Liar, liar, pants on fire...

So I just discovered a picture of a bear that we did see while we were in Denali. 

And I told you we didn't see any. 

I'm turning into such a liar.

We saw this angry mama while checking out the tourist trap of Healy.

The kids asked to have their picture taken with her. Sonny Boy decided that the best possible way to pose would be to crawl between her legs. 

You may now witness the birth of the first man-cub-bear-child.

Come on, Mama. One more push....

And here is your 65 pound beautiful bouncing baby boy, Mama. And his sister.

Congratulations.

No more tricks up my sleeve

I used to love rainy days. It was the perfect excuse to curl up with a good book and do nothing but read all day. Or watch old tv shows or movies. I have a very vivid memory as a kid of watch Magnum PI with my siblings on a rainy, Michigan summer day.

Now that I have kids I don't enjoy rainy days as much as I used to. I try to curl up with a good book but I always seem to be interrupted by two children with too much pent up energy. Waaaayyy too much pent up energy. Sometimes I still kick them outside anyway. In the winter it's easy to send them outside. Just bundle them up first. Summer is best, I don't even care if they have shoes on. Just don't come in the house if you are completely filthy. Please take your clothes off on the porch and hose your feet off before you come in. They know the rules (not that they follow them). But rainy days are harder. They quickly run out of things to do and are soon back in the house begging to watch cartoons. 

I try to be the good mother that doesn't let her kids watch tv all day on rainy days, but I do like to keep a lid on my sanity so I sometimes falter on the tv rule. They were bored of books, games, and mostly each other. So I whipped out Mary Poppins and for 2 hours they were quiet as church mice. But that was yesterday. Rain seems to come in streaks of at least four or so days here. It is day 2 and I am already running on fumes of patience with them. 

This one even bit his sister today.

It looked like a giant rabbit bit her hand because all he has are two (quite large) front teeth at the moment. He hasn't bit anyone since he was 2 years old. He is now going on 8. I have clearly lost control of the household.

Oh how I wish Mary Poppins would float down with her umbrella and carpet bag and save my sanity. 

But, hallelujah, let the angels sing. It is the weekend. Daddy is home. I believe it's his turn. Tag, you're it.

Dandelion queen

 

We came back from camping to find that our back yard had grown a foot in the four days that we were gone. I use the term yard here very, very loosely. We don't so much have a back yard as a field full of dandelions. It is still slightly better than the dirt pit that we call the front yard. I am so tired of dirt as a replacement for grass. By this weekend DH will have planted grass seed and with the help of 20 hours of Alaskan sunshine per day, we should finally have grass in a few weeks. 

 

Hallelujah.

So while I'm not excited about dandelions (even though it is better than dirt), there is one girl who is very excited about dandelions. She usually picks me a few bouquets of them a day.

Often, when we are driving in the car she will suddenly yell MOM! LOOK IT, LOOK IT, LOOK IT! She says it will such urgency that I think that I am about to get hit by a semi carrying a highly flammable load or maybe even a train, but she is simply trying to show me a field or yard full of dandelions.

She often forgets what they are and calls them sunflowers. I should be so lucky to have a backyard full of sunflowers.

 But I have to say, I'm awfully proud to display my dandelion bouquets.

Survival

We made it. I survived camping and I actually had a really wonderful time. 

And we did not get eaten by any bears. In fact, we did not see any bears. I may be the only person on the planet who goes all the way to Denali and hopes that they don't see any, but so be it. My fear for survival far outweighs the want for the thrill of a bear induced adrenaline rush.

We did see a lot of moose, and lots of other park visitors were very excited about that, but considering our backyard is the favorite local bistro of the area moose, we just didn't get that excited about it. Until we were all packed up and ready to leave and the kids came screaming into the camper. MOM, THERE ARE MOOSE OUTSIDE!

A cow and her very new calf had walked right by Sonny Boy and Princess Blondie and then hung out near our picnic table until it was time for us to leave. 

Now let's just talk for a second about the size of these creatures. Holy cow, these things are tall. Every other picture I have showed you in the past was taken from the safety of my porch or window so I was always a few feet off the ground. Well, now I was finally on ground level with them and this lady was TALL. See how her knees are higher than the picnic table? That should give you a little perspective.

 

It was the first time that I had seen a new calf and boy are they cute. But in that really ugly kind of cute, you know, the kind with a face that only a mother could love? It reminded me a cross between a baby giraffe and a calf (of the bovine variety).

He kind of reminded me of Bambi a little too. And the mother sort of reminded me of a model. Very tall, very skinny, with knobby knees and I could see some of her ribs. Not the prettiest face, but that's not always important in modeling. That is what makeup, lighting, and air brushing are for.

Strike a pose, Mama.

Family camping

It just hit me that we are going camping in three days and I am very much unprepared. My focus as of late has been to get my kids finished with school and figure out how to survive summer break with my two spawn. Well, perhaps survive is the wrong word. I know I'll survive, I'm just trying to find a way to make our time together enjoyable and not boring. After Sonny Boy started asking to go back to school on the first day of spring break I started feeling a little queasy every time I thought of summer break. I thought he might actually die of boredom. I guess I'm just not that fun.  At least not by seven-year-old boy standards. And neither is his sister, which is unfortunate because Princess Blondie thinks that he is the coolest thing since sliced bread. 

