The Contractor at My House

Brigg and Stratton recently built me a rack for my skis in the garage, and Brigg has been trying to find a stud in the wall to hang it on, but since we don't own a stud finder and our other attempts have turned up empty, so far it has been alot of listening to walls. Yesterday morning while I was drying my hair Stratton came in to ask where his yellow wooden hammer was. I told him which toy box it was in and he came back with it a few minutes later to tell me that he needed it to find "stums". It took a few question to figure out that he was looking for studs in the wall like his Dad. So, he proceeded to systematically tap all the walls in the house, with Dashell the copycat close behind with his little red hammer. I peeked out of my room to watch them for a minute and heard Stratton tell Dashell, " Dashell, we are looking for stums. They are animals that live in the walls." I had to sneak back into my bathroom to have a good laugh about that. Later that night when I was telling Brigg about the "stums" in the wall, Stratton snuck out of bed and was listening outside our door. When we caught him, he asked Brigg " Dad, do stums have sharp toenails?" I don't know how he gets any sleep with the idea of sharp toenailed stums in his walls. And I think I'll still leave the repair work to his Dad until he figures out a few more of the basics.

Preschool Class Quilt

Last week I finished the preschool class quilt. Each of the kids got to draw their self portrait on a square and then I put it together with fabric that each kid had chosen. May I just say that firetruck fabric and pink flowers are difficult to put together in a way that isn't completely awful? But it turned out pretty well in the end. The funny part was Stratton. While I worked on the quilt, he loved looking at the drawings of himself and his friends. This is Stratton's picture of himself below. I think it is sooo cute and funny.

The really funny part came when Stratton said to me the other day, " Mom, I look a little sad in my drawing." I said, " Stratton, what are you talking about? Your smile is HUGE." and he said, " Yes, but look at my eyes. You can just tell from my eyes that I'm a little bit sad maybe." I laughed so hard! So take a good hard look...if you see somebody with eyes like these, they might be feeling sad, so give them an extra hug!

My most recent project...

I just finished this for a silent auctiona t Stratton's preschool. Hope one of the little girls in his class is feeling colorful!

Decorating the Tree

Putting on the star....twice, so that both boys can do it. Doesn't everyone put their star on multiple times?

Stratton was so excited to decorate this year, he could hardly stand it. We got our tree Saturday and decorated Sunday, but he kept sneaking ornaments out of the box and putting them on the tree early. We had told him we would decorate after church Sunday, and he had run in, changed into play clothes and started pulling out the decorations before the rest of us were even out of the car. I guess he has hit his peak Christmas years for sure this time!

Dashell got into it as well, although he wasn't quite as intense as his older brother about the whole thing. He can hang the same ornament 9 or 10 times in different places and feel equally pleased with the result.

It was fun to have the kids really get into it and help this year. Christmas gets better and better as they get a little older each year.

Winter with the Neibaurs

I know that for some of you saying it is winter may seem premature, but not for us! Thought we would share some of our happenings. Dashell is learning to deal with snow much more gracefully than Stratton did at his age and is turning out to be a pretty good sport as long as something exciting is going on.

Piper and I have been spending our spare time with a new hobby- skijoring. In theory, she is supposed to do alot more pulling than she actually does, but we have so much fun. It has been a great way to combine cross country skiing with getting some of our dog's never ending energy out. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I do. I really love it!

She still does best when showing off for others, but we will figure it out yet. We just need a few more months to learn all the commands and get a little more in sync with each other.

Our driveway has turned out to be the ideal sledding hill, so we take advantage of it most days to get out enjoy the snow.

Today we have had a fluke of extremely warm weather, especially for November that made for terrible roads and a day at home that we spent riding bikes in the garage, painting, cleaning, getting ready for Thanksgiving and building a snowman that Stratton insists looks like me. Can't you see the resemblance?

Hope all of you have a Happy Thanksgiving in whatever part of the world and season you find yourself in!

I Have Been Foolish and Deluded and I am a Bear of No Brain At All...

This is the current favorite at our house- a dramatized Winnie the Pooh with Judi Dench and Stephen Fry an others that is so funny, I enjoy it as much as the boys who mostly like Piglet's squeaky voice and Roo. If all you know is the Disney version, you have missed out! I never thought of Winnie the Pooh as being a funny book until I heard this version. One of my favorite stories is when Pooh tracks the Woozles and is actually following his own footprints in the snow in a circle. At then end, when he realizes what he has done he say, " I have been foolish and deluded and I am a bear of no brain at all." I just keep thinking of so many situations where maybe we could all afford to admit that we have been chasing our own tails and have been foolish and deluded. I must admit, I have put those words into more than one person's mouth this week, including my own!

