where has May gone?

We have been more than a little busy recently!  This weekend we moved out of the Fritz Cove Rd house and into a furnished place up near Auke Rec.  All our stuff had to go into storage.  We got really lucky and a storage unit opened up just in time.  I spent all week toting boxes along with Avery in my Subaru. I managed to get everything but the big furniture and stuff coming with us to the apartment moved.  I am a moving rock star, but am seriously ready to be DONE MOVING!  I just have about a car load of groceries and some cleaning left to do.  I have a 2 month break until the next move...

I went and bought our appliances on Saturday!  It is done and they will arrive June 27. Sears will hold them if our builder isn't ready for them yet.  I got a deal with the Memorial Day sale and was so happy to know that Sears here honored the online prices!  I saved a whopping $2,351.22 from the said prices vs this weekends sale prices.

Sam turned 30 today!  We celebrated by going to lunch at our favorite place, The Island Pub and hanging out at the beach.  The porpoise were showing off this morning.  I tried real hard to get a decent picture, but they move so fast.  There were at least 20 of them screwing around really close to shore.  It was nuts!  We love our new temporary rental!  Just a stones throw from our favorite beach :)

Below are a few photos I took at the beach.

Avery posing with her "stick"!

Avery spotted a sun star.

Wilson loving life.

Eagle spying on us.

Man swimming with the porpoises.

Avery ready to go...

Barn Yard Fun!

Today was Family Farm Day at Swampy Acres.  Swampy's is a local barn and they have all sorts of animals!  Avery got to see piglets, baby chicks, ducklings, miniature horses, baby bunnies, a goat, peacocks and lots of chickens.  She had a blast.  She took three turns on the pony rides and did so great.  I was shocked how well she did.  She let the people running the show put her helmet on and put her on and take her off the horses and I wasn't allowed to go with so she went around the arena on the horse without me.  For my little "stranger danger" child this is pretty huge.  Maybe it was the excitement of the horse back ride or she is just growing up really fast.  I so wished Sam could have been there to see how brave she was. We might have a horse gal on our hands...

Riding a horse!

Holding a baby chick!

back at it...

Well, I am finally going to say it out load. I am running again.  I actually have a couple of friends here doing it with me so that definitely keeps me going!  I don't know how, but I am actually in pretty good shape (I definitely don't look it though!) and can easily run for an hour strait.  I have done that solo a couple of times now, but usually we are running a little over 4 miles on a great paved trail.  Our options are a little limited with the strollers to deal with.  My friend is awesome and shows up even when it is pouring rain, which means the WORLD to me. It is so nice to have that extra motivation to get your butt moving and has been my vise since my retirement from swimming.  Avery has also been doing pretty good.  She does get bored and my phone isn't always a great distraction, but she hasn't totally lost her cool (knock on wood).  Of course I'd rather run without her, but that is not always an option. I have been at it about 6 weeks now so I went ahead and bought a new app to start tracking my speed and distance.  I usually just guesstimate, but this app seems super cool. ismoothrun I hope it is as good as it's reviews.  It is silly, but I am looking forward to this afternoon to use it for the first time!

Other than that things are just chugging along.  Avery's last day at nursery school was yesterday.  She will just have her gymnastics through the summer and then she will begin preschool twice a week in addition to her gymnastics in September.  She is super talkative and recently gotten EXTREMELY stubborn.  She is 25 lbs and insists on wearing a princess dress at all times.  But, so far obeys the rule that we must get dressed in real clothes to leave the house.

The house is also moving along.  The shower has been installed in the master bath, the tub is now in the other bath, 3 of 4 sides of the house have siding up, the roof has been completely shingled, the side door and main doors are installed, all windows are installed, the electricity is in and hot, garage floor is in and all the insulation in stacked up in the garage ready to be put in as well.  Things are going quick.  I was more than a little irritated to see they installed recessed lighting in my dining room.  Sam and I just decided to cancel the order of the awesome pendant light we had ordered and go with it rather than make them change it. We should be appliance shopping next weekend! Along with moving out of our current rental and into a nice little temporary rental until the house is done.  Which to me seems like they really might be done by the beginning of July!

funny, but seriously gross

The other day Sam, Avery and I went to the mall to look at stuff.  We went to the outdoor gear store and were wandering around. Avery is particularly naughty in this store.  Too much stuff to hide in and play in I guess.  Anyway, she was following me around and I saw her pick up what I thought was just a tag that had fallen off something.  I noticed a lady starring at her and not a nice stare, a what the heck is wrong with that kid and her parents stare.  Then, Avery looks up at me "Mommy look, look I have glasses like you!".  She had a hygienic liner sticker stuck across her eyes.  I almost peed my pants.  So creative and freaking disgusting at the same time.  I was embarrassed so I ripped the sticker off her face, but I really wanted to take a picture.  Fingers are crossed she doesn't contract an STD in her eye.

Overcast, but not raining!

 

Lucky us! It stopped raining long enough for us to get out on a short walk and play date at our favorite park! After this stretch of rain people all over town have been calling this "springtober". October being notoriously the ABSOLUTE shittiest month in weather terms here in Juneau.

Sun is in the forecast! Let's hope the forecasters are correct because we need it!

One of my favorites to date :)

Avery fell asleep in the car after nursery school last Thursday (5/3), so I decided to just drive around rather than going home right away.  I was going to just do a drive by of our house in progress, but I saw something strange up ahead and wanted to check it out.

This is what I saw.

Some kind of weird lighting right?  Look at the the trees right in front of me.  Is that a rainbow?  So I drove on past our new street and decided to drive up to Mendenhall Lake and check it out.

A neat, super low rainbow.  I wish I had had my camera to photograph it, my phone just doesn't do it justice.  It was spectacular and the lighting was simply awesome.  It was mostly cloudy this day, but I saw 2 more rainbows from different areas of town on the same day.  It has literally been raining ever since.  

The rain has been beyond depressing this round and I am looking forward to moving on and out of this cold, dark and damp rental. We have just 17 more nights left in this place!

sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
–William Shakespeare

it's MAY!

After a spectacular April it is a little hard to see the clouds roll in and never go away.  I swear we must have had like 4 strait weeks of no rain and lots of sunshine.  But, with the rain Juneau is coming to life and turning green again.  Avery will be able to handle being out in the rain more this summer so we will make the most of each day, rain or shine.  She has discovered that rain and rain pants make for some super fast slides and she LOVES it!  Avery's nursery school ends next week and her Kindermusik ended last week.  But, Avery finally came up on the waiting list for the preschool gymnastics class.  So we will start that this week!  I have heard great things about the class so I am pretty excited. I might sign her up for swim lesson towards the end of the summer, but that is it for summer activities.

Our house is coming along.  They began shingling the roof on Friday and I would expect them to be done with that early this week. The windows are in and the plumbers are getting their work done as well.  I can't wait for the siding to go up so I can really start to see what it will look like. 

  

The flags are up downtown again and the first couple cruise ships have come and gone.  All the shops downtown are open for tourist season and cleaning up their store fronts.  I love downtown Juneau in the summertime!