Home Front Happenings & NEW BOOK

Patrick called tonight to say the winds picked up and mosquitos have subsided. Our conversation was cut short due to satellite moving...but it was great to hear his voice and know that all is well.

The kids are working on going to sleep after a long and cranky day. Nora seems continually exhausted and recovering from the trip out East. She is grumpy with me and with others and just is dragging. She has had a few complaints of her ear hurting, but no other major complaints of illness. I'm hoping yet another night of good sleep will take care of her grumpies. Its easy to bring everyone down when she and Nora are bickering and tired. Ah yes. The joys of parenting a 3 and 4 year old.

We had a great LONG walk with Balika and her two girls this morning on the Island Lake Trail. Nora and Bella sprinted ahead to explore where the trail went. They were giggling with delight about the adventure of it all! Stuey insisted on taking his run bike with him, so I stayed in the back of the pack with him making sure he didn't go down hills too fast.

With Patrick gone, I"ve had a real opportunity to clean out drawers and corners of the house which otherwise never get addressed. It has been spring cleaning to the max. Its sort of like how I go through and get rid of toys when the kids are asleep. Never when they're awake. They wake up and don't really notice that they're gone (and on their way to the thrift store). I don't think I"ve really 'gotten rid' (horrible english...I know) of anything of Patricks, but just reorganized a little bit. (My sister Ella and Karen would be proud.)

NEW BOOK!!!!
On another note today I was in the book store and purchased Wildflowers and Other plant life of the kodiak Archipelago by Stacy Studebaker and am SO excited by it! It is concise, easy to use and full of fabulous pictures. The flowers are arranged by colors, so for someone like me who isn't good with guessing the class, etc, you can flip right to the color section to find the flower. I think its time to do a walk out to Spruce Cape or Abercrombie with the book in hand with the kids and have some fun. I'm really quite excited about such an incredible, local plant reference. Thanks to Stacy for writing this wonderful book! The Next Page has the book.

Photos...
The last photos I'll post from our trip...

Stuey burning off some energy in the Boston airport kids play area before we boarded the plane for home.

Jenni, Nora and myself next to the Dunkin Donuts statue in the boston airport. I LOVE Dunkin Donuts. Gosh I wish they would come to Alaska!

85 deg + wading pond=Happy Stuey and Nora!

2 of the wedding "fashionistas" caught on camera at the Boston wedding. It ended up being hard to take photos of the cool dresses from the front without looking strange. We didn't want random people wondering why we were taking their photo. (next time, Mary Jane-I'll do better since I know how you would've loved to see more photos!)