Halloween

Josh's, Mario's, and mine - they're all currently buried in snow and frozen on the porch!

Blowing out the candle

We took a second crack at carving pumpkins since the one we did when YaYa was visiting had started to look like it lost its dentures (the result of freezing and thawing multiple times).  It was a lovely family evening and I think the jack-o-lanterns turned out pretty nice.  Josh was still disgusted by the seeds and stuff, but he was quite fascinated by what we were doing with the pumpkins.  His has a bunch of sharks, fish, and bubbles and he really liked it.  His favorite part of the activity, though, was blowing out the candles over and over (and over and over and . . . ). 

The straw whistles were a hit!

Trying to eat chocolate donuts on a string

We had hoped to dress Josh as a shark for Halloween given his current fascination with them, but we weren't able to find a shark costume we liked.  Instead we dressed him as a judge!  He first tried out his costume at our church Halloween party.  He sort of enjoyed trying to eat a donut hanging from a string and really enjoyed the chocolate he got, but his best score of the evening by far was a couple of whistling straws that he wouldn't stop blowing for the rest of the evening.

Since Josh doesn't talk much and didn't really get the “Trick or Treat” idea, we thought it would be best for him to go trick-or-treating with his cousins, Natalie and Collin, who could show him the ropes.  He had his full snow suit under his judge robe, and we had white hairspray to approximate a judge's wig, but decided it was too cold (it was 7 degrees) for his head to be exposed.  So we did a last-minute adjustment with some white construction paper and tape to make his beanie into something suggesting white hair.  We had a fun evening with Jed, Crystal, & Co.  Josh's current aversion to almost everything edible surprisingly even extends to candy – the only stuff he'll eat is plain Hershey bars and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  He's tried half a dozen other kinds and spits it all out.  Crazy kid!

Curling!

The "rock"

For some reason, there was about 100 hours of Olympic curling broadcasted during the last winter Olympics. At first it was really annoying, but we grew pretty interested in it by the time the Games were over. Little did we know we'd be moving to Alaska where you can actually go curling! The local curling hall had an introductory class back in October and Mario got to go. He found out that curling is quite a bit more difficult than it seems. In fact, there were people falling down all over the place, let alone throwing the “rock” appropriately. He had a lot of fun. Since this was shortly after Josh broke his leg and he wasn't all that entertained watching people curl, he and I went for a little walk and happened to catch this awesome sunset.   

Dad's visit

We were lucky enough to have my dad come visit just a few weeks after Mom came. He only had a few days, so we made sure we had enough planned to give him as much of the Alaskan experience as we could.

Fielding Lake public cabin

C and N

Not sure what the weird face is about, but it's the only one of everyone

Jed and his family took him out to the Chena cabin and hot springs the first night, then we all headed out to Fielding Lake where we found a fun little cabin to stay at. Fielding Lake is near the beginning of the Denali Highway and usually offers great views of the mountains, but it started snowing the day Dad got here and kind of just kept going on and off, so we didn't get the scenery we were looking for. We did get to see some animals, though, like moose, eagles, and muskrats chasing ducks. 

 There was a stretch of highway where Mario and I saw almost 10 bald eagles, but unfortunately Dad and Jed in the car ahead of us missed them. The landscape that we could see was impressive, but I sure wish we could have shown Dad more of the Denali area.

We ventured out the Denali Highway for a few miles in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the mountains, but we had to settle for a fun little hill and some fresh snow to play in. There were a bunch of kettle lakes that we could see, most of which had little beaver lodges in them.

After our Fielding Lake outing, we headed back to Fairbanks to catch a hockey game. Dad used to be the doctor for a hockey team in Minot, North Dakota when we lived there and we thought he would enjoy going to see a game. We watched the University of Alaska Nanooks trounce a team from Nebraska. It was a lot of fun, and we certainly plan to go a few more times this year, but I was somewhat lost as far as some of the rules and really need to study up before we go again. I waited all evening to get this shot of a guy getting checked. Check out the grimace.

We got to celebrate Collin's birthday the next morning before Dad had to leave. It was so nice to get to spend some time with Dad and show him our little corner of the world. We loved having him and are excited for him to come up again just as soon as he can!

Just a quick update on the little bun in the oven. We've had a couple ultrasounds that showed she's growing well and is on track for her due date of December 5^th. I'm about as big as a whale and chasing Josh is a bit of a challenge these days, but he's a good sport about it. I'm pretty sure he has no idea what it means when we tell him about the baby, but when we ask him where the baby is he'll give my belly hugs or kisses. He was pretty excited to see her on the ultrasound, though, but I think that was because it was like watching a movie more than because he was seeing a baby.

December 5^th (the due date) is just less than 5 weeks away and I'm trying to soak up every last minute I still have with just Josh. I'll admit I'm quite uncomfortable but not so uncomfortable that I'm actually ready to have a newborn quite yet, for the stress and sleeplessness but more because I'm not ready to spend less time with my little man. He's my whole life from the time he wakes up until Mario gets home in the evening and I'm not ready to give that up yet, especially since he's been making small but important steps with his speaking and eating lately. He recently tested at a 12-month level in his verbal communication, and the number of foods he was willing to eat was alarmingly low. We start speech therapy next week and have been working on the eating issues, though, and I'm excited to see what he'll be able to do in the next few months.

