Becca, Shawn and Remi's Adventures

the birth story of adeleine inez robson...

2012-01-18T22:01:00.001-09:00

Adeleine is just over 4 weeksold and I still haven’t written down her birth story. Shame on me! Without any more procrastinating, here’s her story. Be forewarned that this is for me as a recordof her birth, so if the details get tedious feel free to skip ahead. If you’d rather skip the whole story and justlook at the pictures know that we now have a healthy, happy little girl thatwas born on the 16^th of December.

Below is a picture of me and Remi a week or so before Adeleine was born.

Where to start, where tostart… This time around I was a bitworried that this experience would be similar to Remi’s birth (which was not acake walk) but I was excited when I started to feel “ready” around 38weeks. With Remi I just didn’t feel likeit was time when 40 weeks rolled around and I was content to wait until the timewas right. I don’t know if I really feltdifferent this time around or if I was just mentally done. It was so different being pregnant whilechasing around a toddler and I had more aches and pains than last time due tothe toddler thing and the fact that this was my second pregnancy. Either way I was ready for her to come andreally didn’t think she’d decide to arrive late. It was also relieving that my midwives werevery supportive of me waiting for as long as it took until my baby came, unlesssomething indicated that she wasn’t faring well - one less thing to stress about.

On the 15^th ofDecember I started to feel some vague contractions around 11:30am but wasn’treally sure that this was “it”. Again, Iwas terrified that this would turn into the 72-hour marathon that I experiencedwith Remi and I was very uncertain about what a normal labor felt like. These contractions were similar to some ofthe Braxton hicks that I had had for the previous 2 months, which added to myuncertainty. I called Shawn at work around1pm and told him that maybe perhaps it was possible I was starting labor. I can’t remember his response but it wassomething along the lines of “you’re not in labor, you’re not going to have thebaby until at least next week”. He wasexpecting me to be late, again, and since the next day (the 16^th)was my due date he really didn’t believe that our little girl could come ontime. I called him again around 4pm andtold him that I was a little more sure that this might be it, maybe a 50%certainty. His response was about thesame. At that point I decided to call mymom, just to let her know the possibility. The plan was for her to jump on a plane once I decided that I was inlabor. With another sister due at thesame time I was (who delivered a baby girl on the 12^th) and with allthe Christmas stuff happening, we decided that she’d be on “call” in case Ihappened to be 2 weeks late, like last time. I called my mom and told her and she looked at the plane tickets butdidn’t get one quite yet because I was still unsure. I finally decided that I was pretty sure thatthis was really it at around 7 or 8 that night (with a 10% uncertainty). My contractions were starting to regulate(yay!) and they were getting more intense. My mom got her ticket to fly out the next morning and I was hoping thatthings would continue to go slowly because Paula, the neighbor who was to watchRemi, was at her husband’s retirement party that night. Of all the nights that I could have gone intolabor, it happened on the one night that she was busy. I did have a nearby backup, but she was pregnantwith two kids of her own and I knew it might be really hard for her. Shawn and Remi went to bed, I stayed uptiming the contractions and trying to “sleep”. I’ve known of people that can sleep through this stage, but really?! How do they manage that?! Laying down on the couch was torture throughthe contractions, but I pretended to get some rest.

Around 2am my contractions hadbeen shortening to about 7 minutes apart so I called my midwife. Since I was Strep B positive, they wanted toget me in early enough for me to have time to get 2 doses of antibiotics, inorder to protect the baby when she was born. My midwife told me that even though it might still be awhile it wasbetter not to take chances, so she told me to head for the hospital. I called Paula and when she got here Shawnwas outside for a while stocking the wood bin in the front of the house. And then he came inside and leisurely packeda bag. Haha! It was probably 30-45 minutes after she got here until we leftthe house. I really think he thoughtit’d be another day or so until our baby came. Every time I’d have a contraction Paula would say “don’t you think youneed to go?” She was pretty concernedbut I was buoyant because my body was working as it was supposed to, I wasgoing to see my daughter for the first time and I was quickly on my way tobecoming unpregnant (yay!). When we gotto the hospital, the nurses asked us what had taken so long to get there and Itold them, laughingly, why it took so long.

Upon arrival to the hospital, Iwas dilated to a 6 and 90% effaced. Sincethey didn’t send us home I think Shawn was finally convinced that our littlegirl was coming. My midwife, Lauren, gotthere a little after we did and just sat, drank her coffee and chatted away tome and Shawn. After a while I triedtaking a bath to see if that would help me focus. It did not at all, but it kept me warm. I only stayed in there for 20 minutes or so and decided that sitting inthe bed was the most comfortable position for me. At 7am, my midwives changed shifts (there arethree and they all rotate through the on-call status) and Tonia came in. Yay! She’s very mellow and maternal and my favorite out of the three. I was hoping that she’d be the one to help mewith the labor process. She checked mepretty close to when she got there and I was dilated to an 8 and 90%effaced. Great! I continued to handle to contractions,breathing through them. Tonia would stayin the room for a bit and then leave me and Shawn because quiet is what Ineeded most. If I ever needed her she’dbe there in a heartbeat but it was nice to have quiet so I couldconcentrate. After about four hours Iasked her to check me again, my hopes high that I was almost there. She did and I had made no progress. Ugh! Shesuggested that since I had not progressed that maybe we should break mywater. As soon as she mentioned that Iburst into tears. I remember that duringRemi’s birth, when my water broke is when the real pain began. I never wanted to experience that again andhere Tonia was, asking me to bring this on myself willingly. It’s one thing if it just naturally happened,but quite another if I made the decision to bring that on. I sobbed and told Tonia this and she remindedme that I had now been in the “transition” status for about 4 hours and thisphase is the painful phase and I was handling it like a pro. All I wasdoing was wearing myself out. Sheencouraged me to think about it and to take a walk to see if we could getthings progressing. Shawn and I took onelap around the floor and then back in the bed I went. I really was able to concentrate on thecontractions the best when I was sitting in that bed. When Tonia came in I told her to go ahead andbreak my water. So she did. I cried before and while she was doing it. After that there was not a huge change in thepain – yay! The space between thecontractions just shortened to about every two minutes and I was able to handleit because I had quiet and was able to concentrate. I remember getting mad at Shawn and almostthrowing him out of the room because he kept moving and making noise. He was bouncing his leg as I was holding hishand and then he’d get up and walk around the room with his jacket swish-swishing. That was almost more than I could take. So he came and sat quietly, holding myhand. Not too long after that I calledTonia in and told Shawn to get me a throw-up bag and I started to empty mystomach out. When Tonia came in I wascrying and told her I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t handle it. I wanted tobe done. She checked me again and I wasat a 9 (almost 10) and 100% effaced. Shehad me push while she held back the “lip” that wasn’t quite dilated enough. I pushed past it and decided that I wanted tohave that baby to make the contractions stop. I pushed for maybe 20 minutes and had forgotten that this is the mostpainful part of the birthing experience. I had only remembered that the transition period was horrid beyondbelief during Remi’s birth. How had Iforgotten the pushing phase??? Ithurts!!!!! I yelled at Tonia severaltimes to push the baby back in because it hurt too much. And then I just wanted it to be over andfinally put everything I had into it, holding nothing back. I touched her head as it crowned and thencaught my baby as she was born. 11:54amon 16 December 2011. I was the first oneto hold her and cuddle her. Shawn cutthe cord after I had held her for a while and then I nursed her. During this time I kept bleeding so I wasgiven some shots of something and put on pitocin. Then they mashed on my stomach (horrid,horrid pain) to get the blood clots out, which they had to do several timesover the next two hours because of bleeding. I’m pretty sure I hit my midwife and nurse pretty hard on the arms asthey were doing this, yelling like a crazy woman. Pain does make you a bit crazy. Anyway, I got to cuddle with and nurse mybaby for about an hour before they weighed her – 8lbs 4oz, 20 ¾ inches. Soooo nice to be able to initially bond with my littlegirl for that long. And then I got tocuddle with her some more.

This birth experience was sodifferent from my last one and I’m grateful for that. With Remi, his birth was traumatic and Ididn’t really feel any attachment for him for a few days and had a longrecovery. With this girl, I felt thatmaternal attachment to her as soon as I had touched her head. I believe that difference was due to thedifferent experiences I had during their births. I’m grateful that my body did what it wassupposed to – it’s a pro now! I’m gratefulfor my wonderful midwife who was able to coach me when I needed it. I’m grateful for a husband who supported me andwas quiet (swish-swish) when I neededit most - ha! Most of all, I’m extremelygrateful for a beautiful, healthy daughter.

After much thought (11 daysafter her birth), we named her Adeleine Inez Robson. Her middle name (pronounced I-nis) is named after herGreat-great-grandmother, Inez Willoughby (Patch) – my father’s mother’smother.

Here's a final picture of Adeleine taking her hearing test. It cracks me up!

thankful challenge, day 15...

2011-11-22T07:11:00.001-09:00

today i am thankful...

1. that shawn gave me "permission" to not preserve food anymore. i've been preserving food since august and i'm soooo tired of it! we had an abundance of produce from our garden and i've been able to scavenge up some more free goods. i thought i was almost done with processing it all but, unfortunately, our laundry room isn't quite cold enough and so all the apples that i had carefully separated and boxed to eat throughout the winter have now gone soft and something needs to be done with them. also, my last batch of tomatoes are ready to be processed and i've got a lot of squash and pumpkins in the laundry room that will *hopefully* keep until we eat it all. i really would just like to kick back and enjoy my last month of having just one child. argh! last night i was trying to figure out what to do with it all and when to do it. shawn spoke up and said that the apples would have gone to the deer if we hadn't picked them all, so we could put them outside for the deer. i decided that today i'm going to process food like crazy and everything that i don't get done we'll either compost or feed the deer with. i was feeling quite overwhelmed with it all and it was nice to have "permission" to let some of it go.
the pictures below are the tomatoes that came from my garden. the ones on the counter i turned into salsa, 2/3's of the ones in the pantry i turned into crushed tomatoes and the final 1/3 is finally ripe and i think i'm just going to make them into tomato sauce, as that's the easiest.

some of the things that i've processed and preserved this fall are: basil, spinach, zucchini, tomatoes, beets, cherries, apples, peaches, pumpkins, squash, chillies, fennel...

2. that i'm now seeing my midwifes every week. that means i'm 37 weeks along. only 3 more to go!!! yay!!!!!

thankful challenge, day 14...

2011-11-21T08:58:00.001-09:00

today i am thankful...

1. that i finally got to take a bath in our tub. yay! last night after remi and shawn went to bed i decided that i should probably test the tub out. it was wonderful! i started out reading a book but then just decided to enjoy being in the warm water and i fell asleep. mmmm!!! i love that warm peaceful bliss of napping in a tub. it's been too long!

2. when the primary kids get excited about my singing time lessons. at church i'm the music leader for the kids (ages 4-11) in our congregation. i quickly learned that it's a bit of a gamble whether the kids will get excited about the lesson. some things that i've thought would be incredibly fun bomb big time. other things that i thought would be boring turn out to be wonderfully fun. and just because i've put a lot of time into preparing some sort of game doesn't mean anything - it could end up being lame or fun. who knows! with me having a hard time figuring out what will work and what won't, i get really excited when something turns out and the kids really participate and sing heartily. i'm getting better at it, but it doesn't happen every week. someday...!

3. for the internet. we live out in the country and live in a bit of a neighborhood (7 houses) but we are by far the youngest family. there's one other family that has kids, but they're late elementary school age. we're also quite a bit younger in age from the rest of the adults (most are my parents age or older) and i'm the only one who's home during the day. good thing i have so many projects lined up because it can get lonely out here. it'd be really nice to have a friend nearby, but i suppose that's the price i have to pay for the great place we live. the internet is one way that i still feel connected to the world. that's how i get a bit of "social" time in every day and i need it! i can stay connected to friends and family and find out what's going on in the world. i can download audio books from the library, i can pay my bills, i can listen to music, i can share bits and pieces of my life with others (thank you, blogger!), i can look up reference on the many questions that bounce around in my head, i can watch how-to videos to help me with our many projects... the internet is wonderful! it's hard to imagine life before it existed. on a side note, there are also many not-great things that have progressed because of the internet that i'm not thankful for, but for the things that i use it for, it's great!

thankful challenge, day 13...

2011-11-19T08:21:00.001-09:00

today i am thankful for...

1. my life. two nights ago i was laying in bed thinking about all the things that i'm really thankful for and with my due date coming right up (december 16th) i've been thinking a lot about the last time i gave birth. remi is the center of my life now and i wonder what life would be like if things had turned out differently during his birth. i was in labor for 3 days before he was born and because of that trauma my body crashed majorly after the birth. i was convulsing and white lipped. my blood pressure dropped to 27/30. my mom said an army of nurses rushed in when she ran for help and got me back. if i hadn't had modern medicine available and wasn't in the hospital, would i have died? i really think that might have. i'm doubtful that my body could've recovered on it's own. so yes, i am grateful for my life. i'm grateful for the chance that i have to be a mother to my darling little boy whom i love so much. i'm grateful for all the little things that i get to teach him and being able to see his eyes light up when he understands. i'm grateful for my little kitchen helper that loves to push the blender button for me and loves to watch the mixer as it turns things around and around and around. i'm grateful for being able to teach him my love for the world. i'm grateful for being able to snuggle with him, to make him laugh, to just be with him. so yes, i'm thankful for my life and the time i've been given to be a mother.

thankful challenge, day 12...

2011-11-17T16:04:00.001-09:00

today i am thankful for...

1. our bathtub. since we moved into our house (sept 2010) i have only used the bathtub once and it leaked. i was luxuriating in the deep, extra long claw foot tub and heard a drip, drip drip. i quickly exited the tub and let the water out to find out there were two leaks. sooo sad! when we started redoing our bathroom this summer we moved the tub outside. it's been sitting out there since. i did have remi take one bath in it while it was in the yard. i was thinking that i could get some great pictures of him taking a bath outside but i forgot to take into account that i probably shouldn't be more than an arm's length away from the tub and not hiding behind a camera since remi was slipping and slidding all over the place. two weeks ago, i had shawn bring the tub inside and i got it all hooked up yesterday. sooo exciting! i did end up over-tightening a piece that snapped off (drat!) but mcgyvered a temporary solution until i can get that taken care of. remi took a bath last night and it was awesome! i can't wait for my turn! :)

2. chapstick. yes, i am one of the many that are addicted. in fact, just thinking about it makes my lip scream out for some moisturizer. (and i really looooove burt's bees brand - the best!)

thankful challenge, day 11...

2011-11-16T20:45:00.001-09:00

*if you really don't want to read about poopy diapers, skip this post. :)

today i am thankful...

1. for the versatility of a jacket. remi has had diarrhea since yesterday - not fun! i kind of forgot about it this morning and didn't think to bring an extra change of clothes with us this morning as we left the house. he was fine for the morning, then lunch came around. we ate in the car in the home depot parking lot and as i unbuckled remi to bring him to the front seat his pants were soaked and reeked. ugh! i can't believe i had forgotten! unfortunately, i had dressed him in a onsie and overalls, both of which were... ahem... unsalvageable without a clothes washer. he was wearing a sweater, so i changed him and we ate our lunch with him in a diaper and sweater. while he was eating he decided to finish the business that he had started earlier and i was extremely grateful that he was standing up so that it didn't get all over the front passenger seat. i changed him one more time and had pretty much given up hope of going into the store and getting some things we needed to work on the bathroom tonight. i then came up with a brilliant plant of putting on his jacket, pants style. so yeah, he had the little hood dragging on the ground underneath him, but it worked! he was contained enough that i felt semi-safe running inside to grab a few quick things. and since it was cold outside, i felt that he was sufficiently dressed for a mad dash through the parking lot and avoided any accusatory looks.

2. for cloth daipers. continuing the same story as above, we got home and i decided that i was sick of the nasty blow-outs so i stuck remi in cloth diapers. we stopped using his cloth diapers in march, when i became too sick from morning sickness to actually deal with poopy diapers and i've been too lazy to return to them since. i also really thought that he had outgrown the covers that we had. good news - they still fit him! this evening, remi did not have one blow-out. his diarrhea was completely contained! yay!!!! maybe this'll be the motivation i needed to get him back into regular use of the cloth. and since our new baby girl will be in cloth diapers, it won't be that much more work to have them both in them.

thankful challenge, day 11...

2011-11-16T07:15:00.001-09:00

(to make up for yesterday)

today i am thankful for...

1. nap time. i know, i know, i already did this one on monday, but it's sooo true! i am grateful for nap time. remi took a nap for nearly 3 hours yesterday! i'm pretty sure he was just making up for lost sleep but just imagine the possibilities if this became a habit. :)

thankful challenge, day 10...

2011-11-14T17:17:00.001-09:00

today i am thankful...

1. for nap time! remi didn't really sleep great last night. combine that with my hormonal issues right now (pregnancy) and i think i only got 3 hours of sleep. i'm exhausted! remi's been cranky most of the day and i tried several times to get him to take a nap. i figure it'll probably take a week or two to get him back into the swing of things after being gone for so long. while i was working on organizing the pantry, i had put remi in his high chair to eat a snack and i looked over and he had fallen asleep. yahoo! i immediately ran over to the couch, threw a blanket over myself and slept 20 minutes until remi woke up. i sooo needed that nap! :)

2. for being able to spend time with my baby. he's been cranky most of the day but we did have some great moments. my favorite was smelling all the spices i use to cook with. everytime i open the spice cupboard remi gets really excited to smell what i'm going to use. he starts energetically sniffing while pointing over and over to the cupboard in a hint to get those spices out for him to smell. i love our game! today we smelled cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, garlic and vanilla. we made almond milk, dinner in a pumpkin and pumpkin pie.