Fortunately, I think now that we will have plenty to do this summer and Sonny Boy will survive and not, in fact, die of boredom. First off, Sonny Boy started baseball this year and that is keeping us plenty busy. Two games and one practice a week should keep us all hopping. Then there is Scout camp sometime in June. Plus there are the visits from grandparents.

And finally there is the camping. For which I am unprepared. And if I may admit, slightly unenthusiastic. There are a few reasons I am skeptical of camping being fun. First, it sort of seems like playing house on a smaller, dirtier scale. At least there is a smaller space to clean than my house. Not that I clean my house, just ask my husband. I'm a terrible housekeeper. For instance, instead of cleaning I am blogging. Anyhow, second, I'm afraid my kids will be bored to tears. Third, I'm afraid I will be bored to tears. Fourth, I'm afraid of wild life here. Bears especially. They just completely freak me out. If it were just me and my DH it wouldn't worry me so much but I've found I'm sort of paranoid about some things now that I have kids. Bears being one of them.

I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised and really enjoy our camping trip. I think that I will. For starters, we have a fifth wheel now instead of tent. I have decided that I loathe tent camping. Especially in NC when it is unbearably hot. It's just not fun. At all. We didn't really plan to buy a fifth wheel already, but we sort of needed one to live in when we first moved up here. We stayed in my sister's yard until we finally closed on a house. We figured if we didn't like it we could sell it. We decided that we liked it. And now we are on to our first summer of camping, because my sister's backyard does not count. 

My survival tactic for the weekend is to bring books. For the kids but mostly for me. And we will bring games and stuff for the kids. And our bikes, I think. I would love to sit around all weekend and do nothing but read but I think that I should probably interact with and cook for my family. They would probably appreciate that. And since we will be in Denali we will obviously check out the park. Please don't think that I really will go camping and just sit in my camper reading all weekend. I'm not that lame. 

So off we go. Well, not quite yet, but soon. Let me know if you've got any camping survival/fun tips. I may need them.

Sisters

This is my mom. Here she is holding my sleeping girl. 

This is her version of heaven. Her favorite thing to do in the whole world is to cuddle her sleeping grandkids. The only thing that she might like more is to read to her grandkids while cuddling. I used to crawl in bed with her every morning before school to cuddle. Let's just say that neither of us are morning people. Cuddling in bed is much more fun than getting up and getting ready for school/work.

Now, my mom has a sister, Eva. My mom and Aunt Eva used to come down to NC every spring to visit us. It started when my cousin also lived in NC. Mom and Aunt Eva would take road trip and mom would be dropped off at my house and Aunt Eva would go visit her daughter 2 hours away. We would get together for a day at the beach and have a great time together.

Then my cousin had the audacity to move back to Michigan. I'm glad that my mom and aunt decided that these road trips were fun anyway and decided that they would keep coming. So now our new tradition was for them to come visit just me. And we would make margaritas and play dominoes or cards. Mom and aunt Eva are  feisty card players. This is helped by the fact that mom can't hold her liquor. Mom just nurses one drink all night and gets giggly and mischievous. She tries to cheat A LOT. She's not very good at cheating.

I love watching my mom with her sister. They really are great friends. They have so much fun and laugh so much when they are together. 

There was recently a photo contest that was entitled Happiness. I immediately thought of a particular photo of my mom and Aunt Eva. It is the perfect picture of happiness. Then I realized that my sister sent me copies of her pictures and I hadn't actually taken the photo. So much for the photo contest, but I thought I would share them with you, anyway. 

I hope my sisters and I have as much fun as my mom and her sister do when we are old. Hehehe.... I love to call them old. It gets them all riled up. And then we laugh a lot.

Oh won't you please, please help me....

Sorry, I've got Beatles songs stuck in my head today. But really, I do need your help. Especially if you have special knowledge about building in Alaska. 

And here, for your viewing pleasure. I would like to present to you no less than 5 pipes sticking out of our backyard.

 

 

 

 And there is one more in our front yard for our well. The five in the backyard are for the septic and whatnot. Now will someone please help me understand why they are all there. I was told that they were sticking out of the ground that far in case someone needed to access them in the winter. Now my question is why, for the love of Pete, do they need five different pipes to access my septic? And two of them are approximately four feet apart. Shouldn't one be sufficient? 

Having grown up in Michigan I just don't understand this. We had snow in Michigan. The ground froze just the same as in Alaska. If we ever needed to have the septic pumped in the middle of winter I guess that we just had to remember where it was and dig, because our pipe did not stick three feet above the ground. It stuck about an inch or two above the ground. And there was only one of them. I guess it was just good motivation to get all your septic needs taken care of before winter.

I should also point out that our house is not the only house with pipes sticking out all over the yard. All of them have it. It makes playing a backyard game of soccer or baseball a bit tricky. And building a deck. Or patio. Or figuring out where to put a playset. Or a fire pit. There is an industry up here for small fake wishing wells that people place over the pipe that everyone has in their front yard for the well. I'm just not a fake wishing well kind of girl. 

Now can someone please tell me why, oh why, this is all necessary? It had better have something to do with permafrost, because it is the only thing that I can think of that would set us apart from all the other states that I have lived in. Stupid permafrost.