YaYa's Visit

My mom came to visit at the end of September. It was wonderful to see her and it was also a great excuse to do some fun stuff.

Public use cabin near Chena Hot Springs

Inside the cabin

We got lucky and found one of Alaska's numerous public use cabins the first weekend she was here near Chena Hot Springs. I got photos of the cabin, but unfortunately not of the hot springs. You can take a look here at their website to see just how cool this place is. It was a rainy/snowy and dreary day, so the little hike we tried to take was a very short-lived affair, but it was a perfect day to sit in a huge, hot swimming pool in the snow.

Our short walk in the rain/snow

The first evening Mom spent at our house was the night Josh's leg broke, which put a big dent in our activities for the week, but we still had fun.

The next weekend we went to a different natural hot springs called Manley, which is about three hours into the bush outside of Fairbanks. The town of Manley is pretty much a village and has only one business that rents cabins.  We called the week before to make sure they were still going to be open when we wanted to come as the town basically closes down in the winter. They said they would be, but when we arrived, we found the Manley Roadhouse, which rents the cabins, all closed up. Luckily we were traveling with Jed and Crystal, which is great because Crystal is resourceful and personable and she politely poked around until she found someone who knew someone who knew what was going on and could open up the place for us.

Manley Hot Springs is a privately-owned

Some of the flora at Manley Hot Springs

 natural hot spring and is probably the most unique place I've seen here. The actual spring is up a hill and the owners have piped it down into a large greenhouse where they have built four huge water basins that are all different 

Two of the hot spring basins

temperatures. The greenhouse is completely full of plants, from hibiscus to eggplant. It was a wonderful place. The remnants of the hot spring that aren't piped out for use in the bathing pools flow down the hill as a little stream that is delightfully warm and the kids (and grandma!) had fun putting their feet in the water.

Very cool place

Josh wasn't a fan of pumpkin guts

Cider donuts

We took advantage of having Grandma here to carve pumpkins for the kids, which brought back memories of Halloweens past when Grandma (then just Mom) would make fresh raised donuts from scratch. That put us in the mood for donuts, which Mom obligingly made for us.  They were delicious and I think we all ate ourselves fairly sick. That got me thinking, though, of apple cider donuts, so I found a promising-looking recipe and gave it a whirl. It didn't really work out. They tasted great, but cooked very poorly and either ended up soaked in grease, burned, or doughy. Very sad.

It was a great visit and we were all sad to see her go!

 

I don't know why Josh is compelled to do this with every light that comes into his hands

Denali

It was ridiculously early.

Because the colors were so beautiful the weekend we drove the Denali Highway, we decided to use Mario's day off for Labor Day to go into Denali National Park itself. Last year during our Alaska vacation, we also visited Denali. We took the park bus to the Eielson Visitor's Center about 65 miles into the park. This time, we wanted to go 20 miles past Eielson to Wonder Lake. It was a 12-hour round trip, and we decided to do the same thing we did last time and take the very first bus out into the park. Unfortunately, that bus left the Wilderness Access Center at the park entrance at 5:30 am. We live about 2 ½ hours from the Wilderness Access Center. Being the cheapskates we are, we didn't want to spend money on a hotel near the park entrance, nor did we want to sleep in the car and endure another horrible night like we had just the week before. So we got up at 2 am to drive to Denali. Josh is usually pretty good about going back to sleep when we move him, but this particular night he chose not to go back to sleep. I was pretty sure that meant we were all going to have a very rough day seeing how we were all running on so little sleep, but the day actually started wonderfully around 4am when we noticed a beautiful green ribbon of light dancing in the sky over the tiaga forest we were traveling through: our first experience with aurora borealis, the northern lights. It was gorgeous but fleeting – by the time I got out of the car and got the camera set up, they were gone. They came back a few times, but never for long enough to take a picture of.

Sunrise

We arrived at the park in time to get loaded onto the bus, thankfully. We started into the park about half an hour before sunrise. It was ridiculously early, but we were rewarded with one of the best sunrises I've ever seen. It turned the white peaks a beautiful light pink and slowly brought the stunning landscape to life. We couldn't have timed our visit better; the ground cover was a brilliant red, the spruce was its usual green, and the birch were bright yellow. It was a great trip to Wonder Lake. It was fairly overcast when we started and we were worried we wouldn't be able to see Mt. McKinley at all, which would not be unusual as the mountain is high enough it makes its own weather and is only visible about one of every four days, but the clouds cleared obligingly as we went just like last time.

Dall sheep

Apart from the awesome scenery, we also saw golden eagles, lots of Dall sheep, a wolf, and quite a few moose and bears. Josh was a great sport about sitting on a bus for so long, especially as long as we didn't run out of Pringles, goldfish, or chocolate chip cookies!

The Three Bears

Moose

We finally made it to Wonder Lake and tried to stay warm with the howling wind and skies that were trying to rain on us. Because it was so windy, we didn't get the photos of the mountain reflected in the lake that we were hoping for, but it was worth the trip anyway. The mountain was gorgeous and we had a great time wandering around (this was a few weeks before Josh's leg broke, so he was in fact able to wander) before boarding the bus and beginning the six-hour trip back to the park entrance, and then the 2 ½ hour trip home. 

The view from Wonder Lake

 

Cool dust storm in the valley

What an awesome day!

Another road that makes you want to drive!