Bye, Bye Bright Beginnings at Camai

Today is Sam's last day at Bright Beginnings. The staff and his teacher were sad to see him go and all gave him a hug.

Zach also went here, so we know everyone quite well. It is a nice building, but we didn't like that they turned the gym into another classroom a couple years ago. It was such a good place for the kids to burn off some energy on the cold winter days.

In the past couple of weeks, some of the older kids moved up to the next class. What remained in Sam's room were 8 boys!! Sam's teacher, Maleika, had her hands full! Maleika is so nice, she had 8 kids of her own, many of them are now grown. She invited us to her house for an "end of Ramadan" celebration.

Ramadan concludes with a 3 day festival known as "Eid" or "Eid ul-Fitr," which literally means "the feast of the breaking/to break the fast." The holiday marks the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and is a culmination of the month-long struggle towards a higher spiritual state.

With Doug getting home on Friday from being gone all week, we won't be able to attend the party. But it sure was nice of her to think of us and invite us.

Sam's friends made him a card with their hand prints inside. So sweet!

Noon Duty

My timing is horrible....just horrible! School needed volunteers for recess and lunch duty from 11 am to 1 pm. They were offering "double volunteer" hours and, as we were still short a few this month, I signed up to help today. I should have signed up for Monday or Tuesday when the sun was out and the skies were clear; it would have been so easy to "police" the playground. Today it POURED. All day long it rained.

So, I got school to find out that I was to help in 2nd grade and that they would be having recess in the classroom. I asked about the gym and was told a PE class was in there right now. It was the longest 30 minutes of recess in my life. I was living for when lunch would start & end and then I could go back to my adult only office with a quiet work atmosphere.

Zach has German in the morning and English in the afternoon. There are 23 or so kids in each class. As the German kids finished their homework, they came into the English classroom. By the end of recess, all of them were in one classroom. The NOISE level.....oh my goodness!!

Zach's English teacher is a young, no-nonsense gal, I really like her. She had good control and those kids listened to her. Apparently I don't have the same control as the kids just looked at me and thought "oh, some one's mom is here." Teachers are the best! I couldn't do it......

Cozy Coupe

It was another beautiful evening, so we headed out on a walk to the bridge again. Sam had spotted his Cozy Coupe police car in the garage and wanted to take it tonight instead of his bike. I must have been quite the site pushing this down the sidewalk. It is about waist height, so is much easier to push than Sam on his bike.

Yep, the water is still running. Sam has learned that the water eventually flows to the ocean. To a 3 year old, that trivia is pretty cool!

Zach is a riding machine on that bike!

These flowers in a neighbor's yard were so beautiful that I just had to take a picture of them.

Happy 14th Anniversary

14 years ago today, Doug and I were surrounded by family & friends at the Starved Rock State Park in Utica, Illinois getting married! My that was a fun wedding....what a great venue and a great time overall.

Today, Doug is out in Bethel on a week long trip for landfill inspections and I am holding down the fort with Zach and Sam. Doug left us some fresh shrimp from the weekend so I made our favorite shrimp scampi. I also picked up some chocolate eclairs from Carr's. Well, Sam didn't care what the occassion was....his words at dinner were "it is like a birthday!"

Our dinner conversation tonight focused around Toy Story 3 which we had watched last weekend. Somehow the topic of how Zach's toys were going to feel when he went to college came up. We have a long ways to go to college, but Zach thought hard and then said "well, Sam will still be here and he can play with them in my room." Sam's ears perked up....he was ready to go play with Zach's toys NOW. Good thing I could distract that with a chocolate eclair!

Rane instead of Rain

Zach has a list of 20 words per week for his spelling test. We worked HARD on the first list; every night he did a practice test at home. Yeah! He was so happy....he got 19 out of 20 correct on his first school test. He spelled rain as rane. Mastered those....now a new list for this week!

His Mom and Dad are so thankful for spell check on the computer.....we didn't tell him that!

Moving On Up!!

Sam is leaving the tricycles in the dust! Doug found the training wheels for Zach's old bike and I took Sam out this evening for his first spin on a big boy bike. He was excited! Sam did really well with the concept of turning the handle bars to stay on the sidewalk. We need to work more on the peddling instead of allowing mom to push!

Popsicles

We had picked up a popsicle mold at a garage sale a while back, but had not used it. Zach was excited to make orange-pineapple juice popsicles. All he could talk about on the way home today was that they would now be frozen and he was ready to try one!

"Read to Me, Zach"

Sam just loves to have Zach read books to him. Sam rushed Zach through breakfast this morning so they could read a book before going to school. Sam's little voice is so cute "read to me, Zach!"

Wear Them Out!

I have a couple of high school friends coming up next week and we are going to go have fun for a day together. They mentioned doing to the Crow Creek Mine in Girdwood. Since we were down this way, I went to find it.

It was such a nice day, that we went to play on the great playground in Girdwood before driving the 3 miles out of town to find the mine. Zach and Sam had a great time. The playground and adjacent skate park were busy, lots of people soaking up the sun!

