Berry Picking

A couple of weeks ago we had some nice weather and decided it would be a good chance to go berry picking. We picked blueberries and huckleberries and got about 8 quarts between my friend and I.

Here are the girls picking up in the woods. We could have gone behind our house into the woods to pick berries but we've had a bear around there lately so we decided to leave those to him/her.


The girls did a great job picking as well as the boys although I think all of them ate at least as many as they picked.

Izzak was a little reluctant to picking berries. He thought that it wasn't something boys do. He changed his mind though and decided to help.

Joshua pretty quickly go into it although I think he ate more then he actually kept.

We have frozen them for now but will probably use them to make jelly and probably some blueberry and huckleberry muffins as well. mmmmmm. yummmy.

Also we have a new addition to our family. Meet Wicket Kenzie's new little kitten. He's doing pretty well with the puppies so far. They try to play with him a little but he usually runs from them. I don't think he likes them very much but they think he is a new friend.

I'm not to sure what he thinks of Kenzie dressing him up though.

I couldn't remember if I'd shown any recent pictures of the eagles around here. This set is a couple that live in the trees just over our house. The puppies like to watch them when they are outside.

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 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!

Sometimes my town makes me laugh...

I don't ever get into politics on my blog but I had to share this with you.

This is on the back of a septic truck...
Sometimes I love living in a small town in Alaska that doesn't worry about being politically correct....