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.

Welcome to the Neibaur Home!

I can't believe I didn't include a picture of our house. Here it is- welcome to our home! If you're ever in the neighborhood, stop on by. We would love to see you!

Alaska!!!

Once we made it to Alaska, everything went so much better. In many ways, we couldn't have been more blessed. We arrived, took a couple days to regroup, and then when my parents got there after their very long drive north in our car, went house hunting. We loved one of the houses we saw our first day looking, but were going to give ourselves a week or so more to keep looking before we put in an offer since it had been on the market for awhile and we wanted to be sure before we put in an offer. That night, our realtor called and told us that someone else had put in an offer, so if we wanted to put in a competing offer we had to do first thing in the morning. After a little bit of back and forth over rushing into something so big, we did it. And then kept looking while we waited to find out if our offer was accepted. And then it was!!! And we were so excited! We LOVE our house and are so glad we went for it even though it happened faster than we anticipated. And then we had to wait and wait and wait to close on it and move in. So we stayed with my parents and waited. We were waiting to close on our house, waiting for our stuff to arrive on the moving truck, waiting for Brigg's license to come through, waiting for Brigg to start work, just waiting, waiting, waiting! And it all happened! And faster than we anticipated by a long shot....except the house. Brigg had his license and was working by June, at least a whole month earlier than we expected. Our things arrived and had to go into storage until we had a house for them. So then we were just waiting on the house. But we filled our time with lots of other things.

We went to the river and played in the rocks, sand and freezing water. The dog and the boys love it when we go to the river to play for the morning.

Stratton got a big boy BLUE bike. He had been asking for one for months, but we knew we didn't want to move one, so we had always told him he could get it after we moved to Alaska. I think he asked about the morning after we arrived. And now he loves to ride it. At first, he braked every two feet but now he is getting faster and faster. He is growing up so fast!

We found a job we like to do as a family- car washing! And we had alot of it to do after our car made that long drive here. Of course, it turns into boy washing, too. But it is still a fun thing for all of us to work on together.

And finally, we filled our waiting time with fishing! Stratton got his first fishing pole, we went halibut fishing and clamming in Ninilchik and started to work on filling our freezer. And then we moved into our house and have been working on making our new home just right! Hooray!

We Bought a Pig

Just as a break from my lengthy, drawn out catch up to the present time, we bring you a part of our day today. We bought a pig. A big, black and white pig. From a funny lady who talked our ear off about everything but the pig and lived in the craziest farming situation you can imagine. Except that it was a pig farm in Fox, Alaska and for those of you familiar with Fox, it's probably about what you imagine. No, we are not adding to the pets at our home. Our pig is not actually coming to live at our house. We bought it to be butchered in the coming weeks, but it was definitely a new experience for us. I've never bought my meat on the hoof before. It was great! I have to admit, I got a taste for buying our food straight from the farmers while we lived in Ohio, but it is even better here in Alaska. The people who choose to run farms and livestock here have so much personality- of a very specific kind. They are as good as the food! If any of you want to visit for some fresh bacon, just let us know.

On a Lighter Note...

I looked out the window after we had been at my parents house a couple of weeks to see this little helper "mowing the lawn". I had to sneak a picture so he wouldn't take off his equipment.

Into the Abyss....

(No pictures on this one...they would be too depressing,even if we had taken any.)

We woke up and drove to the house to do the last minute packing cleaning routine, counting on the truck being there at 10 am like the guy had called and told us the night before. Just before 10, Brigg decided to take the boys to the Botanical Garden one last time since he was still very much one armed. 10 am came and went....no truck. Finally at 10:30, he called. Noon was our new time. No big deal. Noon came and went, and went and went. Finally, just after 3 pm, he showed up. He had 2 guys to help him load. We weren’t taking that much stuff. I figured it would take them an hour, tops, to get it all loaded. 3 1/2 hours later, they finally closed the doors on the truck. I don’t know what they were packing all that time, but they were packing something. Brigg and the boys were about to completely lose it...you can’t pack or clean much one armed, but you also can’t wrestle 2 boys one armed very well. We were all exhausted and at the end of our ropes, and we still hadn’t had dinner.....which ended up being a compilation of snacks for the boys so we could shortcut them to bedtime, and sandwiches for Brigg and I after. But we were still feeling relatively hopeful. The next morning, we were driving out to Chicago where we had a fun couple of days planned.

