1 year in Alaska

Fun Monday questions

This weeks fun Monday is brought to us by Lisa at Lisa's chaos here is her challenge

What is one thing you would like to ask your readers? Come up with a question to pose to your visitors and throw it out there on Monday. As we’re all visiting each other’s Fun Monday posts we should answer the various questions we come across. OR Show&Tell me about a bird, I’m easily made happy.

Hmm I thought this didn't sound to hard but I've spent all week trying to think of a question to ask and couldn't think of anything original really.

So here is my unoriginal question for you all.

If you could live anywhere you wanted where would you live? I'm not talking your house either. A second part of that question is why do you want to live there and is that where you are now?

My answer to that question is that I do! I don't know why but ever since I was little I was attracted to Alaska and wanted to live there. Kelly and I used to talk about it when we were dating and about 10 or 11 years ago he was sent to Alaska by his work for 2 weeks and he knew this was where we were supposed to be even then. It took us 10 years to get here and have been here for nearly a year now. Actually this weekend will be the anniversary of our leaving Oregon to come here, which might have something to do with why I chose this as my topic. I've been here only a year now and feel more like this is home to me then the 18 years combined I lived in Oregon.

Some of the reasons for that I will admit are the views. I'll share some more with you. I'm not sure if I've shown these on my blog before. They are some favorites though.Another...and another
and one of my many favorites
Oh and for Lisa who likes the bird shots. I thought I would add this since she had it in the challenge also.
Eagles are a common sight here in our little part of Alaska. We saw these two in a tree just off the road on our way to a hike we were headed to.

I almost forgot. I had a question from a blogger friend about the population of our island so I figured this was as good a time as any to tell. Our regular population is about 10,000 but that goes up and down depending on the season which is why I say "regular population" it goes up to about 12,000 or so during the tourist season in the summer because of the people who come up here to work. During the "winterest" months it can drop lower when the people leave for a warmer dryer climate.

Fun Monday --- Favorite photo

This weeks Fun Monday is hosted by Aoj and the lurchers here is her challenge for this week:

Show me your favourite photograph and tell me why it's your favourite. It can be one you've taken yourself or one someone else has taken, a snapshot or a more professional image. Is there a story behind it? Do you love it for the memories it gives or just because it's pleasing to the eye? Show me and tell me

This is a hard challenge for me. I have tons of photos that are firm favorites for various reasons.

But since the challenge on this particular day is supposed to be for one picture I will do my try.

This picture I am choosing is of the my 2 girls McKenzie and Madison about 2 years ago. I love the picture itself because the girls are walking along together holding hands, something that doesn't happen very often anymore at 7 and 9. Some readers who have been around here awhile also know that one of my favorite things places to be is at the beach. Which is where we are in this picture. Everything about this picture when I look at it makes me happy. The beach and my 2 favorite little girls in the world.
Anther thing about this picture is that it is a reminder of the trip we were on when it was taken. Kelly had taken the boys out of state for the weekend for a truck thing (I can't remember what it was exactly) and the girls and I decided to get a yurt at the beach for the weekend for a girls weekend out alone with them. It was a great weekend for us. We got to spend several days alone just us girls which is something that doesn't happen and we were able to do a lot of girl stuff. It was just a really nice time for us that I don't know when we will get to have again free of any other duties or anything else to worry about like that.

Okay and I have to add one more picture....
This is a sunset from our new home in Alaska. We are nearing our one year anniversary of moving here and this picture was taken shortly after we moved here. I love this picture and I love our new home. We have beauty surrounding us all the time here on the island and things are so much different for us here. For me Alaska signifies a lot of changes for our family, the majority good ones. I have been happy here more so then I had been in a long time. I have been able to get back to my dream of being able to be home with my children as Kelly is able to make the money to support us and I am able to homeschool the kids as well which has been a very positive experience for all of us, especially Izzak who was struggling so much in school before and is flourishing now.

