Sam & Friends

Guest Blogger - Renee
February 8, 2009

Bryan, Christine, Alex and Matthew live 3 houses away from us. Alex is a year younger than Zach and Matthew is 3 months younger than Sam. Bryan and Christine both work for Halliburton - we see each other all the time at work, but don't get together nearly enough at home.

Christine was out and about working in Canada for the week, but Bryan, Alex and Matthew were up for coming over for bunch on Sunday. It was great for the kids to all play. Sam was pretty happy about having a buddy his size.

In prisioned in the family room! It is a rough life when you are 1, the stairs are right there....yet, so far away. Every chance Sam gets he makes a bee line for the stairs - he can move QUICK! We had to block off the family room with gates so that Sam wouldn't go upstairs or get into Zach's toys in the front room. Zach's toys are appealing, but have so many small pieces.

The 4 boys sure did have fun. A good test for us that.....yes, we are done at two kids. The volume of 4 kids was, wow, most likely above the OSHA allowable level. Hearing protection was needed! The 4 kids had a great time. We can invision in the future having Bryan and Christine on speed dial to check on our/their kids......the kids will probably make a rut in the sidewalk between the two houses.

The test of a good time can be judged by the mess that is left behind. In this case, it was very good time with no bucket of toys left un-turned.

Project at Home Depot

Guest blogger - Renee
February 7, 2009

It was a busy day at Home Depot with all the kids making Valentine's Day jewelry boxes for their Mom's. Zach had a good time building the box, but then really liked it and wasn't sure that he was going to turn it over to me for Valentine's Day. He did give it to me, under pressure from Doug.....I think with the understanding that he and I were going to "share" it.


Home Depot projects have evolved from the hard concrete floor, to a small carpeted area. Fruit snacks and juice boxes are also provided to the lucky ones who come early enough. It is quite well done....and free, the best part of all.

We have quite a collection of small wooden toys now. Some kits are much more detailed than others. After a few weeks, when the project has been forgotten and cast into the corner of the room, it secretly retreats to a large box in the crawl space. On some future camping trip we will have plenty of kindling for the fire.

Oh...and the best part, a balloon! Holy cow, when you are 4 it is all about the color of the balloon and how much you can torment your brother and parents in the car and at home. Good thing they only last 24 hours.....and some how find themselves in the garbage in the morning.

Sam so badly wants in on the action! He has a Home Depot and Lowe's apron and is ready to build. Right now his job at the Saturday events is to be social coordinator by smiling at everyone around. He does his job well.

Dinner @ Carlos's

Feb 6th, 2009

Carlo's Mexican Restaurant is a regular stop for the Huntman household. We like the food, and we usually are able to find a coupon for buy one dinner entree and get one free. The restaurant is friendly for kids and on the way home. The perfect combination for a regular pit stop.

Zach Attach "drinking" a margarita. (No we didn't let him really have any).

We had a special treat this particular Friday night. The restaurant had hired a couple of Spanish musicians to serenade the tables while the patrons eat. It was very festive! The musicians asked to play at our table and of course we said yes. They were great! Zach and Sam really enjoyed the music and were dancing to the beat. They played a song for us and then answered Zach's 50 questions afterwards. We will definitely be back on Friday's again. Fun for the whole family!

Saving the World

Feb 2nd - 6th
The Alaska Forum on the Environment is one of my favorite training/networking events that takes place annually in Anchorage. This year the 5 day conference had sessions in both the Egan Center and the new Deninai Center . . . and the boat show just happened to be in the same building at the same time. How great is that!?!

Every morning there were keynote speakers to start off our day. My favorite one was called Polar-Palooza. This keynote address had about 7 people who had all spent time in the poles and represented an environmental issue with the polar climate. The speakers consisted mainly of scientist, and they had some really cool (no pun intended) slides.

The mornings and afternoons were filled with all sorts of break-out sessions. My focus is of course rural sanitation, but I was able to take in a few talks on other topics. My favorites were the breakout sessions I attended on Marine Debris.

The conference is also a great place to network with people from other agencies and well as people from the villages. This is my third year attending the event, and every year I see more and more familiar faces. In the above picture, a colleague of mine, Joe from the EPA is giving a talk on honey bucket disposal in the landfill. MMmmm . . . a good after lunch topic.