It didn't take them long to fall asleep in the car on the way home! It was a busy and fun day!

AK Wildlife and Conservation Center

We woke up to the most beautiful, sunny & warm day! It was too nice to stay home today so Zach, Sam and I headed off to the the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC). It is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Alaska's wildlife through public education. AWCC takes in injured and orphaned animals year-round and provides spacious enclosures and quality animal care. Animals that cannot be released into the wild are given a permanent home at the center.

It is located on a couple hundred acres on the Seward Highway near the turn off to go to Portage and Whittier. We had gone there for the Easter festivities earlier in the year, but had not been back to get to look at everything.

Zach was our tour guide with the map.

Taking a side detour via the tall grass.

Whoa! These bears are huge!

Near the bears was a large hill with a picnic table on the top. Zach decided immediately that we would be having our picnic lunch up there! We were hoping that Doug was having the same type of weather for his fishing trip in Whittier with Matt and Jason.

The view from the top was great!!

We were at the end of Turnagain Arm. What a view.

Driving down the highway, there are several old cabins that were damaged during the 1964 earthquake. One of them is a short walk from the driveway of the AK Wildlife and Conservation Center. It was fun to go and see it up close.

Iceland!

While at the library today, we picked up books on Iceland. Zach and I had fun looking at them while Sam took a nap this afternoon.

I had called Alaska Airlines Thursday about 10 am and the customer service representative at the "partner desk" was able to find me a flight on Icelandair to Oslo using frequent flier miles….she said not to wait too long to book. Doug had enough miles, but I didn’t have enough, so she suggested I buy some or transfer some (which I did, from Zach). I then had to get the kids at 11 am to head to the fair so I didn't call back right away to book.

So, I got up Friday morning at 5:45 am to call and book….no seats. Nothing. I called back at 7 am to check on different dates and talked to someone who could see the seats I had been told about originally, but said they weren’t available. Something about them being in a different ‘class group’ that Alaska couldn’t use. I was so bummed…..kicking myself that I should have booked yesterday no matter what.

I called Alaska Airlines from work at 8:15 am to check on May dates and got a guy named Jeff in Boise. I need to send the airline a note on him as he was AWESOME (I even told him he was better than Santa Claus)! We were on the phone for 58 minutes and he got me those flights that I wanted. I am sure they had a back log of calls due to the flights on the east coast and the hurricane, so it was nice of him to search so hard. But, he looked and searched…..and came up, after many goings back and forth with......the PERFECT itinerary. I mean perfect…..!! I thought we would have to buy a one way from Stavanger to Oslo….nope, he even got that included. Flights from different cities instead of round trip from the same place AND a layover!

Every flight we needed…and 3 days in Iceland on frequent flier miles! So we head out in April for 2 weeks. Anchorage to Oslo, Norway, then we de-tour from Norway to Sweden to Trollhattan for the Saab museum/plant, then back to Norway to Oslo, Bergen (where I was in 1994) and to Stavanger (were I was with Halliburton in 2005). Then we fly from Stavanger to Reykjavik, Iceland for a 3 day "layover" before heading back to Anchorage.

I am glad to have flights so now I can start to research places to stay, train schedules, etc and make reservations.

Lee and Alice are excited to see us in Stavanger; they were the ones that got this whole trip started. At the fair, Sarah mentioned that a family from our Cub Scout troop was also moving to Norway. I e-mailed Markayla and she wrote me back an hour later....she had hoped from my e-mail that I was writing to say we were moving there too. No, just visiting. Anyway, they are moving to Oslo and she was excited to know friends were coming and offered that we could stay with them! Awesome, local knowledge is always a good thing. We are happy for them on their move, but will miss Jean, Markayla, Sam (Zach's age) and Owen (Sam's age) - they were fun to have in our scout troop.

Iceland has always been on Doug's "bucket list" - how fun!!

Saturday with Mom

Doug left yesterday for 3 days of fishing with Matt Taylor and Jason. I hope that they have good weather. Zach, Sam and I are hanging out together this weekend.

We ran a few errands this morning and then stopped at the library for more books. Zach had seen in his Scholastic book order form at school some Captain Underpants and Adventures of Super Diaper Baby books he was interested in. We had a discussion about either spending his tooth fairy money on 1 book.....or checking several of them out for free at the library. We found a good collection of them and now have plenty of reading for this weekend.

With the statue of William Henry Seward at the library. Seward was the US Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Under Johnson, it was Seward who had the foresight to purchase Alaska from Russia - a good thing for us!

Before heading home for a nap, we stopped at the Dimond Mall to see if Old Navy had their Halloween shirts in yet - nope, next week we were told. So, we had some lunch at Arby's next to the ice rink. A nice morning!

Ready!!

Sam is ready! He doesn't know for what, but he is ready! Zach on the other hand knows that we are going to Florida and Disney and he is counting down the days!