how to get in deep $h!t with the wife while she's at girls camp

Take the boys fishing and rafting every one of the three days she's gone:




Grind mortar off the kitchen floor and throw cement dust around the house, covering every dish in every cabinet in the whole kitchen with the aforementioned cement dust. How about a pathetic attempt to make things better? Get dessert delivered from the local pizza joint and tell her that her girls camp braids look great.

After the mess is cleaned up, you can lounge around in the hammock.




Better get off the computer, we're headed to the kenai for a couple of days.

company picnics are a horrible idea

Why? Why on earth is a company picnic a horrible idea? Because they make you do crazy stuff like ride mechanical salmon - The video of mason is too big to upload, but here is the link: http://s282.photobucket.com/albums/kk248/slv3x/?action=view¤t=MVI_1425.mp4
The video of Scott if the embedded one don't work:
http://s282.photobucket.com/albums/kk248/slv3x/?action=view&current=MVI_1426.mp4


Or attack people dressed up like sumo wrestlers and break your husbands nose.

Alaska warmer than Utah?

Things are finally right in the world, Utah is once again warmer than southcentral Alaska. We came back from a wedding in Utah in shifts. While we were gone, it was colder in Utah than it was in Alaska. I (Scott) caught the wedding and flew back three days later. What do you do for a last second Hancey bachelor party at eleven o'clock on a friday night? Cheesburgers and shotguns provide great entertainment!

I got back to alaska first and took advantage of the long hours by flyfishing from 11 pm to 2 am. Here's the photo I snapped at 2 in the morning after catching the last fish.

Had a great float yestderday. We're learning the ropes of getting the raft in and out of the water and running a mild, albeit tight, river. It was a scorcher at 70 degrees, and we had to use the a/c in the car - fortunately today is overcast and 60.

Southcentral Alaska is once again cooler than Salt Lake City, all is right with the world.

Manic begining to a manic summer

We hear summers are manic in Alaska, which makes the state a little bipolar in its nature because winters are the opposite. Last weekend we took the raft out, but due to a big accident on the highway, got a late start on the river. Getting off the water at 9 p.m. was a little late for the kids and our friend (also a night shift nurse) running on 3 hours of sleep.

Scott on the sticks:
Turning the front of the raft into a playpen:

Yesterday morning I got home from work, and the weather was beautiful. I had been awake about 27 hours at that point and couldn't bring myself to sleep through such a nice day, so we jumped in the car and headed north. In Talkeetna, we found a little lake to wet a line and play on the shore. Talkeetna is a community of 700 people +/- during the winter and nearly double that in the summer time. It is considered the gateway to Denali (Mt. Mckinley).

Tate did some army training, he's working on crawling:

The largest mountain in North America:

The boys after a long day in the sun:

Not the best fishing lake around, but a great place to lounge in the sun:

And a Happy Mother's Day!

Adventure Race Edition

Yesterday was a women's only adventure race in which Christina competed on a team with our friend Dagmara and a couple of her friends - Tracy and Charity.


The format was four hours of orienteering on foot then two and a half hours orienteering on bike. They bushwacked, hillclimbed, forded creeks, hiked through snow and raced full bore for six and a half hours. The results? Christina is so sore she hobbles everywhere and has been sick to her stomach. It's very motivational - really makes me want to try one ;)

This is the pre-race photo, all smiles.




Checkpoint photo, um, smiling.

Yeah. Can't post any postrace photos because they are not on our camera, but it was a lot of fun and a lot of hurtin'

Priceless

Hours of overtime worked in the last month: 48
Hours spent working on taxes, trying to get the best refund possible: 18
Hours browsing craigslist, searching for the right raft at the right price: 372

The dopey smile on Scott's sleep deprived face the whole way home from picking up the raft: PRICELESS!

It's a 14 foot Aire self-bailing whitewater raft capable of class 5 rapids (although we are not capable of class 5 rapids, yet). Anyone wanna come float the Kenai?

You can't change a fuel pump during breakup

The fuel pump went out in the truck last week. On Saturday, I started to fix it. Part of the way into the project we suffered from breakup. Breakup is a term for when all the snow and ice melt and the state turns into a big mudball. The driveway doesn't drain very well and ended up flooded the garage, at which point we figured saving the stuff in the garage took priority over the truck being able to run. Mason thinks breakup is awesome - big puddles and warmer weather. We saved the garage and put the truck off. I just worked a 60 hour work week, so only having one vehicle was a pain in the neck. Now I'm off for a couple of days (and will soon fix the truck) but I'm exhausted and decided there's an easy way to entertain Tate. The kid loves to swing.

Is it okay to let your five year old pick up chicks?
Yes, that chick really is blue. Happy Easter.