What are you looking at?

2T

Dashell has broken into the box of 2T clothes this week, and they fit! I am a little bit sad that we have already outgrown month sizes. Stratton still says he is his "baby", so why is he getting so big? Plus, why do the terrible twos have to start already. He was being very grumpy and tempermental this morning, so I told him to choose whether he wanted to shape up and go to his music class or keep being grumpy and take a quiet time. I said " What do you want to do?" And he looked at me square in the eye and said, "Nothing!" with as much sass as a not even 2 year old boy can muster. I asked him again and he said " Grandma's house!" He can be such a handful, and that little temper of his has not cooled down one bit since the day he was born. I can tell that we are in for quite a ride with him.

We Can't Play in the Backyard Today

Sorry about the reflection off the window!

Quiet Time

This may be the only way there is ever a picture of me with the kids. Stratton does not always do so great at staying in his room for all of quiet time, and he was not enjoying me paying bills and such on the computer when clearly I should have been devoting my attention to entertaining him. Playing with the computer camera for 5 minutes bought me a few more minutes to get my work done. And I am glad that the special effects kind of blur out the background...otherwise you would be getting a full dose of our pink and flowery room that is just dying to be repainted.

Life Lately

The first hockey game with Grandma and Grandpa. We were so lucky to have them come and visit us for the first time here in Alaska.

Mittens for Dashell....too bad he only wants to wear his dad's and not his own.

The view from one of Brigg's rides from the house.

The boys favorite addition to our household.

Halloween for the boys.

We know that we are recent transplants to Alaska when our boy's favorite toy is a snow shovel.

Conversations with Dashell

I just had to share this evening's talk I had with Dashell. Most of you probably know how much I love talking to Stratton, and Dashell is starting to talk enough to share a little insight to himself too, and I love it. It makes me laugh every time. Tonight we took the boys to their first hockey game with Brigg's family while they are in town. I was bringing Dashell home early to go to bed since it was already almost 2 hours past his normal bed time, even though he was loving the game. In the car, I asked him if he liked the hockey game and this is exactly what he said;

" Hockey...fun. Fourwheeler....fun. Trucks....fun. Stratton....fun."

So I have a little boy who loves his brother, trucks, fourwheelers and hockey. It sounds like it is a good thing we moved to Alaska.

Pneumonia, My Old Friend

The last two weeks have been a complete blank. I somehow managed to come down with pneumonia and am finally getting back to myself. Two rounds of antibiotics and who knows how many other pills, codeine cough syrup, inhalers and ibuprofen and I'm finally down to only the occasional uncontrollable coughing fit. Lucky me. So, I realized today that we have taken 2 pictures over the last six weeks. I can't give a reason for this, but we just haven't been pulling out the camera. We have been staying busy, just not photographing it. Stratton finished his first ever round of swimming lessons on Saturday, preschool has been going great, our house is ready for winter, and Brigg and I got to go our last night. I don't feel like downloading the only two recent pics, so I thought I would post this old picture from the summer of our little face plant boy styling an Avatar look after a scooter mishap. Stratton was equally upset over the smear in his chalk drawing. We are all just trying to get back on our feet like Dash. And we had better do it fast because we have a busy few weeks ahead....thank goodness I made Stratton's Halloween costume last month! We have all our normal life schedule, family coming at the end of the week, an upcoming Primary program that I have only 1 more week to practice with the kids, elections, my mom's birthday and a million other small projects that have managed to accumulate. Too much can stack up in 2 weeks. Tomorrow the projects begin!

To My Boys

To Dashell:

Welcome back, my little man! After last week, I was worried that the grumpy dwarf had come back to stay, but I guess we have chased him away again. Thank goodness! You are such a charming and mischievous little boy, I would hate to only see your sense of humor and fun occasionally. I love your total enthusiasm for life. The older you get, the more convinced I am that you could hardly wait to get started on your life. It's like you are worried you won't have time for all the fun you plan on having. And as you get older and more coordinated, I just wanted to tell you how much I will miss your little half jumps that you do when you are excited. And I may even miss it when you stop adding "-y" to the end of every single word that comes out of your mouth. It makes it seem so much less serious when you tell me you fell "downy" and got "hurty". And the roads will be much emptier without all the truckys, carys, dumpys, bikeys, and mooseys you see.

