A New Family Member

                    It took us a few days to pick a name to fit the little guy with a W on his head.

 

But welcome Wyatt to the Beavers' family

 

 

So far this is his favorite place to hide to pounce on

feet walking by.

 

 

Peeking out the screen door Daddy built wanting to play.

 

 

He's an extremely tiny little fella, not sure he

was really old enough to leave his mom.

 

 

Don't let the picture fool you. Dixie Lou has

no clue Wyatt is there. We are still working

on making sure she knows he isn't a toy.

 

 

 

But they sure look cute sleeping side by side!

After a talk with the techs

and feeling silly for not thinking of unplugging the router AND the modem to correct my lack of internet... I can now get on with a view of the upstairs of our slowly coming together home...



Standing at the bottom of the stairwell looking up...

 

Looking down the hallway from top of stairs.

The first door to the right is the

spare bedroom.

 

 

Peeking in the door of AJ's room...

 

 

Standing in AJ's room at the back door that leads into the shop, note

her mix of Marilyn, Paris and Peace Hippie :-)

 

 

Marilyn and Peace over the bed

 

And her Paris canvas and dream catcher,

needs her Eiffel Tower poster

framed to go up now.

 

 

Peeking into the Master Bedroom door, the

other door leads to the upstairs porch.

 

 

Looking from the Porch door.

 

 

I love our headboard that Christina gave us!

 

 

A peek into the bathroom, which needs some work.

 

The length of the upstairs porch

 

 

Our favorite hangout day or night.

 

 

Passing back thru our bedroom

 

 

Looking down the hall to the stairs.

 

 

No idea why they embedded a quarter into

the wall, but it's pretty cool.

 

 

Looking back down the staircase with

a good cross-breeze window.

 

 

If you go under the staircase, it leads to

our underground storm shelter

that attaches to the side of the house.

All of downstairs except the front wall

is completely underground.

 

 

And back to my nifty little kitchen.

 

Loving our home and all the ideas we have for it.

 

 

Our Home Sweet Alabama

Slowly settling into our new home, though there are probably about a million little things to still find a home for that make sense. This photo is from about halfway down the in the front yard. Most of the 11 acres are to the right side and behind us.

This is looking down from the front downstairs porch towards the main driveway, the soon-to-be chicken coop and the garden area. We're going to make that large cleared area the orchard as soon as we get a chance.

Looking towards the back end of the driveway towards the road. It makes a huge circle, but since we have the yard fenced in, we rarely use this end. I love all these shade trees in the front yard.

Our other family member, Dixie Lou, waiting patiently at the door for me to let her go out and make sure all the squirrels are up out of her yard and in the trees where they belong!

The front of the downstairs... looking towards the kitchen and dining area from the stairs.

Standing in my kitchen looking across the dining area and to the staircase. The light under the stairs leads into the storm shelter that's completely underground. All the walls of downstairs are also underground.

The back of the downstairs is our living room. I'm standing at the woodstove looking across the room to my office area.

Standing at the office end looking towards the wood stove. Poor Eric needs to get his deer up on the wall soon so it is "officially home! The green walls are going to go. We are getting samples now for a nice cream color to brighten it up since, being underground, we have no windows downstairs except the one over the sink and the double window in the dining area at the front of the house.

More photos on the way soon as well as all the fun ideas, projects and other things we want in our life and home!

The Next Bend in the Road

Finally I am out of the horrors of dial up internet. We've had so many changes in our family since I last blogged that I'll just try to slip in facts as I keep up with the day to day things. We've been praying for this bend in our road for a year now and it is finally here. That nifty house up top is slowly and steadly becoming our home. One more load from the old place and all we have will be here. And then, the fun part begins... Making Home. God has blessed us even more than I ever dreamed of. Its a little after 1am here, so I'm heading off to get ready for my Man to come home from work and settle down with myself and our last little bird at home. I'm trying as fast as I can to catch up on everyone's blogs and see what all I've missed. I'm ready to get back into the swing of typing out some of the day and sharing pictures. Little bird is getting big, just turned 13 and is just as quirky as her mom ;-)