3. for christmas music. ahhh, the wonderful sounds of christmas! i have to admit that i really don't go for all the new christmas songs that pop stars are constantly producing. they just don't really have the right feel to them. the classics are what i absolutely love and i listened to them today all day long. i used to start listening to christmas music in september but quickly realized that i got burnt out before christmas ever rolled around. this year i waited until this week to start listening and i am so charged up and excited about it. they immediately bring a christmas feeling to my house. i love it!

thankful challenge, day 9...

2011-11-13T19:12:00.001-09:00

today i am thankful...

1. that shawn and remi arrived home safely! after i drove in the slush last night i was quite worried about shawn driving home with rain/snow forecast almost the entire way. shawn said that the roads were fine and they both got home safely and before i had even gotten home from church. yay!!

2. for my little baby remi. he's not really a baby anymore but i'm sure he'll always be my baby. it took him a little while to warm up to me after being away for 9 days, but he did warm up and i was so happy and content to snuggle with him a bit tonight. it was a great and wonderful break while he was gone, but i was definitely ready for him to come home. i missed him soooooooo much! he's so beautiful!!!!!! if possible, he's even more beautiful than when i saw him last.

thankful challenge, day 8...

2011-11-12T18:40:00.001-09:00

today i am thankful...

1. for the snow! beautiful white fluffiness has finallyarrived! i am thankful that i live in a place that has fourseasons. i don't know if i could handle every day being almost the exactsame. i think i'd most likely go nuts. i need change and it seemsthat whenever i'm getting tired of the season, it changes. with thearrival of snow comes smiles, laughter, great holidays, the feeling of"cozy" becomes more of a reality rather than a memory, sledding, rejuvenation... ahhh! i love it!

2. that sandbags really do make a difference when put in the back of atruck. i went down to town this evening to get a better dog house forozzie and i kept sliding. when i turned onto the main road i realizedthat i actually had much better control than a lot of other people on theroad. even though i was doing good, i stopped at the local hardware storeand got a bunch of sandbags for the truck. the drive home wasamazing! i didn't slide once and i felt so much more confident and secureon the road.

3. for the opportunity to serve. i hate driving past cars thatare stuck. if they're on flat ground, i'll stop and help, but if i'm onthe way up a hill, i won't stop or i won't make it either and there will be twoof us in the same situation. on the drive home this evening i drove pasta van that had it's lights flashing and was turned on an uphill. i feltsoooo guilty driving past them when i could see that they were stuck but irealized that there wasn't really too much i could do. unless they hadchains, they were not going anywhere. that valley is steep going in andsteep going out. as i got to the top of the hill i saw a man running onthe side of the road. i figured that the angle of the road had lessenedenough that i could offer him help. i was able to give him a ride to hishouse, about a mile away, and i learned that he had two daughters (5 and 9) that were still in thevan, scared to death. he figured he could run a lot faster by himself sohe left them there to run home and get what he needed. i would have beenterrified if i was 5! i didn't do much except drop him off at his house,but i'm grateful that i got to help his two daughters be rescued that muchquicker.

on a side note, while i was at the store checking out i got a few thingsthat we needed for our winter car kits and a plug for the block heater in thecar. while i was checking out the cashier said "it looks like you'reready for a power outage." i guess that's because of theflashlights, blanket, tow straps (??)... she motioned to the extensioncord. i told her that was for plugging the car in. she was veryconfused and had no idea what i meant. i explained to her about howextreme cold makes them hard to start in the winter, so sometimes you have to warmup the engine with the installed block heater to get it to start. shewondered if i drove an antique or something. haha! life is going tobe rough when she doesn't have a cozy garage to keep her car warm forher. and then when she saw the dog house, she said that "it looks like someoneis getting booted out to the garage." i told her that no, the dogwas an outside dog and slept outside. she looked at me really oddly atthat point. that reaction is something that i regularly encounter when isay that ozzie is an outside dog. i really didn't think it was that rareof a thing, but i guess it is.

thankful challenge, day 7...

2011-11-11T15:08:00.001-09:00

today i am thankful...

1. for all the veteran's in my life and all they have done to serve our country. first and foremost is my husband, Shawn. he's served in the U.S. Air Force since 2005. then my father, Eldon DeKay, who served in the U.S. Army for 17 years. and both grandfathers, Gene Robert Larson and Robert Eugene DeKay, who served in the Korean War. thank you all for serving our country!
below are a couple pictures of Shawn in the spring of 2010.

2. for gardening! this is something that people don't really think of in the pre-winter stages but today i have planted my garlic for next year. yay! i thought that i had missed the boat with this one and was a bit sad that i had waited too late. i researched on the internet a little and read that garlic was traditionally planted on the shortest day of the year in europe. i decided that i might as well plant today and see what happens. granted, the ground was frozen and i had to use a garden fork to dig and chop up the frozen dirt, but i did it! i'll, hopefully, have garlic next year! i've had a blast growing so much of our own food this year. all those little plants that i started in the windowsill in march did wonderfully and yielded more food than i had thought i would get. there were some that didn't do as well as i had hoped, but i'm still learning and i hope to make this next year more fruitful.

3. for the fresh autumn air. i know i've already written about this one on a previous post but it's something that i'm regularly grateful for. i was not extremely motivated today and didn't feel all that great. (i think all this sleeping in is getting to me, but never fear for shawn and remi will be back at home on sunday and i'll have my regular remi alarm clock to wake me up in the morning). i slowly worked this morning and by afternoon, i had to lay down for a bit. trying to get my body moving, i then decided that i really needed to get that garlic planted. i put on my coat and, complaining in my head, walked out into the cold. it was all i needed to wake up to the day! it was so invigorating to be outside, enough that i didn't want to come back inside. i worked a bit more outside, played with the dog, took a walk, and brought several loads of wood inside. that cool, refreshing air does wonders!

thankful challenge, day 6...

2011-11-10T09:20:00.000-09:00

today i am thankful...

1. that my husband has a job that enables me to stay home with my baby (soon to be plural). while growing up i took for granted that my mom was home, taking care of us instead of at work, taking care of other people. she was always able to help out with whatever project we were working on, she went on all our field trips, if we were sick and had to stay home it didn't throw the world into chaos... i now get to be the person that gets to be at home, constantly teaching remi and my future children, all day, every day. i would not be able to do this without the support from shawn. i'm grateful that he has a steady job, that we are debt free (except for the house), and that he earns enough that we can manage on a single income at this time in our lives. thank you, shawn, for being supportive of me being at home and for realizing that it's not always a picnic. sometimes having a job would be easier and i'd get a lot more adult time and mental stimulation, but for now, i feel that this is more important and i'm glad that our circumstances have allowed it to happen.

2. for my toothbrush. as i sit here this morning, typing away, it's taking all my self control to not run to the bathroom and start brushing away. i haven't yet brushed my teeth this morning and the nasty taste in my mouth is killing me! i love that clean, plaque-free feeling that comes from brushing my teeth. speaking of which, i'm going to cut this short and go brush away. oh, thank you, toothbrush!

thankful challenge, day 5...

2011-11-09T08:19:00.001-09:00

today i am thankful for...

1. the library. i love, love, love books. while growing up, my parents always took the time to read to us and to make sure there were lots of books around. all of us grown-up kids now have a great appreciation and addiction to books. i want to make sure my kids catch the book bug, as well. i read to remi several times a day. every time i sit on the couch he runs and grabs a book for me to read to him, then another, and another, and another... now that he's finally old enough we go to the library once a week for story time and check out books for him. that's also my opportunity to check out a new book for me every week. i love it! i used to spend lots and lots of money on books but have since realized that i don't want to keep and reread every book i've ever bought. thank you, library! three cheers for the public library system!! hip, hip, hooray!

2. for the birth of my new nephew, christian michael deKay. jonathon's wife, lauren, delivered a healthy baby boy yesterday morning. lauren was a champ during the whole experience, no complications, and they now have a happy boy to welcome into their family. welcome to the world, christian!

thankful challenge, day 4...

2011-11-08T10:48:00.002-09:00

today i am thankful for:

1. food. i absolutely looooove food! i love eating it, thinking about it, dreaming about it... i'm pretty much addicted. i love the taste, the texture, the melding of flavors, the colors... i am grateful for the wonderful sandwich i had last night for dinner. yummmm!!!

2. my wood stove. i love being warm and it's great that i can have the temperature in my house be cozy and comfortable rather than frigid. that means that i don't have to wear wool socks, thick pants and a jacket inside like i've had to do in our previous homes. in addition, the warm glow from the fire always adds to the mood in the room. last week shawn started the fire before he went to work at 6 a.m. remi happened to wake up at that time, so when we came into the living room it was just like christmas. the room was quiet and dark but permeated with the warm orange glow from the stove.

halloween...

2011-11-07T09:44:00.001-09:00

trick or treat! i was sooo excited for halloween to come around because remi's now old enough that we could really go trick or treating. since it's not really okay for a 30 year old to go by herself for the fun of it all, it was nice to have remi along as my little decoy - and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly!

remi was a cute, cuddly lion. i got him to say "rarrrr!" when we were at home getting ready, but when he was in the moment all that went out the window. so rather than a ferocious lion, he was cute and cuddly. which, honestly, is how i prefer it.

shawn dressed up on friday for his work party as a green monster but didn't want to paint his face again. that stuff can be pretty thick and uncomfortable. he was toying with not dressing up at all, but it's halloween! you only get to do this once a year! so i came up with this dall sheep costume - complete with paper towel rolls for the horns, remi's white onsie for the hat, and a sheep fur that we got in poland. tadahhh! looks great, doesn't it?!!

i had a really hard time coming up with something for me so i was just going to go as a vampire, since i have fantastic vampire teeth that an orthodontic lab tech made for me several years ago. i started getting ready (check out my face) and then realized that none of my vampire clothes fit. pregnancy was not really cooperating! instead, i decided for my belly to go as a pumpkin and thus i became a vampire pumpkin! for anyone who's in my shoes next year (meaning very pregnant) go as wilson, the volleyball and your spouse as tom hanks from cast away. i stole the idea from a book but wasn't able to use it.

we went trick or treating with some friends - 4 families total. it was great! we were out there for quite a while and remi walked almost the whole time, i was so impressed. he was pretty excited to be given all these random things and put them in his bag and was as happy as a clam ...until... shawn decided to share a tootsie roll with remi and then remi realized what all those random things were that he was getting. sugar! oh, yummy!!! after that remi was very possessive about anything that was given to him and would throw a small fit after every house we went to. he didn't walk much after that. ignorance is bliss... at least for the parents! haha!

we even got to trick or treat to a cop car!

the stash! again, good thing remi doesn't quite realize and remember that all that candy is his, because i polished it off for him. i felt like a little kid again - you come home, sort your candy, hide the candy (more so that remi isn't throwing a fit because he wants some), eat the candy, feel sick. yep, i did all that. i never let myself buy candy except during halloween, christmas and easter so i became an uncontrollable garbage disposal. ugh! and don't worry, i did share - remi loved the m&ms and skittles (he made quite a mess while eating them - a testimonial to their goodness).

thankful challenge, day 3...

2011-11-07T07:58:00.002-09:00

today i am thankful for...

1. for cold, crisp air in the morning - soooo invigorating! i love being warm but i also love the changes in seasons and am ready for winter to be here. no snow yet, although i'm okay with that - just the presence of snow outside lowers the visual temperature by 20 degrees. every morning i definitely don't want to go outside to get wood for the wood stove and i put it off as long as possible, but as soon as i do i absolutely love it! it wakes me up and jump starts my mind and body. (it also makes me appreciate a warm house even more!)

2. social time. being home with a toddler all day (and this week it's just me) makes me yearn to have adult conversation. on typical days, shawn comes home from work and he doesn't want to talk because he's had to do that all day. our needs are the exact opposite and it's a bit of a struggle for me. whenever i get a chance to really talk i'm in heaven and it seems like a lot of built-up stress just melts away. sooo therapeutic!

thankful challenge, day 2...

2011-11-06T08:42:00.002-09:00

today i am thankful...

1. that my baby boy loves to talk on the phone. it's a bit hard being away from my baby but i am rather enjoying myself. one thing that is making it easier is that he called several times yesterday and just jabbered away on the phone. i don't know if he gets so excited because it's me or because it's he just likes phones but i like to think that it's the former.

2. for feeling good. lately i have been horrible about eating dairy. when i do, i feel miserable, bloated, tons of abdominal gas pressure which pushes out my ribs and hurts. it's not fun at all. shawn commented to me the other day that i really am not doing a good job in my avoidance of dairy. yeah, yeah, i know, i know... i do great when i'm at home and have control over what's in my kitchen and pantry - i'm good at restricting myself at the store. i don't have great self control when things are put in front of me. monday was halloween and remi got lots of chocolate, fruitie tootsie rolls, caramel popcorn, etc... good thing he doesn't realize that that candy was his because i've eaten it all and have paid the price by feeling miserable. yuck! and then i got a slice of chocolate cream pie and, rather than throw it away, i brought it home for shawn. he didn't eat it and didn't eat it and didn't eat it... so i had to! it was screaming my name! remi and i shared it and it was good. and then i felt miserable again. you'd think i'd learn. the good news is i've eaten everything that shouldn't be in my home and don't have to worry anymore. i now feel good. no pressure, no bloating, no sick-to-my-stomach. just good.

thanksgiving challenge...

2011-11-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

i know it's a bit late but i decided that i wanted to participate in the november 30-day thankful challenge that many of my friends are participating in on facebook. after reading what everyone was thankful for everyday i thought to myself that i want to be thankful, too, so i'm jumping on the band wagon - and what a perfect way to celebrate the thankgiving holiday and perhaps put things a bit more in perspective.
i've just finished reading The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, "One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bilble as Literally as Possible." this is a great and funny book about A.J., an agnostic, who decided to live the bible. after A.J.'s experimental year and the transition back to "normal" life, he said that "I'll keep on saying prayers of thanksgiving. I'm not sure whom I'm thanking, but I've become addicted to the act of thanking..." so here goes!

1. i'm thankful for being able to sleep in 'til 8:30!!! shawn and remi took off last night to idaho for a week and left me at home to work on projects (i really don't want to drive in a car that long - this pregnancy thing isn't all that comfortable). remi was waking up at 7:30, but has now transitioned to a 6 or 6:30 waking time. i'm not a great morning person so it has been difficult to drag myself out of bed every morning and be ready to be a happy, energetic, involved parent. i've usually been the one who gets up, doesn't look at anyone, doesn't talk, moves slowly... and if you do try and talk with me you'll only get either a mumble or a short one-word answer. it takes me about an hour or so to really wake up. but this morning - awesome!!! i woke up energetic, excited and motivated to get things done today (which is good because i've got to change a tire on my car and tile a shower).

2. i'm grateful for parents who have always been very encouraging to learn new things and to think outside of the box. a year ago we bought our home that is full of never-ending projects and even though i've never done much of this before, i know that i can do it because i can do anything! i know, that sounds like i have a very high opinion of myself, but that's not it. anyone can learn how to do anything as long as they have attention to detail, they know how to ask the right questions, and are willing to put in the time and research to make sure it gets done correctly. all i need is a library, youtube videos, or the advice of parents who have done a lot.

3. last night i pressure canned salsa for the first time and all my jars sealed. yay! we've had an overabundance of tomatoes from our garden and i'm so glad to have a chance to make delicious things with them and to have them work out.

apple picking...

2011-10-25T15:04:00.001-08:00

apple season is upon us... and almost past us. i've been picking several times and am super duper glad that i don't have to go again. my lower back is killing me and it's been hard to watch remi and work at the same time, not to mention being very pregnant.

there's a place just outside of Spokane called Green Bluff where there is a large community of u-pick farms. we went up there one weekend (our first apple picking foray) during their apple festival. we stopped at one of the bigger guys (more money on advertising, kid rides, gift shop, etc) and endured the crowds for some peaches, as they were the only place that still had them, and tasted some yummy treats from their cafe (pumpkin donuts!). we then went to one of the smaller guys who charge much less and picked some apples.

it was so nice having shawn there, so that i wasn't the only one trying to keep remi in line. he has developed a habit that he must have learned from the deer - to take one bite out of every apple he sees and also to throw all the apples from the boxes on the ground. maybe next year he'll be more helpful???

here's a bunch of pictures from that initial apple picking trip - enjoy!

shawn picking the apples:

remi "sorting" the apples:

shawn trying to keep remi from "sorting" on to the ground:

trying to help pick the apples, but alas, they were a little too high for him to reach:

riding the wagon:

remi and shawn enjoying a snack:

back to the car we go!:

deKay family cabin...

