Mount Baldy

I have a dirty little secret.  I am not an outdoors type, although that might not be a secret, but I do love hiking, and that always results in me being dirty.  Dave and I hike a volcano on our honeymoon and I have been wanting to hike more mountains since then.

We do easy walks with the boys.  I know they aren't going up summits because well, carrying an extra 30 or 40 pounds on your back is a whole different challenge.

So I had this grand idea that I was going to hike the closest summit by myself on Monday.  I even cleared my schedule and hired a sitter.  There were several flaws in my plan.  The first is hiking alone is not a good idea,  especially in bear country.  The second flaw was the days of pouring rain and the 48 degree temperature by mid-day.  The final flaw was I was unsure what I was up against.

My friend Cherie came to the rescue.  She solved the bear problem by "packing heat" which is good as I wasn't sure how to use the bear spray and someone was charged by a mama grizzly this morning (for those not familiar with bears brown bears or grizzly are the ones you really don't want to run into).  She also brought beer.  I had visions of taking photos while we hiked, but it was too steep and required too much concentration for that....and at the top, I was too tired. She snapped some photos so it was all good.

It rained on the way down and we saw fresh bear poop that had been left between our way up and our way down. 

Baldy is about a 1.5 mile hike to the summit, so about 3 miles in total.  It was pretty steep and it rained on the way down which meant things were a bit slippery.  My legs are already feeling some burn.  We'll see if I regret it in the morning.

Potty Regression

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.....or it seems that way at least.  I am almpost positive that Liam didn't get a single pee in the potty yesterday.  He was even holding in poop and only went because I prompted him.

I don't mind that he needs diapers at night, but I am really reaady for him to be daytime trained.

They are so cute when asleep

I wish this were a more common sight in our house.

No one can deny these two are brothers, for sure.

Not for the squeamish

At the end of July, Dave will have spent 3 months of 2011 TDY....pretty amazing for someone who is supposed to be learning how to run a JAG office (you know a job that requires him to be in the office).  I digress.....I am a bit overtired and a lot hormonal.

This trip reminds me alot of a 2009 post, elbows deep in poop.  Thankfully in the almost 2 years since that post was written, things have improved, especially in the sleep area. 

However, one week into this TDY and I am elbows deep in poop and vomit....and the TDY is only 1/3 over. 

Last Friday I was putting Liam to bed first and was dressing him while Ben played in the tub.  I heard Ben yelling "throw" which usually means he is throwing the bath toys and soaking the bathroom in water.  Oh, how I wish that had been the case.  I found him with balls of poop in his hand and poop floating in the tub, stuck to the bathroom cabinets, on the floor.  Liam immediately spun up into meltdown mode and I needed to simultaneously calm Liam, get him to bed as he was overtired, get Ben into a clean bath, and clean the poop before anyone played with it anymore.  In case you cannot count, I have 2 hands, and all that was impossible.  We survived, and eventually everything got done.

Ben has been waking at night.  When he wakes, he generally takes up to an hour to soothe back to sleep.  Last night he woke at 11pm and I was doing a victory dance as he fell back asleep quickly with some simple back rubbing.  My celebration was short-lived when I woke to Liam crying at 12:30am telling me "I spit" which in Liam translation means "I vomited the content of everything I ate all over my bed."  As I got him into the tub, I discovered he had been sick out of both ends of his body. When Liam throws up in bed (and sadly this is the 4th incident in 9 months), Dave usually deals with cleaning the bed up while I deal with Liam.  Once it was clear Liam was calm and happily playing in the bath, I started cleaning up his bed.  I was trying to clean vomit off Jaquar (one of his special stuffed animals) when I head him crying again.  I find him in the tub with puke floating in the water and covering his chest and before I can figure out what to do, he starts throwing up more.  I was waiting for his head to start spinning around.  I rinse him off and move him to my tub and resume cleaning the bed.  Once Liam is clean and his bed is stripped and re-made, I check on him....just in time for him to throw up again.  Thankfully, I got him in front of the toilet in time.  Then I clean up his bathroom and read him some stories.  He starts crying again and throws up again.  By this time, it is 3am and I am so tired that I feel nauseous.  I make him a sleeping bag surrounded by towels in my room and ask him to relax.  An hour later, he is still awake and demanding to go to his bed.

I fell asleep around 5am and was woken up by Ben at 6:30am.  Thankfully, Liam has kept almost all of the contents of his stomach in place since waking up.  I am tired though, and have had enough of poop and vomit for the time being.

Bear Paw Festival

The best festivals are in small towns, seriously.  When we lived in England, our tiny village of Barton Mills (population estimated to be about 800) has a giant scarecrow festival and in 1999 was in the Guiness Book of World Records for the most scarecrows built! So, when I heard that Eagle River has a festival called Bear Paw, I was excited.  When I heard Dave would b ein Australia, my interest was less as I feared wrestling both boys in a crowded environment.