Sleep well

Missy

First week back blogging

     Well, it’s definitely been a week! Let’s see, as you know, Thursday we were at the library. I got 5 volumes of the wonderful series of books I’ve just discovered by Robin Jones Gunn. It’s her Sisterchicks series and I’ve been tearing through them and even making notes of some very inspirational parts.  AJ is all into the Nancy Drew books, she loves a good mystery. The library is also clearing out shelves of “older” books and ones that never had good check-out rates, so we also came home with a nice stack of books at 10 cents a piece, from books to learn from to cookbooks to enjoyment to National Geographic mags.  We stumbled to the car loaded down, decided to bypass our usual trip to the coffee shop and hit McD’s since she was starving and I needed a milkshake. Then a quick run into the Gregorson’s grocery for their meat special and finally home again in time to cook dinner.

     Friday is always errands day around here. The only “set in stone” part is stopping at the grocery store. This week our mood was to hunt down bathing suits. We lucked up for AJ and found 2 that will do her nicely for the summer, but none that appealed to me since mid-life decided to kick me in the rear and move me up a few sizes in several areas.

     Saturday, oh Saturday was an awesome day of floating the creek with my guy. We had no clue how much we had missed it these last two years! It was a long trip lasting 7-8 hours and full of fishing, fun, sunburn and smiles. Hubby, the turkey, already has his burn turned tan. My lovely burn has also turned tan but itches, meaning it will most likely peel and make me cranky for a few days…not to mention leaving a lovely spotty tan behind. I have to state (though I’m ashamed to); that for the first time EVER, my hubby out fished me. Never once in all our years has he caught more fish than me. He always catches the biggest, but I catch the most. However, I was fighting with a handicap. I’m addicted to the simple “push the button and cast that sucker’ poles. I really KNEW I should have brought more than the one my generous guy had bought me the day before. I lost quite a few fish when we realized I could have had a pinkie sized fish on there and on full drag there was no way it was going to reel in. So, that leaves me using his favorite kinds of poles…you know, those ugly things (lol) with the line showing and that bell/bar thingy over it. I’m not good with the whole “catch string with finger, flip the bell, cast, flip bell back and then reel in” thing. I spent half the day forgetting to flip the bell before casting which led to a lot of words I don’t normally use as I yet again untangled my lure from my line.

    Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday whizzed by for us. We were hoping for a special arrival on Wednesday, but the girls didn’t arrive until Thursday. We made a pit stop at the Farmer’s Co-op to pick up a few more things we needed. Then we headed up to 4-H headquarters to pick up 20 lovely little ladies that are AJ’s project for the summer, culminating in taking her best 5 of breed to the State 4-H show and auction. Prizes and ribbons to be won galore!!  She’s so tickled with all her little girls that she has dragged one of the dining room chairs over so she can just sit and stare at them. They sure are cute and we are all looking forward to getting back to having fresh eggs again. We are still torn over if we want to keep them all and sell eggs from home or just keep the few we need for our own needs and sell the rest of the pullets in September. Decisions Decisions, LOL.

     Today I also got about half of my medicinal and tea herbs in the ground with the rest to go in tomorrow evening. The veggie garden is slowly coming along with the tomatoes, pumpkins and watermelons outdoing everything down there so far. All my cooking herbs are up on the front porch in pots and doing well, still haven’t decided if I want them out in the front bed or just keep them potted so they can come in for the winter. It’s so nice to be settled in, growing things, painting rooms and homeschooling/unschooling to our hearts content!

     AJ seems to thrive on this way of learning in our combo of homeschooling and unschooling methods. She is very much a visual learner. So far we are having no major problems, other than the dreaded multiplication tables that we seem to be completely stuck on. That is one of the “required learning” we have. She was “supposed” to come out of 4^th grade last year at public school with them down pat. When we took her out mid-year this year the secretary mentioned that if she had to guess about 80% of the 5^th grade was failing math because none knew the times tables… yet the teachers don’t “have time” to go back and teach them again since they have certain things they HAVE to get done this year. How are kids supposed to add, subtract, multiple and divide fractions when they don’t even know the basic times tables. Something tells me there are going to be a lot of upset kids repeating 5^th grade at CMS, and I’m thankful mine won’t be one of them!

