Thank goodness.

I love the way moose have to get on their knees to eat things off the ground. Those long legs are a bit of a hindrance when the prize is ground level. His head only reaches to about the second floor. I suppose this is why their natural diet consists of bushes, branches, and things that stick out of the snow.

It also seems their natural diet includes my flowers. At least they waited until they were dead this year.

After his snack he peered in the window to see who was spying on him. I was still out on the porch watching him watch us.

My friend Lori that was visiting had left a mere 12 hours before this bull showed up. She had been waiting to see a moose. We saw a cow and her calf earlier but I was bummed that she didn't see this handsome guy. 

He came back later that evening with lady friend to finish off the jack o'lanterns that had been sitting there frozen since Halloween. No need to worry about our pumpkins getting rotten and moldy this year. They froze and hour after we stuck them outside and stayed that way. This bull was feeling pretty amorous towards his lady friend and I seriously thought we were about to witness some birds and bees moose action on our front walk and was worried that they would crush the bench that they kept running around. That would definitely be a first. Lady friend rebuffed his advances, or at least had the good sense to find someplace more private where they weren't being spied on by a family of four and their two watchful dogs, and wandered off into the woods with him close behind.

I hope it works out better for you next time, pal.

BFFs

My gorgeous friend that I've known since she was born came to visit. She and my father share a birthday. Our parents were out to dinner celebrating my dad's birthday when her mom went into labor. So when I say we've known each other since birth I'm being literal.

She has come to visit me in every state that I have lived in. No small feat considering I've lived on the Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Alaska and in between. Many many miles she has traveled to see me. She's one of those lifelong friends that has helped me get into trouble as many times as she has helped me get out of trouble. She's the one who convinced me that her parents were ok with us smashing all the eggs from the chicken coop. Really, we could throw them against the wall of the coop to see what happens, she says. We found out what happens.What happens is that her parents were not ok with that.

 But she is also the one who bought me a pregnancy test and forced me to take it and held my hand and let me cry and drove me to the health department when I found out I was pregnant in college. She told me everything would be alright. She was right. Now I have the most beautiful family in the world.

 I flew home six months ago to be in her wedding. I've never been more excited for a wedding than I have been for hers. I'd never seen her happier in my life. Her joy was my joy and no one deserves that happiness more than she. We are very different. We spent much of our childhood arguing the way sisters do, but we have the common bond of shared childhoods, joys, and heartaches. She conjures up a fierce sense of loyalty in me that I have reserved only for family. Which makes sense because she is not just a childhood friend. She is Aunt Lori to my kids. She is family.

Finally

All my Michigan friends and family are posting first day of school pictures of their kids today so I thought I'd join the party. I'm a little late considering my kids started school nearly three weeks ago but better late than never is my motto.

Speaking of better late than never, I made my husband a very happy man when I finally finished this project that I started nearly over a year ago. He just loves all my half finished projects taking up shelf space in his garage. It makes him all warm and fuzzy.

I fell in love with the wooden sunburst mirrors that had suddenly become very popular but didn't really want to shell out the money for one. I found several tutorials online for mirrors made with wood shims. I used some of their ideas, added a few of my own, and I'm pretty happy with the finished project. Even DH is pretty impressed with it but I think he's mostly impressed that I have actually finished it.

So what started out as several packs of wood shims eventually became this. Buy way more wood shims than you think you'll need. Or be smarter than me and actually do the math and figure out how many you'll need before you go back to the store for the third time to get more.

 

This should have taken me about a weekend to make, and if it had, I may have actually been on trend instead of behind, but I still love it. I still love chevron too and I'm not ashamed to say it even though the home decorating blog world has moved on to newer and trendier things.

My favorite part of this whole project, by far, is the movement of all the thermostats to one side of the wall. Whoever built this house put three thermostats spread out over this whole wall like some strange homage to thermostat. I couldn't hang anything there. You try decorating around that.

See them all lined up neatly and out of the way? It makes me ridiculously happy. If you are lucky enough to be married to a handy man, then you have someone who can dig through walls and go in crawl spaces and rewire things like this with out burning the house down. I am one of those very lucky ladies. The very luckiest of all. 

Now to get to all those other projects that I've started. DH could use the shelf space.

Beaching it

After three days of warmth and sunshine we finally decided to go to the "beach" with the kids. Gravel bar along a lakeshore may be a more appropriate term. My sister and I arrived with our troops and were greeted by clouds and warmish weather. We were sent on our way with a light shower. Oh well, you take what you can get up here. The kids were brave and jumped right in the cool lake.

So far I stand by my resolve to not actually immerse myself in a body of water in this state. If the water temperature suddenly rises I may change my mind. I'll live vicariously through my children until then.

Sneaky

DH and I don't have many photos of just the two of us, so on a trip to Denali last month I gave the camera to Princess Blondie and had her snap a couple pictures. I learned two things. Don't give the camera to short people. You'll look like you have a Jay Leno chin. And second, my son is an expert photo bomber.

Thanks for the memories

Oh, Alaskan slip n' slide. You are the best entertainment I get all summer. 

 Your frigid Alaskan well water on warm summer days induce squeals of frosty surprise,

draw in shocked breaths,

prompt peals of surprised laughter, 

and contort faces into shapes before unseen.

 You make babies happy,

 and cautious,

 and snuggly,

 and  most importantly, tired.

Thank you.

The new 20

I've decided why I don't like doctors. Every time I go in for one thing and they find something else that's wrong with me. I went in for one problem and came out with two more. It's like being swindled by a shady mechanic. (Except my doctors aren't shady at all. In fact, for the first time in my life since the family doctor I had when Sonny Boy was a baby, I love both of my doctors. Military doctors are an acquired taste.) This time I went in for an MRI to see what was wrong with my neck and back and discovered I have a cystic lesion on my thyroid. More doctor appointments made to follow up with that. Blood work ordered to check out thyroidy things only to discover that I have low vitamin D levels. I now have to take 5,000 IUs of vitamin D a day. Until today when I got the super concentrated vitamin D pills I had to take a literal fistful of pills each morning. An even dozen. I felt a little geriatric. I guess it's glimpse into my future.

I thought 30 was supposed to be the new 20, and yet today I took a fistful of pills, had an ultrasound on my thyroid, and discovered I have two protruding discs in my back along with a slight case of degenerative disc disease, which is apparently normal for my age(?!). Thirty, I'm disappointed in you. You are not living up to all the hype.