2011-09-07T22:35:00.000-08:00

last week i got to go to my parents cabin/shack/shed with several members of my family. the cabin itself used to be a small greenhouse that never quite got finished at my parents' old house. when they got the property in talkeetna, alaska, they took apart the greenhouse, brought it out to the property, assembled the frame and threw up some plywood - viola! a cabin! i know this isn't the greatest picture of it, but it shows the uniqueness of the shape - a hexagon that's up on stilts. while we were there we replaced one of the stilts since it was starting to rot. here's a picture of the guys levering the cabin up enough to squeeze the new stilt into place. later there's a picture of me peeling the bark off a tree which became the new leg of the cabin.

a little side note, to get to the cabin it's a 10-mile four-wheeler drive through in-the-middle-of-nowhere forest. the trail is predominately covered in water/mud that can get quite deep. it usually takes 2 hours to drive the trail but i remember several years ago when it took us 6 hours. this time it took us 4 hours to get to the cabin. some of the machines got stuck in the mud several times, one of the machines oil line came out of the clamp (oil everywhere), and the small trailer kept popping off the hitch. it's an adventure and no matter what happens on the way out, i always love every minute of it. so when you look at this cabin, realize that everything that is out there had to be brought in by four-wheeler or snow machine. i remember bringing in the plywood for the walls of the cabin. those are quite large pieces for a small four-wheeler trail. we had them strapped onto a small flatbed trailer and at one point the whole thing flipped right over. it was a bit of work to get the whole mess flipped back over and to the cabin site without any other major mishaps. because of the difficulty of bringing things out there, my dad uses a lot of the trees as building materials, especially when they're leaning - the beginning of the falling down process. he's got a log arch to drag the trees with and a chainsaw mill to cut the large logs into flatter boards/beams. it's quite the process and doing this through the years has really made me appreciate how difficult it was to settle a new land (and we've got the chainsaws, four-wheelers and modern tools to make it even easier!).
okay, so am i boring anyone to tears? i'll get onto our real trip instead of just rambling...
as i stated in a previous post, the colors out there were just "popping". it was fantastically beautiful! here's shawn and remi walking down the trail on one of our little walks. i love this picture! the leaves are just starting to turn and fall - especially in the past two days. when fall comes up here, you better enjoy it because it only lasts a couple of weeks. remi did incredible out there. i was a bit worried that he'd have a hard time navigating over all the sticks, roots and uneven ground but he did great!

here's some of the other crew that came on the walk to the creek. from left to right, cayden, catheryn (you can't see her head), martina (the townsend's czeck exchange student), cassidy and curtis townsend. this bridge used to be much more narrow and creepy. this bridge is paradise!

here's my mom with her "feathers". her hat/glasses combo made her hair stick out just perfectly to resemble feathers or fishing flies.

and mom and cayden, the fire bugs, faithfully keeping the fire going.

here's me! i'm peeling the bark off of a birch tree. and i know i haven't really officially internet announced this, but i'm pregnant! i'm due december 16th so that makes me... ummmm... (okay, i had to look it up) 26 weeks along. i haven't really paid that much attention to counting every week this time around. i've been busy with my little boy and all the other projects that i have going on. i know my due date and that works for me.
so here i am peeling a log, pregnant, and a sleeping baby on my back. yeah - that's an alaskan woman for you! haha! and btw, i showed this picture to my dad the other day and he said "are you barefoot?" how rude!

during the ride out (and in for that matter) i didn't have my camera out because i really didn't want my camera ruined with mud and water. i keep it safe in a dry bag for the whole ride - otherwise i would've had pictures of the trail. we all dress in rain gear from top to bottom because you really do get mud soaked. i choose to wear hip waders under my rain overalls and some family member always seems to laugh at me when we're getting suited up. and then there's always someone that the water goes over their rain boots. i can then laugh back. :)
the following picture is of the townsends back in the parking lot at the end of our trip. most everyone had already taken off their muddy rain gear - i got my camera out too late to get good pictures of the muck.

and here's me, shawn and remi. we had remi ride in the six-wheeler in his car seat. mom said that he did great and even slept part of the way. the only part he didn't like was when a wave of water came over the top of the six-wheeler and covered his face. he didn't like that part at all. not one bit. and i'm ashamed to admit that i was the one driving the four-wheeler in front of them that caused the wave. what a great mother i am! :)

there be bears!!

2011-09-07T20:21:00.001-08:00

while at the cabin, me and some of the kids went on a walk to try and get remi to take a nap in the backpack. we were successful! but even more exciting than a successful nap time was that we got to see lots of bear tracks on the main four-wheeler trail. we found a few black bear prints...

and lots of brown bear prints...

so... how do you know the difference between black bear and brown bear tracks? black bear - smaller, absence of fingernails (claws?) in the print. brown bear - larger, can usually see some or all of the claw tips in the track. the brown bears are diggers and have larger and wider claws than the black bears. the tracks above are pretty clear and deep due to all the mud on the trail, especially the brown bear track. i found that beauty where a small trail took off from the main trail down a hill, which turned it into a drainage. that means that lots of water runs and sits on that trail = soft mud just waiting to record a foodprint. look at how clear those claws came out!
my niece, cassidy (age 7), recorded every time we saw a bear track. i can't remember how many she came up with, but there were lots - although they probably belonged to the same two bears.

mother nature's wardrobe...

2011-09-07T18:38:00.000-08:00

last week i got to go out to our family cabin in talkeetna, alaska. i'll post more pictures of the actual trip later, but for now i just wanted to share some photos of one of the reasons that i love, love, love alaska. everytime i go outside it's a feast for my eyes - the colors are vivid, popping with life. tomorrow i'm going to take a jaunt up to hatcher's pass, where the tundra is starting to turn red. the beginning of the fall is my favorite time of year up here with all the colors and smells - especially the high bush cranberries. i used to think that they stunk, but now all i smell is... fresh. mmmm!
this is devil's club, a literal pain of a plant. it's a plant that takes over the forest with huge leaves and thorny spines covering the stem and underside of the leaves. when hiking, never grab a devils's club! you'll be left with thorns in your hand, that will fester and hurt. the upside of this plant is that it's gorgeous. the 2nd photo below shows curtis, shawn, catheryn and cassidy in a clearing filled with devil's club - turning yellow with the fall. this plant also has medicinal benefits. it stabilizes blood sugar, body-balancing and system-strengthening qualities, cold and pain relief, skin irritations, scratches... and on and on and on. it's in the same family as oriental ginseng. anyhow, great but irritating plant.
look at those colors! the green is lush, the red berries contrast so well with the green, the yellow pops... *sigh*

here's two plants that contrast so well with each other - in color, shape and size. the plant on the left is a currant and the plant on the right is a wild rose. are your eyes feasting yet???

this last picture doesn't pop as much, but i still think it's eye candy of a different variety. fall leaves are very individual and unique and this little leaf flaunts that quality. and again, i love the contrast with the creek stones beneath. (btw, if this photo looks like it should be rotated 90* to the left, you're right. i'll have to figure out how to rotate it using blogger so i don't have to re-upload it)

also - do you like the background of my blog page? i love it! i took a bunch of photots last week of fireweed up on the side of mt baldy, overlooking meadow creek valley (aka my parents house). the fireweed leaves have just started to turn red within the past couple of days so i need to get out there and take some new ones!

2011-09-07T11:54:00.001-08:00

i just have to say that i love, love, love the new blogger interface. it's wonderful! it's so much more user-friendly than it used to be and i'm that much more encouraged to actually post.

alaska state fair...

2011-09-07T11:45:00.001-08:00

last week i got to go to the alaska state fair with my brother robert's family. it was great fun! it was a beautiful, sunny day and i thought for sure that it'd be crowded, but it wasn't too bad. it was crowded but not to the point that you can't walk without pushing your way through masses of people. and i didn't have to wait in line to get my traditional gyro! that was the biggest bonus! :)
here's a photo of me and remi in front of some of the vegetables. the vegetable weigh-off wasn't until a later day so not everything was there. right behind me was a huge pumpkin (i can't remember how much it weighed). the winner this year was a 1,287 lbs pumpkin, but could've been a 1,723 pounder that was disqualified because there was a hole at the bottom of the pumpkin. holy pumpkin!!!
here's the story: http://www.adn.com/2011/08/31/2042397/1723-pound-pumpkin-disqualified.html

i recently have gained an interest in growing a bonsai tree. a cousin's wife mentioned that she was going to grow one and just find one out in the woods to start her off. i was a bit startled and realized i had no idea how to grow a bonsai and that you could just find a tree in the yard to use, so i checked out a book from the library on bonsai's and realized that i can do it! at the state fair they had a whole room full of bonsai's and it really got me excited to start one. here's one of the many that were there:

fair food is horrible food but wonderful food! the vendors all charge an arm and a leg for simple foods but we're all so excited to have that once-a-year treat that we're gluttons for punishment. mmmmm!! again, my gyro was incredible, to die for, yummy-licious!! my two nieces, winnie and hannah, decided to get a turkey leg. i don't know if they're as popular at other fairs as they are up here, but there are vendors all over the place selling them. here's winnie possessively enjoying her turkey leg: (okay, okay, i did ask her to pose for the camera... :)

and hannah showing her stuff at the hoola hoops - 3 at one time - wowee! i didn't try it but i don't know that i could do more than one. it took me a loooong time to learn to keep just one up. being able to coordinate body movements has never been my strong suit. i can do lots of things with my hands - music, art, building... but i have always failed miserably at sports. way go hannah!

the beach, alaska style...

2011-08-31T10:19:00.003-08:00

monday was a beautiful day - blue sky, temps in the 60's or so, no wind. what could be more perfect? i went on a little walk with my sister and two of her kids to the north fork of eagle river. when i was here last year the mosquitos were horrendous and chased us out of there in no time. this time? none. i think i may have seen one or two but that's it. perfect!
here's a pic of all three kiddos playing in the water. remi was content throwing rocks in the water the whole time but the other two were having a ball wading in the river. we found this perfect little pool of water off the main river and it was perfect to play in. well, "perfect" if you don't stop to think that this is glacial water, glacial = big chunks of ice = frigid.
here's catheryn in action:
canyon loves the taste of dirt and kept tasting and tasting it. so funny! i love the smell of moist dirt and i'm sure when i was younger i loved the taste of it. she's very conscientious of her diet - making sure she gets plenty of minerals. ha!
and here's carolyn with canyon and catheryn:
my mom just walked by and asked "are these your pictures or carolyn's?" i know that i post a lot of pictures of everyone else but i absolutely love taking pictures and i'm almost always the one behind the camera. carolyn took the one of me and remi (thanks, carolyn!). i have lots of pictures of me while holding the camera out in front of me and i used to do a lot of timer pictures, but it's nice to be photographed when i don't have to operate the camera. my engagement pictures were on timer as well. yeah, that's talent for you!

green chilis...

2011-08-31T09:10:00.004-08:00

what have i been doing lately... since my last blog post was eons ago...???? i'm now in alaska!! yay!! i get so excited about coming home every year and this year i'm up here for three weeks. i wish it could be longer. right after me and remi got up here my mom's parents flew in with 200lbs of green chili for us to can. mmmm!!!! delicious!!! :) the process is basically roasting the chilis, peeling the chilis, washing them and then canning them. i took pics of the whole process and maybe i'll get around to posting those, just on the off chance that anyone else wants to do it - it's not very hard.
here's my grandpa playing with fire. i'll bet that's the main reason the guys get into the chili processing. pyros!
it's also a very social process. you get to sit around and talk, laugh, tell stories... i look forward to doing this everytime i happen to be up here when papa and granna come to town. and they might come to spokane next fall and we can do it there! yay! we'll trade cherries and peaches for chilis. below is jennifer (with joyce) and carolyn:
and here's carolyn, my dad, papa and martina (carolyn's czech exchange student):
here's cayden with his grinch tongue:
and thomas:

self feeding...

2011-02-28T10:08:00.003-09:00

remi is now very competent at feeding himself. and when i say "competent" i just mean that he can get food from point A to point B (his mouth) with accuracy. it doesn't mean that he's neat and clean at the end of it. last week we had spaghetti and after remi was done eating shawn said that maybe we should just keep feeding remi because he makes such a mess. i had three responses: (1) he'll never learn to eat if we're always feeding him, (2) that it was so nice to be able to eat a meal without having to take a break every 20 seconds to spoon more food into remi's mouth, and (3) where's the fun in that?! :)
and it's not too hard to clean him up - just throw him in the kitchen sink, grab some soap and scrub him down.

shopping...

2011-02-28T09:01:00.007-09:00

why is it that we love shopping so much? i've been thinking about this lately and wondering why we love spending money to get new things. and why is it that social status in middle and high schools can revolve around malls and on shopping at certain stores and owning specific name brand things? is it any surprise that we are in a time where being in debt is common and accepted as normal?
growing up with five siblings it was easy to get carried away as to who had more than another - especially at meal times. i don't know if we were typical in this but it became a competition at dinner to see who could end up with more food on their plate. at one point i remember my parents mandating that they had to dish up the plates because they were sick of all the whining and griping and fighting.
so is this drive to own more or better things than another an innate survival instinct? in nature, animals try to acquire resources for survival and guard them possessively. if they don't, it may well mean that they won't live very long. if it is innate, how can we defeat it? how can we teach our kids to overcome it?
i'm not saying that over-acquiring ("debt"or "hording") is a natural characteristic of every person, but is it a natural drive? and how do we change the next generation's outlook on it? on shopping? on owning new things? and how do we change our own?
on a side note, below is a picture of all the items that i scored for $16 at albertson's a few weeks ago. yeah, yeah - acquiring things can sometimes be exciting! :)

guilty pleasures...

2010-12-12T20:15:00.004-09:00

i am not a nap-taker. i definitely was back in my teenage years and i'm not sure when the transition happened, but it did. i now have the hardest time taking a nap if it's light outside because i feel as if i'm wasting valuable daylight to do something that is not important. i know there are lots of people that feel the opposite. naps can be a way for people to unwind, to take leave from the daily or weekly stresses, or to just luxuriate but i just really can't bring myself to do it. even right after remi was born i had the hardest time taking a nap even though my body was crying out for it. i was exhausted and needed to heal, but i would put up a good fight before submitting. when i do take a little nap i have some personal rules that came about somehow (no idea where). when i take a nap it can't be on a bed and i definitely can't get under the covers. that is for when i go to sleep at night and i know i'll sleep forever if i get under those covers plus i make the bed every morning and to mess it up more than once a day... *sigh*

so... i married a napper. shawn loves to take naps and he loves to climb into bed and burrow under the covers. it drives me nuts! every time i see him unmake the bed i have the hardest time not getting frustrated. i'm sure i sound obsessive (and maybe i am) but i am working on it. patience, patience...

today, when shawn went to take his sunday nap i started to think of my guilty pleasures that are so enjoyable to me but may just drive others crazy. i came up with one almost immediately - reading. i absolutely love devouring book after book. at any one time i'll be reading several books at once and when i happen upon one of those page-turners, i'm pretty much useless until i finish it. i'll sacrifice sleep, which is a big thing for me, and will stay up to all hours of the night to finish a good book. how it must drive others nuts watching me not able to function without my book. how i become so enveloped into that book that i'd rather live the characters' lives instead of live my own. yes, it's an addiction. i have to consciously space those page-turners out over time or else i'd probably forget to shower, eat, sleep... maybe not that bad, but you get the point.

question. what are some of your guilty pleasures?

*after shawn read this he said that the nap thing is maybe why i get stressed out so easily, maybe i should take a nap once in a while. hmmm... :)

when two dream worlds collide...

2010-12-10T09:08:00.007-09:00

dreams, dreams, dreams...

i know there's a lot of thought about what dreams mean and i really should read up on what the "experts" are saying. or you just could say i'm an expert because i experience them every night. ha ha! anyhow, so last night i dreamed that an indian man was beating his wife and i expressed my disagreement with the way he was treating her so he decided that i needed to be taught a lesson. i ran and hid to get away from him. then next i'm dreaming that i'm the wife that gets beaten. shawn got mad at me and wanted to fight me, so he did and i got beat to a pulp. the pain of the injuries didn't hurt much, but the emotional hurt was more than i could bear. after he left, i went into a room and cried and cried. i was heartbroken. so shawn heard me sobbing in my sleep and in his sleepy state, the only way he could think of to wake me up was to ask me over and over again "what time is it, becca? what time is it becca?" i was a little perturbed when i woke up that he wouldn't just check himself but now that i think of it, he was probably dreaming of something like sleeping in and missing work and so that was the only appropriate response he could think of. ha! it makes me laugh now! anyhow, i told shawn very sternly never to beat me again and he just chuckled. my dreams are very vivid. :)

question. what are some funny/curious ways that you've carried your dream world over to the waking world?

*my sister-in-law asked if this was a picture of me and i realize i should've posted that i google image searched for a picture for "dreams" and found this. it's from this website: http://thereisnoafterlife.info/
i just think posts are so much more attention grabbing if they have a picture. :)

2010-12-08T14:52:00.002-09:00

in my little neighborhood there are eight houses, two of which have kids (elementary age). there's also another family across the road that has an elementary kid. of the three young families, all of them have either a part-time stay-at-home dad or he works from home, so they're the ones to pick up the kids from the bus stop. obviously gender roles are being redefined in today's age but it seems in my neighborhood they've been completely switched. kinda weird. it makes meeting other mothers quite difficult.
anyhow, remi has now been on solids for a few weeks and he loves it! here he is enjoying his first real meal, butternut squash.

counting my blessings...

2010-11-18T16:20:00.003-09:00

today i had an experience where i got swindled, i think. i'm still waiting to hear if this guy will come through or not, but i don't want to keep my hopes up too much longer. luckily it was only for $20. whenever someone is dishonest with me i always feel dirty inside, which is ironic because it wasn't me who should be feeling dirty. it's a feeling that i really don't like because everything around me starts to take a darkish cast and i get mad at everyone and everything. so when i got home tonight i just had to say a little prayer and remind myself of how lucky i am. i'm married and have a wonderful little family, we have a home and have the means to pay for our home, shawn has a job, we both come from incredible loving families, we both have kept ourselves clean and healthy, and on and on... i just had to remind myself of these things when i got home to help me feel clean again and to remind myself that the disappointment and $20 loss doesn't really matter in the long run.
reminding myself of my blessings is a great way to help me stay above the smut that can try to pull me down.

harry potter and the deathly hallows...