     Other than that, I'm looking forward very much to my guy having 3 whole days off from work. We had wanted to go camping, but when the weatherman informed us of 95 degree temps we decided we might want to plan something else. I’m sure cooking out, fishing, gardening, driving back roads, board games, movies and many other things will abound this weekend…I can hardly wait! When he gets off in the morn we are going to tuck him in for a nap while we make the library run since we’ve both plowed thru all our books, movies and desperately need some high speed net time!

     Whew, quite the lengthy post here. Thanks for hanging in if you made it this long. I’m really hoping this will work until we can finally get high speed here at the house.

Until next time,

Missy

The Rambling Granola Gal….

    

I shall return!!!

Now that we've settled thru all the massive changes we had to deal with and at home in our place we will be for quite a while to come, I get to return to blogging!!! One major change was bringing our youngest girly back home to learn at home in a loose kinda freestyle/unschooling type way. I have a very few things that are required and the rest of the time we just go along like leaves wherever the wind blows us.  One of our things is a weekly trip to our small town library, who (YES) happen to have high speed internet. So I thought I could type up on Word each week and upload on our visit to the library along with pictures we've taken during the week. Now, off to take my girly to get a milkshake and get ready to float down the creek on Saturday...our first time getting to do this since before we moved to Alaska. Two years is a very long time to go without floating our favorite places in the world!

Lesson learned...

...the hard way. Why, why, why do I ignore things that tell me not to do 'whatever'. So, my oldest girlie had the tonsillectomy and adnoidectomy and septum alteration yesterday morning. We had to arrived at the hospital at the lovely hour of 5a.m. (have I ever mentioned we live 45 minutes from that side of Gadsden, depending on exactly how fast I'm driving..in the dark, 45 minutes since I have night blindness issues). OK, so she is his first scheduled surgery of the day, supposed to start at 7. We check in at exactly 5am, go to the room that is going to be her recovery room and get her changed into gown. About 6 they move her to the "holding room" where all the folks having surgery are so the nurses can poke you and the folks who will be knocking you out stop by for a chat, all the usual fun stuff. Well, nurse keeps coming by and saying "we're ready to go as soon as Doc gets here". Don't get me wrong, he's a wonderful doc (he's the one who reset my broken nose), but I was annoyed when the man FINALLY arrived at 7:20. Things went quickly from there though. They took her back at 7:25, the nurse called the surgery waiting room at 7:35 to let me know she was under and surgery had just started. I waited, drank coffee, did sudoku puzzles and wondered if Hubby and the baby girlie were going to make it up there before surgery was over. (Hubby working third shift, girlie sleeping at grandma's till Daddy got home). At 8:35 Doc makes it out to let me know everything went very well, that it took a while longer because it appears she had a chronic infection for years and didn't know it, probably didn't know the difference in the way it should feel. Also informed me one of the adenoids was so swollen that it was completely blocking off the nostril on that side, hence the reason she breathed thru her mouth 95% of the time. The infections had "christalized" into tiny pellets that were getting in the way of removal. The repairs inside the nose, he made almost double the size that the openings were originally given the fact that they were only about half the size of the tip of a pinkie finger. Hubby and the girlie arrived about 15 minutes before she was moved to her private recovery room. After two hours we were allowed to take her home, which we were all more than glad to do. Now, as to the lesson learned. Last month when we saw the doc and planned the surgery we were given several pages about both of the surgeries giving the general info and all that good jazz. One sentence struck me as funny. It was talking about how the tonsil heals and the paper said it is actually better to NOT try to look back there after surgery because it looks awful, but that is how it is actually supposed to look, so don't look because it would cause you to worry for no reason. Yeah, right, I thought. Well, I will freely admit I was wrong and they were right.....we looked today, with a flashlight. It's going to take a while before I get that mental picture gone. Blech. Poor girlie took a look too, in the mirror and flipped out (at least that part was kinda funny...I'm such a mean mom, hehehe). It is amusing when your 16 year old is running around saying "get it out get it out" and "uuuuggghhh, that is soooooo nastyyyyyyyyyy" in classic teenage whine tones. Either way, believe me, when surgery papers tell you it is probably best if you don't look, take my advice....DON'T LOOK!
Wishing all ya'll a blessed evening. I'm heading to tuck my girlies in for the evening and curling up with my favorite fella to watch the rest of the Bama/LSU game. Roll Tide Roll!!!

