Girls Day

I am lucky during the summer if I go into work early or stay late to make sure all my billable notes are done I can take off after half a day on Friday.  I try to take that afternoon and do something fun with the girls, today we decided to go check out some of the fun boutiques and consignment shops here.

We started off at a great boutique everyone had been telling me about, it is quite large but crammed full of all kinds of great stuff, antiques, clothes, shoes, accessories, jewelery, they have it all, and they give all their shoppers pink cotton candy (I don't like cotton candy but the girls did.)

We had fun window shopping there, it is a special occasion store for sure, one you would go to for a special gift, I thought a bit expensive for everyday shopping.
We hit the perfect shopping day at our second consignment stop, a section of stuff originally marked down to 1.00 but today it was 5 for 1.00, I got these super cute ballet flats

and the girls picked out an aborcrombie shirt, some earrings, a wallet, and something? for our 1.00, I love that each item was 20cents!!! we found some other cute shirts fairly inexpensive as well, so we were happy.
We made our way to a couple of the new/used book stores after, I am lucky my kids all love to read, I can hardly keep the girls in books, we found some good deals on some books to keep us going for summer and then headed off to our favorite coffee/smoothie shop.  They were closed so instead we bought our own fruit and ice cream and made our own super yummy smoothies at home.
It was a really fun day just hanging out with the girls and the whole afternoon cost me less than 30.00 and we made some fun memories.
I am so glad my girls still want to hang out with me even as they hit their teen age years, now if their sister and my sister and Mom were just here it would have been the perfect girls afternoon.

Alaska Job

I have been working at a local behavioral health clinic, it is great since I am able to use my education, the office is only 5 minutes away and I am able to see new areas almost everyday.
The clinic I work for treats children ages 5 to 18 in my department (22 for other areas) with SED's (severe emotional disorders).  The issues these kids have vary from needing help developing social skills, to much more serious problems.  Some have been brought by their parents most of who are great people who want what is best for thier kids, some have much more tragic stories, many are in foster care, lots of trauma in thier backgrounds.
I work in the school based area, so during the school year we do lots of work in the schools with these kids, but for now we are in our summer program. 
The summer program is great, we get all the kids together in the afternoons and take them on field trips.  We do lots of hiking, parks, lakes etc. we like to get them outdoors.  It is great for me since this is our first summer here, I am able to check out lots of areas and get fun ideas for family weekends.

Hatchers Pass is one of my favorite hikes, I have done it twice with work, the last time my client was a seven year old boy so we stopped and "paned" for gold, he really did find a few flakes and was so excited to take them home to show his Mom.
We spent one day hiking next to a river in Palmer, a couple of us and our "kids" (I had a 8 year old boy that day) even hiked down the side of the mountain so we could play at the river for awhile, getting down was not bad, getting back up took some effort.

Today I had one of the girls I really like working with, Friday is free time so we get to choose what to do, we walked to Wasilla Lake, it is a mile each way, so a nice walk.  She and one of her friends who joined us spent the afternoon, the girls caught leeches in the lake, big nasty looking ones, needless to say my girls will not be swimming in the lake, even though it is full of swimmers when we drive by.

Even without swimming it is a gorgeous lake to walk along the shore of.
I split my time at work between kids who are in the 7 to 9 age group and teen girls who are 12 to 18, I like the change, it is nice to work with a variety of kids and the different age groups keeps it interesting.
So far I like the company and the people I work with, they are flexible and that is so important with all I have going on, school, my own kids, home, Richard, all the work the new house needs and so on.

Our first visitor

My brother Clint came for a visit last weekend on his way to Bethel (also in Alaska), he was our first visitor so we were pretty excited to see him.  He arrived on a Saturday, so Rich, Staci, Conner and I (Cheyenne was spending the day with a friend) spent the day in Ancorage while we waited for his flight.  We did some shopping, stocked up on some stuff from Cosco and then took a nice hike in a park by the airport.  The great thing about parks here is they are full of trails so you can park and walk while enjoying the gorgeous scenery. 

Conner loved being out in the sunshine, the rest of us thought it was pretty nice as well.
After we picked up Clint we headed over to the Mooses tooth, the pizza place everyone had been raving about that we had wanted to try, it is popular, we had to wait 45 min for a table.  The pizza was very good but not really great, the price was a pleasant surprise, much less than we expected to pay.

