blatant random silliness

What we've been up to......(part 2)

August 2010

Remember that duck pond I found on my extra long bike ride in July?  Well, I started taking Dylan there on a fairly regular basis.  He really likes feeding the ducks and watching them eat (while he has a snack too).  The playground nearby is more for older kids, but has a really long balance beam type thing that he likes to walk on.

Dylan and the ducks.

We did spend a lot of time on playgrounds this summer.  I wasn't as good about bringing my big camera along (or pulling out my iphone) as I should have.  I was probably too busy talking to my friends while our kids played.  The other reason for a deficit of photos this month had to do with losing the camera battery charger for our small camera.  When we finally did just go buy a new one, we found out that the camera itself didn't want to work anymore and ended up buying  a new pocket camera.  So, in a month or two you'll see more photos.  :)

 The thing  to do here in August is to go blueberry picking.  Our friends Laura and Willow invited us to go with them to Artic Valley to pick blueberries.  Unfortunately, the berries were pretty picked over, but we had a good time hiking around through the tundra anyway. I did take my good camera along that day (since I had Denny with me too) and had fun taking photos of everyone.

 

A panorama of Anchorage from up towards Artic Valley. Click here to see it nice and big.

Here are our friends Laura and Willow picking some berries.


Denny entertains Dylan by making him "fly".


I love this shot of Willow!


Here are my sweet giggly boys again.

Dylan does love rain puddles and we certainly had our share of those this summer.


Stomp! Splash!

And I believe I mentioned in my July post about Dylan's love of letters and spelling. Here he is playing with letter tiles and spelling rhinoceros.


My little speller.

In August, we had the first moose (that we saw anyway) in our yard. We were just sitting watching TV one evening and Denny looked up and was like "#$*&! there's a moose!". I managed to get a few bad photos on my iphone despite Safety Boy asking me to be really still (he was afraid the moose would see our motion in the window and ram into the house). The moose actually hopped over our fence into the back yard without any trouble at all. She sampled various trees and shrubs and then meandered toward the garden. We held our breath...the garden fence is higher than the one she had jumped...would she attempt to get in? She snacked on some of the sugar snap pea plants, stood by the garden gate for a minute or two and then turned back around and came back towards the house. She hopped the gate back to the front yard again and then walked off down the street.


There's the moose. You really can't get a good idea of just how huge a moose is from a photo...they really are huge!

Denny's birthday was in August, which means only one thing. More CAKE! I had Dylan help me decorate with sprinkles. That boy loved shaking on the sprinkles. And then he realized the brown ones were chocolate and started picking them back off to eat.


The cake was sprinkled a lot! And Denny didn't mind at all. :)

Dylan started his new preschool in August. Unlike last year when we had to leave our crying upset boy on the floor in his classroom, he was very happy to go to school this year. He even asks to go to school on weekend days. He loves to sing and really likes circle time. The first few weeks of school we'd get concerts of the songs he'd learned at school. Also, unlike last year when it took him a really long time to start singing along with the other kids, this year it only took a couple of months. Dylan still has a hard time interacting with the other students. He's happy to hold hands with the other students when they are walking, but he doesn't initiate any sort of conversation and doesn't tend to pay attention when another kid is trying to talk to him. He's adjusting to being in a large group of kids (well, there's 8 in his class...and that's a lot for him) and hopefully, like last year, he'll have made a friend by the end of the year.


Dylan and his teacher.

They made apple crumble and here's Dylan turning the crank on the apple/peeler/corer/slicer. Man I wish I'd kept mine.

We visited the Anchorage Museum again in August (that membership really pays off) with our friends. Dylan discovered a few new things he hadn't played with before (and of course visited his old favorites).


Dylan likes making these gravity balls bounce.


Willow, Faith, Denny and Dylan check out the water feature in the museum's atrium area. Everytime we go by that now Dylan asks for a coin to throw in.


Dylan loves crawling into this bubble and making faces at me.

We visited the Alaska State Fair in late August. It's kind of odd that the fair is after school starts. Lucky for us, Dylan's teacher let us take a Friday off so that we could go on a less busy day. We saw lots of extra large vegetables, lots of animals and ate some yummy food (salmon quesadilla anyone?). And then we headed over to see what the rides looked like. We tried the pony ride again, but unlike the last time he rode a pony and really liked it, this time he wasn't into it at all. I had to walk around beside him to keep him from being upset. Poor guy. We saw that same tall purple slide we saw on July 4th (and spent lots of money on....it was Dylan's favorite) but it was closed because of the rain. So, we had to divert Dylan with the train and the carousel.


