You better change your clothes before mudding the pantry...

The remodel marches on, consuming most of my days (or nights) off. I was going to mud the pantry today, and Christina said if I got my new pants dirty I was gonna be in big trouble! Solution - just take them off.

Here's a photo of Christina with her new cabinets and...well... that's pretty much all we have in the kitchen. The subflooring should be done tomorrow and tile in next weekend.

Christina and Mason wanted freshly baked cookies to accompany the movie "G-force" last night. Cookies are a tall order when you don't have an oven, but we improvised with a pizza stone and the blaze king wood burning stove. It took some fine tuning to get the cookies to turn out. Here's a photo of Mason with one of the trial and error cookies. Maybe we got a little carried away with the fire because at one point the thermostat said 94 degrees.

This picture is old, and the snow is now gone due to the 80 mph hurricane force winds we had last week, but I still like it. It's all the snow that slowly slid off the roof of our greenhouse as the boys and I call it a day after working on the house.

no photos. no camera. no computer.

We live in the house - thumbs up.

The good news, that was pretty much it.

The bad news, we have no blinds, doors (except for one bathroom and exterior doors), kitchen floor, kitchen cabinets, kitchen sink, clothes dryer, hanging rods in closets, etc.

All of our stuff is moved in and it is total chaos. We have carpet with a fridge and a microwave set up in the middle of the living room. We are eating a lot microwave dinners.

We have our work cut out for us. On the bright side, the painting is pretty much done and cabinets are coming today. We should get the internet and phone line on Friday.

I don't know if I'll ever get to go fishing again ;)
Scott

Dudes Don't Blog

Scott here, just thought I would throw a couple of photos up and wish everyone a happy holiday season.
I went to the new house to get some work done on Christmas night and was greeted by a a booger blower in the front yard. By the way, booger blower and swamp donkey are our favorite nicknames for moose. Sorry for the poor quality cell phone camera picture - the moose is the big dark thing in the center of the image.



We had a great Christmas. Mason and his Transformers obsession continues on.







Christina insisted if we move to Alaska she was going to get some good quality cold weather gear. Strangely, I could not talk her into buying the mad bomber hat.

Only in Alaska

Saw this at the Palmer Fred Meyers. Yes, it is Fred Meyers, if you say Fred Meyer people give you strange looks. License plate: AK RDNK

Where else ya gonna see a truck jacked up 10 feet off the ground with a confederate flag across the tailgate and... snowmobile track for mudflaps? only in Alaska.

Shouldn't it be Alaskan Grown Hanceys?

Nope. Everything grown in Alaska has a label on it, including kids.

Here is Mason in his shirt declaring he is Alaska Grown. The kid loves taking down wallpaper, what can we say?

We took a break from working on the house to cut down a Christmas tree the other day. Scott had to take a picture the improvised "tripod" we used to set up the family picture. Mason decided to do the Yoga "tree position" with the tree.

Help!

All of you bloggers out there, I need help. I cannot get this whole layout thing figured out when it comes to adding pictures to a post. What's the trick? Also any tips on how to add cute borders or my own personal touch to the actual blog? Please keep the language on the appropriate "computer idiot" level. Thanks!

thankful for Thanksgiving

We had a very relaxed Thanksgiving Day this year. The day before all of the food, Mason's preschool put on an incredible Thanksgiving party. The next day was unusually quiet doing dinner with just our little family, but we spiced things up with some time playihg outside in the fresh snowfall. Scott tried out our latest purchase - a truck with a SNOWPLOW. Okay, are we Alaskan rednecks yet? I have to admit it is handy for plowing the 150 ft. driveway at our new house. To add to our redneckedness (a word?) we did a few doughnuts in the street with our riding lawnmower. Hey, don't knock it till you try it! Tate took an unfortunate tumble in the snow but recovered very quickly. I guess we are training him to be immune to the cold. It's a good thing we relaxed Thanksgiving day because the renovations on our house are moving full steam ahead. We spent eleven hours working on Saturday - most of that was spent removing stupid wallpaper. I HATE WALLPAPER RIGHT NOW. My fingers hurt, my back hurts, my neck hurts, my forearms hurt...should I go on? We have tried wallpaper removers, witch doctor mixtures found online, nothing works except using a razorblade to peel of the top vinyl layer and then going back to remove the adhesive. Sounds like fun, right?! I must at least admit it feels good to finally get things moving. On another note: I'm going to try to figure out a way to do additional column on the blog entitled "Only In Alaska." We've seen/experienced quite a few things that seem to be unique to Alaska. Some things are good, some things are weird and some things have just been plain hilarious. This column will feature things like: only in Alaska do preschoolers get moose jerky for their snack, and only in Alaska do preschoolers take a fieldtrip icefishing. So get ready for a little taste of Alaska's flavor!