I had a couple options for outing the next day, but Clint was exausted from the move and it was raining so he caught up on some sleep while the girls and I did some errands, then Clint and Richard headed out to find someplace to try out Richards new retirement gift (a new 45) and of course they had to take a shotgun for fun as well.
I worked on Monday while Clint ran errands picking up stuff he wanted to take with him and hung out with my girls, then Tuesday I took off work and the girls and I took him to the airpor.t and hit the mall for some shopping.
It was really great to have him here, and I love that he is only an hour plane ride away from me (there is no road to drive there) knowing he is close makes it seem like we are not so far away from everyone, because while we really really love it here, it is hard to be far from family.
We are looking forward to many more friends and family making their way up for a visit.

Reindeer Farm

I wanted to do something quick, and fun last weekend, after checking out the local web site we decided on the reindeer farm.  The web site said they did not have a military discount, but when we arrived they gave us one anyway, very nice I thought. 
I thought we would get to see them from the other side of a fence, but we actually got to walk into the pens.  There were babies, less than a week old, and the older ones are very tame, they run right up to you.

We found out some interesting things.  The difference between a reindeer and a caribou it only that a reindeer is tame and a caribou is in the wild.  They have four stomaches, both male and females have antlers, but the males get an extra point in the middle.

The males on the farm are "fixed" it keeps them tame, but when they do that it changes the hormones and their antlers grow different like the one below.

It was a fun outing, the farm is nice, we will return this winter for a sleigh ride.  What better place to take a sleugh ride pulled by reindeer than Alaska.

Lucy

Our new house backs up to what we would call BLM land, here they call it Green Belt, either way it means no one can ever build there.  We did not know this when we bought the house, but had we known it would have been a huge selling point.

Moose are abundant here, they are everywhere, in our back yard and in the green belt live a mom and her baby, Staci named them Lucy and Brownie, they come to visit often so we have a lot of fun watching them from our window or the safety of the deck.

You can see little Brownie in this picture, Lucy was just off to the side and we needed to leave, since they were right by the truck Richard had to carefully walk down and start it in the hope it would scare them off (it worked) so the baby and I could come out of the house.
They are really interesting to watch, one morning we had five total all over our yard, they ate for awhile and then laid down under the trees, they could see me watching them and did not appear at all concerned with me, however I was being careful to stay far away and just watch them.
We also have two squirrels we can watch chase each other from tree to tree, Staci also named them, Bob and Emily, they give us much morning amusement.
A turkey wandered through yesterday, I did not know we had wild turkey here, turns out we don't it was one of the neighbors pets come to visit, I guess that would explain why it walked right up to Richard without any reservations.

Canada

We made it across Canada, it took four days, a pretty major snow storm and $1500 more than we had hoped (still within our Army move budget). 
I have been into Canada twice before but this was a whole new experience, we saw the little out of the way towns that are not tourist attractions, in fact several of them looked like gost towns, fairly deserted, building closed down and boarded up.
It appears the recessions has hurt them as well as us, with gas prices so high (about 7 a gallon there) people are traveling the Alcan/Alaskan Hwy less and less.
Hotels, food, everything is very expensive there, just to take the four of us out for hamburgers one night was 75.  We quickly learned to buy lunch at the grocery store and stop at a park for sandwiches etc. along the way, leaving a better budget for dinner.
Even at the high cost of food, gas and lodging it was a fun trip for us, I am lucky that the kids, Conner included travel well,t he girls read most of the way or we played the who can see what animal first game....I won :)
I suppose they are all memories that I hope the girls will think fondly of when they get older.

No news

We had expected to be out of here by now, we were told we would have orders as early as the end of December but January for sure.  Not only do we not have orders, we have no idea what is going on, it seems the VA does not agree with the Army on something in Richards medical file so there is sits while they say they are figuring it out.  No one will give us any answers, several people have said why are you still here, we are just playing a never ending waiting game.
It is frustrating, Richard cant put in for new jobs because he does not know when we can leave, I am not sure what to plan for the kids school, and we are at risk of loosing our new house since we do not have a for sure date and the sellers are of anxious to be done.
So I am angry and tired and there is no end in sight.