A little of this and that...

I'm working within the confines of dial up to get my blog here fixed back up and on track..and hopefully active again. I miss posting so much, lots going on, opinions to share and life in general...I miss sharing it all with my bloggy pals!

So, on another note, I have weight gain issues. Don't get me wrong, I know I'm skinny and could stand to gain weight (note previous photos for proof of the extent of bony-ness LOL) HOWEVER, I find it highly wrong the manner in which I am finally gaining weight. I was thrilled to finally get back up to 126, which was always my goal weight since it is the bottom number of "correct weight for height and frame"....Well, as I was walking out of one of my doc offices a few days ago (Monday), she grinned at me and said "Curious?", of course I am, curious is my middle name....133 1/2!!!! While normally this would be a good thing, I find it extremely wrong that I've worked and slaved for years to gain weight, and instead of the nice lovely thin little layer I want all over...it is ALL hitting my belly, I look 3 months preg for heavens sake!! This is so wrong. Ok, done whining, I know I could have much worse issues
I suppose, opinions here, that it makes it really wrong that I had 3 1 inch slices (ok, 1 1/2 inch) of banana bread for breakfast ;-)Went on the weekly baking binge yesterday and made 2 loaves of banana bread, 2 dozen blueberry muffings, one huge pan of chocolate chip bars, and a square pan of each chocolate chip/pecan bars and peanut butter chip bars.Time to replenish the flour supply now LOL

I've been praying and studying up on homeschooling again. We homeschooled years ago with the 4 oldest, but decided to try public school when we moved from big city to small town. Lately I've been feeling a strong tugging in my heart to bring my youngest back out. My oldest at home is in 10th grade and is really doing well in that setting, and there is no way I could replace some of the classes that she is taking. My youngest, however, is not doing well in public. It just is not her learning style. She's asked several times over the last few weeks to be homeschooled like her brothers and sister were, but can't provide reasons why she wants to make this change (other than she says she is bored in school and her friends think it is a good idea and that they want to also but thier moms work and because the boys did so good when I was teaching them).So, I'm researching, praying and waiting. Hubby and I agreed to have a decision by end of the semester(December). We had picked that date because when the first 9 week grades came out she was failing 3 classes I know she should be doing fine in. Then I kinda got floored when 2nd 9 week grades came out and she went from an F to a B in math. Considering I help with homework every nite (literally 2-4 hours each evening for a 5th grader?!?!?!?!), and I know for a fact that she still has not grasped the work they were doing (add and subtract fractions) to the point of tears trying to understand...HOW in the world did her grade jump that much? It honestly makes no sense to me. She knows it is being considered and she knows the final decision rests with Daddy. Prayers for God's will in this are very welcome!

Wishing you all a blessed day!

Still hanging in..