2010-11-15T23:09:00.005-09:00

spoiler alert!!! spoiler alert!!!
if you haven't read the book or don't want to know details of the end before seeing the movie, don't read this...
due to the seventh harry potter movie coming out soon i decided it was high time that i reread the last book. i flew through it the first time and couldn't put it down and, honestly, i couldn't really remember too many details. the longer i take to read a book, the more i remember it. when i read i become the characters and i live every day with them on my mind. kind of weird, but i'll bet that most people are like this. so the longer i take to read, the longer i dwell on their lives during the course of my normal days and the more "memories" i have of them.
anyway, that's beside the point.
so i reread the deathly hallows and loved it even more this second time around. i was able to sit and think since i wasn't plowing through it like before. my absolute favorite character is severus snape. i just had to write something because i am just amazed. i know he's just a character but i really just want to give him a big hug and give him some of the love that he'd missed out on during his life. can you imagine being him, staying loyal to a memory of a dead friend and protecting her boy, who detests (and later hates) you and who only reminds you of his dad, who was one of your main tormentors??? all this for loyalty to a memory of someone who no longer lives! i'm sure he was very aware of the evil building around him but why stay around? why stick his neck out? my heart just went out to him when i've realized, through all the books, that he never had anyone (except lily, for a short time of his life) to care for, let alone to care for him. he was completely and utterly alone, except for his guidance from dumbledore, and yet he still stayed true to the very end. he was willing to live with everyone despising and hating him under false pretenses. wow. i'm sure that i could never be half the person that he was. the part of the book that made me cry the most (and i bawl when i read, as opposed to a few tears during a movie) was when harry was watching snape's memories and realizing that he had sacrificed everything to protect and to maneuver harry into the position where he could succeed.
and the doe patronus... *sigh*
how could anyone who had led such a loveless life be so dedicated to those who despised him? wow.
anyhow, just a bunch of thoughts as i've just re-finished the book tonight...

Bowl and Pitcher

2010-10-24T14:57:00.004-08:00

i want to hike all the hikes that are around spokane and to start, me and a friend, melissa, went on a little kid-friendly day hike with our kids - the bowl and pitcher. this is a beautiful place along the spokane river in riverside state park. this bridge is a replica of the original built by the civilian conservation corps.and the scenery along the river...
me and remi. i "made" a copy of a moby wrap and remi has loved it since he was born. he is completely content in it and will fall asleep without his typical pre-sleep fussiness. it's comfortable and only costs about 10 bucks (as opposed to $40 if you get the "real" thing). get a few yards of cotton knit fabric, cut it so it's about 25" wide and there you have it! i didn't get enough yardage so i added some length by sewing fabric ties on the end. here are directions for making your own and here for how to use it. easy!
melissa and her two girls - noelle and elizabeth.
while we were trying to distract the girls so that they'd keep walking melissa found some lady bugs that interested the girls so much that they didn't want to leave. it reminded me of my grandparents family cabin in southeastern arizona. up on top is a place called ladybug saddle and it's covered with lady bugs! ahhh, memories...

Fall Canning Season

2010-10-03T16:51:00.005-08:00

me and a fellow alaskan-living-in-spokane, melissa weight, canned apples and peaches a few weeks ago. it was quite exciting to, once again, go through the process of making my own food. mmmm! we picked three different varieties of apples, one variety of peach and i found out what pluots are. they're delicious! you should definitely try some!
below is a pic of melissa and her two twins. they were great helpers in picking apples. at one place they each had a plastic bag that they were carrying (definition = dragging) around until it got a huge hole in it. ever hear the story of hansel and gretel? well, the birds didn't eat the apples first but they could have if i hadn't acted fast enough! or rather they would've just rotted where they dropped. i love apple picking with kids! so much more entertaining! :)
and here's one of the girls trying to console remi. he was soooo good during picking and just started to fuss towards the end (he was getting hungry).
ah, sugar. my life-long frenemy. when eating jams and jellies it's easy to forget how much sugar goes into making them. try making them. you won't feel so good about that peanut butter and jelly sandwich anymore. or toast and jam. might as well get a spoon and down the sugar straight from the bag. ...but freezer jam is oh-so-good!
melissa was a bit less sugar-happy than i and chose to can most of her peaches whole, in water. most of mine were made into freezer jam. next year i'll do more whole peaches since they're added-sugar free.
and the applesauce. mmmm! i know it's hard to tell from the pics, but they're a beautiful pink color which melissa's girls loved. and we added NO sugar, just lemon juice to preserve the color. pink is much better than brown.
i love making things with melissa. i had forgotten how creative she is - she made all these labels and more for all the goodies that we made. sooo much better than the plain, drab labels i made last year. these definitely have a peppy personality. :)

abortion, where do you stand?

2010-09-29T20:47:00.005-08:00

a friend posted this link on facebook and i just had to share it. this is the touching story of an abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen.
Part 1
Part 2
this story made me grateful for the healthy, happy little boy that i have, i couldn't ever imagine life without him. it really tears me apart knowing that "doctors" can let infants be born with the intent to kill them.

it's been three months!!!

2010-09-26T20:15:00.008-08:00

update on our lives for the past three months...
after i was home from the hospital for a day and a half, shawn flew out to washington to look at a house he saw for sale online. the military was moving us and we had to find a place to live fast! shawn's parents came up with their truck and helped us move the few things the movers didn't take and when remi was 2 weeks old we hit the road to move from north dakota to washington, stopping in idaho along the way to visit shawn's family. remi traveled soooo easy. the only hard part was stopping every two and a half hours for him to eat. on the whole, it didn't take too long and we picked up two extra passengers on the drive to idaho. we stayed there about a week and then drove on up to wa and i got to see our future house for the first time. we lived in a hotel for close to two weeks before we closed on the house, and the movers got here with our goods the day after we closed. great timing! we kind of "moved in" and less than a week later took off to alaska for three weeks. shawn had two hunting trips planned and i got to introduce my family to our little baby. we then came back down here on august 28th and then my parents and shawn's family came over to bless remi on september 5th. while they were here we put them to work. my parents helped us lay tile in the kitchen and around fireplaces and then when shawn's family got here we all worked outside thinning the trees around our house (to satisfy the insurance company). we know have lots of firewood to keep us warm in the winter.
since then we have been busy working on our house. below is a link for pics of the house:
18309 w coulee hite rd
it's a huge straw bale house on 10 acres and we love it! the house is unfinished so there are LOTS of projects to do. we're focusing now on getting flooring put in. we wanted to do that before remi gets old enough to start crawling, as cement isn't the most accommodating medium to learn to crawl on. thus far we've put tile in the kitchen, bamboo wood floor in the dining room and the carpet guys get here tomorrow to carpet the living room, hallway and our bedroom. it's going to be soooo wonderful!! it's looking more and more like our home!
below are various pictures from the past three months. a lot has happened!! enjoy!
this is our old north dakota home. how sad to leave it!
while in idaho shawn got to do some bonding with his horse.
this is shawn's grandma kaye - one of the murel's remi was named after. read the end of this post for an explanation of remi's middle name.
since remi was 3 days old he's slept "through" the night (six hours!). he is a champion sleeper and we are getting incredibly spoiled as first time parents. i love my sleep and i'm glad he does, too!
and here's a close up of remi's face. i thought he looked like shawn although now that we've had him for awhile i just think he looks like himself. i can't even spot shawn or me in him. he just looks like our beautiful little remi.
SOLD! after the sign was taken down i realized that we should've gotten a picture standing next to the sign. hmmmm... photoshop?
while we were in alaska my dad's parents were up there for two weeks. grandma got to spend lot of time with remi (thanks for always offering to watch him, grandma!). this particular day everyone was wearing blue. no coordination, just random that three or four of us were all wearing the same shade of blue.
i was watching two of my sisters kids (thomas and rachel) and my dad took us for a ride on the barrel train down to feed the neighbor's horses.
my grandpa would play with remi a lot and remi would just watch grandpa talk to him, entranced. i absolutely love it that i come from a family that loves babies!
i was convinced that all i would do when i got to alaska was hike. i really wanted to loose all that baby fat. well, i didn't do that much hiking but i did a bit. here's me and remi, carolyn and her kids, lauren and her daughter and grandma deKay on a hike behind the visitor's center in eagle river.
here's the bunch of us adults at shine's sushi, a favorite family restaurant. from left to right me, shawn, jennifer, gary (shawn's dad), lorlei (jonathon's new daughter), jonathon, lauren (jonathon's new wife), grandpa deKay, grandma deKay, mom, dad, carolyn, bethany (robert's wife), and robert. shawn and his dad had come back for a break from sheep hunting before heading out again.
i had to put this picture in here for no other reason than that i absolutely love it! this is keith, jennifer's son, and he is very willing to have me pose him for pictures. he and my dad were thinning the carrots in the garden and we got to eat the spoils!
remi's first hike! after shawn's dad went back to idaho and before shawn took off caribou hunting we went on a family hike up mt baldy. here we are on top with my sister-in-law's dog, sam.
here's shawn on the hike down, carrying remi.
on a beautiful, warm day (low 70's) the nieces and nephews went "swimming" at one of the lakes in anchorage. here's remi and his cousin, cassidy, warm in the sun.
me and remi went on a hike with much of the family to go pick blueberries up on mt baldy. the blueberries aren't as plentiful this year but we did get enough to snack on, as well as a wonderful hike on a beautiful day.
my sister-in-law, bethany, took some pics of me and remi where we all stopped for berry picking.
me and remi, carolyn and her two youngest kids (cathryn and canyon) went hiking up at hatcher's pass. this is one of my favorite places to go since it's so green and peaceful. once you start hiking you never run into anyone else out there. most people stay right near the road.
me and carolyn made a deal that i'd take pics of her and she'd take pics of me. here's some of the one's i took.
here's carolyn helping cathryn hike. cathryn was doing okay but once we got to the steep part carolyn carried her two kids to the top. cathryn on the front and canyon on her back. whew!! i was tired enough just carrying remi!
and here's the "lion king rock", as i designated it.
and cathryn, looking pretty for the camera. it was an incredibly beautiful day!
this is an incredibly looooong post with lots of pictures with brief descriptions, but i guess that's what i get for not posting for three months. i don't have any pics of shawn's hunting trips so i'll try to get those on here, otherwise next post i'll focus on our life here in spokane, wa.

wood floor

2010-09-22T13:36:00.003-08:00

the house that we bought in spokane, wa is unfinished and so we're in the process of making a bit more home-y. we put tile in the kitchen and the wood floor down. it looks so much better than raw concrete!

i should've gotten a "before" pic but i forgot. so here's the after. the last piece of the puzzle!
hopefully the carpet will get here soon and that will complete the flooring for the main living areas downstairs.

the birth story of remington merle robson

2010-07-03T20:10:00.014-08:00

we have news!! he has come!!! i'll start at the beginning and if any of you get bored or are really not all that interested, be informed that we now are proud parents of a beautiful baby boy. this account is really more for me than anybody but it was good motivation to write it on here. if you want to skip it, scroll down to the bottom for pics of our little angel.

below is a picture taken the week before i popped. that stomach is big, but would you believe that i had room to hide a 9lbs 8oz baby in there?! we were operating under the idea that our baby would be 7lbs or thereabouts. that's what the midwife thought, at least.
here also is a picture of my mother, who came to join in on the fun on the 17th. she loved being able to bask in the sun and so here i surprised her with my camera.
anyhow, so my due date was officially june 17th but the ultrasound pushed it up to june 13th and that's the date that the midwifes were counting as my real due date. that day came and went. then the 17th came and went. they started to get a little concerned and so scheduled me for an induction on the 24th. i really had a hard time with that and so called and canceled that on the 23rd. i felt that my body would know what to do and so i didn't really want to push it. they then rescheduled me for the 28th.

on the 23rd i started doing everything i could to jump start my body. although everyone has these ideas of what will start labor, i believe that for all these things your body has to be ready and so then they'll help. if my body wasn't close to ready i knew that i most likely wouldn't go into labor. anyhow, i used evening primrose oil, i walked, used jasmine oil, and i hooked myself up to a breast pump among other things. my body stubbornly refused. so i decided to get a chiropractic adjustment. i talked to my aunts (who are both chiropractors in az) and the idea behind this is that if the pelvis is not quite lined up then adjusting my pelvis might help the baby to be able to descend. on friday morning, june 25th, i got adjusted and the chiropractor also massaged some pressure points he said might help. so i went home and continued my breast pumping and voila! that evening i started having contractions. shawn was working 12 hour night shifts due to an international exercise so me and my mom worried that if my labor went fast that he might not be able to make it. so i called his work and was told that they wouldn't be able to get a hold of him for an hour but they assured me that after an hour they'd get him to a phone to call me. a little over an hour later he called me from his cell phone and told me that he didn't know anything that was going on. they had just told him to turn in his gear and go home. he assumed that meant i was in labor but he had no idea where i was. i assured him i was still at home and so he came to join me in waiting.

the contractions at this point were irregular and were stubbornly refusing to form any pattern. they'd come every 4 to 20 minutes. for a while it would appear that they were regular but then they'd break any semblance to that. ugh! this went on all friday night, saturday, saturday night, sunday... on sunday i spoke with my midwife asking her if i could cancel the induction since my body was already doing something. she talked me into coming in on monday morning for a stress test for the baby and then we'd talk about it. i could agree to that.

sunday i started losing it. up until this point i was able to manage the pain and to stay on top of things but the exhaustion of not sleeping since thursday night was catching up to me. on top of that my contractions started to get worse. they still wouldn't regulate themselves and they now decided that they would come and hang around for 5 minutes, which was torture! previous to this they had been a minute and a half to two minutes long but when they started lasting an eternity i really couldn't take it anymore. so on monday morning at 4am i called the hospital and told them i was coming in. so me, shawn and my mom headed over to the hospital where i was admitted and hooked up to an iv. since i had been scheduled for an induction that morning they started me right away on pitocin. the midwife got there at 6 and was surprised that the nurses had already started me. i started crying to her and told her that i couldn't do it anymore. i was so exhausted and if she could tell me i'd have that baby before midnight, 18 hours away, then i would be happy. that made her laugh a bit in a sad way but was probably relieved that i wouldn't be a difficult patient anymore.

anyhow, when i was admitted the nurse checked me to see how far i had progressed during the weekend and the answer was practically nothing! the only progress was that my cervix had thinned from 80% to 90%. a whole weekend of pain and exhaustion and nothing to show for it. grrrr!!

my goal had been to have no drugs put into my body during this. even though the amount is minimal that actually gets to the baby, some is more than none and i didn't want to drug my baby. after a few hours on pitocin (i know, a drug) i asked if there was anything they could give me to relieve my pain so i could rest a bit. i consented to have the drug nubain. this drug is awesome!!! i was able to rest for somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 hours. i'd semi-awaken for the contractions and then doze right off. it really helped me to get a much needed nap. when that wore off i dealt with my contractions like before but quickly wore out so i asked for more pain relief and they gave me a narcotic, which didn't do too much for me. every time i'd close my eyes i'd be somewhere else and would talk nonsense. i guess shawn and mom said that it was pretty funny. i remember opening my eyes and seeing their faces, trying not to laugh. i just wanted to be taken seriously so i think i might've gotten mad. i really can't remember. then the pain really hit when my water really broke. that brought on incredible pain. the contractions were so intense and it felt like there was a glass shard buried in my abdomen that was compressed every time i'd have a contraction. intense pain!! not pleasant! and that's when my screaming phase started. i completely lost it. the last drug they gave me just made me lose control all together. i remember asking the nurse to please just cut me open and take the baby out. she calmly told me that i didn't really want that and i pleaded for an epidural, which wouldn't have worked because i could hardly keep still. so the nurse distracted me and asked me if i wanted to take a shower, that it would help. so we went over to the showers (locker room-like showers) and that's where i found out that the nurse lied! i really think she was just trying to distract me and that worked pretty good except that it didn't help with relaxing me or with the pain. shawn said he could hear my screaming out in the hall. so we went back to my room and i suffered some more and then decided that i wanted to push. i tried for a while and when the midwife got there she checked me and said that i needed to wait a little bit longer, that my cervix wasn't completely open. so for the next hour i had to wait. torture! and my midwife, gloria, was fantastic. i'd get ready to start screaming and she'd tell me to focus and would talk me through my pain management. she was the only person that i would listen to and she was able to help me so much. so after an hour of waiting i announced to the midwife i was ready to push. she looked skeptical but checked me and told me that all was clear. i was so relieved! so then i pushed and pushed and pushed. towards the end the little baby's head was hanging out but would not pop out. i don't know if his eye brow ridge was holding him back but it was unbelievable that he would not pop out. after 20 minutes of no progress i begged gloria to just cut me and help him come out. she didn't want to but after a while she conceded and out his head came. and then the midwife told me to catch my baby, so i reached down and caught my baby as his shoulders and the rest of his body followed.
after a little family bonding time, shawn headed off to the nursery with baby to do all the checks while i delivered the placenta and got stitched up. a little while later my food got there and i started to eat but then started to get really icky feeling. my mom went to get a nurse and when she came back i was white lipped and convulsing. my mom told me later that my blood pressure had plummeted to 47/30. the nurses moved fast and got me back online. i think the exhaustion finally got to me and my body was allowed to react to it. kind of scary! later when they were trying to move me to the recovery room i blacked out again, but not as bad.

for the future, rule #1 is to never start the real labor process so exhausted. a body can only deal with so much!
remington merle robson was born monday, june 28th at 5:04pm. he weighed 9lbs 8oz and was 22 inches long. he's a perfect little boy that we're thrilled to welcome into our family and he has brought us so much joy already.
a friend of ours jokingly told us that we should name our baby remington shortly after we got pregnant. he had said that because of the remington brand gun and he knew i would never name my child after a gun, as i try to steer clear of them. so it became a standing joke but shawn fell in love with the name. in the hospital, when we were trying to make a final decision on a name, i looked at the air conditioner in the room and laughed. it was a remington air conditioner! i decided that i could go with the name because it wasn't representative of a gun, but of an air conditioner! haha!

as for his middle name, merle, that is a robson name. shawn's dad's middle name is merle and shawn's mom's mother's name is murel. same name, different spelling so we decided to stick with the male spelling, merle.
welcome, remi! we're so excited to have you in our family!!

letter to winnie...