Dylan and the big pumpkin. Although this one wasn't as big as the one we saw in Ohio last year. 

Dylan kicked back on the train ride.

Denny's band played for the Anchorage Fire Department in August and Dylan and I went too. They had a family day with lots of fun activities for the kids. Dylan got to "drive" a fire truck, go through an obstacle course, put on a real fireman's hat and shoot water out of the fire hose and listen to his dad play guitar. Oh, and did I mention he got to eat a donut? He overheard one of the band guys saying they had donuts and promptly asked for one. :)

Dylan in the fire truck.

Dylan and Denny in the firetruck.


Dylan using the fire hose.

September 2010

September brought with it more fall weather.  We had a few warm days towards the beginning of the month, but by the end most of the leaves were off of the trees.

This playground is near the duck pond. Dylan likes balancing and walking back and forth on this balance beam. And that's my hat on his head. That sun is bright!

On Labor Day, there was a union sponsored festival downtown with free bbq and bouncy fun for the kids. Our friend Laura invited us to meet them there. Dylan loved climbing up and going down the slides.
Denny and Dylan come down one of the slides.

I lost Dylan's hat and we bought him a new one. He wore it happily and looked even cooler "playing" the drums in Best Buy's music section. (Of course, I found his other hat after a couple of weeks of it being missing).



In the garden, the sugar snap peas and snow peas were ready to pick. Dylan loved going out in the garden and eating "sugar snack peas" right off the vine.




The vines grew nice and tall. I think I'll need to tie them to the fence for more support next year.


The cauliflower was also ready to pick and eat.


Dylan in the garden with a sugar snap pea in one hand a raspberry in the other.


There's a little person in the garden. As you can see, the collards and chard did really really well.

On one of the warmer days, we took Dylan to the Chester Creek Park for a bit of creek stomping. Don't be fooled by Denny's shorts, when I say warmer, it means above 60º and the sun was out. The sun here is really intense and can make it seem warmer than it actually is.
Splash!


And here's a totally random picture. We were making a card for Dylan's friend Faith, and he decided he needed a sticker on his nose.

We took our first trip to the Alaska Botanical Gardens for their harvest festival.  The kids got to make real Mr. Potato Heads with pipe cleaners and fruit and googly eyes.  They also had apple dipping  and a bean bag toss.  We didn't get to check out the whole festival because we had a birthday party to go to.  We'll have to go to this again next year.  The Botanical Garden will be nice to wander through in the summer for sure.

 

Dylan and his potato head.


Dipping for apples.

We also had our first trip to Cheney Lake Park with our friends Laura and Willow. The fall colors were in full array and were lovely reflected in the lake. There's a multiuse trail around the perimeter of the lake as well. Dylan and Willow enjoyed watching the ducks and playing on the playground. Dylan had fun climbing on a big rock too.
Cheney Lake


Dylan on his rock.

Since September is the month for Harvest type festivals, we were able to go to one on a farm. Pyrah's Festival is one of those big events...lots of people. Next year we'll be sure to go right when they open and are less crowded. It reminded me a bit of Young's Dairy back in Ohio. They had tractors to climb on, a hay bale maze and a little train for the kids to ride on.


Can you find Dylan in the hay bale maze?


Dylan wasn't as excited as I thought he'd be about the train (he was busy concentrating on his snack). However, Willow and Faith were way happy.


Dylan in the tractor wheel.

Just across the main road from our neighborhood is an elementary school with a nice big playground. It's open to the public during the summer and on weekends. And luckily for us there is a pedestrian overpass across the big road so we don't have a cross the busy street to get there. On this trip to the playground, Dylan road his tricycle and Denny carried up the stairs of the overpass.
This yellow tree was so pretty near the school.

We had our first leaf pile of the season (after I finally decided I needed to rake...:) and Dylan had fun running up to the pile, stopping, and then jumping in.

We went to yet another festival in September at the Chester Creek Science Center. It was their Public Lands Day and they had all sorts of activities. We met our friends Stephanie, Joss and Aidan there and share s'mores with them. We tried orienteering (using a compass and following clue type directions to get to certain points) and we tried geocaching. The geocaching was our favorite of the two. It was a lot of fun to tramp through the woods looking for treasure.


