We Made it to Alaska!

It's been six or seven weeks since we arrived to Alaska and so many things have happened. The first two weeks were really the hardest. I think out of the first 14 days we were here, I had worked 9 of them (several of those days being 12 hour shifts). Also during those first 14 days we welcomed here our nanny Sara, the kids started school, James started work, we bought two new vehicles, picked one vehicle up from being shipped in from Texas, bought a new living room set, had the movers drop all our stuff off at our home, and had to stock our house with food. Which actually was kind of difficult because we were so busy, it was hard to think about making meals!

The kids have had their ups and downs. They loved getting here with all the snow. Sledding was first on their list of priorities and oh my goodness, what fun it was to watch them get to experience that for the first time. They had a blast. they wanted to go sledding every day... until all the snow melted. They also went ice skating on the lake behind our house yesterday for the first time. I think that we would have had more fun if we had more snow, but shortly after getting here it all melted in a freak warm-front and just last night we finally got a couple inches. It's hard to be excited about living somewhere new/cold when there isn't much to do outside from lack of snow. Hence... they've had a somewhat hard time as they've realized how much they miss about Texas. They miss their school, teachers and friends immensely. Elisabeth came home crying (or in some other emotional mood) from school for about two weeks straight because she felt so overwhelmed with all the changes with school and such. Noah has done pretty well actually. And Amelia has done incredible. She has done really well going from daycare every day to being at home with mostly only one adult all day long. She spends her time playing in the playroom, with her toys and seems so happy.

I thought I was loving Alaska until a couple weeks ago when I would find myself randomly bawling because things were just so different. Just going to the doctor, grocery shopping, running errands... little normal things started to frustrate me because of how different it is here. But I blame pregnancy hormones! Overall it's fine. I like my new job, church has been good and our new routine at home has been well. At this point, moving or not, I think that I'll be much better off once this little Baby Bear is born because I am so limited in what I can do with being 8/9 months pregnant. I want to unpack more boxes (which I have to say, we only have a handful left to unpack, I'm very proud of that!) but I'm too tired all the time.

My sweet honey bunches of oats seems to be doing okay. He's gotten into a good routine with his semi-long drive into Anchorage every day. He gets home at a pretty decent time, he's home for dinner every night, which we all appreciate. However, by that point he has been gone for 12 hours. I work 12 hour shifts, but only three days a week, he does it five days a week. Poor guy. But he's been working on getting his enormous garage situated. He bought a four wheeler and has been working on getting our house all in order. I don't know what I'd do without him!

I'll admit, in the craziness of the past six months, I feel like him and I have been putting our relationship on the back-burner. It seems like we spend so much time trying to keep all the balls in the air, we don't have time to work on us. Our communication skills have become mediocre at best and we never seem to be quite on the same page. We've talked about it, but yet don't know what to do at this point to fix or help it.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

I’ll just ignore the fact that I’ve not written anything for months! Right now I’m sitting on a borrow air mattress in our very empty home. The home that we purchased 7 years ago when Ellie was 17 months old and I was 6 months pregnant with Noah. The home where I spent many days, weeks, months home alone with the kids because James was working 15-18 hour days, 7 days a week being a Military Training Instructor. The home where my kids all learned to walk and talk, where I built a sandbox and garden and set up inflatable pools to keep them busy and happy. I have many good memories of our family in this home. But we’ve definitely outgrown it and now we’ve sold it and we’re preparing to head to Alaska!

It’s funny though: our kids have had more fun with a completely empty house in the past couple days, than I think they’ve had with all their toys and things over the past couple months! They have a few blankets, pillows and a gallon-size Ziploc bag of Duplos to play with and yet it’s kept them laughing and running around and being silly for hours and hours. I haven’t heard them utter, “I’m bored” since the packers took all our household goods last week.

Everyday, it seems there is one more thing we add to our “to-do” list, whether it be here in San Antonio or for once we arrive to Wasilla. And it’s emotionally exhausting. Thankfully I don’t have to do it alone; James is an amazing husband and I love solving all our problems with him. Last night our two problems to work out were: being a one car family for three weeks (I’m not upset, I’m glad we sold our truck last night, but it’s still an adjustment) and how we’re going to get the five of us and our luggage and our two pets to the airport. We agreed on just getting two mini-van Taxi’s, which is going to end up costing us over $150, by the way, ugh.

James and I have always said how we'd love to unplug and raise our kids more how we were raised. Well it's truly about to happen and some of it is actually no choice of our own. In our new home we will have no Netflix, Roku or satellite television; we will get less Internet in our home than we currently get on our phones. I can’t believe I’m even the slightest bit upset, because we don’t watch that much t.v. but the thought of having to watch how much Internet we use each day just stresses me out a little bit. I’m happy that we’ll be spending more time away form the t.v. and computer, however I do think that it will take a little time for everyone to get used to it.

Oh and we have a septic tank which means we have no garbage disposal and when we called to set up our trash service, we discovered we're going to have to cut back the amount of trash to a quarter of what we throw out right now. I guess we'll be composting and recycling a lot more than we do now. I actually spent a couple hours researching worm composting! I know it won’t be hard per sey, to not throw food down the sink and to recycle our recyclables, but it’s just not something we’ve had to do before. I feel like this is going to be so much change all at once.

I think that the weather change is going to be a shock for the three kids (as well as me! Even though I claim to be a Minnesotan still, this San Antonio weather has messed me up a little over the past 7 years!) but I’m hoping that there will be so many new and fun things that they’ll not complain too much. I think they’ll be excited to run around in our big backyard. We currently live on less than a tenth of an acre and our new home is on two-thirds of an acre. I think they’ll love it! 

