August's Visitors Part Two

Shortly after my parents left, we had more visitors come stay with us. Good friends of ours from Germany, Scott and Amber Spahr, were in Alaska visiting an aunt of Scott's up in Fairbanks, and decided to come spend a few days with us while they were in the state. I was trying to figure it out, and I'm pretty sure it's been about 5 years since we've seen each other. Crazy! Especially when you realize that over that five year, we've added Zeke, Deacon, and Finn to our family, and they have added Anna (plus another on the way).

Our kids became friends in no time at all, and we all had a great visit. From watching movies:

To going to the zoo (and later that night out to dinner...thanks again you guys!):

To checking out the Imaginarium at the Anchorage Museum:


we had so much with our friends. Thank you, again, for coming to see us Spahrs. We had a blast.

It Smells So Nice

Before I put up some more posts about life here in Walterland, I wanted to post about Scentsy wickless candles. It's been popping up in conversations and blogs and things lately, so I thought I'd write about it right here.

First, I'd like to let you all know that a fellow blogger is giving away a Scentsy plug-in warmer (like the one pictured to the right here) and 3 scents. If you want to enter the contest follow the link to her blog and leave a comment:

Me and My Soldier Man

Now, my neighbor across the street sells Scentsy stuff as well, and I have to say that I really like their products. I went over their today to get new catalogs because I recently broke my warmer, and I said to my neighbor that she needed to have another party that I could attend, because let's face it, they're fun. She turned around and said that I should have a party instead. So I guess that had me thinking, if I did have a party, even though most (all?) of you couldn't actually attend, would any of you be willing to look through her catalog online and maybe order something? Please don't feel like you'd have to because I'm not even sure I'll actually have a party, but I'm curious now.

And now, here is my own little "testimonial" for you. One day I had my warmer going, and the wax was all melted and warm and what's-it. Zeke was running through the house, swinging around a shoe lace, when he managed to land it directly into the warm wax. Before I could stop him, he swung the shoe lace out of the wax and it landed right in his eye. BUT, since the wax never gets warm enough to burn someone, he was perfectly fine, just a little annoyed that something got in his eye. No burns, no marks, nothing. Lovely.

Oh, and their scents are aroma-riffic.

August's Visitors Part One

So. As I said in my post the other day, my mom and step dad came out to visit us for a little over a week this month. They got in on Tuesday the 3rd, and we couldn't have been happier:

Wednesday morning, Josh and Matt took my step dad on a two day fishing trip. Apparently my dad did pretty well since he caught most of the fish (the other guy in the picture is Matt, Josh's friend from work - it was his boat they went out on):

After they got back, they spent a good part of the morning on Friday cutting, and washing, and trimming, and vacuum sealing the many, many pounds of fish they caught. The boys were more than happy to supervise the process to make sure it all went well:

Saturday saw a little break in the rain (for a few hours anyway) and so I took my older boys and my parents to the zoo. And no trip to the zoo would be complete without popcorn and kit kats:


Sunday afternoon, Josh took my dad and the older boys on a hike down to the river, while my mom, Finn and I stayed home and made dinner:


Monday morning we took advantage of another break in the rain (I'll post about the rain we've been having later) and took the boys to the playground for a little bit:

That afternoon, after nap time, I took my parents and the older boys onto post to check out the airplanes and to get some groceries from the commissary:

On Tuesday, my parents took a train ride from Anchorage to Whittier, then took a day cruise around:

As you can see it was a chilly day. They did get to see a bunch of glaciers as well as some sea lions (the sea lions are the black dots on the ice block in the water):

Wednesday morning it was raining (again) so we tried out The House of Bounce in town. It was pretty cool. There was a bunch of blow-up jumping things in there for the kids (and the parents!) to jump around on. The boys had a blast, and I think Josh had a fun time too, even though he banged himself up pretty well:

While the kids were napping, the rain stopped, so I took my parents to the Heritage Museum. We got there just in time to see some authentic dancing:

There was also a very rare event going on that day. Apparently four of the tribes that are represented throughout the museum had agreed to share a house at the museum (outside is a pathway that leads around a lake, and along the path are different Alaskan house types to go into and see how they live, etc). To commemorate this big deal of a thing, each tribe commissioned a local (to them) artist to carve a totem pole to represent their tribe. Then, each day last week one of the totem poles was raised in the house. It was a pretty big deal, and we were pretty excited to have been there to see it:

They said the totem weighed a little over 900 pounds. It wasn't very tall, but it was wide. And thick. Very cool.

And then Thursday my parents left to go back to New Jersey. All in all, it was a great trip, and we had a great time. Thank you Mom and Dad for coming!

PS...for those interested I will eventually get the pictures up on Flickr, but there are over 200 of them to sort through, so it might be awhile before that happens. Until then, see ya!

Are You Still Out There?

It feels like forever since we've been here, doesn't it? I apologize. My mom and stepdad were visiting and so blogging just didn't happen for me the past two weeks. I'm going to try and get another post or two up this weekend since we have more guests coming in on Monday. But now I have to go and make some dinner for my man-cubs. Tootle pip!


-posted from my iPhone.