Sorry I haven't updated since we left Alaska, but I'm still on the never ending fight with dial-up internet. I find it amazing that in AK we lived 40 miles from town and had high speed, yet here in Alabama, if I hear ONE more time that we will have high speed within a year I'm going to have a stroke! That's what they've been saying for 4 years now here at the In-laws house, blech! We've had such fun (not) readjusting to the temps down here in the southland...quit strange to realize one summer away can cause you to lose your knack for the heat. There are days I am glad we are back, times when I am glad we were here for family such as when the tornados ripped thru and they really needed our muscle-power for the clean-up..and there are days I miss Alaska so much. I had heard a number of people say once you have lived in Alaska you will miss it and want to go back the rest of your life...they might be right. It was a learning experence, and we can see everything we should have done differently that might have made a difference. On the other hand, we've been shown quite a few times now why we needed to be back here. Who knows what the future holds. I'll try to update as often as I can about all that is going on here in our lives.
Our oldest gal is really thrilled to be back, which we expected. As much as she loved snow and having the chance to run dogs....she was older and to her there is nothing like the best pals that she's grown up with most of her life. She's also a grandma's girl very much and revels in getting to see and talk to her daily.
Our little girl takes it all in stride, like the girl she is. She enjoyed equally playing in the snow in AK and swimming in the pool here in AL. She's just deeply blessed with that "bloom where you are planted" gene that she didn't get from me LOL. That's something I struggle with on a daily basis.
Thanks all for hanging with me and the kind words of support you have sent me, they meant more than you will ever know.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Well, I sat down last night to type up a post, even with much prayer I was having issues in choosing how to word it... and in typical me fashion, I read thru blogs that had posted that day to sort of settle my mind before I started my own. Imagine my surprise when I head over to one particular bloggy friend and see she is announced the same exact thing I was preparing myself to type up. This gal lived one town over from me back in Alabama, moved to Alaska the same month we did and now, ironically, is heading back to Alabama on the very same day we are. Our reason are the same and different. Our major reason is different, but all the small reasons, she summed up better than I might would have. For my hubby and I, it was always a dream to live here...mainly because the "Last Frontier" is appealing, and a huge chunk is that we've never found a place were we feel like we fit like glove..where we felt totally at home.I don't know if we thought Alaska would be our forever place or not, but we wanted to live a dream and find out. This is truly a beautiful and glorious state and there are things that I will miss like seeing moose, bald eagles and snow drifting down, the incredible spirit of the people who call this state home. However, there are things of the south that we miss that go soul deep..rafting down Terrapin creek, thunderstorms blowing thru(not the tornadoes though), cicadas and crickets chirping at night, big and round leafy trees,...thinking that 32 degrees is pretty darn cold(hehe). Our girls are happy to be going back. While they love the snow, dog sledding and such..they miss the family we are close to, they miss the friends they've grown up with their entire lives, they miss the freedom of outdoors without being layered so they don't freeze (or get frost nip, which one of them dealt with 2 weeks ago despite being covered and layered head to toe), summertime and heat, hunting and fishing.
And so, on that note, due to some family issues back home and southern roots that go deep...we are ending our Alaskan adventure this Sunday. The hubby will return this summer for construction season, which will be difficult for us being apart that long, but necessary as he is committed to the company he works for for this summer season and for income for us to settle back in down south. We continue to pray for guidance on this path. We have no doubt whatsoever that He led us here for a reason and we feel at peace with the fact that we are going back...I look forward to whatever adventures He has in store for us on the journey of life. We've learned much about ourselves here, we've learned what we can and can not live without, or with, for that matter. See you all from the Southeastern side!

Heading into a New Year

The rear of our cozy little cabin at around 9am.Light is slowly creeping back into our world.

Quite a load of snow up on the rooftop, at least 8 inches deep with another heavy snow heading in this evening.

Our 12/30 snowfall total for overnight and the day,bring us up to 30 inches so far this winter.

Its so nice to be a kid! 8 new inches of snowfall make for terrific snow angels.