Here are some of the people that I attended a few of the sessions with. Sandi, (red coat), works with me at ADEC, but she is in the Juneau office. She and I tried out for The Amazing Race together. We didn't make it "obviously", but we had a fun time making our 3 minute audition video. The girl next to Sandi is Jenni. I first met Jenni in Bethel, where she worked as a Health Aid for the Yukon River Health Consortium (YKHC). Lief (boyfriend) is next to Jenni. Lief, Jenni and I all posed for a Bethel calender together. The rural sanitation people are a great group and it is always fun reconnecting with people at the different conferences throughout the year.

Game Day!

February 1st, 2009 Super Bowl Sunday

We took it easy this year for the Super Bowl. We were invited to a party, but the weather was bad and it was all the way out in Eagle River. Se we decided to stay home and enjoy the time to ourselves. We are not big football fans, so we watched for the commercials. The highlight of the game was the half-time show in 3-D. The glasses were a big hit, and everything was 3-D for the rest of the evening . . . even after we turned the television off!

Nora and the Big Three

January 31st, 2009

Nora turns the big three today. And to celebrate she invited a bunch of her friends over for a "Pink Party". Now, I don't know what that means, but there was a lot of pink around. Having two boys, we don't really experience the pink isles at Toys R Us.

Everyone got to color their own artwork on the table covered with white paper. A great idea, except for when the idea gets taken home, and there is no paper on the table.

Here is the Birthday Girl.

Blowing out the candles on the cake!

The bounty of gifts. Most of them pink . . . of course.

Sam is still a bit young to get in on too much of the action. But he did do a great job of helping out with the ring toss game. He was the target. As the kids get older, the parties will continue to get crazier. It is fun to see all of the kids grow up and their individual personalities emerge. Both Sam and Zach's birthdays are coming up. Fortunately no pink though, just blue.

Boat Show

January 31st, 2009

The Anchors Aweigh Boat show is one of my favorite events. I have a lot of fun drooling over the new boats and imagining the adventures I could have if only I had an extra 100 grand lying around.

We all loaded up and headed to the show at the new Denina Convention Center. The show was a big improvement over last years show at the Northway Mall. The mall had about 18,000 sq ft to display the boats and accessories, the new Denina Center has over 50,000 sq feet! Lots of room to spread out and compare the boats side by side. We met up with our friend Karl, who also has an interest in boats. While Karl and I were on a boat, discussing how we could get second and third jobs to pay for it, our friend Dustin called and said that he was just getting to the show and was wondering if we were going to be there. Similar minds think alike. We all walked around for close to three hours, getting ideas and drooling over the new shinny hulls. But alas, we all walked out empty handed, even the fanfare of the boat show was not enough to convince our wives that this was the year for a boat. Maybe next year.

Zach found a boat that he would have fun with. This is an aqua-bike.

The motors are getting so huge! This is a 300 hp Suzuki outboard. The thing is taller than me and probably costs more than my truck.

I love these Stabi-Craft boats. They have the stability of a Zodiac inflatable boat, but are made entirely out of aluminum.

Zach and Ian found a friendly tugboat named Coastie. The Coast Guard Auxiliary does a good job educating the public on how to have fun on the water by boating safely. I am glad that Zach and Sam are learning to be responsible boaters at an early age. Alaskan waters are beautiful and a great place to escape everyday life, but, if you are not careful they can be tricky and downright dangerous. Can you say, Deadliest Catch?

Time Sure Flies!

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Time flies when you are having lots of fun with Grandma and Grandpa! I really don't know where the two weeks went. We packed in a lot during the short stay and never managed to run out of stuff to do. We sure appreciated all of their help during their stay. Couldn't have made it with out them. We look forward to seeing them again in April. Have a safe trip back to Illinois!

Back to H2

January 30th, 2009

We love going to H2Oasis whenever we can find the time. It is a nice break from the cold outside.
More fun on the Pirate Ship. This time Zach had a lot of fun showing Grandpa all of the ins and outs of the ship. If you look carefully at this picture, you can see Grandpa sliding down one of the slides.

