May 2023, Part 1

In May, the sidewalks & paved paths in our neighborhood were finally clear of all the lingering snow & ice so the kids could ride their bikes to school..hallelujah! We are just under 2 miles from our neighborhood elementary school, and it is a "walking community" so no bus service whatsoever. With the warmer temps, the kids loved riding their bikes to school but I still had to drive Shelby's cello to/from school most days. ;) And Brady enjoyed tagging along for the bike rides, too! I even got my first bike since I was little and enjoyed riding a few times with the kids as well.

May brought lots & lots of orchestra and choir concerts. Watching the girls perfom brought us such joy!

It's hard to tell in the picture below, but it is actively snowing. This was taken on May 3rd, which just so happened to be Alaska's annual Bike to School Day. It literally snowed ALL DAY LONG....in May, which is just crazy to us!

Brady and I found a new lunch spot to try after his last P.E. class of the year, and he was thrilled to discover grilled cheese was on the menu!

{Hadley crocheted herself a new pillow}

We visited the Alaska Railroad Open House one weekend in Anchorage.

It never ceases to amaze me that what we once considered "cold" or "chilly" weather now has the kids barefoot!

Derek took another TDY trip to Japan and brought back souveniers. Hadley thoroughly enjoyed using Google Translate on Derek's phone to read the packaging & labels on everything.

Derek was home from Japan just in time to celebrate Mother's Day! We enjoyed a rare sunny day bike ride down to the river as a family. It was the perfect afternoon!

The picture below is of Brady's homeschool Field Day. I'm so glad he got a day just for him after he helped me volunteer at the girls' Field Day.

{one of the last pictures we got of Brady with both front teeth}

Everyone keeps saying what a "late Spring" we're experiencing in Alaska. It has been extremely cloudy, drizzly, and chilly....it definitely doesn't feel like tomorrow is the first day of June!

Apparently I took a lot of pictures this month....I'll be back soon with the second half of the month! :)

Summer Reading

Today was a perfect summer day {despite the drizzly mid 40 degree temps we experienced} that started off with us sleeping in and included a trip to not only the library, but also our local used book shop!

Since I had books on the brain, here's a few of my recent reads...

Fire Keeper's Daughter, The Only Survivors, and River Sing Me Home were three huge flops for me, but I loved every single other book of this bunch so much! If you are a military family or have a nomadic, transient lifestyle, I highly recommed This is Where You Belong. I enjoyed it tremendously. The author Melody Warnick actually just released a new book If You Could Live Anywhere in response to the normalization of teleworking in today's post-COVID era, which sounds fascinating. Definitely one I need to read before our Air Force days are over & we will get a say in where we'd like to live. ;)

I'm looking foward to more lazy summer days spent with a good book!

April 2023

It's hard to believe we're already a week into May! It feels like our calendar is bursting at the seams with all of the end-of-the-year festivities and concerts with a few TDY's thrown in for good measure on top of all of the regular life stuff. The end of April brought us lots of melting, which was super exciting! Without further ado, here's a look back at the past month...

The girls' school has a late start time + Shelby sets her alarm fairly early so she's not rushed in the mornings, which has led to a lot of bonding time for these two lately. In the first picture below, Shelby is reading aloud to Brady while he eats his breakfast.

Hadley was writing a poem in her bed one night when we came to tuck her in. She wrote this poem a couple of days after Easter when we got about 6 or 7 inches of fresh snow. It's kind of hard to see the text in the picture below, so I will type it out:

Ever-falling snow,
When will it stop,
Falling for hours,
40 hours actually,

Perhaps, maybe,

I don't want it to stop
It's so pretty

Oh don't stop snow

Falling to the ground

Five inches, six inches, seven

Ever-falling snow

Will it ever stop?

I really, really hope

It doesn't

{Brady finishing his new puzzle from the Easter Bunny} 

{so crazy to see Hadley in short sleeves with all of that snow still on the ground!}

{it was sunny & 50 degrees on this day, so we spent all morning outside!}

{the kids experienced their first Kona Ice at the girls' school Spring Fest}

{playing basketball on the driveway...something we haven't been able to do in a very long time!}

{Brady's share board on sea turtles}

{the girls made our Saturday morning pancakes when Derek was in San Diego..they did a phenomenal job!}

We are eager for what May has in store for us...hopefully more sunshine & warmer temperatures! We didn't really notice the extended sunlight too much last summer on our move here because it happened so gradually for us as we traveled. But it has been fun to watch the days get increasingly longer this spring. As of now, the sun is rising around 5:30am and setting around 10:30pm. Hard to believe that at the height of summer we'll be getting 22 hours of daylight! We're also eagerly awaiting the street sweepers to show up in our neck of the woods. In Alaska they don't salt the roads in the winter because it draws the moose. So they spread gravel on the roads here instead of salt. Well, as you can imagine, by the end of winter the volume of gravel left on the roads {and in yards from where snow was plowed/shoveled} is truly indescribable. It is so thick. It makes it extremely difficult in some areas for the kids to play or ride bikes safely. We experienced our first Alaskan snow plows and snow removals this winter, and hopefully we'll get to watch our first gravel removal in the coming days!