To Stratton:

I cannot believe that I am old enough to have a 4 year old. You have turned into such a sweet little boy. You still run in high gear, but you are thoughtful and considerate, most of the time, and are a great friend. I love our conversations and how hard you try to help Dashell and me. Not to say you don't have bad days, but your good ones more than make up for it. You are a constant surprise. This week, I am especially proud of you getting all your winter gear on by yourself every time, and writing your name all by yourself. Don't worry. The other things you are working on will come.

Fall just in time for Winter!

Since the first snow of the year has been falling out my window since yesterday, it seemed like time to put up a few of our fall pictures. September has been a busy month full of preschool, music, trips to the library, yard work, and birthdays. It has been great to get into a routine and really settle in to life here. Here are a few highlights...

Here are the boys hard at work on the dirt wall behind our house. They literally spend hours playing on it almost every day. I don't even mind going through a couple pairs of pants in a day when it can keep them so occupied for so long.

Stratton shows off the potatoes from our garden this year. I wish I could take credit for them, but they were planted before we moved in. We just get to enjoy them! Stratton harvested all the potatoes with his Dad one Saturday afternoon.

His job was finding all the potatoes in the dirt after Brigg had made the initial hole. He did great...it must be the spud farmer in his blood. He is still very proud of the buckets of potatoes we have in the garage from his hard work.

I love this picture of Dash from one day out picking lowbush cranberries. My boys are learning to love, or at least tolerate, lots of berry picking with their mom since we moved here. Maybe I'll be able to talk them into even more berry picking next year. For now, they have snow on the brain, just like their dad.

The Finger Store

This morning I was driving Stratton to preschool when he let me have another peek at how his little brain works. Some of you may know that my mom lost her ring finger last year in a wood splitting accident. Stratton has just recognized this over the last week and has told me 100 times about how Grandma lost her finger to the wood splitter. This morning, he was telling me again about how Grandma lost her finger. Then he said, " She should probably get a new one." I told him it would be nice if she could. After being quiet for a second he said. " But I don't think there are any finger stores. So she can't. That's too bad." I loved his idea for a finger store, but I don't think we'll see them popping up anytime too soon.

Starting Young

Stratton is an unbelievable 4 years old and has been growing up so fast lately. He has been saying some of our family prayers lately, and we have started doing a job chart for him each week to earn an allowance. Every Sunday night he gets his allowance, and we talk about tithing and put some of it into his tithing envelope. This morning he was saying morning prayers and at the very end he said " Thank you for paying my taxes." Brigg and I started laughing so hard. Who knew that 4 year olds had such weighty financial matters on their minds? We asked him if he meant tithing, and he got red and giggled, so I don't really think he's worried about his taxes, but it made us laugh.

Be a Good One

I came across a quote from Abraham Lincoln this morning that I liked.

" Whatever you are, be a good one."

I want my boys to know this. I don't care what they are. I don't care if Stratton really does grow up to be a pilot, like he currently tells us, or grows up to be a "strong robot" like he insisted on last year. (Well, maybe I mind the robot thing just a bit) I just want them to be good. They can be whatever they want, just be happy at it. Same goes for me. Do I really need to define what I am or do, or can I just be good at what I'm working on at the time? Just what's on my mind while folding laundry today.

Redemption can be so short lived...

Reading Winnie the Pooh to the boys by the fire on a quick overnight camping trip up the Chena a few weeks ago

Monday I had one of those days where everything I touched turned to ashes, in one case quite literally. By the time we had put out the massive grill fire that was supposed to be our dinner, I was completely discouraged. You know when you feel like you don't even want to start anything else because based on the day you've been having, it's bound to be a disaster. Wednesday we still started out rough, but by the afternoon and evening, everything was going great. The boys were being wonderful, not fighting and playing by themselves while I cooked dinner. Dinner turned out great. Life was as it should be. Then Dashell dumped 2 gallons of bath water on the floor when I turned my back to grab a diaper. Even so, most of it was absorbed by their shaggy bathroom rug and I still felt like maybe we were getting back on track. Next week, our life is about to get much busier again and our unstructured days of the last 4 months are going to be a thing of the past with preschool and all our other activities starting up, so in recognition of that, I thought that today instead of staying home to get some house projects done, I would take the boys to the park to play for one of the last times together this summer. I should have known that something so harmless and universally popular at our house as a day at the park was not going to turn out well. We were there for about 2 hours and Stratton spent at least 45 minutes of that time screaming and kicking in the gravel having a massive meltdown tantrum of epic proportions in front of a 4th grade class on a field trip. Dashell was fine at the park, but fights tooth and nail whenever we have to leave, so my attempts to make it to the car carrying 2 kicking and screaming boys were even more embarrassing than letting my child meltdown in public, so we ended up waiting it out in full view of the few other park goers there on this foggy morning. And the trigger for this drama? I reminded Stratton he needed to ask nicely if he wanted me to push him on the swing. Yes, that's right. My normally sweet and relatively well mannered boy had a massive tantrum because he didn't want to say 'please'. Lovely. At least I had a brief respite this week. That's why I posted the picture above. It looks like a perfect family campfire scene. Don't all families sit by the fire and read Winnie the Pooh on camping trips? But in reality, it was a brief respite from a chaotic and wakeful night that ended in a morning of rain and early return home. But looking at the picture makes me smile at the 10 minutes that the boys just wanted to sit and find out where Eeyore's tail was. I suppose that for me, the real achievement as a mother is when I can revel in the peaceful moments enough to weather the next inevitable storm. I can't always do that, but I am trying. I think that we all have been so thrown off by our move and starting over in a new place that we aren't even completely certain how to "get back to normal". Even the definition of "normal" will be new. I don't even know if we'll recognize when we get there, if we ever do. "Normal" is an elusive state with 2 rapidly growing and independent boys. Maybe we shouldn't be seeking normal, just a little more day to day stability. And we are getting there. Even as our days are getting shorter, the moments of sunlight in our family are getting a little longer and more regular. Lets hope my little boys sunshine increases as our daylight decreases.

