Wood Cutting in a Winter Wonderland

Living here in the northland we always seem to be in search of more firewood. Wyatt and I were feeling a little cabin fever so we decided to accompany Papa during his woodcutting adventures. We really were not much help but we did offer our moral support and got in some good sledding while Papa did all the hard work. It was a gorgeous day to be out..if only every winter day could be just like this one!!

I love it when the plants are all frosty, I took a million pictures but they never quite come out as pretty as it really is.

Wyatt is pretty excited about the chainsaw so it was hard to pull him away from the action for some boring old sledding with Mama.
Aww, aren't we cute :)

We also met up with Rob and Ellen, they have a huge trailer so we shared a few loads. I think we (I guess I should say -they) ended up getting ~ 6 cords. It wasn't hard pulling Ellen away form the woodcutting for a little sledding!

Catching Up..Again

Back at the library, lucked out today because there is a little girl here entertaining Wyatt by putting on a puppet show and enlisting his help with various other projects. It's very cute.


So here are a bunch of random shots from the past month or so. The first one is Jeff playing guitar during his first big gig! He has been playing music with some friends that have a band in town but this is the first time he has played in public in many, many years. The name of the band is "Simple Folk Uprising" and they rocked the Moose Family Lodge!!

Sometime around Halloween Wyatt and I flew down to Anchorage to meet up with Jeff who had been down there for work. We spent the weekend with Kim and Paul and got some good visiting in with a bunch of friends we had not seen in a long time. We did our traditional pumpkin craving over at Jp and Elizabeth's. The tradition is to carve the pumpkins then order food and have the delivery person judge the pumpkins. This year was kind of a bust in that the delivery guy did not speak any English but we still had fun.

April and Jeb- we missed you!!

Jp is great at keeping the youngins entertained. Oh Jp- if your reading this Wyatt was talking about you the other day and he is still saying "No talking about gansers" :) I guess your Phd defense really made an impression on him!

For Halloween Elliott was dressing up as a Worker Man and Bennett went as a Spaceman.

The dogs don't make it on the blog very often so I thought I would stick these on. Nellie and Tecate were freaking out one afternoon because a squirrel was on the wood pile. They managed to climb up on the pile and get stuck in between the top of the pile and the barn roof- it's a pretty tight squeeze and we had to help get them out, the squirrel got away.

They were up on top of this pile, crazy mutts!


Shiway and Dave came for a nice long weekend. The boys went moose hunting of course and Shi and I hung out and had some girl time. I even got her to go to my mom's group meeting. The theme of the meeting was "becoming an outdoors mom". Shiway was a good sport and took part in the obstacle course.
Walking the balance beam with baby in the backpack, waders on and 2 bags of groceries
Doing some target practice
and hauling some wood...yup, pretty typical day for an Alaskan mom. Good work Shiway, I think your ready!!!

I was bad and didn't take any other pictures of Dave and Shiway's visit. Dave and Jeff got their one moose and Shiway spoiled me being such a big help with Wyatt. I wanted to hire her as my nanny!! Come back soon!!!

Below are just a couple cute pics from our little play group. Wyatt has some good looking girlfriends.

Jen was brave and let them all paint on her floor, most of it stayed on the paper.

Happy Boy

So here I am with two hours of free time at the library but I forgot my camera cord and can't download the newest batch of photos...bummmer! I guess I will have to do some online shopping instead :) But I will post a couple videos I took of Wyatt this fall. Shiway als0 posted a few pics from thier stay with us.

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That laugh just melts my heart- even if he sounds a bit like a chimpanzee when he really gets going :) I try to get videos of him talking but he always comes running to the camera and wants to see the pictures. During that video I was running backwards away from him.

I also feel ike I should take a moment to comment on baby # 2. It was recently brought to my attention that I have not even mentioned #2 on the blog. I meant to post some ultrasound images but it didn't work out. So, anyone out there that doesn't know, I am 6.5 months pregnant. We expect to meet the new baby in mid-February. We did not want to know the gender of the wee one but during the ultrasound both Jeff and I thought we saw boy parts. So??? Now we think we know but we don't really know, so it will still be a surprise either way.

Jeff is taking off for NY to go hunting with his Pa. Wyatt and I will be solo for a week so don't expect the blog to be updated properly for a while. So sorry.

A couple more

While I was looking for the videos I saw these photos that I don't think I ever posted.

Wyatt loves to climb the Elk fence.

Rose hips are another favorite. Even now that there is snow on the ground he is still munching on them.

Enjoying one of last really nice fall days.

Getting Out With The Girls

After the busy hunting season (which isn't actually over yet) I was feeling like I needed to get in some quality time with my lady friends. Mette was nice enough to host a get together at her house in Fairbanks a couple weeks ago. It was a super fun but I don't have any photos to post, not that there was anything going on that we felt like we needed to hide ;)

I also decided that it would be fun to get outside before the weather turned so I reserved the Lisa Lake Cabin and invited a bunch of my Delta lady friends out for the night. We had a blast and there are lots of photos to prove it.

If you look closely you can see the ladies hiking along the shore.


Ellen and I took the boat across the lake to the cabin, it turned out to be a lot faster to hike!The view from the cabin.

We took a hike from the cabin out to the Johnson River, very nice.

Here is Heather setting up for the group photo opp.

Here we are: Cindy, Rita, Ellen, Tiffany, Rachelle, Heather and me (minus Brooke, she showed up later).

Relaxing around the campfire.

Cindy and I caught a couple nice lake trout, they tasted great cooked fresh right on the fire.

Brooke gave Cindy some wood chopping lessons.

Dinner is ready! Beans, dogs and fish on the fire, yum! Not that we were at all hungry after eating all the yummy snacks everyone brought, but we still found room for dinner and dessert. Heather's husband had this great idea of wrapping roll dough around the hotdog then cooking them right over the fire. Try it sometime! Our timing was just right with the weather. We woke up to a blanket of white. It was gorgeous, we were all glad to be out in such a pretty spot to welcome in the first snow. Well, maybe welcome isn't the right word but it is time- we do live in Alaska!

Those hot drinks taste so good on a snowy morning.

The all the ladies ready to head back for home, husbands and kids. No offense to my boys but the trip was too short!

Amazing how much stuff eight ladies will pack in for just one night :)

Cindy rows the boat ashore.


Thanks for the great trip ladies- we will definately have to do it more often!!!