The drive to Chicago went surprisingly well. The dog was going a little nuts, but the rest of us did okay. We found our hotel and played for a little while. That night, we had reservations at a Chicago restaurant that I have wanted to eat at for years. I had made the reservations 6 weeks in advance. I was really looking forward to it, so we left an hour early to get some where that was supposed to take 15 minutes to reach. One hour later, we were about 1.5 miles from our hotel and nowhere near the restaurant. Yes, we had to cancel, turn around and head back to the hotel. We stopped to eat and had to leave with our food to go because the boys were both screaming and throwing things. The worse they got, the more the lady at the next table told us how cute they were. It really ticked Brigg off.

The next morning, we had planned to go the aquarium as something fun for all of us. It was a great idea, but not a great experience. At all. We had been to the aquarium before and really liked it, but not this day. There were so many field trips there, Stratton kept getting smacked into the glass by the older kids. Dash couldn’t get out the stroller because he kept getting knocked over. It was totally miserable. So we left. We tried to go to another restaurant we had wanted to try to get take out for lunch, but the week before, they had stopped taking take out orders for lunch. So, we gave up and went back to the hotel where we tried to pretend like the boys would take naps. My parents were flying in that evening to graciously diver our car up to Alaska for us, so I left to pick them up. Once again, I was in traffic for a total of 4 hours coming and going. And I wasn’t going that far. Brigg and the boys were once again about to go over the edge by the time we got back and we skipped dinner because we couldn’t face leaving another restaurant.

My parents left first thing Saturday morning. A few hours later, we took the airport shuttle to the Midway airport with all our bags, car seats, boys and dog in her crate. We wanted to make sure we gave ourselves plenty of time to get the dog checked in and through her paperwork. A great idea, but the check in counter didn’t open for an hour and a half. So we sat and waited. They finally opened and as we were starting Piper’s paperwork, they announced the plane would be at least 3 hours late. No big deal, except it meant we would miss our connection to Fairbanks. I pointed this out to the ticket agent helping us and she told us that if we missed that connecting flight, there wouldn’t be another flight until Monday.....that’s right. In 2 days. I cried. I am not a public crier. I’m not even much of a private crier. But I couldn’t help myself. I cried and cried and cried. Not for sympathy or anything else. Because things were just that bad. It had been quite literally the worst 5 days of my life, to include labor. I would have been embarrassed, but really I was too tired to care. I think it freaked the ticket agent out a little bit. She disappeared to the back for about 45 minutes. Finally, she came back and had booked us on a flight out leaving in a couple hours from O’Hare airport. So, we loaded all our bags, boys and dog into a stuffed to the rafters taxi and drove all the way across town to the OTHER airport. Piper had already been in her crate for about 6 hours at this point, and we hadn’t even gotten on a plane. The woman who helped us at O’Hare was fantastic and we got to let Piper out and giver her some food and water and she was soo helpful. Thank heavens.

The flight was a straight shot from Chicago to Anchorage. It takes just shy of 7 hours. And Dashell had decided that enough was enough. He screamed for hours. Neither boy finally gave in and slept until about a half hour before we landed. And we still had one more flight to Fairbanks. That flight went much smoother. Both boys crashed. We watched Piper get loaded on the plane through the window, and she looked like she was about to have a stroke she was so nervous. ironically, after all the hoopla, we only got into Fairbanks 45 minutes later than we had originally been scheduled to...it just felt closer to 48 hours. And we learned a couple of valuable thing. First, Piper was a nervous wreck and wouldn’t let us out of her sight for the next 2 weeks. I don’t think we will be flying with her again. And secondly, we decided that we hate Chicago. You can tell me all you want about what a great city it is, but we decided that even if it great, it’s ruined by there being so many people in their cars. All of the time. Good thing we moved to Alaska....we shouldn’t be having that problem too much in the future. When we finally made it to my parents house at 2 am, we crashed. We didn’t do anything for days....literally. I don’t even think we left the house. We were just so glad for it to be over. We were really still just beginning, but at least the worst was over.