 

Mother's Day 2013

This was my most favorite Mother's Day ever! Ellie was so excited, it was almost the best part: to hear her anticipation days before Mother's Day! On Mother's Day, though, Ellie and Noah walked into my room and a bright and early 8:30 in the morning, much earlier than I had wanted. They had brought me breakfast in bed, but I wanted to be down with my children on Mother's Day for breakfast, simply because they were so excited. It seemed selfish to stay in bed and sleep. So we all went to the kitchen table and Ellie Belly brought me a BIN of wrapped presents. She was so excited. When I saw that they were wrapped using the entire brand new role of wrapping paper I had purchased to wrap Amelia's presents, it took everything in me to not say something to them. But let the record show that I was so sad that they had (once again) used wrapping paper without getting approval from me. (At Christmas, Ellie pulled out German wrapping paper that I had gotten in Germany, obviously, but never actually intended to use and I had a talk with her about asking before suing wrapping paper.) Anyway I opened each gift and they were all so wonderful. Homemade present from the kids, pictures and poems and vases of paper flowers. They mean the world to me. Such love and thought went into each of them. So so sweet. Then Ellis had donated $2 to James to purchase new sheets for me. I have been dying to buy new sheets. I have to admit, it totally left me so relieved. I was so worried that James would get me something unpractical, and while sometimes that's okay, I didn't want to be getting lavish or impractical gifts when we are trying to pay of debt. So it was good. James then helped me get the family ready for Church and we all went together. When the kids and I got home James had dinner ready and we ate a feast of his Chicken Alfredo w/Black Beans pasts dish he loves to make. The rest of the day we playing games as a family. It was perfect.

Speaking of debt. Have I mentioned that we paid off my Durango? YES! Last month! Now we are working on paying off our second to last credit card. Next month I have to start paying on my student loans... so that's going to be more money going to debt as well. We are so excited to still be pushing through. I'm a little sad to say that I do know we could be penny pinching a little more, but at this point James isn't wanting to feel that "no money" pain as much, so we've cut back on most things, but not everything.

Minnesota trip

If pictures are truly worth a thousand words, then this trip to Minnesota at Easter to visit my best friend from high school and her new baby, should require no explanations.

The Zoo

My Dang Phone

I don't have all the time in the world to get on my computer to update. But I do often try to update on my phone. However... I never actually check to make sure the post went through!! :-( And I just noticed three posts with PICTURES didn't go through over the past month or so. I'm so mad. I tried to post them again but now I think they'll all be out of order. Oh well.

I went to kite day with the two kids last week. This was the first year I could actually go because in year's past I was at school taking finals. Kite day has always been during finals week. This year I could finally go and Ellie's class went first. Although I was excited to go be with my baby girl, I wasn't too thrilled about flying a kite. I'm not very good at it and I was afraid that Ellie would have high expectations of me and I would disappoint her with my lack of skills in that department. Much to my surprise, she was an excellent kite flier herself and actually encouraged me and showed me that kite flying is about the experience and not about how long you can keep the kite in the sky or how high you can get it to go. Although, she was good at both of those as well. I had such a wonderful time with her. She is such a sweet and thoughtful girl.

Noah's class was next and it was hilarious! Simply adorable. He also had no expectations of me helping to fly his kite. He was perfectly happy just running around with his kite, hanging onto the kite itself, not just the string. It was so cute how happy he was to be doing it by himself. Man I love my two kids. They bring me so much joy.

Tonight I was lying in bed thinking about them though and my heart aches with grief. Earlier this evening we had some friends over: their kids are younger than ours, their oldest is barely three. But I noticed something, that I've noticed before, but it really sunk in more today. I am not the most gentle mother. And I HATE it! I speak so harshly to my children and I don't know why. I didn't speak that way to the kids I nannied, I didn't speak that way when they were babies or toddlers, but somewhere along the line, the gentleness in me slipped away somewhat. I don't feel like I am mean or cruel or unfair to them. Although I guess one could argue that not being gentle to a 5 and 7 year old is unfair. But that's beside the point. I pray that I will be more gentle. And yet it seems Heavenly Father doesn't help me that much. Why? I don't understand why I have to get so anxious inside that I speak with such a harsh tone. The things I need to say to them would be much better received if I could take a deep breath and say it nicer. Why can't I do that in the heat of the moment? It makes me so angry with myself. The biggest problem is that while I am working on it, my kids are growing up. What kind of memories will they have of me? Will they remember how I took them to the peach orchards, the zoo, Sea World, the beach, the lake, hiking, the museums? Will they appreciate all the time and effort it took for me to plan to do all those activities (many times without hubby there)? I'm afraid that they will remember me getting onto them about rubbing their hands along the cars as we walk through the parking lot or scolding them for the way they didn't get a bowl to get their watermelon and instead tried to eat it right out of the serving bowl or setting them on timeout for getting side tracked when they were supposed to be doing their chores. That's what I am scared to death they will remember. Ugh and it makes me cry and cry and cry.

I love my kids so very much. I do everything for them. I'm always thinking of things to do with them or ways to make their life a little more interesting. Yet I wonder if it would be better for me to just stay home with them and sit and play a game (although we DO try to play games a lot as well) or read a book or just talk. I want them to feel my love for them and I'm afraid that my anxiety of doing everything right is messing them all up and interfering with their ability to feel my deep love for them. I hope that I can do a better job with Amelia and future children. And I hope I can convey this to Ellie and Noah before they get too old.

Kite Day