This year has been dry. Warm and dry. Little to no snow in the spring, warm temps, and then hot and dry summer. (Some people have been loving it, but not me. I don’t like hot. And in coastal Alaska? Hot & dry just shouldn’t apply!) With the temps so warm and the precipitation so […]

After a RAINY weekend coaching and cheering at a softball tournament, and looking at a forecast of rain for the next week, I decided to switch to a sunny, spring photo. (Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the rain, and after a summer with almost none, I am so grateful for it. I’m just feeling […]

Just a little shot of cheeriness every time I sit down to my computer. 🙂 What’s your desktop photo right now? Come share over at Clare’s Share Your Desktop challenge!

Wow – this Pic & a Word Challenge had me thinking! Living in Alaska provides so many experiences! Having kids provides experiences! Homeschooling provides experiences! Living life provides experiences! And each of those builds experience. (Clearly I’m over-thinking this, LOL!) I decided to pick a fun experience we had in April. Our homeschool program set […]

Each year, in early May (usually Mother’s Day weekend), we participate in the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival. It’s a long weekend full of learning about birds, looking at birds, and visiting with folks we haven’t seen in a while (sometimes since the previous year’s festival)! They have a Jr Birder program for the kids, to […]

It’s been a while since my kiddos have featured in my desktop photo. This past weekend we got to do something out of the ordinary! We spent the weekend in Anchorage and went to see The Piano Guys! We’ve had tickets for a while…the show had cancelled twice in the past two years. It was […]

The sun is emerging a little earlier (and disappearing a little later) each day! We gain more than 5 minutes a day this time of year… Sunrise is currently 6:06am, with sunset at 10:04pm. 15 hours and 57 minutes of light. Except that that’s not quite right, because the light does not stop when the […]

The days and nights are warming up, the driveway is turned to mud, the river is open, and the yard….is still covered in a few feet of snow. It’s getting there, though! About the only thing obviously growing are the rhubarb, in the part of the garden that has melted out. (We take ash from […]

It began as my son’s science project. He was putting drops of food coloring in bowls of hot and cold water, to see how fast the color dispersed. It looked pretty cool in the white bowls, so I snapped a photo. Then I was playing around with a photo app on my phone, and applied […]

How effective are willy warmers for keeping the chill out? Well, I don’t have a willy, so I don’t think I can really say with any authority how effective they are. Now, my jeep’s warmer is quite effective, but it is really too new to be considered a Willy’s jeep, so nope, I’m really not […]

Sunset in Alaska When the beach grass glows golden Anchor Point Beach; Cook Inlet – October 2020 Connecting with this week’s Pic and a Word challenge.

A Guy Called Blake shares another set of intriguing Weekend Quickie questions! Check them out and then play along! Have you ever had the desire to holiday in a nudist camp? To holiday in a nudist camp? Not really. Though I did consider that living in a community that did not require clothes would be […]

How important is it really to know how to wash your hair?Knowing how to wash your hair, and actually washing it are two different things. Both are fairly important. What are five things everyone should know?How to laughHow to be kindHow to cook at least 2 meals for yourselfHow to buy groceriesHow to spend time […]

The transition from winter to spring Called “BreakUp” here in Alaska When the snow starts to melt And the ice from below rises up The weather warmed A chunk of river ice fell in Exposing flowing water And layers of winter A light layer of fresh snow Covers a layer of brown Where the water […]

Last week, one of the Share Your World challenge questions was “What impact do you think it would have on the world if bananas were illegal?” I try to ask my kids open-ended thinking questions, to challenge them to think in different ways. This seemed like a great question to pose to them! So, I […]

My little guy is learning to nordic ski. He’s progressing from “Dead Bug”… ..to what he calls “French Fry”. I’m progressing, too, by learning lots of new vocabulary! “dead bug” = where you fall down and your legs are all tangled and you have to get back up with skis still attached. “french fry” = […]

I love purples! All the different shades of purple. My camera has been acting up lately, and for some reason I haven’t taken many cell phone photos, so I decided to do a search on my computer for photos I’ve labeled with ‘purple’. Amazingly, there weren’t many. (It would appear that I name my photos […]

We’ve had a lot of wind and ice lately. Walking and driving have been treacherous. On one particularly gusty, slippery day, we noticed this sign. The kids joked that it now meant “Warning: people fall down here”. The sign eventually tipped fully over (“People stand on heads here!”) and then fell off. It is now […]

I would love to be sitting at a cafe table, sharing a cuppa chai and a pastry with you. I’d take a deep breath, and let out all the overwhelm of the past few weeks. I’d forget the layers of clutter and piles and piles on top of clutter that my house has become swamped […]