Dylan had his first s'more.

Towards the end of the month we had our first snowfall. It didn't stick, but we were amazed at the size and shape of the snowflakes.

October 2010

So I didn't take a whole lot of photos in October.  I have a few from the beginning of the month and more from the end (Dylan's birthday).  So, we'll start in the beginning.  We visited the Anchorage Museum for their Latin America Day.  They had great music and different crafts for the kids to do.  Dylan and Willow really enjoyed the music.

 

Dylan and Willow dancing.

With winter on its way, we decided to go ahead and build some new garden boxes so we'd be ready in the spring. Or, I should say Denny built new garden boxes. He did an awesome job and it will be nice to have my raised beds higher next year.


Denny's handiwork.

So, now we will skip forward. Mid-October was probably more of the same for us with random outings here and there. Back in August, Dylan's ABA therapy started back up so our weeks our pretty busy. We typically have a tutor here every morning for a couple of hours, then a little free time, lunch, then off to school. Plus, we're on the opposite schedule from our friends who are in a morning preschool class. So, we usually have a standing date on Thursdays to visit the indoor playground nearby and catch up with each other. Although, now that we have snow, we've gone sledding instead (more on that in my November post).

Now we skip forward to the weekend before Dylan's birthday. The Anchorage Museum had a Halloween type festival and the kids got to wear their costumes.


Here's the back of Dylan's tiger costume.


It's Super Why and Tigger!


One of the activities they had at the museum was pumpkin decorating. Dylan wrote the whole alphabet on his pumpkin.


And no visit to the museum is complete without Dylan crawling into one of the plastic bubbles (love that dimple!)

Next up, Dylan's 4th birthday! We got him a kid camera for his birthday and this year I figured out the best way to give him a present. We took it out of it's packaging, made sure it had batteries, and then put it in a different box. I wrote out a note that said "it's a camera for Dylan" and put that on top of the camera. On the outside of the package I wrote a card that said "Happy Birthday Dylan". He is so into words and reading that I thought the best way to draw him into the present was with words. And I think it worked pretty well. I also decorated the house for his birthday to make it extra special.


Birthday decorations: streamers over doorways and if you peek through you can see the fabric birthday banner I made last year and plan on using every birthday.


Dylan's birthday present.


After a little encouragement to get him to rip the paper off, he opened his present.


Checking out his camera. He's more interested in pushing the buttons on the back than actually taking pictures with it so far. But, I have a feeling the other part will come in the future.


I made chocolate zucchini cupcakes for Dylan's class on his birthday and he got to have one after dinner. Here he is listening to us sing "Happy Birthday".


Mmmmm...cupcakes.

In between Dylan's birthday and his birthday party, I decided it was time to get a new battery charger for our camera (since the one we had disappeared during our road trip). Denny went and picked one out and we charged up the battery. I got to use the camera one last time before realizing it would only focus when it felt like it and then would give an error message and shut off randomly. So, we took back the charger and found a new pocket camera. Which means more photos. Yay!

The weekend of Halloween was the party weekend. Our friends Laura and Willow had a Halloween party on Friday. And then we had Dylan's birthday party on Saturday.


I got to dress up for Laura and Willow's party too. I was Princess Leia and of course, Dylan was a tiger.

Preparations were in full force for Dylan's party the week before. This year, I knew we would have a much smaller party. The past two years we've shared a party with Dylan's friend Jax back in Ohio. Which was great fun and made party planning easier with two of us to plan. However, last year's party seemed overwhelming for Dylan...especially trying to get him to open all of the presents during the party. So, this year, I went for the smaller party. This was actually easier to do since we don't have a ton of friends here yet. I rented out the party area of the Museum of Natural History and all we had to do was show up, set up our food and let the museum do the rest. We ended up with 4 other little ones (and a couple of big brothers and sisters and one little brother) and it was just the right size. Dylan was enthralled by the cake I made and kept running over to the table and touching it. I love to see him excited by things and that so makes the work I put into the cake worth it. All the kids enjoyed the museum and most of them wore costumes as well (since the party was the day before Halloween). The museum also had science experiments set up and the kids had fun checking those out. Opening only 4 presents went smoothly for Dylan and the party was a great success.


Dylan's birthday cake.


Dylan checking out his cake.


Here's the party setup at the museum.


Dylan reacts to everyone singing "Happy Birthday".


