Spring has Sprung

It seems like spring is getting here early this year, and I can't say I'm complaining.  If we're not going to get lots of snow it mine as well be warm and sunny.  It was also exceptionally clear skied for like 3 straight weeks in March.  We lost some snow to the warm sun, but it still made being outside totally lovely.  The days are also getting longer and I'm getting to catch some beautiful sunsets on my drive to and from Anchorage.  I actually called Drew one night to tell him he had to go out on the arm and see how beautiful it was with the sunset and this low hanging fog over the water.  He couldn't believe I wasn't stopping to take a picture and so finally I turned around and drove back to get a few amazing pictures, even if it made me late.  I don't ever get tired of this view on my commute:

We've also had an ongoing joke going on with our friends Aaron and Jennifer, who spend each of their weekends doing something fun as a couple.  Whenever we get out and spend the day together we joke we should post our excursion on Facebook so we can show them up.  No internet, so we didn't every put these on Facebook, but here they are from our little walk along Glacier Creek.

Our other big thing from this month is that we moved....again.  The owners of the house we were watching came home and we hadn't found a house to buy as we'd hoped.  So we ended up moving in to the first floor of a house of some friends.  They are letting us rent month to month so we are happy about that.  They do have a very steep driveway that with the melting and refreezing has been giving the Camry a hard time.  I lost it off the edge of the driveway my first day at home without Drew:

 Whoops...luckily a lot has melted since then and the driveway isn't near as slick as it was a few weeks ago.

I did end up going out on the flats for the first time a few weeks ago with some friends after work.  It was a pretty walk out underneath the highway and up to the water's edge.  It really felt like spring was there as the sun went down. We liked it so much we went out and BBQ'ed there with my brother and his girlfriend who cam to visit. (More on that to come.)  We're looking forward to many a BBQ out there this summer.  

Other than that Drew finally got out and did a little bit more back country skiing, even going two days in a row.  I think that's a record for the boys.  Here's a few shots from three of their trips:

Talking to me on the phone...

We had a great time with Joey and Rachel when they were here...more on that later!  Hope you are enjoying spring wherever you are!

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!

A Weird January...

We had a crazy January this year.  It got as warm as 55 degrees in Girdwood and almost all the snow melted.  That has inspired me to start winter running, and I've been at it pretty consistently three times a week.  I will usually just run with ice grippers on my shoes but by the end of our month and a half without snow I didn't even need those.  It was fun to get out and enjoy the sunshine and warmth, but I didn't feel like I'd really paid the price of a long winter to appreciate it as much as I normally do. We started out OK in October with this:

 Unfortunately it didn't last.  And then all the rain we got while it was warm really washed any snow we had away.  Drew took some pictures to remember our year it hardly snowed:

Needless to say we haven't exactly had to break out the snowblower much...

Usually the bike trail along this mountain is closed for avalanche danger.  It was wide open and ice free.  I even broke out my bike a few times.

One positive of all the warm sunny weather was that we had some beautiful clear days and nights.  We drove up the arm one night after we'd each spent the day outside (hence the clothes) just to take some pretty pictures at sunset:

Despite the lack of snow I did get in a cross country ski day or two early on, and Drew kept skiing the ice whenever the resort was open.  He took a professional ski instructor class this year so he is official now.  He's been having fun volunteering at the adaptive ski school and he found the classes really helped him with his own technique.

I love getting to spend a morning or a sunset afternoon cross country skiing here. I like to go alone, listening to classical music on my Ipod.  It's totally peaceful.

It's been really fun having our friends Tim and McKenzie here in Girdwood this year. (They own the dog we watched this summer, Wren.)

Gotta love the water view from the top of the resort.

A Summer with Wren

This summer we got to watch our friends' dog Wren a few times.  I've never had a dog before but I loved taking Wren on walks and runs and playing fetch with him.  We have such a beautiful town that loves dogs and doesn't care if you put the dog on a leash or not.  So we had fun taking him around in what Drew likes to call "a dog's paradise."  Portage Valley is one of our other favorite places to go.  If it wasn't already owned or forest land and it wasn't so far away from work we would build a house there.  It's our favorite of the four valleys.  Drew came home from a kayaking trip this summer and we decided to do a hike together, but Drew was so exhausted that he didn't really feel like hiking up a mountain.  So we decided to walk the Blue Ice Trail, which is about as flat of a hike as you can get along the valley floor.  Wren and he had such a fun time being off leash and jumping into the water and the snow.  We had another gorgeous day.  He loves to splash in shallow water but he won't swim.  It was absolute torture if we through a stick in the water too deep for him to reach.  It was fun to watch him find ways to get the stick without having to swim.  He also loved the snow by the avalanche chute that still hadn't melted.  He is such a great dog and we love whenever he comes to see us.  Hopefully soon we can get a dog of our own that's just as good.

Dipnetting

As Alaskan residents we get the chance to go dipnetting every year.  This year in July we took advantage and got a group of friends together to drive down to the mouth of the Kenai and catch us some fish.  Since this summer was freakishly sunny, we got lucky and had a beautiful hot day.  We packed a picnic lunch, brought a tarp and camp chairs, a bunch of borrowed gear and a couple of coolers and spent the day on the black sand beach there.  It was so fun!  It was like my Alaska life colliding with a trip to the Jersey Shore. Unfortunately we lost our set of pictures we took that day, but we have several from friends that we managed to get.  I wouldn't actually kill the fish myself but I did gut them and everything so I feel like I did pretty good.  We just got a few little pinks but the experience was awesome.  Hopefully our long lost pics will show up again soon. In the mean time....

It's a beautiful day on the beach in Alaska...

Believe it or not, this is not really that crowded.
It's supposedly is shoulder to shoulder when it's really busy.

Holding the net steady in the water against the current is harder than it looks.
I got my muscles worked out that day holding it steady.

One of my fish.....so proud!

Our friend Fay in the water...

This is one of those moments that 10 years ago
I never would have guessed would be a part of my future.

We ended up staying up half the night processing the fish and of course eating some of it too.  It's not the best salmon ever, but we know what we are doing better next time and we have already arranged our summer plans around dipnetting again.  Now if we can just get weather that's this good again!