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!