Opening a present. This Super Why game is Dylan's favorite to play currently.


He also really liked this "Alaska 1 2 3" book and wanted to read it right away.


I had Dylan decorate the goodie bags by drawing on birthday cakes and writing his friends' names.

Oh yay!  I'm almost caught up!  One more month to go....and November will be my next post!

What we've been up to.....(part 1)

Yes, it I have been "off the wagon" for awhile now.  But, now, it's time to catch up the blog with our adventures this summer and fall in Alaska.

I never did finish writing all about our 23 day journey from Ohio here to our new home in Alaska.  But, I do have all of the photos uploaded for you to peruse.  So, if you'd like to see ALL of my photos (and if you used to read regularly, you know I take a lot of photos) then head over to Flickr to view my Road Trip Collection.  

I will now do a month by month catchup of our time so far in Alaska.  This blog is not only for family and friends, but also for me.  It's my memory of our adventures in all of the places we've lived.  It's my memory of all of the fun and silly and wonderful things my sweet boy does.  It's my way of keeping track of our lives.  If you'd like to see more photos from the month, just click on the title of each section.  Here goes:

May 2010

One of the first things we did after checking into our temporary room on base was find the playground. Luckily the base here has a good one and Dylan was so happy to see other small kids that he hugged one or two randomly. We spent a lot of time at the playground and also found other things to do in Anchorage to keep ourselves busy and out of the small TLF apartment. The Anchorage Museum has been a good source of fun for us. We went one time and promptly bought a membership. They have an excellent science area and a fun area for the smaller kids as well. And Dylan's favorite thing was the bubble area. The boy loves him some bubbles.


This is part of the hands-on science area at the Anchorage Museum. Dylan decided this blower (which you can use to "levitate" balls in the air) was a lot of fun for his head.

This is one of Dylan's favorite things at the museum....the squishy waterbed-type area. I don't know the real name of this but it sure is a lot of fun to roll around, somersault and bounce on.

We also made a trip out to the Alaska Zoo. It's a smaller zoo than what we were used to from Ohio and they don't have too many "exotic" animals. Which is too bad, but understandable considering the climate here...it's just too cold for elephants, giraffes or zebras. They do have a tiger, yaks, musk ox, polar bears, wolves, moose and a myriad other animals.

The polar bears were wrestling and playing when we saw them.

Our most successful outing however was to the Alaska Museum of Natural History. This is a smaller hands-on type museum and they host a Tinker Time for toddlers and preschoolers every Wednesday morning. Which is just what I was looking for when we first got to town. Something for Dylan with a hands-on activity with kids his own age. We managed to hit the jackpot and found some wonderful new friends our first time there. They adopted us into their group and we had lots of playdates over the summer. Now that the kids are in preschool and have different schedules, we don't get together as often, but we try to see each other once a week. We went to Tinker Time every week until Dylan's tutoring started up in August.


Dylan really liked the lion at the "little museum" (which is what we dubbed it to distinguish it easily from the "big museum"–the Anchorage Museum).

June 2010

Thomas the Train, Dylan and Denny before our train ride.

In June one of our first outings was north to Wasilla (and nope, we didn't see Russia).  I saw an article in one of those local parent-type magazines about the Alaska Live Steamers, a group of railroad enthusiasts who run a miniature railroad through the forest outside of Wasilla.  The big draw for us was not only the fact it was a train ride, but you could see Thomas and some of his other friends as well.  A note for those of you local folks that want to check this out:  When you first pull up, you will be very unsure as to if you are in the right place.  It looks, well, like someone's yard out in the boonies.  However, park your car and walk towards civilization and you'll find their little gift shop and the trains.  Dylan was very excited to see Thomas and Toby.   This was a little bit scary for us big folks who think about safety (did I mention my husband's nickname is Safety Boy?)...there are no seatbelts or even sides to the train cars.  Let me show you:

 

Yep, this is how you ride on this 20 minute long train ride.

Needless to say I held on to Dylan the whole time. He was just kicked back and relaxed and didn't seem concerned a bit. All in all the trip was a lot of fun and we'll probably go back again next summer.


Here we are going under a bridge (that we did cross over later).

Have I mentioned the glorious scenery here in Southeastern Alaska?  In Anchorage we are situated between the ocean and the Chugach Mountain range.  The mountains are glorious in all seasons (well, maybe not glorious in fall before the snow comes, but they are still impressive then).  Here are some views we enjoyed taking the scenic route home from Wasilla to Anchorage.

