Here is a little preview of Halloween...that is if the costumes last that long. I have already endured the "Friday Night Fights" with Darth, Ninja, and the Storm Trooper trying to conquer the "bad guys" (sometimes Gracie and Aly) or just each other. Loud and hilarious, with a few bonked heads in between. Tomorrow is Harvest Fair at school, so they are looking forward to the pre-Halloween festivities. Was Halloween a week long when we were kids? Honestly, after this week I am going to test them for Type II Diabetes...and that's even after we turned down invitations to another Halloween party and a birthday party!! (A mom can only handle so much sugar...) So...it was 19 degrees here today, sunny and clear, but cold. Trick-or-treating could be varsity this year. Our sun is setting about 6:20 p.m., but it only shows up after 9 a.m. I don't like getting up in the dark, it always seems a little harder...here we go, Winter #3!!! :):):)

The boys...

Just a few pictures of the boys in their future college gear and our wind storm. We lost about 4 trees, had >75 mph winds for hours on end. Needless to say there was no sleep that night...so loud! (Boys slept through it; how is that possible?) A neighbor found a part of our out door heater down the street...in three pieces. :) All is well. We have snow on the ground at this point, nothing pretty yet, but the mountains are beautiful. Storm is foaming at the bit to get out there and ski. More in a minute... Love, KM

Some September Pics

Hello again, here are a few pictures of the house with our recently added deck. I put in a picture from last winter to show how the house looked without the deck....and because I cannot wait for it to snow again!!! Also there are some pictures from a race that Nick and Alex ran. It was about a 1 mile cross country run. The kids did great and had a blast. Other than that we are just enjoying the end of our fall colors and getting ready for winter. There's some snow on all the mtn tops around our house so its getting closer. The kids keep asking me when they can go skiing again and they are already planning which hills they want to sled on first!! I am personally hoping for a record snowfall year, of course I hope for that every year. Anyhow, enjoy the photos. See Ya, Storm

A few more Denali pics

Well here's some final pictures from our visit. We saw about 8 Grizzly/Brown bears during the day, however they were all about 50-100yds from the car so a bigger camera lens would have been optimal. I guess 50 yds is close enough when there is no fence. The picture of the road is at a place called Polychrome Pass and it is impressive. We put the car in the photo for a little bit of scale but I'm not sure that it worked. The rabbit needs no explanation I guess, he was on the side of the road so we took his picture. Lastly I built a little rock structure on the river bank behind the hotel and it turned out well enough to deserve a picture. The kids would've stayed there and thrown rocks in the water for hours. I hope that you've enjoyed the photos, and for anyone coming to visit Alaska I definitely recommend putting Denali in your plans. Storm

More Denali pics

Here are some more pics from our day in Denali National Park. Obviously there were some caribou antlers to play with, man those things are heavy!! You would have some pretty impressive neck muscles if you walked around with those on your head every day! Yes Max is saluting in almost all of his photos, I don't know where he learned it, but he sure thinks that its hilarious. We drove all the way to the end of the road which is mile 92. We took a picture at mile 89 because I was too lazy to do it at mile 92. At the very end of the road there is an airstrip and there was a helo parked there. They were out surveying the glaciers and they stopped for fuel on their way home. They let the kids sit in the helo and then we got to watch it take off, the kids loved it. The picture of the lake is Wonder Lake at mile 85 of the road, Denali was unfortunately covered by clouds by this time or it would have made an impressive photo. And there is also a photo of Alex and Max getting their Junior Ranger awards. After they watched Nick do it, they decided that it was pretty cool so they finished their books too (with a little help from Mom!). They were very proud when they got their badges. Well I could tell lots of Denali stories but I need to get this done so bye bye. Storm

Denali

Hello everyone, here are some of our pics from Denali National Park. First I'll explain how it works and why it was a big deal to drive the road. The park road is open from mid May to mid September each year. The road is 92 miles long and normally you can drive the first 20 or so in your car, to go further you are required to take a bus. However each fall the park opens the entire road to 400 Alaska residents per day for 4 days. They use a lottery system to determine who gets to go in. Well, obviously we were selected so off we went. We drove up on Sunday and stayed in a lodge Sunday night. Our day to drive was Monday and it was beautiful!! Which is unusual especially for this time of year. We drove the entire length of the road which took almost 11hrs since you can only go 35 mph (its all dirt and single lane in many areas) and of course we made lots of stops. Even though it is a National Park once you are in the gate you are on your own, there is no food, gas etc... there are numerous bathrooms however. The scenery is spectacular and there is a lot of wildlife. It was a really great experience and a lot of fun. The only animals that we didn't see were wolves and moose, of course we see moose in our yard so that wasn't too heartbreaking. Now for the pictures. There are some caribou, some dall sheep, and a ptarmigan. You can see that the ptarmigan is already losing his summer colors and getting all white for the winter. Also there are pictures of Nick being sworn in as a Junior Ranger!! He completed the book they gave him and they swore him in and gave him a badge, it was pretty cool, and man was he thrilled. I also put in some pictures of the mountain which was nearly cloud free for a good part of the day and a picture of the road so that you could see the lack of guardrails and the 1000ft drop if you missed the turn. I'll write more with the next group of photos. Storm

School and a 'puppy'

Here's a few pics of the kids on their first day of school, and a pic of our 6 month old 80+lb puppy!! Everyone is doing well and having a great time. I'll have a whole bunch more pics of our trip to Denali soon.