Big Week in the Making

Avery playing dress-up with a new classmate at the open house :)

Avery will be starting preschool!  I can't believe it, but in my heart I know she is ready. Luckily I have chosen a cooperative so I get to be a big part of the process.  I was also talked into a board position so I will get to be really involved. It's going to be fun.  She will start this Thursday and then will go T/TH's for 3 hours.  The preschool has a play-based learning philosophy and we love the teachers, the set up and the school.  We think she is going to have a blast and I can be present as much as she and I need me to be. 

Other than that.  We have just been crazy busy.  I am on a major purge binge.  We have little storage in our new place so things we don't use or need have to go! Sam has been working a lot.  He has been back and forth between Juneau and Haines and Skagway, so he is busy busy busy.  His cousin Courtney was here doing an externship for a couple weeks with Smith Equine and the small animal practice Sam works for.  Avery adored her and definitely wore her out :)

I am still in denial I am going to have a 3 year old here in a couple weeks.  How has it been that long?

Kowee Creek Trail

  

 Yesterday we decided to head all the way out the road to hike a new trail.  Kowee Creek (pronounced: Cow-ee)  It was around mile 38 of Glacier Hwy and the trail was only about a mile until it ends at a T going one way to dead end at the creek and the other to a massive field of wild flowers that is part of Echo Ranch.  There was a road we walked along boarding the massive wildflower field and we walked that for another mile or so.  Avery can only really tolerate 1 1/2 to 2 hours of hiking so we opted to turn back after 2 miles.

Avery hiking.

 The trail followed a beautiful creek with gorgeous light blue clear water.  There were quite a few people fishing.  We were ready for bears, we saw nothing but a LOT of poop and one foot print. It is July and that means berries are ripening. We got to snack on fresh blueberries along the way.  Avery thought this was VERY cool.  

blueberry bush!

 Wild Iris

Sitka Burnet

We are have been searching for chocolate lilies and unfortunately we still have not found any.  I think we may have missed them this year.  We did find some beautiful flowers.  So many wild iris, fireweed, Alaska cotton, Lupine and so many more.

Wilson in a field of Wild Iris

 We all had a great time.  The drive was a little long because of construction, but it was sunny and beautiful!  The dogs are taking the day off.  They had a busy week and I think poor Wilson is sore.  Getting old sucks sometimes :(

Fishing in the Rain

low tiding @ Auke Rec

This morning I wasn't up for going big, but didn't want to waste the lowest tide of the month when it was at a convenient time for us.  So we walked across the street to Auke Rec.  Great decision!  Either I am getting better at spotting critters or everything was out and about!  We saw LOTS of crabs, these eel looking things, lots of sea stars, a couple sun stars, hermit crabs, clams, sea urchins, and even a few anemones!

A REALLY big sea star.

A big shy hermit crab and a brave itty bitty hermit crab that Avery spotted!

 A clam.

Sea Urchins.

Baby Sea Star.

A smaller green anemone.

The blob. Anemone.

After we poked it.

A video of another anemone as we irritated it.

I am not sure what this is.  Maybe an eel?

Crabs.

 A video of a crab.

 A sun star.

We are trying to teach Avery about the difference between low and high tides.  This is mainly so when we go to the beach and it is high to mid tide she isn't upset that the sea stars are not visible.  She is having a lot of fun finding things and learning.  We are so lucky to be living in such a neat place and we are truly falling in love.  We miss CO a lot, but we couldn't have landed in a better spot.

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!

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!

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!

beach bums

A few families we know decided to get together this weekend and have another beach fire. This time we went to the beach right by Sheep Creek down the Thane Rd. I am sure this is going to my husbands favorite weekend activity as most of you know he loves to "burn it down". Anyway, the kids had a blast running around. We roasted some hot dogs and marshmallows. Avery had her first s'more and I had 2! Yum!
The weather held out and with all the daylight we were able to hang out until about 9 with light. No kids fell in the ocean or in the fire which = successful outing!

We had a fun and busy weekend with Avery's Gigi and Grandpa Rick. We did lots of shopping and lots of playing! They stayed in a great little apartment nearby and Avery had lots of one on one time. She already misses them and can't wait to see them again.

Avery eating frozen yogurt with Grandpa and Gigi!

Avery got some sweet temporary tattoos all over her belly. She is pretty proud of them!

I also was able to squeeze in a 5K and did alright, thanks to Paige and Rick for watching Avery! It was only my 3 time running since the half marathon I ran last June. 26:33 was my time. Not sure what place as the newspaper seemed to leave out most of the participants from the results. The overall winner was well under 20 minutes. Here is the link to the article that lacks much information: http://juneauempire.com/sports/2012-04-15/heart-hospice-fund-raiser-run-results#comment-43805

Thank you guys for everything. We had a lot of fun and LOVED that the weather held up through your visit! See you guys soon.

spring is officially here!

Mosquitoes are back. Big and thirsty and lots of them. I don't remember seeing many late last summer. I am hoping these guys are just hatched from the melting snow and there has just been a population explosion that will settle down soon!


My first casualty of the season.

they broke ground today!

My friend sent some photos and a video of the action today. Her little boy is in Avery's nursery school class and LOVES to watch the diggers and trucks in action. So he will be fully entertained for awhile as he lives just down the street.

Sam and I went for it and picked out a lot. There will be more, but got quite a bit done for now. The house will be green! Our house package is currently on the barge to arrive next week and our windows have been ordered. Things are rolling and our contractor is shooting for just after the 4th of July. I am not holding my breath, but that is a full 2 weeks early. Which means it will hopefully be good to go by our original close date of the 20th of July!



They said foundation should go in next week and once they start framing that will go up in about a week! I can't wait to see the progress! We are over the moon excited!