Crossing the Matanuska River.


Driving on the old Glenn Highway towards Pioneer Peak (I think).

The big event in June was finding a house to rent. We really lucked out and found a house in the Midtown area in an older, established neighborhood (with lots of trees). We have really nice neighbors (who have lived here either all their lives or for a good long time) and they had us over a lot through the summer for trampoline jumping, campfires and potlucks. Why don't we live on base you may ask. Well, after 4 years of living in a small apartment in Japan, and 2 years of living in privatized military housing (in a quadplex), we were ready to have a standalone house with a big yard and room for a garden. And that is what we got. Our living room space is a little smaller than what we had in Ohio, but we have a huge basement to make up for it. Denny finally has the guitar man cave of his dreams and he can actually play his guitar through his amps without disturbing anyone at all. And I get a portion of the basement for my craft room. Everybody's a winner!


Here's one of the first photos of our new backyard. As you an see, there's a nice fenced off area made for a garden.

To amuse ourselves while waiting to move into our house, we decided to explore the base a bit. Denny had heard that the north part of the base was really just a lot of woods and lakes and chalets. So, we took a drive around and did some exploring. There are some really lovely areas and there were lots of wildflowers.


Yellow flowers everywhere.

The base also has a really great indoor play area for the kids that not only has a playground but a rock climbing wall and a putt putt. We met some friends there and Dylan really had fun trying to do the rock climbing wall.


Dylan rock climbing with some assistance from Denny.

Of course, we visited the Anchorage Museum again, and this time we got a bad iphone photo of Dylan's favorite thing.

 

Dylan loves the bubble wall...especially when Mommy blows a big bubble through it.

One of my very first things I really wanted to get done once we moved into the house was to get my garden planted. Before we even moved in, I got out into the garden space and started pulling weeds and trying to uncover the raspberry plants that were already there. I even found a stray strawberry plant in the midst of the weeds. We moved in and camped out about a week before our stuff arrived. Denny talked me into buying a new flat screen TV since our living space was too small for our big japanese entertainment armoire and our big old CRT style TV. We spent that first week on a borrowed air mattress watching our new TV on the floor. Oh, and we had our first taste of Moose's Tooth pizza...which is really really good pizza.  

 

Here I am in the garden pulling out weeds.

We also spent the first week continuing work on the garden.  My new friend Laura loaned me a book called "Lasagna Gardening" which made my life so much easier. With a Lasagna Garden you lay down a layer of cardboard (which we had plenty of after unpacking) or several layers of newspaper and then layer on organic matter. In our case, we bought peat moss, used grass clippings and leaves along with composted soil we got for free from Craigslist. Which we thought was fantastic...free compost! Well, later in the summer we figured out that it wasn't so great since it has weeds that came with it. Oh well. This being our first year with a real garden, we learned a lot of things along the way. On Father's Day we finished the garden and put plants in the ground. Which is a bit later here, but great for sales on starter plants. We planted broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, swiss chard, collards, radishes and I started snow peas and sugar snap peas inside from seeds. A few weeks later I found free strawberry plants on craigslist. We drove out to the middle of nowhere near Wasilla (a friend who lives near that area drove me out there...which was so nice...thanks Tella!) and met a really nice lady who gave me lots of strawberry plants. I so loved having a garden and we've already expanded for next year.


And here is the garden in progress. I had already done a lot of planting and we still needed to go and get woodchips from the city (for free!) to line the pathways.


Dylan helping me bake the week we were camped out in the house.


Here we are waiting for the movers. Dylan was helping to make signs for each of the doors so the movers would know where things go (which is always nice in theory, but never quite works).


Our back yard has stepping stones from the back gate all the way to the front door. Dylan had a good time with his sidewalk chalk decorating the "circles".

One of the excellent things about our neighborhood is we have an entrance to the Chester Creek Trail. The trail is for bikers and pedestrians before there is snow. And after it snows it is groomed for skiers. This trail goes all the way downtown and connects with the Coastal Trail. I took Dylan out for a ride in his wagon to explore the trail from one of our entrances to the other.


This is Chester Creek. You can see some bikers over to the left, they are on the trail.


Here's my handsome boy on a playground across the creek from the trail.

June was also my birthday month. Dylan was way happy that that meant CAKE!