Zach and I behind the mushroom waterfall.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

The rest of the group monitoring from the sidelines. It is nice to sit and relax in the lounge chairs listening to the sounds of the water and soaking up the heat. It is very reminiscent of being in Florida, minus the sun of course.

The three wild and crazy guys. It was kind of a bummer that the pool only had a few attractions open. Every Friday from 11:00 til 2:00, H2Oasis has a "toddler hour", with reduced admission. The ticket to get in is only six bucks for child and parent, or in our case parent and grandparent. If you go at the regular time, it will cost you 25 bucks a person. Ouch! But on this toddler hour, the only rides that were open were the pirate ship and the mushroom water fall. Can't complain too much, we still had a ton of fun and were there until a little after 2:00 anyway. And it wasn't too crowded either, which is always nice.

We even made time to have lunch and an ice cream sunday. I tell ya, H2Oasis has it all!

Best Food Ever!

January 28, 2009

A co-worker Bill invited Duane and I to go at lunchtime to Fort Richardson Air Force base and grab a bite to eat. I had been there before and knew that they had one of the most interesting, if not delicious foods on the planet, the cheeseburger link!

The cheeseburger link is, as I am sure you have guessed already, a hamburger rolled into the shape of a hotdog. This concoction is then heated and served from the same rolly like oven that hot dogs and polish sausages around the world are served on at gas stations or quickie marts. I have eaten my share of hot dogs this way, but had never before seen this flavor of dog. The cheeseburger link is probably my new favorite.

I bet that I can make one of these at home, I just don't know how they keep the cheese in there. It was pretty good, although I am not sure where it fits into the food group pyramid. It is unfortunate that I can only find these on base. I 'll just have to convince my co-worker to do lunch again in the near future. I'll buy!

Hunting in Peter's Creek

January 25, 2009

It happened to be a beautiful Sunday, so Karl, Duane and I decided to take advantage of this weather window and go for a hike. We were in an area that you could go hunting in, so we brought our .22's and made a plan to look for any Spruce Hens that might be in the area. We drove about 40 minutes out of town to an area near Peter's Creek. I had never been to this area before. We ended up in the mountains at the end of a very steep road. There were all kinds of houses in the area, heck of a commute if you had to go to Anchorage everyday. Chugach State Park maintains a trail head at the end of the road. There were only two other cars at the site, it is kind of off the beaten path, so it is one of the less used trail heads in the system. It is also one of the few trail heads you can go hunting off of anymore.

It is a multi-use trail head, so it is important to respect all of the different users. The sign is kind of funny, because it looks like a musher is being pulled by a bear and a moose. I will definitely want to steer clear of the trail if I see that coming!

I love taking the Jeep on these sort of adventures. It gets better gas mileage than my big diesel truck, and you can keep all of your "stuff" inside and out of the weather. I also like the fact that it is old and I doubt anyone is going to mess with an old Jeep parked on the side of the road. I thought that we would be getting rid of the Jeep after we bought the Subaru, but I find that we still use it quite a bit. And today it proved useful once again by getting us safely to and from the trail head. Here we are getting locked and loaded and heading out on the trail.


The snow was perfect for walking and the trail wide enough the whole way so we could all talk. Talking is great for passing the time, but bad for actually seeing anything in the way of birds we were trying to get. Needless to say, we didn't see bird one. Nobody really cared, that just meant less work cleaning the birds back home. The day was warm and no one was really out on the trail, we had the whole place to ourselves. I think that total we walked around 4 miles. We had a quick lunch at the halfway point at 1:00 and then headed back to the car. We didn't find any Spruce Hens that day, but we did have a good time just hiking and taking advantage of the nice weather window in January.

To Da Dump . . .

Jan 17, 2009

Duane and I had to make a quick trip to the transfer station in town to get rid of some trash. Our trash day was inadvertently canceled by the wind we had a few days ago. I work in solid waste at work, so I thought that the transfer station might make an interesting blog entry. I know, I need help.

Here are the bays of the Anchorage transfer station. You back up to one of these bays and throw your trash on the huge tipping floor. Zach always gets excited, because he gets to see the enormous Bob Fix its (loaders). You can also take used oil to the transfer station (free), and hazardous wastes are also accepted on Tues, Thurs. and Sat (free).