Fun at the beach

We've had a nice week here in Ketchikan. Most of the summer so far has been a bit wet but we get some nice days or weeks here and there and this one was probably one of the best weeks we've had all summer.

Madison started back to her swim lessons this week. Since it is the summer schedule she is doing 2 weeks straight Monday through Friday. I think I prefer her school time schedule of 2 days a week for 5 weeks. It leaves me more time during the week and she doesn't get as tired of it.

Her swim lessons are coming along well though. Before swim lessons she wouldn't even get off the stairs in the smaller pool. She is now in the level 3 swim class and can swim the length of the big pool back and forth. She knows several different strokes (she really likes the back stroke) and this time she is learning how to do the butterfly stroke which she thinks is cool. Also this week she made a big "jump" and actually jumped off the diving board into the deep end which is in 12 feet of water, this was huge for her. She knew she was supposed to do this in the level 3 class so she was really worried about it. The first day she didn't do it but by the 3rd days she was doing it and really proud of herself! Friday she even dove in off of the diving blocks!



On one day after her lessons the kids went swimming at the pool and 2 other days we decided to go to the beach for the afternoon. The kids loved it and had a great time playing in the water. We got together with my friend Johanna and her daughter. Another friend and 4 of her kids came along plus 2 boys that are friends of Izzak and Joshua so we had a pretty good size group of kids going. The loved playing in the water....


And inspecting the tide pools during the low tide while we were there. They always come out to us with little crabs and other things.

Here are several of them checking out a little pool.

Kenzie and her friend getting ready to go back into the water....

Our beaches here mostly consist of small and large rocks. Here Madison is laying in the little rocks. They stick to her wet skin and she thinks it's pretty funny. Then she will go back to the water to wash off. One advantage to the small rock rather then sand is that it comes off a lot easier and we don't get our cars full of sand on the way home!



The weather this weekend changed and it is a bit overcast and cooler but I'm sure we will come up with some other things to do this week!

I've gotten almost all of Izzaks school materials in so far. Still working on getting the finishing touches on the rest of the kids to have them in the same program as he is in but I know what we are ordering so it won't take long once that is finished. We are working out some of the details as my friend and I are going to be teaching some of the subjects together to both her daughter and my kids this year, mostly science and history. One of the things we are studing is called beach explorations so we are trying to spend more time at the beach looking at the tides and tide pools to get the kids noticing what they can find so this has been a great week for getting started on the years lessons!

Girls go kayaking again..

Sorry about not posting anything after Kenzie got home. We have loved having her back and are getting her back into her normal mode and activities. She had a great time and I am working on getting pictures from the people she visited down there to show pics of what she was doing.

Anyway on Saturday the girls got to go kayaking with their girl scout troop again this year. They had a lot of fun and the weather was fantastic. Which itself if great since we have had kind of a wet summer so far.

Here is Kenzie with her paddle.

Kenzie, some friends and Izzak looking in the water to see the small fish close to the banks of Ward Lake.

A group shot with the paddles and soem of there good friends.

Maddie with her paddle.


More Kenzie with her paddle. Here they are learning how to use them and about safety in the water and with the kayaks.

Madison kayaking


Seriously Madison is a natural little kayaker! She loves it and was getting people to take her out for extra times during the day. Now she is trying to convince her dad that we need to buy her a kayak so that we can go kayaking whenever she wants....


Kenzie getting ready to head out for one of her times out in the kayak.

The girls had a great time and we were out there from 9 am till around 3. I enjoyed myself as well since a lot of my own friends were there with their daughters. Also, like I said the weather was gorgeous even though it looks like the girls were wearing jackets the whole time. The water was clear and gorgeous as well and the salmon and other fish in this lake were jumping out of the water again which I love to see, it's pretty cool to watch and really makes me want to go fishing!

Today the weather is really nice and warm so we are meeting a bunch of other home school moms and families to the beach to play for awhile. It should be fun and I will of course take several pictures and share with you