Our friends Laura and Willow made Bouncing Bears a regular weekly thing. She and some other friends would meet us there for a fun bouncing time. Really great way to get some energy out...especially when the weather outside wasn't cooperating (wait til you get to July).

Willow and Dylan climbing up the big slide.


And here's Dylan on the way down.


One of the coolest things about this particular bouncy place is this huge jumping area....like a big inflated pillow.

And here's one more photo from June just for Grandma and Grandpa:
Dylan reading one of his favorite Japanese children's books....that hiragana translates into "ru"...which imitates the sound of the airplane.

July 2010

Dylan checking out the sign for the Girdwood Forest Fair.

The first weekend of July brought two fun events.  While Denny was off to Seward with the band, Dylan and I kept ourselves busy by going to the Girdwood Forest Fair with our friend Yuki and to the Anchorage 4th of July Day Parade.

First, let me tell you about Yuki.  We first met Yuki when we were stationed in Japan.  She was a friend of our friend Cassey.  She is such a sweet person–I remember on my birthday one year she couldn't come to our dinner out and sent me flowers instead.  After we moved away, she got married and moved to England.  And then, she moved here to Alaska (her Air Force hubby is actually from Alaska).  We got our orders to move here and it was so nice to see Yuki again and for our friendship to develop further.  

So, back to the story at hand.  We headed down to the Girdwood Forest Fair with Yuki. Girdwood is about 30 miles or so south of Anchorage and is home to Mount Alyeska which is home to a large ski resort. It's also located in a rainforest...they typically get more rain and snow than we do in Anchorage.  The fair takes place in a wooded park area and is full of arts and crafts and yummy smelling food.  My friend Laura is a fiber artist and had a booth for the first time this year.  I was excited to see more of her work.  Dylan did really well walking around with us, listening to music and was happy when we found the kids area with bubbles and hula hoops.  We also made some time for him to play on the nearby playground before we went home.  Yuki and I got flowers for our hair and spent most of our money on snacks and local honey.

 

Here is my attempt at a group shot of Yuki, Dylan and myself.

The next day was the July 4th parade in downtown Anchorage. We met our friend Ann and her family downtown for the event. Ann is another friend we met in Japan...she is from Anchorage and visits her family every other summer (she still lives in Japan the rest of the year). Her little girl is a little bit older than Dylan. Anyway, we met them for the parade and then went our separate ways.

I realized I didn't really bring enough cash with me for the festival part of the day (after Dylan saw the pony ride and seemed interested), so we went on a grand adventure to find an ATM in the downtown area. My first thought was the big Marriott hotel. We headed there only to find that they ATM in their gift shop wasn't going to cooperate. Then, I had the idea to buy something and get cash back. Unfortunately, the lady behind the counter didn't speak much english and didn't understand what I needed. On the positive side, Dylan, who doesn't ask for much in a store (or anything for that matter) picked up a bag of M&Ms (which we don't usually buy and give to him) and asked "want this". So, I bought a bag of M&Ms, but a few in his snack cup (and tucked the rest in my pocket) and off we went to find another ATM. We stopped a gift shop with an ATM sign out front. Their ATM wasn't working either. They sent us to the restaurant next door, and finally, we had cash. So, we headed back to the festival.

First stop, the pony rides. I wasn't sure what Dylan would think about the pony ride, but he seemed to enjoy himself. His favorite part of the day however was the extra big purple slide. I went down with him the first time, then he wanted to do it himself. I was a bit worried...it's a lot of steps up (and he had a blanket to carry), but he made it up and down and up and down until I was out $15 and convinced him we were done (not that he believed me, he did pout for a bit).


Dylan and the pony.


There's my little dare devil way at the top...and then at the bottom...he absolutely loved this!

As you can probably gather from the raincoat Dylan wore to the festival, July was the month of rain. Literally. It rained for something like 31 or 32 days straight and broke a record from the 1950s. Not only did it rain, but it was cool outside (I can't say cold as I am learning what cold is now). Rain was great for the garden and plants, but not so great for us. We found lots of indoor things to do with our friends and took advantage of every little bit of sunlight that came our way.


Here's the garden in July. All along the left are raspberry bushes. In the foreground are the strawberries from craigslist. In the tires are different kinds of squash and one has corn. The middle box is broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, lettuce and cabbage. And the back box is greens (collards and chard). Along the right side are the tiny starts of snow peas and snap peas and a few more cabbages.


Here are my itty bitty sugar snap peas.