2010-05-13T16:21:00.003-08:00

My brother's 5 year-old daughter, winnie, will occasionally send me pictures or letters in the mail and i love it!! i took to writing her back in the following manner because i loved reading Highlights magazine stories like this when i was a kid. I have so much more fun writing these types of letters than boring, adult "word only" letters so i just had to share my last letter that i sent to winnie.
truly a work of art, eh?! :)

Shawn's promotion video

2010-04-27T09:52:00.002-08:00

Finally! The video uploaded!!

Shawn's promotion

2010-04-27T09:18:00.007-08:00

Last week, on April 21st (which also happens to have been our 3rd wedding anniversary) Shawn graduated from Airman Leadership School. He is now a Staff Sergeant. Congratulations, Shawn! We got to go to a nice dinner and hear lots of speeches and then the actual graduation. I'll try to upload the video that i took, but either my computer or the internet connection has not been cooperating. I'll try again.
this pic was taken really quickly when the graduates would walk up and shake hands (have picture taken) and salute, do an about face and then shake hands and salute the guy on the other side. too many things to concentrate on getting right with everyone watching you. i think i would've gotten it all in the wrong order, or fallen, or turned the wrong way... no pressure, right?
here are the 32 graduates. Shawn is in the very back row, third from the left.
the following are the security forces graduates. i had to put both of these up, even though they are almost the exact same picture. Shawn thinks he looks better in pictures when he doesn't smile but i love it when he shows those pearly whites of his so, to satisfy both of us, i had to put both pictures on here. :)

from texas to north dakota

2010-04-14T09:53:00.003-08:00

in december we left north dakota for texas, by way of idaho (for christmas) for shawn to receive training to become a combat arms instructor. we're excited for him to have a normal work schedule and to work with a small group of people. i drove down with him, stayed for a week and a half, and then flew to alaska to spend with my family until i joined shawn again in texas in march. one of the main attractions of the san antonio area (besides sea world) is the downtown river walk. a lot of restaurants and stores have set up shop along the river - the majority of the restaurants being either steak houses or mexican food. below are me and shawn in march on one of the bridges that cross over the river.
the last weekend before shawn graduated his program, we took off down to corpus christi, tx to visit padre island national seashore - one of our nation's national parks. i loved it!! i love the ocean so much and could spend all day watching the waves lap on the shore, looking for treasures that the tide has brought in and hearing and smelling the ocean. it was such a peaceful day taking all that in. i really didn't want to leave. i tried to talk shawn into running into town and buying some blankets and sleeping on the beach, although i really don't think that would've worked very well due to me not sleeping very well at night on a normal bed. my hips and back and knees were not cooperating very well with my pregnancy at that point and i was quite miserable at night. anyhow, i read the quote below in the visitor's center and it really made me think. we have come from the age where poseidon is the all-powerful god of the ocean to the age where we have trashed one of our treasures and no longer really fear the ocean as much as we used to. it still is a dangerous place - ask any fisherman - but much of the fear of the mass populace has been erased. cruises are a commonplace thing, ocean fishing trips for fun are common. as a people, we no longer view the ocean as "all-powerful". it is just one of our natural resources and no longer a thing of magic and mystery. sad.
and here's my car!! honestly, when i got this subaru in 2004 i didn't really like it but it has grown on me. it can go anywhere anytime of the year and the all-wheel drive is incredible and has never failed to get me out of sticky situations. way to go, subaru! what ever would i do without you?!!!
me and shawn, once more. i was about 25 or so weeks along in my pregnancy or thereabouts in this pic and i felt huge! i'm even bigger now at 32 weeks.
and here's shawn after his graduation from combat arms school. way to go, idaho!!!
on the drive back north to north dakota we stopped in idaho to pick up our dog, denali, at shawn's parents' house. one of the nights we were there shawn's niece and nephew spent the night. shawn talked the kids into building a fort so they could sleep in it and the kids were excited. we all built the fort and when they got bunkered down for bed shawn's niece decided she would rather sleep with grandma. so shawn started telling linkin (pictured below) a bed time story and linkin then decided he wanted to sleep with his grandma, too. i guess shawn started the story off something like "it was a dark night.." and linkin got scared. i don't even think shawn was able to get out more than a couple of sentences before linkin was out of there. haha! kids are so funny!
while in idaho i was also able to go see my little brother and meet his fiance, lauren. i was just going to have lunch with them but ended up spending the whole day at lauren's house. thanks for a wonderful meal (bulgogi) and the great company!!
and here is shawn and denali on the drive home to ND. denali had to have her head on shawn's shoulder for most of the drive. i guess she was excited to have her separation from shawn end.

Robert Mitchell DeKay

2010-04-14T09:09:00.006-08:00

here are bobby's pictures! he wasn't very happy when he was awake so it took a while to get him asleep and we took most pictures then. he didn't actually have his baby blessing until several weeks after these pictures were taken so his suit was a bit big but i think that it just shows how tiny he is as a newborn. adorable!
for bobby's post by his mommy, click here. bobby was born 13 february 2010 in providence hospital in anchorage, alaska.

Canyon Lily Townsend

2010-04-14T08:32:00.004-08:00

i'm always looking for babies to take pictures of to improve my mad skills. :) i've improved tremendously since i've started doing this and while up in alaska in jan and feb (shawn being in texas for training) i got to take infant pics for canyon lily townsend (my sister, carolyn's fourth child) and for bobby mitchell deKay (my brother, robert's third child). following are some of the photos of canyon. we did a whole bunch of pics of canyon nursing, but i wasn't sure if carolyn wanted those up here or not, so i left them out.
for canyon's birth story, click here. she was born on 9 january 2010 at their home in eagle river, alaska.
cathryn is canyon's older sister and since she was such a good sport while we took pics of canyon, we made sure to get some of her. this is one of my favorites.

the stork is bringing a...

2010-02-08T15:45:00.003-09:00

the news is out - we're going to have a baby boy! i'll post pictures of the ultrasound later. our baby boy was definitely not trying to hide, not shy at all...

safford christmas 2008

2010-01-30T11:53:00.003-09:00

my grandparents have been up here for the past week and grana joy showed me this video that she made of her christmas celebration 2008 at her home in safford, arizona.
my uncle kent and his family and my uncle mons and his family were all there.
enjoy!

"everything we do is music"

2010-01-21T21:23:00.002-09:00

check out my sister-in-law's blog for a report on a pre-school that i helped out with :)

2010-01-20T20:29:00.006-09:00

what a cruel joke nature plays on me! me, who used to have a steel bladder and could hold it all day if i wanted to. me, who used to never wake up in the night to pee. why me?!!! i now have to pee every hour or two!!! is that nature's idea of a good laugh?! oh, the cruelty to women!! the inhumanity!!!

the exquisitely resplendent tree

2010-01-12T22:03:00.004-09:00

so i know that these pictures might look almost exactly the same, but they are not. i took about a billion pictures of this tree, taking several steps to my left after every shot, so these are different and my two favorite close-ups of this tree.
*sigh* exquisite, isn't it?
*sigh* resplendent, isn't it?
and here's a similar shot to that which now sits at the top of my blog. *sigh*
exquisitely resplendent... *sigh*

snow machining in the teton valley of idaho

2010-01-12T21:35:00.003-09:00

after christmas shawn took me on a little snow machining ride. he'd been going out almost every day but i hadn't gone with him until this point. it was a blast! all the farm fields are covered in snow and so the sky's the limit on where you can go. we took off towards the bitch creek bridge (and yes, that really is what the name of the creek is). this used to be a railroad bridge back in the day and then just existed. shawn almost slid off of it on his motorcycle several years before he met me. i'm glad he didn't. it's a lonnngggg way down. this area has been in the works to be a national park for a while but i guess it's finally going to happen next year. awesome trails have been put in on old farm roads for hiking and biking and, in the winter, snowmachining. the bridge now has a nice railing on it, which i'm grateful for. no more almost-gone-over-the-edge accidents for shawn!
i kept waiting to get the perfect shot of the tetons as we were riding and i decided that i should've stopped sooner since they were getting so far away so i finally told shawn to stop so that i could get a picture of them. they really are irregularly shaped mountains and quite stunning.
and here's shawn taking the same picture with his camera.
while crossing some fields i saw the most exquisite tree so i hopped off the machine and told shawn to come back and get me after i got some good pictures. he took off, grateful for the chance to really ride!
and here he is riding. he told me to get my camera out and get a picture of him in the air. he was like a little boy - so cute! "watch me do this, becca!" "and this!"

family potluck

2010-01-12T21:26:00.004-09:00

the saturday after christmas shawn's aunt arranged for everyone to meet at the church for a family potluck get-together. here is the crew! there were only a few missing from that side of the family (shawn's dad's family). it was a great time and fun to see everyone and all the expanding families! :)
i'm wearing my new coat that shawn got me for christmas. i love it!! thanks shawn!

ice fishing on jackson lake

2010-01-12T20:41:00.007-09:00

while in idaho for christmas, me, shawn, and brandon (shawn's brother) went ice fishing. the day was absolutely gorgeous! there was not a cloud in the sky and the sun was shinning brightly. the temp was somewhere around 0* or so but standing in the sun warmed up my jacket so that it was actually quite pleasant. it was just so wonderful being out there, surrounded by no man-made noises and just listening to the sound of silence. perfect nature. if this happened to be a girls outing, instead of me and the brothers, we would all have holes near each other and just be chattering away the entire time. doing things the "male" way has been a learning experience for me. especially when i'd accompany them hunting and shawn would have to keep telling me to be quiet. haha! anyhow, this is how they fish. like i mentioned before, it was nice to be out there without any noise and just to immerse myself in my surroundings. i'm learning. :)
and, for the record, i was there! i was wrapped up in all my clothes, staying warm but you can at least see my cheeser smile in this incredible self portrait.
brandon was the first to catch a fish. so i decided to fish near his hole and maybe get lucky. not so. a little while later the pole that brandon had left in the hole starting losing line. a fish was on the other end! shawn quickly jumped over there and, with a bit of waiting for the fish to tire and wrapping two other lines with his fighter, he was able to bring the fish in.
while shawn reeled it in, brandon pulled the fish out when it got to the surface. it ended up being a 15 or 18 or 19 pound trout (depends on who you talk to) which shawn cooked up for dinner the next night. it was great!!! i went home empty handed. no fish with my name on it that day.
and here's me. so after a while of not much happening i got a little bored. at one point i took out my book and read a bit (rule #1: never travel anywhere without a good book!) and at another i decided to write my name in the snow so that any airplane that randomly ever passed overhead at that spot, before the next snow, would know that i had been there.
and here's my closing picture of the teton mountains from the wyoming side. stunning!

we're pregnant!!!

2010-01-08T11:28:00.004-09:00

we're pregnant!!! ok, so i know that many of you already know but i've just been lazy about posting it on here. here's the ultrasound that i had in early november, so i'm now in the neighborhood of 17 weeks along with a due date of june 17th.

deKay thanksgiving

2010-01-08T10:15:00.007-09:00

this november shawn and i got to go home to alaska to spend thanksgiving with my family. there were several fairly important things that happened during that trip and so we are grateful that we got to go up. firstly, my baby brother came home from his two year mission for our church. for those that don't know, he went to uruguay and completely immersed himself in the culture and in teaching the gospel for two years. this means no phone calls home (except on mother's day and christmas) and he only gets a limited time on the internet for emailing once a week. soo with all of this separation it was wonderful to have him home and to hear about his adventures and to see all of his pictures that he took. he now is fluent in spanish and he feels pretty lucky that he lives in the united states because he can constantly practice that language, unlike my older brother (korean) or husband (polish) or other family members. spanish is a pretty good second language to have in the u.s.
secondly, my sister and her husband and baby son announced that they were going to be sealed for time and eternity in the anchorage, alaska temple. that's such a huge important step and i'm so glad that our whole family could be there for that monumental occasion.
and thirdly, a few days before we were to fly up there i found out that my parents dog, raisin, was dying. it was really hard for me to accept that she wasn't going to be there when i got home. after she grew up from the puppy stage she became my hiking companion and was always there for me. she'd warn me of bears and moose and other people on the trail. i felt so secure with her and took her with me as much as possible. as soon as she'd see me head out of the house with a backpack or dressed for hiking she'd be there jumping in my car. and she'd do the same with my parents for hiking or four wheeling or snow machining. she kind of reminds me of "nana" out of "peter pan". she really took care of us. these past couple of years her hearing has gone, her sight has really dimmed and her balance isn't there like it used to be but she didn't let that stop her. her sense of smell was as keen as ever and she relied on that. anyhow, so two days before we got home my brother decided to have her put down. he could tell that she was in such pain among other things that were going wrong with her body. so she's now gone and it really hit me hard. so here's to raisin!!
alright, alright, enough with the sob story, i know. so here's a few pictures from our vacation. my camera died in the middle of our trip so my other pictures are on my parents cameras.
some of the kids (nieces and nephews) had asked me to come outside and play so when i finally made it out there cayden was outside off by himself making "sugar and cinnamon" (i think that's what he was calling the snow). i've been reading this fantastic book called "the female brain" by louann brizendine which tells how hormones have made the physical structure and behavior of the brain in males and females so drastically different. anyhow, now i look at this picture and the next and i think "how so typically male!" when i finish the book i'll write a little more on the things i've learned.
now, "how so typically female!" the girls were all together on the deflated cataraft playing house. the invited me to play but i convinced them and cayden that we should go on a little winter hike. so we did! nothing like a wonderful nature walk in winter to appreciate the world we live in. :)
here's the view from my parents house that i never tire of looking at. sometime i do start to take it for granted and then i have to kick myself and remind myself of the raw beauty in front of me. every time i come back to my parents house after being gone for a while i am floored by the view all over again.here's a picture of me and shawn in the airport, waiting for jonathon's flight to show up. my mom and dad went down to uruguay for a week to spend some time with him and meet the people that he's spent the last two years with. on their way home they took a side trip to go to manchu pichu -sooo jealous!
and here's jonathon!!!!
the night before thanksgiving my sister sarah (who was also staying at my parents house, as her and her family live in colorado) proposed that we offer to babysit all the grandkids and give their parents a bit of a break. so we decided to have a giant sleepover with 10 kids. it was a blast! i had the kids help make turkey place markers, which you can see on the table. then sarah took the kids, a few at a time, into the kitchen to make their personal homemade pizza. we then went to the basement and made a huge, gigantic fort for the kids to sleep in. then got read for bed, watched a charlie brown thanksgiving movie, jello for dessert, brushed teeth, then bed. so the evening went smoothly but they had a hard time sleeping during the night. i know, i know, sleepovers were times that it was exciting to stay up all night long telling stories and such when i was a kid. but now being an adult with kids that won't go to sleep, let's just say it made a long night. then in the morning we had jungle breakfast. it's a wonderful thing that my mom used to do for all of our sleepovers when we were kids. we had to go outside (we did it inside because of the cold weather this time) and find all of our food. ...little cereal boxes, bananas, milk and capri suns were strung in bushes and trees... good memories!!! so we had a fun night and got to give their parents a date night off. :)
and here's the mast chef (and i really do mean that she's a master chef - i wish i could cook like her! the most delicious food ever comes from her!) getting the turkey ready early on thanksgiving morning.
here's dallin, sarah and chris' little boy. my dad does this thing with all little kids and it just scared dallin to death. sooo funny! he pushes their noses three times and on each time says "beep" "honk" "ka-dooga". every time dad did it dallin's eyes would get big and round and his lips would start quivering and then he'd start crying. i think that's a first time that has ever scared anyone. haha!
and here's another, better picture of jonathon, home at last! and here he's holding thomas, the current second-to-youngest grandkid (although not for long - four on the way with the earliest hopefully coming today!)
shawn is a very active person and it's hard for him to sit still or to stay at home. he likes to get out and do things. so here he is with my dad and two brothers getting ready to hike up mt baldy.
anyhow, that's the pics i have from our thanksgiving vacation. i just have to say that i love my family!!! :)

2010-01-07T12:09:00.002-09:00

nothing like a new background to make me feel like i actually updated my blog... sigh... okay, so i suppose that's cheating but a new look does makes it feel refreshed! :)
i actually can't see the newness of it all because the library thinks that i'm looking up something bad on my blog. with all the technology we have, it still can make mistakes...

idaho trip

2009-11-08T13:30:00.002-09:00

this past week we drove to idaho to spend some time with shawn's family and to see mountains and trees again! :) on the drive down our dog, denali, had a hard time staying in the back of my car and instead wanted to snuggle up to shawn. shawn had just got off a 12 hour work shift that morning and all he wanted to do was to sleep. having a dog that constantly wanted to sleep with him kept waking him up and he'd push denali away. give her two minutes and she was right back where she had been before.
we were down in driggs, idaho for halloween and so i grabbed all my wiggs before we left north dakota. i thought that they just might come in handy. and they did! shawn's parents got to go to a "trunk or treat" (where families will meet in the church parking lot and kids will trick or treat from car to car.) and halloween party. luckily, i happened to have all of my wigs and we had fun dressing gary and marlene up. marlene even found one of her daughter's old drill team hair pieces which we turned into a striking beard for gary. gary even won the award for the best adult costume!
our primary reason for going to idaho was to see shawn's grandma kay. she had had a stroke three weeks previous. she's doing great and making progress in recovering the use of her body. we had a great time spending time with her. :)
we also got to spend some time with shawn's nephew and neice - linkin and linlee. the kids love riding "horses" and drafted shawn to be their horse several times.
and here's my other wig that i brought. the kids thought that it was a lot of fun to wear. so here's linkin:
and linlee:happy halloween!