Valdez!

This last weekend we took a trip down to Valdez for our last summer hurrah! We had the best time and hit the best weather. I think it was the warmest Valdez had been all summer. And we were ready for cold and wet. By the last day, Stratton was begging me for short sleeves, and I hadn't even packed a t-shirt for him...sorry, long johns and sweatshirts for you bud! Valdez has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. Brigg had only been through Valdez on our way to Cordova on a wet, cloudy, foggy day 2 years ago, so I think he was surprised by just how beautiful the mountains were. Plus, he finally got to go salmon fishing. 6 years into marrying a girl from Alaska, the man has finally got some silver salmon to show for it! We saw lots of animals, fish and sunshine. It was perfect.

Here is a picture of one of our wildlife spottings. This sea otter was in the harbor eating its dinner just a couple feet away from the dock. (No, the dog in the picture isn't ours, even if Brigg would like it to be. It belonged to a nearby boat.) Anyways, we took the boys down on the dock to see the sea otter up close and found out that Dashell LOVES sea otters. He kept calling it a puppy and trying to get in the water with it. We had to physically fight him for about 10 minutes to keep him from jumping in the harbor to get an up close look at the otter. We eventually had to leave just so we didn't end up with a soaking wet baby. Instead we left with a screaming and kicking baby. I am fairly warned for next year...if there's an otter in the area, Dashell will be trying to jump in the water with it.

Dashell loved the trip if for no other reason than being close to a harbor and being able to point out every single boat that he saw. And fish. The Wappett gene for "fish brains" skipped Stratton, but is very much present in Dash. He loves fish. He would have spent all night spotting fish off of the pier or looking at the spawning salmon. He even wanted in on the fish cleaning action after we'd get back from fishing. Stratton, on the other hand, was much less interested. The first day, he stayed with Grandma and Grandpa while we were out fishing and they went to one of the salmon streams. When we got back, he told me that he saw " Lots of fish. They were huge and scary." Perhaps an exaggeration on both counts, but he stuck to his opinion. Every time we'd try to get him to touch one, he would refuse vehemently. So, Dashell appears to be the natural born fisherman of the two. We'll just have to teach Stratton. Once he starts catching them, it shouldn't take too long for him to be as excited about it as Dashell.

Here's a picture of Brigg with about half of one day's catch hanging up.

And this is him with one of the first silvers he caught. You can't fake that smile. I caught the only king salmon on the trip, but it was a small one, so I'm not sure it counts for bragging rights. I was the variety catcher. I caught my silvers, but also a chum and the king, although my nephew was the one to bring in a huge jellyfish along with one of his silvers. Brigg was a natural. My mom thinks he definitely shows potential for getting addicted to fishing. Next year we'll have to see if we can up his variety. Maybe some reds and a king for him, too. When he qualifies for an in-state fishing license so the king tag isn't so pricey.

All in all, we had a wonderful time. Driving home Tuesday afternoon so Brigg could go to work Wednesday morning felt criminal. How could we drive out of Valdez in such beautiful weather? It felt like it would only be right to stay until the clouds rolled in. While we were in Valdez, Stratton would tell us every 10 minutes, " I really like these mountains." He fell asleep as we drove over Thompson Pass and when he woke up, he started crying because the mountains were gone. We like the mountains too, Stratt. Don't worry, we'll visit them again next year.