One of the exciting things about the summer was seeing Dylan start to read and spell and write whole words. He, of course, still loves to just write the alphabet. But, over the course of our trip here and through the summer he learned to spell and to read. I have to give some credit to the iPod touch. We filled it with learning games before hitting the road and he played with that in the car a lot. He became a bit obsessed with it and it was hard to pry away from him during the first part of the summer. Luckily, like a lot of things kids get obsessed with we were able to start finding ways for him to be all done without a fit. His favorite type of games are the spelling games and he learned so many words from that. He started with small words like cat and hat and moved on to large words like rhinoceros and elephant and giraffe. His memory is phenomenal and you can ask him to spell the words and he will. This started translating into reading with Apps that read books to you like "The Cat in the Hat'. After playing that App, he wanted us to read the real book together and then eventually started reading it himself. He branched out to several other Dr. Seuss books as being his favorites and we threw a new one in the mix whenever we could. He's really reading and it's so exciting to see. I'll talk more about that when I get to present day again.


Dylan's serif font, copied from the font used in "Dr. Seuss's ABC's".


Dylan's cake...he was cake obsessed for a bit.

One evening when it looked like it might not rain, my neighbor Eva called me up and invited me to drive up to the Glenn Alps with her. The Glenn Alps are south of Anchorage and include Flattop Mountain. There is lots of hiking in the area (including to the top of Flattop) and some fantastic views of Anchorage and the ocean.


Here's a view of downtown Anchorage and the ocean beyond.


Flattop Mountain


After a little hike, we headed back home and on the way we spotted this mama moose and baby moose.

Towards the middle to end of July we started picking some of the greens from the garden and some strawberries from our strawberry plants.
Chard, bok choi and chives from the garden.


Our first strawberries.

In mid-July, Dylan and I drove to Wasilla to see Denny's band perform for a museum event there. In the park are several replica and original buildings including an old schoolhouse. After the band was finished, we checked out the old schoolhouse and while I was making paper airplanes (one of the activites they had), Dylan discovered the piano. He sat down and started to pluck at the keys and sang "Max and Ruby Had a Farm". Cutie pie.

Here's a video of Dylan doing his thing. The volume on this video is sadly really low, so if you want to hear it, try turning up your speakers. If you can't hear it, just enjoy his facial expressions while singing.

July also brought a visit from some more friends we met in Japan. Sandy, Ted, Julianne and their new little one Daniel stopped in for a visit. Sandy is originally from Anchorage and they were in town to visit her dad. Julianne is a little older than Dylan and they played together when they were babies. It was nice to see them and catch up with their family.


On the left is Dylan and Julianne as babies. On the right is them in July.

On one of the rare non-rainy days in July, we loaded up and headed on a little adventure to Girdwood. We stopped at Beluga Point on the way to see if we could spot any whales. Then we drove into Girdwood in search of lunch and then the Winner Creek Trail. We had lunch at The Bake Shop at the bottom of Mount Alyeska. And the trail we wanted to hike on started behind the ritzy Ayleska Resort. Our plan was to do a bit of hiking and enjoy the pretty weather while we had it. The trail was lovely and one day we will hike the whole thing. As it was, we hiked in a ways and then hiked back. Dylan did a bit of riding on Denny's shoulders and did a lot of hiking himself.

Beluga Point.

On the road to Girdwood. I think that's Mount Alyeska straight ahead.


Denny and Dylan hiking on Winner Creek Trail.


Dylan had a great time climbing up on this stump. He did it several times before we decided to move on.


Dylan also really liked crossing this log over the stream. He wanted to keep on doing it.

The next photo is one I took with my iphone while walking back to our car from the museum. I just love the way it turned out:
Dylan and Willow

The raspberries came in towards the end of the month and Dylan promptly ate the first ones I picked.
Yep, he ate my whole first harvest.

My neighbor Eva invited me for a bike ride one evening and we rode all the way from our house to the coast and up to Earthquake Park. I calculated it later and it was about 9 miles total. Quite a ride for my first time in a while. Really cool though. The coastal trail is just lovely.
That's Eva up ahead. Yes, I was snapping photos while riding my bike.


Towards the end of our ride (which means we were close to home) we found this little duck pond with a playground nearby.

One more garden photo for you. This was our one big eight-ball zuchini we got from our garden:

And now, I will bid you adieu and go and do some real work. I will continue with the next three months very very soon (and I mean it).