My MOM's Club had a tent on Friday for the Annual Teddy Bear's Picnic.  I was able to get a sitter so i left Ben with her to nap and took Liam to the Teddy Bear's Picnic.  It was crowded and there was a long line for food.  Liam was immediately worked up and talking loudly and asking to find where the teddy bear's were having a picnic.  He refused to wait in line for the free food being given out.  He refused to register his teddy bear (which he brought) or visit any of the booths.  A teddy bear dance started and Liam started tugging on his ear furiously and then yelled he had to use the potty. After the port-a-potty trip, he refused to go near the crowd of kids dancing with theirbear or the ones lining up for the parade.

So off to the rides we went.  I thought the carnival rides would over-stimulate Liam more but he started demanding to go on everything.  I bought a $20 value pack of tickets and immediately worried it would be a mistake.  I also realized why my Dad complained when I begged for tickets at the boarwalk...rides are expensive....between $3-5 a ride per person!  I found a ride that friends were riding and had Liam go in.  I expected that he'd cry to get off.  Instead, he waited like this to be buckled in:

He ran from ride to ride demanding to get on.  I bought a second value pack.  He even wanted to go on bigger rides that he couldn't manage on his own (I tried to keep him on the kiddie rides).  Heiked the bumper cars and loved the swing.  The swing made me nervous but he just giggled more and told me he loved it.  Here he is on the swing with me:

He rode a pony and thanked the pony for letting him ride:

Today we headed back to Bear Paw so that all 3 of us could watch the parade.  Getting to our parade location was a test of my patience.  Liam kept asking when the parade was going to start, cry9ing because it hadn't started, and refusing to walk because he was afraid I was taking him away from it.  Ben cried anytime we stopped as he wanted to keep walking.  Thankfully, we found Liam's friend from school, and stood near him.  I talked to his mom while Liam played with him and his brothers.  I found snacks and Ben miraculously seemed calm.  Liam loved the parade and Ben mostly ignored it.  He did give me this smile:

After the parade, I went searching for food and my luck ran out.  It was crowded and Liam became really overstimulated.  Ben refused to nap when we got home as I missed his sleepy window.

I cannot wait to try Bear Paw next year when I (hopefully) have Dave home to help and Ben is big enough to ride the rides (he didn't meet any of the height miniumums).





Day trip to Talkeetna

We took a day trip to Talkeetna, just to check it out.  I had heard Talkeetna was often a starting point for people going to Denali and Mount McKinley. 

Talkeetna offers flightseeing and rafting tours, but again, these tours aren't toddler friendly.  It has an Old West feel to it but is very, very, very small.  I most enjoyed looking at the old buildings, Dave most enjoyed lunch there, Liam most enjoyed the playground, as did Ben. 

There were some local crafts on display.

Overall, it was a fun day trip and not too bad of a drive.





Our visit to the cosmic hamlet by the sea

A couple weeks ago, we visited Homer, Alaska, which is the halibut capitol of the world.  Homer has a way of stealing people's hearts and it has lots of cute descriptions.  According to Wikipedia, "one of Homer's nicknames is "the cosmic hamlet by the sea"; another is "the end of the road". A popular local bumper sticker characterizes the town as "Homer - A quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem."  While in Homer, we stayed at a place called Land's End.  Back in 2006, we visited Land's End in England while I was in my first trimester of pregnancy with Liam.  I hope to someday visit Land's End, Maine. 

My Alaska friends told me that Homeer was a must see, but when I asked for activity suggestions, no one had any.  I am a planner by nature and couldn't fathom visiting somewhere with two small, active boys who like to be kept busy without activities acheduled.  I researched and found lots of tours to Kodiak Island to view bears, but these trips run upwards of $600 PER PERSON, and include being on an island with LOTS of grizzly bears for up to 8 hours.  The websites mentioned not approaching the bears and I couldn't get the visualization of Ben yelling "doggie" while running towards the bear and getting picked up and carried away out of my mind.  There were lots of fishing charters, but they usually were a minimum of 4 hours.  Both Ben and I get seasick and could never survive a fishing charter and Dave didn't want to leave me alone to go fish.  I started the trip with trepidation that we would be bored.  Our hotel was on the Homer Spit, which is 4.5 miles long and about 1.5 miles long. 

We survived the 4 hour drive, which took over 6 with boys who got a bit stir crazy.  We discovered this view from the room:

On a clear day, this is what we could see:

I don't know why I was so worried.  The boys were so excited to be there.  They could have spent days doing nothing but throwing rocks in the water.  They didn't really care about anything else while we were there.

As far as us, there were lots of interesting things to see:

We even saw a sea otter at our hotel beach.

That wasn't the only wildlife we saw.  We saw too many bald eagles to count, and even saw a bald eagle nest.  At the Alaska Islands and Visitor's Center (free and awesome) we took a walk on the outside trails and discovered that Alaska has cranes (this one had a baby):

Homer had a very cool atmosphere, and all that worry about things to do were for nothing.  I would love to go back before we leave Alaska.