Here we are emptying the truck of the house garbage from last week. We also collected a bunch of shingles, branches and general litter. The litter was the remnant of last weeks garbage collection gone wrong. Also included in this load was one toxic bag of dog poo. Special caution had to be taken in handling this cargo. It was heavy and smelly!

Once the waste is thrown on the tipping floor, a loader consolidates it into a corner of the transfer station where another machine picks it up and loads it onto a large dumpster type container that is then covered, hooked up to the back of a semi-tractor trailer and taken to Anchorage Regional Landfill (ARL). It is a pretty cool process. There is a bit more interaction with the garbage as oppose to just putting it on the curb for the truck to pick up. There is a certain satisfaction to throwing a bag of garbage off the back of the truck onto the tipping floor and then watching a huge machine swing by and mash it with the tons of other material. Anyway, that was a brief look at the Anchorage transfer station.

Return of the Grandpa-pedic

Feb 11, 2009

Grandma and Grandpa have returned! Both Zach and Sam find their favorite spot on the Grandpa-pedic mattress.

Impromptu B-Day

We went to our friend James's house for a Birthday party and didn't even know it. His wife Terrel made homemade pizzas and the atmosphere was festive. I've got the date on my calender for next year so I can remember to at least bring a card.

Terrel did a great job with the pizzas. She even put Domino's to shame!

The kids were in the other room watching Cars. They are all basically around the same age so their tastes in movies is the same. Ka-Chow!

Everyone getting caught up on the latest events.

What a feast. Does not get any better than pizza and beer.

Here is the Birthday boy, Terrell and their two boys Camden and Eli.

Wind

The strange weather conditions continued to plague us for the next few days. The winds lasted about 4 days, while the temperatures continued to climb. With the highs climbing toward 60 deg. F and the winds continuing to gust around 70 mph, we were in for a wild ride.

I got a cool new portable anemometer (wind meter) for Christmas from Mom & Dad. I forgot to take it out during the really strong gusts earlier in the day. I took this reading as the winds were starting to die down in the evening. Even though the winds were starting to calm, in the 5 minutes I was out taking readings, I had several gusts get near 50mph. I literally had to hold on to a tree so I wouldn't be blown over. It was kind of scary looking up at the 50 ft. tall spruce trees, as they bend over in the wind like blades of grass. We were fortunate not to loose any more trees in this storm, even though I think the winds were stronger this time. We did however gain a new tree in the yard as a result of the storm. Someones Christmas tree had blown down from somewhere and lodged itself in the green area next to the house. It is kind of funny because, some storms taketh the trees, while other storms givith back.

The heart of the storm occurred during the a Wednesday morning. This was unfortunate, as this is garbage day in our subdivision. We had our garbage out for a bit, but quickly retrieved it after witnessing cardboard boxes race by in the ever increasing gusts. I saw the garbage truck attempt one pass of the neighborhood before giving up and heading back to town. This meant that all of the garbage set out was now blowing around the neighborhood. It was a real mess. At one point Renee, Zach and I just stood in our open garage and watched as material of all sorts skipped across our driveway, making its way further down the hill. I saw lawn furniture too. A cushion got wrapped around our mailbox for a bit, but it too eventually made its way down the hill. We tried to retrieve some of the larger items as they got caught in our yard for a brief moment, But the wind combined with the driveway covered in ice made this impossible. We just had to be content to sit and watch the parade of trash go by.

A sight too often seen in our neighborhood. These were all over the yard. The funny thing about the shingles is that you are never picking up your shingles out of the yard. You always pick up the neighbors shingles, because that is where they end up after they blow off of the house. I am sure the the neighbors to the left of us, or the down wind neighbors, were picking up our shingles.

Zach was kind of helping to clean up. He would actually go into some of the tougher areas for me to maneuver into and pick out shingles. The warm weather and lack of snow also allowed him the opportunity to play on his swing set for a few days. Despite the weird weather, or I guess in this case, in spite of the weird weather, we were able to enjoy a few warm, snow-less days. Kind of like living in Colorado. I knew that our weather window would not last long. There is still a lot of winter left, so we enjoyed it while we could.