Fall has flung...

2009-11-08T12:26:00.004-09:00

it's fall and i thought i'd up a picture of our back yard. the leaves took forever to actually fall off the trees and i was kind of excited to rake the leaves and jump in them. but i never did. for some odd reason having a dog takes away all that excitement - the possibility of landing in dog poop convinced me that i better not. ewwwh! so shawn was raked them up instead. anticlimatic.
early this fall (or was it late summer?) shawn decided to get his very first bow. he hasn't actually hunted with it yet but he has done some target practice. he's not bad! not bad at all!
we went and found a field that did not have "no trespassing" signs posted and found a hay bale for shawn to practice on. here he is in deep concentration.
i love all of shawn't facial expressions! here is his "giddy" face. i'll ask him to smile for the camera and so he'll give me a fake smile (which i can't complain because i have a hard time having a real looking smile when i'm told to smile - it's a deKay thing) and then i'll ask him to really smile for me. and then he'll pull one of these faces. i love it! when we took our engagement pictures everytime right before the picture took, shawn would chuckle under his breath to get that perfect smile. i thought it was just so darn cute!
and here we are together. awwwh! :) can you tell i'm freezing from the wind?

i'm back!!!

2009-10-13T17:31:00.009-08:00

ok, ok, satisfied?! :) so yeah, it's been a while and i suppose not many of you are too updated since i have taken an internet break. it's been sooo nice to not have the internet black hole tempt me to steal my time away. yet here i am again... although this is a pretty good purpose for getting back on.

anyhow, here's a summary of the past two months or so. below is a pic of shawn and denali on their daily run. this is how shawn runs denali and she loves it! she pulls shawn on the bike until she's too tired and then he pedals and keeps her going. on this particular trip i went with them on our family bike ride and denali got a hold of a road-kill squirrel. she was so proud of her catch and it took some coaxing to get her to release it. she's quite the huntress. in our backyard she's caught one bird and one squirrel already.
about a mile or so from our house is a Scandinavian heritage park. it's awesome! a lot of the people from this area are from norway. every october there's a huge norsk hostfest that celebrates the norwegian heritage here. here is one of my favorite statues at the park: it's hans christian andersen - a celebrated norwegian. i love this statue as it portrays such a lovable guy that is hard not to want to know what he's thinking.
and here's a building at the park. i think it's a church. i've never been to the park when the building is open, so i've never been inside, but i will make it eventually.
some friends that we've made while here had a wedding reception and i got to make the cake! they were married this spring, right before chris got deployed, and then had their wedding reception when he got back. i happened to get to know this couple through becky's sister, who was in my same ward when i was at rick's college, a million years ago. cool, huh! anyhow, i was nosey and asked if they were going to have a cake, they said no and so i offered to make it. i love making cakes and want more practice at making them so i'm glad they accepted my offering. :) it turned out great! angel food cake with whipped cream frosting - not your traditional wedding cake. mmmm! it was delicious!

a few weeks ago me and shawn and denali (or rather shawn, denali and i...) went to explore Theodore Roosevelt national park. we loved it!! we only had a day to experience the park so we went for the quick overview and want to go back to explore it more thoroughly. while there we saw a ton of wildlife! we saw plains bison, mule deer, antelope, prairie dogs, elk, wild horses... it was awesome!! here's some of the bison that we saw. it amazes me every time i run into them that they could care less about anyone or anything nearby. they walked right next to our car - if i was a more daring and brainless person i could've put my hand out the window and touched some of them. there were even two males that did a bit head butting. really cool!
shawn wanted to try and call in the elk so we went on a wild elk chase. we had heard the males bugling and the females calling all night long and that morning shawn was able to call some females in but they didn't come all the way in. so we crossed the river that meanders through the park, randomly found a trail on the other side, followed it for a while and then headed out off the trail trying to find elk. there never were any that answered back but we did blunder into some females and they paused for a bit when shawn did his bugle but decided that we weren't worth the effort so they left. i guess shawn needs to work on getting a more "manly" bugle. tee hee.
this is shawn's tool for his bugle - and it really sounds real! it's a plastic accordion straw that he bends to make the noise right. this particular straw we got free from someplace and it has hearts around it that say "love" and other such un-manly words. i think the pink and red color might've clued the females in to thinking that they wanted someone with a deeper bugle. we'll have to search out restaurants that give away blue or green straws next. i'm sure those'll work better. :) haha!
and here's me chewing on a piece of grass...
and us together! we rarely have pictures of us together since i'm usually snapping all the pictures. we just need to get a photographer to follow us, just so we can be in a picture once together, a picture of us doing something other than posing for the camera that i cleverly hold in my outstretched hand.
here's onto my latest projects: honey!!! people at church have befriended one of the beekeepers around here and so our ward gets a super good deal on raw honey for people to fill up for food storage. this guy owns 4,000 hives, spends the summer here in north dakota and the winter in california renting his bees out to pollinate the crops down there. he gets a lot of honey in the summer and so a friend invited me to go help to fill all the honey orders for our ward. i have no idea how many gallons we filled, but it was a lot!! there were possibly about 20 5-gallon buckets we filled up, plus all the other miscellaneous containers. i personally took home three gallons and i'm so glad i did. it tastes delicious and it's super good for you! i've been trying to substitute honey in for things that require sugar, like my breads.
i took lots of pictures of the honey as we poured it from the vat. when we'd get down to the bottom of the vat the different types of honey would mix (from different flowers) and awesome shapes would appear in the honey. i also asked a billion questions about bees and learned so much that really makes me appreciate the little guys. like, have you ever heard of bee sting therapy? some people claim that they've been cured from multiple sclerosis because of it. and did you know that the bees determine what type of bee a larvae will be (worker, drone, queen) depending on how much food they feed the larvae? it's amazing!
another project i've been working on is making anything and everything out of crab apples. for those of you that don't know or that are in denial, crab apples make some of the best applesauce i've ever had. and the sad thing is that people think that they're just ornamental and that there's no purpose for them other than making a mess of their yard and driveway every fall. that's the wrong attitude! make them into applesauce, apple jelly, fruit leather, apple cider additions and you can substitute applesauce for fat in breads, cookies... they're great! me and some friends did the first batch and then i continued on alone. i wanted a lot because it's soooo good!
shawn got off work early one day and came and helped me pick apples on base. no one wants their crab apples so you just have to knock on doors and ask to take the apples from their yard. and presto! the apples are yours!
there was also a tree on base of normal apples (i don't know what kind these are) that hadn't been pruned so there were tons of little apples. i picked a box of those - they were delicious!
all in all i processed four boxes on my own and it's a lot of work! here's my stash that i ended up with. i'm quite pleased with myself. :)
and for those of you that have asked, here is my house. this is the backyard, which is the only way we go in our house. the front door is reserved for those that don't know better. haha! i'll take a picture of that later for you. the blue thing is a tarp hung on my clothes lines as an awning for the dog when it rains or drizzles. we're working on getting her a dog house. and we rent the main floor and basement. someone else lives upstairs, so we don't quite have a house to ourselves yet.
last weekend my grandparents came up from phoenix to iowa, where they were both born and raised. and since iowa is just a short jaunt away (11 hour drive) i decided i wanted to see and experience the land of my forefathers. here's my grandpa, bob deKay, in front of his name on a monument to all those from griswold, iowa that have served in wars. grandpa served in the korean war.
i got to go to three of the cemeteries around town to see where my ancestors are buried. here my grandparents are standing next to my grandpa's parents (far right) and my grandma's parents and brother (to the left of grandma and grandpa).
g and g took me to a park right out of town and there we found lots of walnut trees with tons of walnuts on the ground. it was fantastic! we had a ball picking them up. i ended up going back on my way back home and got a whole bunch more. they're now sitting in my basement drying so that i can crack them open and get the wonderful black walnuts from inside, as grandma (helen deKay) is demonstrating here. black walnuts are so much harder than those that you get in the store (english walnuts?) and so a nut cracker doesn't really cut it. a hammer works much better but it takes a lot of skill not to blow the nut to pieces when you get frustrated, as i found out the hard way. he he.
all in all it was a wonderful trip. i love my grandparents so much for the people they are and the person that they created in my father. going to griswold helped me to understand them and where they came from better, as well as made me appreciate those who have gone on before me, that i have never met, but have forged the path for me to be.
and to close this rather lengthy entry, a last picture. north dakota has these all over the highway systems and i love it! some say "do your best" or "be grateful" or "be happy" but i always like this one. simply put, "smile."

sunflowers of north dakota

2009-08-23T19:34:00.006-08:00

the sunflowers here are awesome! i was quite surprised this spring to hear that the sunflower is one of the big local agricultural products and i was excited for summer to come so that i could see all the wonderful flowers. and they are wonderful!! there is also a large amount of canola and flax grown so, combined with the sunflowers, the fields are the most wonderful of colors! the flax fields are oceans of blue, the canola fields are oceans of yellow and the sunflowers are golden suns. it's gorgeous! there are also a lot of other grains here which i really can't tell a difference between but i've got the flowering plants down!
i've been going out and taking pictures of the sunflowers and i just wanted to share some of them with you. i've absolutely loved seeing them! when i'd be out among the flowers i would imagine that i was alice in wonderland and would hope that the flowers would start talking and singing to me. just so you don't start worrying, no, the flowers never did talk to me but they definitely mumbled among themselves when the wind would start blowing. :) they certainly have a personality because of their ginormous size.

the weeds next to the fields are quite pretty, too. they're definitely photo-worthy...

Alaska trip continued...

2009-08-18T08:51:00.008-08:00

To continue my alaska vacation...
i made it my goal, after the family reunion, that i would go hiking everyday, or go on some outdoor adventure. i stuck to that pretty good except for sunday and 4th of july. i just wanted a rest from being busy everyday so it was just nice to stick around my parents house for a day. so here is another baldy hike. this is krystal, keith and me. and the pic of dad is in the next frame. so this is my "summit" pose that i borrowed from some family friends. every time i reach the top of a mountain i have to have some sort of dominating pose (ha!) to show that i'm at the top and the world is at my feet. corny, i know, but lots of people do it, so there! :) and way to go keith! not bad for a six year old, especially since he beat me to the top! (i'm a slow, steady hiker...)
here's my dad doing what he thought was the karate kid stance. i disagree and think it looks more like a spider man pose. either way he looks rather limber in this photo, ready to swoop down and pounce on unsuspecting villains!!
one of the hikes i did was up to the hatcher's pass area. i parked on the side of the road on the way up and me and raisin took off up the side of the valley and found this beautiful bowl. the tundra flowers were GORGEOUS up there with little streams running here and there. it was great! we stayed up there awhile but i could see a storm moving in from further in the mountains, so when it started to sprinkle on us we headed down.
and just as a side note, a tribute to raisin. she is the greatest hiking companion ever! i don't like hiking by myself, just in case something happens, so i've always taken raisin with me and she's wonderful! she's a great bear alarm and she's not the type that will chase the bear, just warn me of it. she also is very conscious of who she's hiking with and constantly plays "mother hen" making sure no one is left behind. she's nearing the end of her life now and is stiff and has trouble walking smoothly but she never wants to be left behind. as soon as she sees me put my backpack in the car, she is there jumping in my car. she's also now deaf and so it's hard to call her to let her know where i am. so if she looks around for me and can't find me, she starts panicking a bit. so then there i am jumping up and down, waving my arms so that she can see me. i do love her and appreciate her being such a good companion to me.
and here's a photo of me on the drive down from hatcher's pass, after my hike. this is the matenuska river and it's beautiful! and a perfect place to stop and take pictures. and just fyi, the daisy picture at the top of my blog was taken right next to this river. beautiful flowers!
while i was home i probably went and ate sushi two or three times at my family's favorite restaurant. mmmm! there's no sushi here in minot so i had to eat as much as i could while up in alaska since i knew there'd be a sushi draught coming on. ha! anyhow, here is one of my all time favorite rolls - the dynamite roll (the one in the center of the picture that looks like a volcano). it's fabulous! whenever i go that roll always gets ordered even though i'm trying to branch out and find something as fantastic as that but i always come back. oh dynamite roll, how i luv thee! :)
carolyn's family came up and spent the day at mom and dad's house so i got to spend some good times with here kids. here's cayden, pretending to sleep in some baby fireweeds. he's trying to pretend but had a hard time trying not to smile... :)
and here's the youngest, cathryn. she's a very smiley baby who is always into everything! she's very adventurous and has a very strong personality. and notice that nice gouge in her head? that happened when i was watching her and she smacked her head on the corner of the counter. it really makes me feel horrible because she carries that nice reminder on her head.
and here's whole bunch of wildflowers that my mom picked and put on the porch. daisies, columbine, geraniums, blue bells. i love the wild flowers from home!
i know this doesn't show much but the kids are sitting in the flower garden that i started back in 2004. i made a nice little stone walkway and a flat area at the top for chairs that was soon overtaken by weeds. when my youngest sister got married, we pulled out all the weeds, really flattened the area, put some of that black fabric stuff that stops the weeds, covered it with gravel and put some nice boulders around to add to the charm. here's cassidy and cayden sitting in my garden. i'm so glad that my mom and dad have kept it up. it looks great every time i see it!
and one last wildflower picture. i don't know what these are called - i'll have to look them up later and add the name once i figure it out. but they're gorgeous! they're really tiny flowers that grow in clumps and just look so angelic. mmmm!

deKay family vacation, part 2

2009-08-14T11:25:00.006-08:00

i mentioned that the kids entertained themselves the whole time and found lots of things to do. they decided that they all wanted to make bows. they would go find the perfect sticks and have my dad tie string on them and then find great arrows. here's hannah with a great arrow that she found. i don't know that it'd be that functional but it really does look great!
for all that really know me, i am a true deKay, which will be defined in a second. this is my campsite. i had to find the perfect site and then i hung my tarp over my tent, just in case it decided to rain the entire time, which it didn't. it only sprinkled a bit the first day but i left the tarp up because it sure heated the air under it up quite a bit. anyhow, i have to have everything perfect and just so and all the knots tied correctly and all. it's amazing how nit-picky i am. anyhow, every time i'd walk up to my tent i'd get a little thrill of pleasure by how perfect it looked. i know, it really sounds obsessive and ridiculous but for some strange reason i love making things work efficiently and neat. And that is the definition of a DeKay.
here's a pic of jennifer and thomas looking out at the ocean. i just love thomas' face in this one. he is such a master of facial expressions and you can tell exactly what he's feeling. water is such a draw for almost everyone and it's exciting and relaxing. especially if you can throw rocks or sand in the water - then it's even better!
the last full day we were there curtis and robert took the kids out in the kayaks. cathryn was not very thrilled at all about being out there and being confined so she screamed and tried to stand up. needless to say, she didn't stay out very long as curtis was afraid that she'd tip the kayak over. the rest of the kids were great! here they are, swarming around the double kayak, waiting for their turn to go out.
one final picture and then you'll be done with my family vacation (although not my alaska vacation)! here's the whole group that came, minus krystal who's taking the picture, bringing the total to 24. my mom's brother and his three sons came, and then krystal and then various siblings and their kids. for the deKay family, we were almost complete with the exception of three: shawn (because of work), tyson (because of training) and jonathon (he's still on a two year mission for our church - but will be home in november! wahoo!!). next time we do something like this i hope that we can all be there. i loved spending so much time with everyone that went - it was a blast!
and just a side note - do you like the shirts? i know you can't really see the print on them but i did it! i learned on YouTube how to screen print shirts, bought some photo emulsion off of a screen printing shop, built some nylon screens and did it. it was great to learn how the whole process was done. next time i do it the shirts will look even more fabulous because then i'll know what i'm doing. :)

