February: Walking the Line's 50th post!

Hey!  We made it to 50.  I can't say the blog is going strong, but it's still going!  February brought us a little more snow than January, but I think we're still on track to have one of the worst year's for snow on record.  Trying to post monthly is at least helping me capture the little things going on each month.  My dad's extended family has had a monthly family newsletter for years and lately they have been encouraging those of us from our generation to contribute.  I like to think that keeping the blog updated on a monthly basis counts as my contribution. :)  February wasn't too exciting.  Drew passed his exam to become an official professional ski instructor.  He learned a lot of good techniques for himself.  It even helped me out a little since I went skiing TWICE this month.  If you don't know, I never ever skied before I met Drew.  Our first day of Drew teaching me to ski started out with a lot of laughs (which I think you can still see videos of on my Facebook page) but ended with Drew's first introduction to my hotheadedness (not featured on Facebook but you can bet it's one of Drew's favorite stories to tell people about me.)  Luckily, he stuck with me despite my flaws and inability to ski, and every year since I've gone skiing exactly one time a season.  It usually coincides with Drew's birthday as his birthday wish is always, "I want to go skiing with you."  This is enough of a guilt trip to get me back on the hill, vowing again to not lose my temper and make his birthday any worse than just having to wait for me to get down the bunny hill over and over again all day. Unfortunately, I don't have enough self control to stop myself and most of his birthday ski day memories include that time I impaled him with a ski pole/threw a ski/yelled profanities at a well meaning skier passing by/threatened to throw myself off the chairlift/etc. Every year it gets a little better, and last year I could actually say I had fun for most of it.  So this year Drew took it a step further and bought me my own set of skis. We actually had a pretty great time when we went, and I decided to go a second time the next week.  Drew skied mostly with Rich, and I just stayed on Chair 3 and tried a chair 4 run at the end with Drew.  I skied for like 6 hours and had a great time, once I figured out how to get my skis on.  I'm hoping to go out a few more times this year, but I've been so busy it's been hard to commit a full day to using a ski pass and getting on the mountain again.

For Valentine's Day I knit Drew another custom handle mitt for his cast iron and Drew made me this awesome white chocolate/peanut butter frosting cake inspired by my favorite candy: 

Delicious..but super rich!

I've also been a more social cross country skier this month and went out a few times with friends.  I am excited because even Drew decided, without my even pushing him, to get his own pair of classic skis.  Maybe we'll even go together one day! My friend Sam also bought cross country ski's this year and we got Drew to take her older kid downhill skiing while we took the younger one out in Moose Meadows.  It was beautiful, and Sam rocked it.  It's got to be so much harder with a little one on your back!

Have I mentioned that I love where I live?

I also had my spring concert with the Alaska Chamber Singers this month, which was all Johann Sebastian Bach.  It was good music, but it was a heavier concert for the boys to sit through.  I'm looking forward to resurrecting our fall concert program, Darwin Sings:  The Evolution of Choral Music, for our tour to Homer and Cooper Landing in April. Drew baked up some amazing snacks for my choir and for work.  He made peanut butter and chocolate cookies, as well as croissants, some stuffed with chocolate.  He's pretty amazing.

I also ran in the Frostbite Footrace during Fur Rondy this year.  It's only the 3rd race I've ever done and the other two I waited for over an hour just to start running.  So we were like 10 minutes late getting there for this one which I assumed would be no big deal.  Oh no, it had started already.  Which meant that I got to bust through the people on the sidewalk and start running right in front of the funny guy with the mike that gets paid to make smart alecky comments as all the runners come by.  You can bet he loved making fun of me. :)

At first I felt like a total loser cause I was being passed by EVERYONE and I was huffing and puffing.  I finally gave up and slowed my pace to something I could handle.  It was a loop course that you did twice.  When I came around to start my second lap while everyone I'd been with cruised to the finish line I realized I was running with all of those competitive athlete people.  I came around the corner and there were all of my people, jogging at a much more sane pace.  :)

I'm hoping to do 3 more races this year, so this was a good warm up one.  Next time I'll try and be on time for my start.  Hope you got through your February OK.  I guess it won't be too long before I'll be late for a posting in March...better late than never!

Drew's Birthday Weekend

To be fair, I wrote this entire post and then tried to publish it just as the library was closing the other day...and it didn't publish but instead erased the whole thing.  So this is Drew's birthday summary, take 2.  This winter we figured out that most all of our friends have winter birthdays, so we have been moving McKenzie's "Happy Birthday" banner from restaurant to kitchen to kitchen.  We decided being born in the winter has influenced our decision to end up in Alaska.  Anyways, for Drew's birthday he actually made pizza, which sounds pretty lame that he ended up cooking on his own birthday, but Drew's pizza is so good, nobody could do a better job.  McKenzie did make him a super sweet chocolate birthday cake:

The night ended as most of our raucous house parties end, by falling asleep under the electric blanket watching Seinfeld.

The next night Drew and I ate out at Pepe's Turnagain Arm House, which was pretty good, but not our favorite.  Still it was fun to eat at a restaurant we see all the time but have never tried. I had wanted to take a longer getaway for Drew's birthday weekend, but Drew had ski instructor class on Saturday so we decided instead to just spend Sunday night in Eagle River valley at one of the yurts you can rent.  We had thought we'd be snowshoeing or cross country skiing out, but there was barely anything more than a little ice here and there on the trail out to the yurt.  So we just walked.

 We got a fairly late start, but it was less than two miles back into the valley to the Rapids Camp Yurt where we stayed.

 We got there just as it was getting dark.  I totally took charge of making the fire in the wood stove, (which kept the yurt insanely warm) and I even made dinner.  (Don't get too excited, I made rice and tastybites.)  The next morning was sunny and clear and we enjoyed the beautiful view from our yurt before hiking out.

Fancy outhouse!

We drove home through Anchorage and spent the day running errands, eating out for lunch, and even caught the first movie of the day at the movie theater.  We saw American Hustle, which was good.  It was the first time I've been to a movie theater in over a year.  When you don't have a movie theater near where you live, you just don't go that often.  It was a short getaway but even just going to town with Drew and running errands together is a treat.  Here's to another year!