Never catch snowflakes with your tongue...

...until all the birds have gone south for the winter.

As everyone probably already got the memo that it snowed in Anchorage and Wasilla, I won't rub it in that we are leaving for Hawaii this Saturday! We are all excited and busy making preperations. Alaeric is going to have a blog and as an assignment for school he is going to blog about his Hawaii adventures. Check his blog out here. Niall is up to his ear-balls in algebra, he has to finish this chapter so he can take the test before the quarter ends.

This year was kind of iffy for berries and stuff, we did not get any raspberries but we got rhubarb, crab apples and a fair abount of booberries (it's October so they are booberries! November they will revert to blueberries.) Enough to make 45 jars of jellies and jam. Considering the season I think that is respectable. I am really bummed about the raspberries so I may have to buy some to make jam because I use the raspberry jam in recipes.

And now for something completely different....

The UAA "A Cappella Festivella 15" is going to be this Thursday (October 19th). One of the groups is named Inpulse and is awesome, here is one of their songs. If you can make it you should, the groups are always great and it is a lot of fun for the whole family.

With that said, I need to get back to the algebra enforcement task force.

How many skateboarders does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Three. One to screw it in and two to hold his pants up.

Warning: I am going to jump between topics and this blog might seem a bit random.

When is it okay to be antisocial? Lately I just haven’t felt like participating in much of anything. Maybe it is the crappy weather we have had all summer. Oh well. Life is too short to wallow in self pity. I dropped out of my choir’s first concert, just not enough time for everything and I had to simplify my life. I will do the rest of the concerts though. I wish there were about 10 more hours in a day.

Preparations for Hawaii are going well, I have as much scheduled as I can…our days are packed! We will be doing a lot of geocaching which is a fun and free activity that involves hiking and searching for hidden caches. I figure it is a good way to get to see the more scenic areas of Hawaii.

Last weekend we went shooting with Joe and Karen, the guys were having fun exploding propane bottles. video here. I think Joe and Alan were practicing for the Darwin Awards.

What Do You Always Get on Your Birthday?

Another Year Older!

Forty is a hard number to come to grips with. This year’s birthday I feel like a two-by-four has hit me upside the head and I am staggering around wondering where the time has gone and thinking about what have I accomplished so far. For the most part I feel like I am right where I am supposed to be, but I still have some what ifs; what if I had gone to med school, what if Alan and I traveled before settling down. Thankfully the older I get (and hopefully wiser), the fewer what ifs I have.

So moving on after that indulgence of self pity, I got a lot done this weekend! I hung out with family and a friend Saturday, we had planned to go blueberry picking up Arch-Angel Valley in Hatcher’s pass and maybe watch a movie. What really happened was we did go pick berries in Arch-Angel Valley, but it was raining pretty hard so after getting a scant cup of berries, Karen and I took the kids back to the cars, fed them and waited for what seemed like an hour. Finally Alan, Daphne and Joe decided they had had enough and we drove back to Mom and Dad’s (also Joe and Karen’s) for an impromptu BBQ. Yum.

Not being done with the day, Alan asked Joe to take us shooting so Niall could discern the difference between a real gun and his video games. We all packed into 2 cars and “drove” up the Jonesville mine road in Sutton. Due to the rain the road was filled with craters and had this thick layer of silty mud. Woo Ha! The kids learned a few new words. We finally got to the top of this cliff overlooking the whole Matanuska Valley and had fun blowing up propane bottles. Who knew? Thank you Joe…explosives and guns are a fun mix.

Niall found a fossil while we were up there and the view was spectacular. It would have been fun watching the sunset, but thought it prudent that we head down before it got too dark to see the cavernous potholes…like we could miss them. Alaeric was quite chatty on the way back telling us all about cock fights (he saw a flock of chickens as we drove by a farm) and white trash. The white trash had to do with capturing ostriches (I don’t pretend to understand his logic). Anyhoo he had Daphne and I laughing hysterically. It doesn’t take much to amuse me anyway. Was a fun night all-in-all.

Sunday I processed the blueberries that Alan picked and we got 8 jars of jam. I added that to the 11 jars of rhubarb jelly and felt a smidge of accomplishment. Today we are smoking salmon for the first time.

There is a link in today’s paper to an article which describes what Alan does and will be doing at work for the next three years. Thank you Begich for job security.

Note to self: check to see if rambling is a symptom of old age.