deKay family vacation, part 1

2009-08-14T09:26:00.014-08:00

ok, ok. so i haven't posted in a LONG time. it's only been a little over a month, but a lot has happened since then, hence the "LONG" instead of "long". so in the middle of june i took off to alaska for a family reunion. i was only supposed to go up there for two and a half weeks but i ended up extending that by a week. unfortunately shawn was unable to go with me because of work, so i went up by myself. when i got there the flowers were amazing! i absolutely love wildflowers! perhaps i'll have to dedicate a whole post to the best flowers that i took pictures of since i think i spend most of my time photographing them.
here's some of my neices and nephews in a lupine patch in my parents backyard: cayden, rachel, cassidy and keith.
one of the first days i got there we took a nice family hike up baldy, the mountain that my parents house is on the side of. we hike straight up from their property up to the top. not all of us got to the top, as hiking with little kids slows things down a bit. here's a pic of cayden and rachel part way up the mountain with the town of eagle river spread out below. and here's one of those gorgeous flowers! this is a chocolate lily, which are everywhere in the woods around my parents house.
my sister sarah and her husband, chris got to come up with their one month old son, dalin (or is it dallin?). i got to take some baby pics so i'll get those done and posted. and yes, sarah, i'll send them to you. :) he's a very cute baby and was great during the whole trip. people were surprised that they took a baby on the trip (across katchemak bay, out of homer, alaska) but he did fantastic!
i drove down to homer with my sister carolyn and her husband, curtis, and two of their three kids. we stayed the night at a campground in anchor point and while carolyn was putting cayden down to bed me and curtis and cathryn went down to the beach. i was down there at first with cathryn, taking pics and there were some huge bald eagles that swooped down towards cathryn. i think they thought that they might be able to carry her off. i didn't let her get that far from me after that. she had so much fun finding all of the perfect rocks to throw into the water. i really think that's every kids favorite pastime. something about seeing that splash is so thrilling!
and here's a lovely self portrait of myself. i just really liked the effect of the clouds and the sand and the reflective water. *sigh* it was hard to leave.
so the whole troupe met down in homer for our five days of fun and we had water taxis take us across the bay and drop us on the beach that was to become our home away from home. there was a yurt (kind of like a cabin) there that we rented from the forest service and the rest of us set up our tents in that same area. it was pretty isolated there. when the tide came in it completely blocked our beach, so we were stranded there until low tide. it was great!
the sand, dirt, sticks, sea weed, plants, trees, water and rocks provided so much entertainment for all the kids. there was never a moment when they weren't busy. they would find flowers and plant gardens on the beach, they would make castles with mote systems for the incoming tide to fill up... i got the kids to make a mermaid with me. we made sure she was modestly dressed (a full shirt instead of just shells) and we used only the things that we could find on the beach for her composition. after we were done winnie decided that our mermaid needed a mer-dog, so we made one, complete with a sea weed leash. here's winnie, cassidy, me and hannah.
we brought two kayaks with us on our trip - curtis' and my parents. curtis had taken a five or six day kayaking course in katchemak bay earlier in the summer so he was our guru teacher. he took all of us out and instructed us in safety and all the little techniques that he'd learned. it was great! it was wonderful to have someone who had actually taken a formal course instead of just having us use the trial and error method to find out all the ins and outs of things that you never really think about until you do it the right way and find out that it works so much better that way. here's curtis virtual kayaking. i guess the class failed to teach him to use an actual kayak! haha!
and if you know me i have a need to take a random meditation picture everywhere i go. it's just one of my constant poses that define me. so here i am on the beach, sitting on very uncomfortable rock covered in mussels. i didn't really meditate there but if i had it would have been good practice on ignoring the pains of the body, especially those sharp points i was sitting on.dad and keith started building this great tower. they very strategically balanced all the rocks and then dad very carefully lowered keith on it to see if it'd hold him and to see if he could balance enough to not knock it over. he did great! then i decided that i wanted a turn. let's just say that the great rock tower is no longer standing...i just had to put this one in. mad cow disease finally got dear 'ol dad.curtis taking me and krystal bundy (my brother-in-law's sister) out for a kayaking jaunt.
we decided that we were going to go on a 16 mile hike to a glacier. we had to time it just right so that we could hit the tides right, since our beach gets isolated at high tide. chris, krystal, curtis and cathryn came part way in and then turned back to get to the beach before the tide cut them off. they were being the responsible ones and went back to make dinner, help watch kids. the rest of us went the whole way. me and my dad split off from the rest of the group towards the beginning of the hike and so got to sit and enjoy the glacier for a while before everyone else caught up. then my dad decided that he wanted to go down to the glacier, so everyone went down except for me. yeah, yeah, rub it in. i was freezing and the last thing i wanted to do was go and stand on the ice. i probably should've but i didn't. the group did bring back freshly melted glacier water flowing in streams on top of the ice and it really did taste great. i guess i'm just a wimp. ha! so here's dad:
and here's the crew down on the ice below me:
and here's the group on the hike back: my uncle mons, cousins bryce, kyle and tyler, dad, robert (brother) and me.
here's a pic of the kids and krystal climbing on the rocks and peering into a tide pool that had sea anemones in it!
and finding lots of little snails in the water...
dad with winnie, rachel, cassidy, keith and cayden.
earlier this year shawn wanted to get matching celtics shirts. i have to admit that i haven't really worn my shirt since i'm not really all that into sports but i did make sure to bring it with me and to take a picture of me wearing it. i did it for you, shawn! in this pic i'm holding cathryn.
i had decided before i came that i was going to go swimming in the ocean. there was never a day that it was really, really sunny so i had to just go with a cloudy, breezy day. i convinced krystal and several of the kids to go with me and we had a blast! i don't know if you can really call it swimming, though. krystal and i dunked all the way in and i was on my way out when i realized she was still in. the kids were squealing because of the cold and she was patiently standing in the water convincing them to come in. i think they all ended up coming in and krystal would float them on their backs until they decided it was just too cold. i felt like a huge wimp because i just wanted out of there! i did bring soap and did a quick saltwater hair wash but she was just the image of patience and it seemed like the cold wasn't bothering her at all. great job, krystal! the kids all came out of it smiling and laughing and shivering and blue but we had a blast doing it. the picture below is the "before" picture. i don't know that we could've stood around long enough to get an "after" pic.

shawn's birthday

2009-07-01T20:20:00.003-08:00

first of all, thank you all for your comments about those paintings. i just really liked making them and i have no idea if they actually looked like anything. so thanks! i'll do a second round soon and we'll see if i can gear those more towards the ideas everyone had.

here's a confession. and it's a pretty pathetic and sad confession. since i've known shawn i have missed every single birthday of his. this was the fourth birthday running. so sad! the first year i went up to barrow, alaska for a bird job. the second year i was backpacking in china. the third year he was deployed to iraq and i was in arizona for a bird job. and this year i left on his birthday (june 16th) to come to alaska for a family reunion. it's terrible! so this year i made his birthday last three days long. on sunday i made his breakfast in bed, which he ended up eating at the table - i need to invest in some food trays. and then i made a birthday cake that was incredibly, deliciously good! it was angel food cake with whip cream frosting and strawberrys with strawberry freezer jam on it. it really melted in your mouth. i was excited that it turned out so well! so we had some friends over to celebrate. and then on monday i took him to lunch, since he works the night shift. and on tuesday morning i flew away. next year i'll make it even more fabulous to make up for my continued absense every year. so just an advance notice, 16 june 2010 i am busy. please don't ask me to do anything because i figure it's about time that i put in an appearance on the right day. :)

Oil Paintings...

2009-06-04T08:50:00.004-08:00

so... i just wanted to get a critique from everyone. i'm starting to work with oil paints and loving it! they mix great, they smear great and are just all around fun to work with. anyhow, i am just wondering what you think of these paintings. they are more "modern"/abstract art, which i was never really a fan of before but i'm really starting to like more and more (but still am very choosy on what i like). so what do you think? should i keep doing these or drop them? they might just look like kids paintings and i would never know unless i'm told that. it's that whole bias thing since i'm the one who painted them. i really appreciate your comments! :) i've mainly used variations of black and white but will get more colors going if i decide that it's worth it to keep going. and i'll probably use these as backgrounds and paint silhouettes on them. like a few small bird silhouettes flying or such...

and just a side comment, i didn't improve the colors in photoshop to make them as they naturally are, so the colors are what you get from bad indoor light. they really are much more vibrant than the pictures suggest.

don't forget to leave your comments and let me know what you think! THANK YOU! :)

trip to st louis

2009-05-17T21:31:00.004-08:00

two weeks ago shawn and i went down to st louis, missouri to pick up my car. since we were coming from alaska (and i think they do this with all overseas tours) they will ship one car to the nearest port to your new base. so we drove one of our cars down (shawn's) and we shipped my car. it's seems a little silly to say it, but i really missed my car! for some reason it symbolizes freedom and everything that i love, so i was really ready to go and pick it up. i was a bit worried that they would've only shipped it to seattle, which would've meant going all the way back west and driving the same road again to north dakota. luckily, they shipped it to st louis and paid for me and shawn to go and pick it up. we ended up taking the amtrak down - it was great! i've never taken a train in the united states so i was interested to see how it differed from other places that i've been. we didn't get a cabin, so stayed in the public seating cars the whole 26 hour train ride down.
here's a pic of me on the train, towards the end of the ride, with shawn studying for his big upcoming promotional test in the background.
we got into st louis around 11 or so at night. we looked around for a place to stay but all the places right around the train station were really expensive hotels. because we didn't want to wander around a busy, unfamiliar city in the near midnight we ended up staying at the sheraton. wow! the rooms were beautiful! a huge downside of staying there is that they want to charge you for everything. most hotels now have wireless internet as a courtesy but not the sheraton. they wanted to charge us $5 for 2 hours. ridiculous! and no free breakfast. the restraunt was ridiculously expensive for basic foods so we didn't eat there. and we made the receptionist look up everything for us on her computer instead of us paying $5 to look up directions. i also did a bit of long distance internet searching through calling various members of my family and having them look things up. thank you all, i couldn't be as travel savvy without you! :)
here's st louis!
while there we went to see the massive gateway arch. for some reason i thought that this was a random sports thing and so i wasn't too excited to go and see it. but shawn convinced me and i found out that it was a national park and the arch was to commemorate the westward movement in our american history. cool! the grounds were beautiful and the day was sunny and warm.
we decided to take the little ride up to the top of the arch. i'm so glad that i have my national park pass! it's 630 feet to the top and we got to ride in these cool space capsules to get there. each capsule seats 5 people and on the way up we were the only people in our capsule. which was good. shawn can get a little claustrophobic and so when he realized that we had to be trapped in these things for four minutes he started to get a little panicky. below is a picture of his face when he had that realization. just a bit worried...
luckily, when the door closed there was a little window that we could see out of and that made him much at ease. and here's me, all ready to go in my space suit jacket. well... it's not really a space suit jacket, it just looks as if it could be.
and since i know you're dying to ask me this question, i don't get claustrophobic. if you ask shawn about me he'll say that i do get claustrophobic. i don't mind being in small spaces with no window. but i do mind having my body or body part pinned or held firmly. if i shook someone's hand and that person would not let go of my hand, i just might have a panic attack. or if someone held me in too firm of a hug... but i really don't view that as claustrophobic, it's something else that i just don't know the name of...
and here's shawn looking down on all the little peons below. 630 feet make those people look minuscule!
at the bottom of the arch there's a great museum that tracks the westward movement. i'm such a museum nut and love to educated myself as much as i can about anything and everything. they had a bunch of quotes all over the walls. some of them were absolutely heart breaking, mostly from things that were done to the native americans and how their views were treated as nothing. here's one: "what! sell land! as well sell air and water. the great spirit gave them in common to all, the air to breathe, the water to drink, and the land to live upon." -Tecumseh. how touching is that? it is pretty ridiculous that these things that you'd think would be human rights to have and to share are bought and sold and selfishly guarded. too bad so many people don't respect the earth enough that we could ever move to the point where we'd all share and live in it alike. below is another quote that i like:
and here's shawn with the gateway arch in the background.
shawn was pretty excited to see the st louis cardinals stadium and so we just had to go to a game. it was my first big baseball game. when i was little i'd go to my dad's city league games, and i'd go to my brother and sisters games, but those aren't really fan based. it was crazy how many people go to these pro games! i was shocked! we got our tickets from some random guy on a corner in town and so saved a few bucks. that left us just enough to purchase a peanut shell to split between both of us. just kidding! we actually got some fries and we made sure to get a bottle of water before we walked in the gate to the stadium. food is soooooooo expensive there! all in all it was a great new experience.
when we got back to minot, north dakota, our rental house was ready for us to move into. i'll make sure to post some pictures of it when we get our things unpacked and looking nice. pictures of boxes never did it for me... for mother's day eve shawn got me a bouquet of flowers and a dairy queen cake. he really does have a soft spot for those cakes and now i understand why. in the middle of the cake are little crumbly chocolate things on a pudding-like layer. yum! and no, i'm not making an announcement. i am a future mother and a kind-of-mother (other words known as a loving aunt) to all my nieces and nephews, and we have a dog - so i deserve those flowers and that cake! :) it was wonderful! thank you, shawn!

family dinner

2009-05-10T18:16:00.005-08:00

on the last sunday before me and shawn left to move down to north dakota, my family got together for a farewell dinner. it was also to celebrate the birthday's of my sister, carolyn, and brother-in-law, curtis. my mother is an amazing chef and she made us all indian food. it was fantastic!
here's some of the toppings to go on the chicken curry.

here's my wonderful father and mother contemplating what to eat first.
this is catheryn townsend.
hannah deKay.
keith bundy.
cayden townsend.
cassidy townsend.
winnie deKay.rachel bundy.
jennifer and thomas bundy.
tyson bundy.
ma and pa kettle.
bethany and robert deKay. (i thought i had a better one of you two, but i didn't.)
shawn robson.
catheryn and carolyn townsend.
curtis townsend.
sarah and chris davenport live in colorado and jonathon deKay is in uraguay. other than that this is my wonderful, stupendous, loving family! i love you all!

February and March

2009-05-10T16:55:00.005-08:00

For two and half weeks in February my sister and her husband took off to Hawaii for two and a half weeks and me and Shawn watched their three kids for them - cassidy, cayden, and catheryn. here's (from left to right) cassidy, winnie (my brother's daughter), and cayden. cayden loves his big sister and wants to do everything with her - including dress up! :)me and shawn took the kids to the first day of fur rondy, the festival in anchorage that kicks off the iditarod sled dog race. this is me at the grand parade...
... and here's shawn and the kids at the parade. cassidy ended up getting pretty cold so towards the end of the parade wasn't having all that great of a time. we went and found a place to have some hot chocolate to warm up and then kept going to some of the events around town. we went to the train station where they had model trains set up where the kids could learn about trains.
and we went to the snow sculptures. i think the judging took place the following day so people were still working on sculpting. below is cassidy and cayden standing in front of a kayaker riding a wave.
and here's catheryn and shawn in the train station. we made sure to wrap her up pretty thickly so that she wouldn't freeze. we did such a good job that she slept almost the whole time we were out and about.
february brought my nephew, keith's, birthday. he is now officially six years old. at his "cousin" party they had paper airplane races and made crazy hats. this is my neice, hannah, with her hat. this was a really crazy hat and very unique so i just had to take a picture. way to go, hannah!
and here's keith with his birthday cake. my sister let him choose any cake he wanted and he chose this one, probably because it came with a play cell phone. he looks a little tuckered out in this pic.
and here's the attendees starting at the bottom, going clockwise: zoey, keith, rachel, cassidy, natalie, bethany, jennifer, sarah, hannah, jeremy and winnie.
here's keith:
i talked to jennifer a few days before keith's party and she mentioned that he had wanted a pinata so i volunteered to make one. here's paco, the mexican chicken. notice the really cool chicken legs made from yarn. when i dropped him up and down with the rope when the kids were swinging at him his legs were flying!
and here's me and thomas at keith's "friend" birthday party. he got to invite two friends to go bowling with him and i came along as well.
here's the bowlers. the one on the left is keith and the one on the right is rachel, his sister. i can't remember the names of the other two, oops!
and that's february and part of march!

January to February

2009-05-10T15:55:00.003-08:00

here's the photographic summary of my life starting in january.

for the pic below, my sister was the assistant coach for a volleyball team and they would sometimes have practices right next to my house so i would sometimes watch her kids while she went to practice and they'd stay the night since she'd get home sometime after 9. this is cayden and cassidy, sleeping on the floor in our apartment. carolyn peeked in after she came back from practice and thought that it was so cute that they fell asleep holding each other. awwwhhh! cute!
and here is shawn. right behind my parents house is mt baldy, part of the chugach range. this is a very popular climb in eagle river and it's one that my family does a lot. keeps us all in shape. me and shawn and denali (our dog) and raisin (my parents dog) hiked up here. it was a bit difficult because the snow was no longer snow, but ice. going down was quick and i was very lucky that i had a crampon that i could dig in the snow as i slid down the mountain to slow me down.
and here's me at the top of baldy, squinting in the sun.
i thought this was a cute picture. it's shawn and my nephew, cayden. we were going to the commisary during shawn's lunch from work.
this is winnie, my neice, in front of one of the walls that i painted a tree on in her and her older sister's room. for christmas this past year i drew my parents this picture from a photograph that i took in their yard of a mom and two baby moose.
here's my niece, cassidy, making the assent of... a rock. she just looked like a really hardened mountian climber in this picture even though it is only in my parents yard.
these are some of my nieces and nephews at thomas's 1st birthday party. starting at the bottom left corner and moving clockwise: cassidy, keith, hannah, rachel, and cayden (with my mom and dad in the background).
here's me with the birthday boy himself! one year old!
shawn took me on a surprise date in february and wouldn't tell me anything about it. i got home from work, he told me to get dressed warm and then we drove up to mt baldy's parking lot and he took out a backpack that looked heavy and a bundle of wood. we then hiked up a little ways and he stopped and unpacked his back pack. he was carrying a dutch oven! that's why the back pack looked so heavy! he then proceeded to make me dinner with the anchorage city lights twinkling in the background. it was a quite cold night and i was grateful for that warm food. it was delicious! chicken and beef and onions and peppers with lots of spices. mmmm!!!here's me and shawn with a full stomach and freezing faces!

the million year post...

2009-04-30T18:49:00.003-08:00

i know, i know. i've heard lots of gripping (or is it griping?) lately that i haven't posted in a million years. i suppose i'll excuse the complaining because... it's totally true! and here's the list of excuses that i've prepared. *ah hem!* first... just kidding! i really won't go into those but i will give you a quick update on our lives now and i'll work to get more pictures on here sometime because a blog without pictures...
me and shawn have moved to minot, north dakota, courtesy of the air force, and get to be here for the next two and a half years. it's not the most scenic place in the world but the people here are extremely wonderful! we found a house to rent but can't move in until the middle of may so we're living the hotel life, not knowing where we'll be the next day and hating it! i can't wait to get into a real house and get our stuff here. by the time we move in it will have been about two months since we left our house. that's way too long!

Mural...

2009-01-25T20:32:00.003-09:00

here is a link to my sister-in-law's blog, "deKay dreams". i did some paintings at her house in my nieces room and she took some pictures and posted all about it. i need to make sure i get over there and take some pics as well! :)

official substitute teacher...

2009-01-14T15:27:00.002-09:00

I'm a substitute teacher! Because of the holidays it took a little while to push all of my paperwork through the proper channels. I had a training class last week and then my first job on monday. I got to be a music teacher at an elementary school. we didn't actually sing anything. the teacher had left a movie to watch, so that's what we did. then today school was cancelled because the weather decided to warm up and rain on us. so that turned the whole road system into a massive ice skating rink. when shawn drove to work this morning he said that he saw a bus sideways, i'm assuming off the freeway. not that safe at all. so i stayed home today and did things around the house and prepare a few lessons for school. i'll get to actually teach someday! :)

cccolddddd.....!!!

