Our Tribute to the Military

Well we have put a lot of thought into designing the graphics that we put on the bike and Dave gave some input as well as a couple others.  It was a struggle trying to decide what should stay and what should go, what exactly is the statement I was trying to make with it.

There was a lot of thought about my family, Dave's family, ones living and ones past.  I thought to myself, we have a very long tradition of military service in our family dating all the way back to the civil war on my dad's side of the family, and Dave and pretty much his entire immediate family has served.  With all of our family we have lost people dear to us, either through military service or the after affects of being in combat.

My thoughts went to Ron Ridenhour, my Uncles, my Grandfather, my cousins, Daves Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, My Boys (yes Jason and Brandon I think of you as my boys) our Ashley and all the other family and friends who have served over the years. A special thank you to Marlene and Bob from Dave, as he feels with your guidance and support in influencing him towards the military and throughout his life,  he feels you made his life so much better.

So many people impacted us and influenced us along the way, we just wanted to say how thankful we are to each and every one of you.  We thought no better way to do this than being very loud and proud with it.  So THANK YOU, to everyone.  We love you all very much.

Aurora Borealis

We have had some amazing nights here the last few weeks. The Northern Lights have been keeping up at nights! I just can't seem to either go to bed or stay in bed knowing the skies are clear enough to see the Aurora. There has been several days with activity on the sun that creates enough energy sent to earth to create some spectacular displays. Here are some from the house and a few from Hatchers Pass. For those of you that have been up to visit, you should remember Hatchers is the area just north of the house. Enjoy. As always you can click on any picture to make it bigger.

 Look in the middle of the picture, I think it's a shooting star or maybe a satellite.

More SNOW?!?!

Ok so the King of the snow mountain is fast becoming our house and Dave, it's ruler.  I know I live in Alaska, don't we have snow all year round? Don't we all live in Igloo's and drive dog sleds or ride snow machines everywhere we go????? Ok you got me some of us actually do, well not the live in Igloo parts but the rest of it, yes it is true.  However this woman is getting a bit cranky about our latest snow, tired of the white stuff, yep you heard me.  Now Dave, the abominable snowman, LOVES this stuff and it does make for a great race season, but come on, enough is enough!  My flowers at this rate won't know spring hit until all the snow melts in August at this rate.  HA HA!! Besides we have already established you can't ride motorcycles in the snow, not even the three wheeled monster I have, it hates the snow!!

I am dreaming of sunshine, GREEN grass, COLORFUL flowers and other things that don't come in, oh I don't know, any color other than WHITE, and no Dave brown or grey snow does NOT count.

As you can tell I have spring fever, also know as cabin fever, or snow machiner's wife's blues.  I am ready for the long days of summer, nothing like 24 hours of sun light to grow the worlds largest pumpkins and sun flowers, right?! Oh and did I mention I can ride my motorcycle then?? Yep spring fever.  I started cleaning the house yesterday and even thought hmmmm maybe I will open the windows to let in some fresh air, good idea right? Apparently not a good idea with the temperature hovering around 8 degrees, yep almost put the house plants into shock over that little adventure and the house just smelled like snow after that, and we know that I get plenty of that smell right now.  So needless to say my feeble attempt at a hint to mother nature did not work as it then snowed 6 inches that night.  I think she is telling me that nope you are NOT going to be seeing spring anytime soon!!

Oh well, guess I will just keep longingly looking at my gardening books and thinking about what kind of landscaping I can add to Davey's honey doo list this spring, he he he he!!!

Miss you all!! Pray for warmer weather, it will be our secret, I promise!!

Anchorage Seasonal Snowfall

Well we are up to 119.9 inches of snow so far this season in Anchorage. We are now just 13 inches from breaking the old record. Keeping my fingers crossed. I figure if your going to get this much snow you might as well set a record. In Palmer, at our house we have only had 66.8 inches of snow this year. In Anchorage we have 36 inches piled up on the ground right now and only about 15 inches out in Palmer. The last 4 months we have been in the top ten for snowiest months for each month. Sorry about taking all the snow from the lower 48 this year.

Snow and more snow

 Here it is February 29th and we have 36 inches of snow on the ground and still falling. So far this season we have over 118 inches of snowfall, that's a lot for an elevation of 135 feet above sea level. The record of 132.8 inches fell back in 1954-1955. We are currently the 4th snowiest season on record but may edge into 3rd place by the end of the day. It has been pretty awesome, but the poor moose are suffering with all the snow, that would be the downside to it.

Jen is staying busy with work, her project is keeping her on her toes. She is really disliking the fact that it seems to snow everyday, I keep telling her that we had such a mild winter last year that we are making up for it.

Krista is staying busy with school and working at Chili's, she seem to like her job. I noticed now that she pays for her own gas that she doesn't want to drive as many places. Hmmm, funny how that works.

Ashley is doing well in New Mexico, I think she only calls when she is bored or sick though. Must be hard being a social butterfly....lol

My brother Roy visited for 3 weeks in February, we didn't get time to really show him much of Alaska. He decided to head back to Rapid City before we got a chance to get out and take some pictures.



This is a picture taken while Ashley was home for Christmas out in the swamps by Willow Alaska.

 Picture taken at work.

 Another picture taken at work, just awesome how the frost looks like grass.

 Table at work back when we didn't have much snow, now the table is missing under all the snow.

 Turnagain Arm with some ice chunks.

Arctic Survival Skills

Well all we survived Christmas.  Ash came up and we had a good time with her, nice to be able to relax and just spend time with her.  Did some snow machining and learned that if you have to pee you had better do it BEFORE you get all your gear on and oh by the way at -13 below your pee will actually freeze, yellow snow cone any one LOL, sorry I know that was kind of gross but hey we are all family right??, If not too bad!!!

But back to the update, so Ash came up and Krista went to see her grandma, both had a good time, and Dave and I had a good time, all and all it was a good Christmas.

So we have been racing snow machines and doing normal winter activities, the freezer olympics, this is where you run out of the house to start your car, quickly scrape off 3 inches of ice, then run back in the house before you loose any fingers or toes from the cold. Yep winter fun in alaska.  We also have the do I plow the drive way now or wait for the city plow to plow the road so I don't have to plow twice dilemma.  Oh decisions, decisions.

We got some goodies for the motorcycles over christmas, and today Dave put on his snow gear and we pushed the spyder out of the garage and road it to the paint shop.  The spyder is getting a paint job!! So excited!! I will post the video of Dave riding the spyder, it only took two tries and a couple of pushes to make it up some of the hills we have, apparently a trike and snow don't mix, who knew! :))  We will post pictures of the paint job once it is done.