The smoke just rolled in as I wrote that last sentence. I have a feeling that this is the first day of many yucky smokey days, because we've so far had in my opinion the best summer since 2006 and 2007. Not too many wasps, not too hot, not cold, not too rainy, and most importantly no smoke from Alaskan fires gone wild.
We've had a decent mix of work and play this summer.
My husband is a workhorse when it comes to firewood. He's taken advantage of the state, borough, and federal firewood cutting areas and has found a lot of good wood at a minimal cost. He's gotten 2 loads from a state area past Salcha, 1 load from an area nearby that is open because it was burned in a fire last year, 3 loads from the Army Corps at the Chena Flood Control Project, and 1 load from a friend who wanted some trees down. He's had a little help from both my dad and his dad, which was wonderful. This photo shows the first 3 of those loads. 5/7 loads are cut, split, and stacked already. We hope they will be dry by winter.
The trees we purchased from the Alaska Conservation district were pretty much a success. We helped all of the 25 white spruce through the dry spell of early June by persistent watering. They budded and doubled in size. The 15 jack pine on the other hand have pretty much died. 2 might live, but I doubt it. I suspect these bareroots came from a different farm from the spruce and were not cared for properly.
Our two year old son is really into summer. I think he is going to be a lover of the outdoors just like his mom and dad. He wears his red rubber boots and a hat everywhere he goes. To him, they are the best tools for outdoor play. He uses a real hammer and pretends to split wood like his dad. He spends hours watering . . . the garden, sandbox, slides, stairs of his playset . . . anything. He LOVES to go to any playground and over the last couple of months has gotten very brave on slides and ladders and climbing onto toys all by himself. I would say most of all he likes to watch tractors load piles of dirt, ride 4-wheelers and lawn mowers, and go to his great-grandma Carol's house down the street to play. He also loves to wear his helmet and ride on his dad's bike. I have so many pictures that I don't know how to choose.
He's doing great with potty training. He pees outside without any prompting because it is fun to pee standing and write your name with your pee and he loves to poop inside because he gets a chocolate/vanilla stuffed cookie once he's done. We learned that if you have a boy, you must have a Baby Bjorn potty.
My parents came to visit for over half of a month. They and we had a fantastic time. We went to the Botanical Gardens, the Large Animal Research Station, Chena Lakes Recreation area, and some play dates and field trips at various parks and even at an organic CSA farm. We went to a concert, a band at a coffee house, and had a big BBQ here. They went to the Golden Heart Revue, a comedy show about our gold mining town, caught 75lb of Halibut and other fillets outside of Prince William's Sound (and it was sunny in Valdez!), and got gold at the El Dorado Gold Mine. We took in all of the solstice activities--dressed up for the sun run in gold with a bunch of friends, went to the fair downtown, and the midnight sun baseball game (which went to 3am!) And that's just half of it. We were BUSY and the weather was fantastic.
While my parents were here my husband and I went on THREE dates. This is notable, because I think we probably generally only go on 3 dates in an entire year. We went kayaking down the Chena, to dinner/drinks/movie at the Blue Loon, and to drink beer and play horseshoes with another couple who had a parent in town to watch their kids at our local bar. It was great! It's just not that easy to get out at night when you have kids. People offer to babysit, but they're not really that serious about it when it comes down to it.
We took our almost 0.5 and almost 2.5 year old tent camping. Our older son fell into the bonfire for a split second while he was throwing a tantrum because he wanted to take a marshmallow off of the stick by himself instead of having his dad feed it to him. My husband has super speed in emergency situations, so he was pulled out unharmed. The baby loved the tent. And so did our older son. He begged and begged to go night-night in the tent until he got in there. Then he repeated, "NO MORE CAMPING." My husband after stories and songs offered him visualization of great-grandma's house, 4-wheelers, and piles of dirt and the boy became so happy that he went right to sleep. Our baby is quite agreeable and our toddler has slept many times in a tent that he's had in his room so we knew going into it that it would probably be a pretty easy trip considering the age group we were dealing with.
Well, our baby is grown out of our abundance of under 15lb disposable diapers and doesn't poop constantly anymore. I am off to Blueberry Baby to make our purchase of organic cotton prefolds. For about $100, the cost of a month's worth of disposables, I should be able to diaper him until he's potty trained.
Also, he's almost 6 months old, which means I am about to feed him single grain brown rice. After rice, other solids, which I will make myself. This way I can feed him organic food affordably and also avoid the plastic packaging that contaminates commercial baby food.
So, I will be busy diapering and feeding, cooking and cleaning, but mostly playing and napping.
I love being a stay-at-home mom.