2009-01-06T09:48:00.006-09:00

it's been freezing up here!! we've been dealing with -10* to -20*F this week and last week. way too cold! i really miss the warm sunshine. so yesterday i went out to start my car (after not running it for two days) and it would not start. luckily a friend was nearby and came over to jump me but the car would still not start. and then my extension cord was way too short to actually reach the car to plug it in. for the past few days shawn has been ultra worried and so has been running his car every night for a bit because his car doesn't have a plug. so the moral of this story is to listen to your husband! don't be so over confident next time. :)

me and shawn went out to go ice skating on friday but after we were outside for 20 minutes our faces were frozen so we decided not to go. on saturday we were more prepared and took lots and lots of gear and went hiking so that i could go and take pictures. the following pics are a summary of my last week:

this is at the end of our hike on saturday. we were outside for several hours (i'm not sure how long). i wanted to see how big the ice chunks on my eyelashes would get so i resisted the urge to clean the ice off. it was getting so bad that everytime i blinked my eyelashes would stick together so that it was a pain to get my eye all the way open again.

here's a pic of shawn and our new puppy, denali. she's really a great dog and listens and is very calm. she's only about 3 months old or thereabouts.

this is a pic from the trail that we were walking down. beautiful! you might have to click on the picture to get the full effect, so that you'll see it bigger.

this is from friday. me and shawn drove out to ship creek, which is the corner of anchorage that touches the ocean, where they have all the cargo shipped to and from anchorage. it's also right next to the train station. this tree stood out incredibly well. the frost all over the tree contrasted so starkly to the blue sky.

my mother does a lot with the cub scouts and last week she had her neighbors come down to take some of the boys and their families dog sledding. it was incredibly cold so the turnout was low and those that did stay didn't stay long. i showed up because i could :) and i really wanted to try my hand at mushing. hehe! all the kids got to go by themselves on a quarter mile loop with one dog pulling them and the adults got two dogs. we did have a couple of people that fell off but the snow is a nice cushion. this pic is of my mom coming in at the end of the loop.

this pic is from the day after christmas when my whole family went to my brother-in-laws family cabin. these trees look like they're topped with marshmellow cream. :)

this is a view of the sleeping lady (mountain on the top of the pic) from ship creek.

here is another pic from our hike on saturday.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2008-12-30T17:37:00.001-09:00

I just wanted to recommend this book to all. It's fantastic and kind of heart-wrenching but worth it. Read it!!

Summary of the fall...

2008-12-30T16:55:00.004-09:00

okay, okay. so it's been about a million years since i've last posted (and i'm serious - a million!) and i decided that i let you all know that i'm still alive. so shawn got home a week after i got home in october and then we had two weeks to romp and roam and do whatever we want. :) so we went on a little adventure to fairbanks, alaska to go to the hot springs up there. it's about a 7 hour drive north. we coasted into town just as it was starting to get dark, found out where the hot springs were and started driving. now, we were driving our "new-to-us" audi and one of the down falls of it is that the dash lights don't work so when it's dark you can't see the gas gauge. you can probably guess the rest of the story but i'll fill you in just in case you don't get it. :) so we started driving down the road to Chena Hot Springs and the last time i was there i remembered it as being right outside of town. after about a half an hour we started panicking. and then our gas gauge light came on notifying us that we were about to run out of gas. unfortunately for us we had passed the last gas station a bit before and it closed at 8pm. all the normal 24 hour gas stations were all the way in fairbanks, so that didn't help us any. and to add to the suspense a bit more i had no cell service since we were driving down a very narrow valley AND it was -10*F. COLD! remember that i had just come from arizona and shawn from iraq. jumping from +90* to -10* was quite the experience! so we found a little road side motel/restraunt and pulled in. as soon as we walked in the door the old lady gave us an odious look and decided that she didn't like us. i pleaded and pleaded and tried to pull every trick i knew but she would not give us any help or any gas. we decided to try our luck to see if we could make it to the hot springs. we did have a good sleeping bag in the car that would tide us over if we did get stuck out there. we barely made it to the hot springs and were so happy to not have to freeze to death in the snow. so then we got our room and asked and pleaded with the hot springs people to please have pitty on us. did they? nope. i actually overheard them say "not to get involved" with us and our predicament. in the morning after trying everything i could think of i remembered i had roadside assistance (why did it take me all day to figure that one out?!), we called, they brought out some gas and we only had to pay for the gas. so... the moral of the story is (1) that fairbanks people aren't always that helpful (no offense if you're from there - maybe it's just the chena hot springs road people) and (2) always remember roadside assistance! haha! anyhow, on our way home we made sure to stop at north pole, alaska and go to santa's house. unfortunately santa was away getting ready for christmas and was only there on weekends, so i didn't get to sit on his lap. :( as a side note, if you send a letter to the north pole it might just appear on the wall at santa's house. there were tons and tons of letters pinned to the walls there from kids all over the world. it was really fun to read them!

in november we went down to idaho for two and a half weeks to see shawn's family. it was fantastic to get to see all his family. and for those of you who are wondering, yes, shawn did get an elk. the majority of the meat is still in idaho (we'll pick it up in april on our way to north dakota) and we got the jerky shipped up to us. delicious!

then christmas. whew! it's always a busy time of year and this year was no exception. one of the most time intensive presents that i gave was for my parents. i did a charcol drawing of a photo of three moose that i took in 2004. everyone was amazed and astounded :) and it turned out great! i'll put some pictures up here of it when i remember to bring my cable to hook up my camera to the computer. after christmas we went out to crooked lake with my whole family (minus one sister and family and my youngest brother) where a brother-in-law's family owns a cabin out there. you drive right on the ice to get to the cabin (taking a boat didn't quite work on the ice). we played in the snow a lot and built some great snow caves - one of which works kind of like a slip-n-slide with a snow tunnel over it. quite fun! that brings us pretty much up to date and i promise that i'll try to keep everyone current! we don't have reliable internet at our house which makes email and all this other stuff quite difficult.

hope you didn't fall asleep reading this! i'll be sure to have pictures in the future. :)

2008-10-19T19:38:00.001-08:00

just a quick note... feel free to comment on my blog. i know that there are a ton more people out there that look at it than actually comment and i'm just curious to see who looks. :) thanks!

Team Yellow-billed Cuckoo 2008!

2008-10-19T18:05:00.005-08:00

I've heard a lot of gripping (haha!) about how it's been about a month since my last post so i decided i better get on the ball and get caught up before life starts running away without me. Below are the members of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo Team that i was apart of this summer.

For starters, here's Murrelet Halterman - our fearless team leader, hungrily eying a delectable cicada. mmmm!!! Murrelet is from California and has two dogs that are her faithful companions, Pipit and Tui.
Eli - the head supervisor of our team, from California origianally but now a resident of southeastern Arizona. He's really into energy efficient living and being completely self sufficient. He also happens to have a great sense of humor and was always coming up with ways to keep us all smiling and laughing. (Refer to "lobby the lobster" in previous post...)
And Shannon, another supervisor. She's not a big fan of the camera and so wanted to try to hide from the camera. I do have to say that i like this picture, although it is a bit blury. Haha!
Luckily, Shannon was okay with being in a group photo and with a little help from my friend, Photoshop, i was able to display her shinning face, minus the hat. Shannon is Australian and yes, she does have an awesome accent. Just ask her! (She was born in the U.S. to an Austrailian family, so is also American - but don't tell her i told you!)Diane is our third supervisor. She is from Texas, moved to Washington, raised her kids there and is now a resident of the world. Her dog, Brew kept us company throughout the summer. This picture would have been perfect but for the twig that's in front of her face - just try to imagine it's not there and i'll work to get it photoshoped and i'll make it disappear! Vona, or Iwona, is our resident Polish representative. She moved to the states when she was 10 (or 11? 12??) and is busy adding more and more bird experience to her resume. She and Eli are the two that swam across a part of Lake Havasu with me. Vona was also a great encouragement in dragging me to the gym and keeping me in shape. She is from New Jersey and is now living in California.
Eric was the youngest member of our crew. At 18 years old he had the most bird knoweldge out of any of us and was very patient with those of us (me, in particular) that had next to no experience in that realm. He's the next Einstein of ornithology. Haha! He is now going to college in Colorado Springs.
Joe. Need i say more? Joe is an avid birder and would sneak off with Eric to go look for everything that was out there to see. At the beginning of our summer we would fill out bird lists with all the birds that we saw. Let's just say that it was probably Joe and Eric that compiled the most comprehensive list of birds we encountered. Joe is from West Virginia.
Amanda, the Puerto Rican. Amanda was my survey partner throughout most of the summer and shared in my stress as we came to the realization that we had to write down all the birds that we saw! Ahhhh! Then we found out that the only bird that we really had to know cold was the cuckoo. Whew! Relief!! The other stuff wasn't as important and, hey, we had Joe and Eric doing such a good job anyway!
Bob is from California. He's a retired engineer, after which he went back to school to get his biology degree and has been doing field work since. He's a trooper! He worked in Barrow a few years before I worked there, although we worked on different projects. He has a few kids, step kids and lots of grandkids. He's now home in California enjoying being with his wife and family.
And last of all, Dave. I know that the picture below doesn't really show you his face, but i have to admit that i just thought that this picture turned out really well and i just had to show it. Dave is from New Jersey and is an up and coming birder with lots to teach. He is working on finishing his last class to graduate with his bachelor's and is now living and working in Tucson, Arizona.
Below is a picture of Dave and his dad that i took off of Dave's facebook page. I felt kind of bad that you couldn't really see his face in the picture above so i thought that i should put a more complete picture on here.
That's my crew! Hope you liked it! I do have a few more posts left of this summer that i'll be working on getting up in the near future.

colorado kayak trip

2008-09-22T17:00:00.004-08:00

last week a few of us decided that we were going to kayak down the colorado. we were doing vegetation plots about an hour's drive north of lake havasu city, so after all of our plots were done two of our crew dropped us off on the river to paddle the 15 miles down to lake havasu. the colorado, at this point, is a slower moving river with none of the gripping rapids that are associated with the grand canyon. i say this just because i know that when i used to hear "colorado river" all i would think of was the grand canyon rapids. well, this part of the river has none of that so don't you worry for me! :)

here we are at the boat launch. we had lunch first at the restraunt/cafe/bar that's attached to the docks and then were ready to begin our adventure! the three of us that did the trip are pictured below : your's truly, joe and eli.
the night before eli had checked the weather and it had said that it'd be partly cloudy so we weren't too worried. once we got on the water and paddled for mabye 30 minutes these dark clouds started assembling. oops! we weren't too worried because we're all pretty aware and prepared to deal with things if a huge storm brews up but we decided that we were going to try to keep ahead of it the whole way. this picture is of joe and eli at the front of the storm.
and another picture showing the amazing clouds! during the whole trip we stayed just ahead of the storm hearing thunder in the background and getting only a few sprinkles on us. it was very pleasant and cool and the lighting made my pictures look all that much better.
because i was behind my camera the whole time i handed off my camera to eli to take a picture of me just to prove that i was, in fact, there.
there were some amazing cliff walls right along parts of the river and eli decided that he was going to try and climb some of those. this picture is after he had jumped in the water from the rocks and was getting up on his kayak. yeah, you can tell he grew up on the califonia coast...
this was an incredible rock that i thought looked just like a skull. i can totally see treasure island and goonies taking place here.while on our trip down the river we found lots of trash from those (grrrrr!) messy partiers on the river. eli would go picking up the trash he could and once in a while he and joe would find a treasure (i did mention treasure island, right?!). here is a blowup lobster that he found, affectionately named "lobby the lobster".
and here's joe with one of his found treasures - a buoy! he also was on the sit-on-top kayak and so got to carry the ice chest with him. when it got really windy he definitely had to paddle a bit more than me and eli to prevent from drifting upstream.
we timed our trip so that we got close to the end just as the sun was setting. we sat and watched the sun go down until it started getting really dark and then we paddled as hard as we could to get to the pull out. we had forgotten to bring our headlamps so i wanted to make sure that i could kind of find my way to the car. while i was paddling in the dark through a whole bunch of sedges there were a ton of coots in front of my kayak. when i would get close to them you could see the whole flock run on the water ahead of me. it was so neat because i could only see the water as it sprayed from their feet but the actual duck was lost in the darkness. i wish that i could've captured that on film for you because it was so awesome!!
it was wonderful to do this little trip and i really wish that we had done it earlier in the season. when i come back down to arizona i'll definitely have to do this again!

more iraq pictures...

2008-09-12T20:59:00.002-08:00

here's some more pictures of my incredible husband in iraq! he just put them up today so i can be honest and tell you that i didn't forget to post them this time. :) shawn asked me to put these up especially for his family, so they could see what it's like over there, so enjoy!

shawn's iraq pictures...

2008-09-08T18:45:00.003-08:00

here are some pictures of shawn that he took over in iraq. i'm glad that he took them because it gives me a little more of a feel for what he's doing and where he's living. it's taken me a while to get them posted because... i forgot! oops! sorry, shawn! i was just so happy to get them that i forgot to share them with everyone else. anyhow, here's shawn!
cozy bunk beds, don't you think?!

see that incredibly irrestistable smile? that's my man! :)

august posting

2008-08-28T15:24:00.005-08:00

here's a bunch of pictures from this past month:

me and eli decided that we were going to swim across the southeastern section of lake havasu, near where the bill williams river dumps into the lake. i'm proud to say that we did it without drowning or getting hit by a boat! we actually had vona come along to kayak alongside of us just in case we needed a bit of help (she towed the blue kayak behind her but i'm proud to say that we didn't need it) and more importantly, the kayaks served to make sure that boats saw us. this is in a section of the river that is a no wake zone that not many people wander into because it leads nowhere. occaionaly a boat will come in to go fishing or to park so the people can go swimming. we swam all the way across and then decided that we were still in pretty good shape so we swam back across to the starting point. on the way back vona decided that she wanted to give it a try so eli tied the boats to himself and towed them to the boat launch. all in all i swam 1.08 miles! wahoo! it's 0.54 across and next time that we swim it we plan to swim it four times and see how we do. and don't worry, we'll take the same precautions next time. :)
this is a picture from the coziest hotel that i've ever stayed at in a little town in california, palos verde. we occasionally stay there to do surveys at a wildlife refuge there. if you can't tell what's in the picture, all those things are cockroaches. they were in all the corners of the room, in the kitchen cabinets, there were little bugs that crawled over us a night (fleas? bed bugs?). at least this time we got a room that the toilet actually worked in. yeah, i have to admit that it was funny staying there because it was such a novelty. i've never stayed in a place like that so it was a good experience. i probably won't be going there again after this summer although i will remember it with fond memories.
a rattlesnake! my boss, murrelet, went to use the bathroom and found this little treasure right where she had planned to go. have i mentioned that i love snakes? not!
this picture was taken just north of yuma, arizona at imperial wildlife refuge, where we would occasionally stay at a usfws field house while we were doing surveys. that night there was a huge storm and the sky was in turmoil. after the storm i got to see one of themost beautiful sunsets that i've ever seen. the picture does not do it justice!
and me and vona at imperial wildlife refuge, up on the viewing deck.
me and vona on a kayak survey in yuma, arizona.
my sister, carolyn, and her daughter, catheryn, came down to visit both sets of grandparents in phoenix and safford. due to how my work schedule is arranged i can choose when to take my days off for the month (two for every week, plus holidays) and was able to spend a week with them. it was a wonderful breather to escape work for a while and to get to know one of my neices. she loved me!
this is catheryn, carolyn, and grandpa deKay.
grandpa deKay, catheryn, and grandma helen catherine deKay - whom catheryn helen is named after.
after we were in phoenix for a few days we headed down to safford to visit my mom's parents. on of the fun things to do when we were little was to hold and haul around all the new born kittens and puppys that were born on granna joy's property every summer. this kitten is just 10 days old.
my great grandpa bought this cabin back in the 1930's up on mount graham outside of safford. it's been a long time since i've been able to spend some time up there so me, carolyn, catheryn, granna joy and papa went up to the cabin for three days. we got to hike to the bear cave, read a lot, and just spend some time breathing in that fresh mountain air. ahhh! it was wonderful!
every time i pulled out the camera to take pictures catheryn would start smiling while looking right at the camera. she knew that we would say smile everytime that we pulled it out so now she's got that practice down without even having to tell her to smile. she's a ham!
i thought that this picture was so funny. she kind of looks like a sherlock holmes chewing on a pipe. i'm sure carolyn is trying hard to break her of that practice while she's young! haha! :)
funny coincidence - me and carolyn were actually in the process of reading the same book - the proper care and feeding of husbands, by dr. laura schlessinger. i had picked mine up in a goodwill in yuma and her husband, curtis, had checked this out of the library for her. even though i think dr. laura is quite rude and over the top on the radio i was quite impressed with the book and it helped me realize things that i can do better in my marriage. i highly recommend this book to everyone.

one of my cousins told me that i'm pretty good at using the timer on my camera. yeah, i'm sure you thought that i really was sleeping, but in fact this is completely posed. even though this wasn't completely "natural" i stayed there for a long time thinking on that rock. it's the most perfect thinking rock ever!papa and catheryn... again, catheryn is a sucker for the camera.
and, to finish off, me and catheryn in papa and joy's backyard. this time it's me who is acting up for the camera!
it was a fantastic vacation for me and i'm now ready to work hard for one more month until i get to go home. and then shawn comes home!!! yipee!!! :)