Also makes for a very snowy little girl!
Currently the snow is falling as "Storm 2" makes its way thru our area. The forecast shows snow for the next 7 or so days. I'm just a snow addict! I think we're going to spend our first year here in Alaska quietly at home, keeping our traditions of the torching of the years Christmas tree and just simply being together as our family has always done, and thinking of the family we have in the South that won't be with us for New Years for the first time ever. Eric doesn't return to work until Tuesday, the same day the girls head back to school. It's been an awesome time for us to be together, just relaxing and meshing again as a family unit. I, personally, have been on a bit of a soul and heart searching "quest", for lack of a better word. Everything has been so busy busy busy with a pile of stress mixed in that I let slip the peace I should feel and the heart for home that is so important for a helpmeet to have. I have a bad habit of borrowing trouble and worrying about things far more than I should. I tend to forget that my whole life is in His hands and keep thinking I have to handle all this myself. Time to fix that....

Almost Christmas and Life in General

Well, the tree is up and a few gifts are wrapped. We still need to make a grocery run to get the rest of the fixings for our little Christmas dinner. Today is the start of Christmas vacation for the girls. Our youngest is enjoying it by sleeping in late, then getting up to watch movies and playing Wii the entire day (apparently). Our eldest is out helping out with the Alaska Excursion 120 dog sledding race with friends of ours, so I imagine she will take tomorrow to sleep in late and watch movies all day.

Life is...cold. We have folks we know all over this beautiful state, some with far worse temps than we have, but this poor southern gal is cold, hehe. Thankfully not the "I can't hack this and I want to go home" cold, just more the general observational type that notices the fact that nose hairs freeze the minute you walk outside and the toes are feeling pretty icy and if I have to get up at 2am to crank cars so they don't freeze one more time I going to lose it kind of cold. I will admit to having those "what were we thinking" moments, but in general I'm still thrilled we are here. There is truely no place like this on earth. Even in the frigid negative temperatures there is no place I would rather be.

So, we spend our time making plans for our future here. We've narrowed down the area we want to live in, scan the real estate ads often and think about settling into our own little place here on the last frontier. It will be the end of summer before we buy, since we have a years lease on our little log cabin in Willow here, but that gives us plenty of time to look around and find the perfect fit for us at the right price. Life here in the one room dry cabin is refining for us what we can and cannot live without, the things we see that need to be done better and the things that work.

Still here!

Wow, life got so busy and yet it was hard to form thoughts to put together in any kind of form that would make sense. We had my Sister in law and Niece come for a visit Thanksgiving week, which kept any homesickness we might have felt for the first time away from family for the holidays at bay. I think they were very grateful to return to the land of warmth and running water after 5 days here LOL

The girls and thier cousin at Talkeetna.

We had a strange weather front come thru while they were here. Warming temps that dumped rain on us, promptly turning to solid ice as it hit the ground, leaving it highly unadvisable to try to get out on roads. As they left the day after Thanksgiving the colder temps started creeping in. Clear skies came out exposing all the beautiful mountains that they didn't get to see the whole time they were here. We awoke this morning to 15 below, the coldest we had experienced so far...until this evening. Eric went out to crank cars and let them run so hopefully they won't freeze overnight and crack the blocks and it is already 20 below out in our yard, meaning we'll need to get up several times tonight to crank cars and let them run about 15 minutes to get warmed up. So far that is really the only thing I'm not liking about living here in Alaska. We'll definately have to fix that before next winter by getting the cars winterized so we can plug them in on timers and save ourselves the worry of destroying motors.

Now it's time to prepare for Christmas...I'm so not ready!

Waking up this morning...

Well, not sure if we were mentally prepared for our first winter in Alaska or not with real snowfall, but it decided we were. Eric had an interview this morning to go to with work afterwards, so we were up early and peeking out the window. I'm thinking I haven't gotten past my southern mentality of believing I have to take pics before the snow melts. My little brain hasn't totally wrapped around the fact that this snow is here to stay for the next 5 to 6 months, give or take. Ok, so we head out to clean off the car so we can warm it up. Measurement on top of the car (keeping in mind we had 3 inches on the ground already)

I looked back where we came down the steps, almost missing every one since snow had it to the level the one above it usually is at.

We can see the car peeking!

My guy working his way around the car...

Weather forecast is calling for another 4-10 inches thru tonight..this should get interesting. Yes, still loving it so far! At least it has to warm up a bit to snow, haha.