New adventure

Well Mr. thud took us on a new adventure, the adventure of broken bones. It seems that swings, snow and snow pants do not make good playmates! He ended up have a couple pieces of bone chunked off the wrist and so they castes him for three weeks. My house and the people in it will never be the same. I have a towel rack that will never quite be the same, I have wood furniture that has been "sanded" and we all have various bruises from it. So when we went to the doc to have it removed the whole household was excited! Thankfully the boy healed well and the cast will stay off!

Ice globes

Our first winter experiment was a success. About halfway through October we colored and used water to fill some balloons and used the ice box we call Alaska to freeze them. Well tonight we peeled the balloons off and loved seeing some of the results. We made the conclusion that the coloring must be heavier than the water because it all collected in the bottom and froze while the rest of the balloon was clear. I don't know if u can see it in the photos but they also froze in air bubbles that make it look like I have a sea urchin frozen in it!! This was very cool to do!!

Hockey

Our newest Alaskan adventure was a success! We were able to go to a local hockey game for the first time and had a blast! Although none of knew the rules and trying to keep up with the puck was a bit of a challenge, lol! We wouldn't mind going again! During one of the breaks they had a younger team out cleaning up after a fan game and unfortunately they didn't work fast enough and ended up on the ice doing pushups, lol!

Fun things to try while dad is away!

Well we had another first this week! We received our first snowfall and so everyone ha to suit up. Did this stop my son from still playing on the swings? NO, and guess what?! Snowpants don't like to hold to swings, so the boy took a tumble and took a small chunk out of his wrist. Which equaled our first cast. Have to say that I was amazed at how quickly it went together. So now the boy has a small club for an arm, lol. It is always interesting around our house :)

Chasing Heaven

 Well I have been dying to try my hand at photographing the Northern Lights but I have a hard time staying awake until Odarkthirty to see them(hey a girl needs her beauty sleep!) So last night I was able to see them right at bedtime and I chased them until way after my bedtime. Thanks to my girlfriend Conni I was able to go to a spot that made photographing them so much more beautiful! So this is an amateaur's attempt at photographing something that can only be described as the angels dancing:

Eve got all excited when I showed her this one because she swears its an angel!

This one was hard to photograph because of all the airfield interference but turned out kindof cool.

The aurora was moving so fast it was hard at times to get a photo was what I wanted but they still turned out beautiful.

First snow

You would think that afte going through 2 Alaskan winters my kids would be sick of snow( we usually have it for 4-7 months) but this weekend we saw our first snow fall and my kiddos went crazy! All they wanted to do was get on their gear and go play in it, let's hope they are this excited in 3 months ;P

Alaska Wildfires

 

So, if you have never been to Alaska it probably isn't what you would expect. You have the usual snow and cold, unbelievable cold. But did you know that the Fairbanks area is also considered an arctic desert. That's right a desert, it is insane how dry things are around here. Well with that dryness comes this crazy summer wildfires. Generally, if you are up here in July/August, you will see smoke or haze from one wildfire or another. Last summer, because of one storm, lightening caused over 30 fires in one night. Well this summer there was a lightening strike just south of us in June. Because it was on government land and wasn't endangering anyone they let it run it's course and eventually the rains put it down, but they didn't put it out. In August we had a little heat wave which made it flare up once again and the smoke was spooky to see. Well here it is September and we had a little windstorm which once again made this fire flair up. This time though I was able to see it from my bedroom window. I took these photos right at dusk so they aren't very clear but at the bottom of the page the orange you see is the glow from the flames. You can see an initial smoke line in grey and a secondary line in white. It was eery and very cool to watch from my bedroom. Anyway, just thought I would share a little bit of my Alaskan life!