Goodbye Drift

We said goodbye to our sweet friend, Drift, a few weeks ago. He had been battling diabetes for almost 2 years (that we know of) and his quality of life was just not what it used to be. D made the very difficult decision to end his suffering and let his best friend go.

I've never had a dog before. Growing up, we had a cat that lived to be 17 before my parents put her down due to dementia. And my crazy cat lady status was cemented after I somehow acquired 3 cats! But Drift made me love dogs - and how could you not fall in love with such a sweet soul like Drift? Even my mom, who is not a big dog person, spoiled Drift like he was her very own grandson.

D took him into the vet the day we left for San Diego. In some ways, it made the transition a little easier - being away from home and all the reminders of how empty our house (and hearts) are without Drift. But even now, weeks later, we still look for him outside in his dog house or think about needing to adminster his medication.

A sad but fond farewell to the best dog I've ever known.

Boyd around the house

Sometimes while I am cleaning the house, I wonder why I even bother tidying up before Boyd goes to bed. He can mess up a room like nobody's business! But he also helps clean when we ask him to. It just seems like our house looks like it's in shambles every time I post a photo.

This weekend I let Boyd hold the mail as we came in the house. I just had to laugh when he ran straight over to his chair and put his feet up to check it all out...

It's not often that I go out and leave Boyd with someone else to take a little time for myself, but last week I had TWO NIGHTS OUT with the girls! Wednesday evening I met some of my girlfriends for sushi, and then Thursday night I had supper club with my work friends. It was awesome to just relax with all of these ladies and have a couple nights off from baby duty. Plus I think it's great that Boyd gets quality time with Daddy. Everybody wins!

When I got home last week after sushi, I saw all of Boyd's bath toys lined up along the edge of the tub. So funny! I really appreciate how D takes a different approach to parenting tasks than I do. I think it's good for Boyd to experience us both.

Helping me vacuum. He went through a stage of hating the noise, but now when I turn it off he says, "more!"

He goes and gets his toy vacuum whenever I bring out the Dyson. We feel strongly that he needs to learn about chores (in a playful way now) so that it will be normal for him when he's older.

Master of the list at Costco! We didn't see our favorite checkout lady this time. She coos all over Boyd and he gives her big smiles. We also stopped by the thrift store and an older lady just could not get enough of him - she commented about his cute Bogs boots and laughed about how they were both wearing Columbia jackets.

Boyd has been loving the Learning Tower lately. I've been trying to teach him how to climb into it, and then he has easy access to the counters. He put this extra large rubber band on his head himself. So goofy.

He retrieved this container from a shelf, brought it to me and then proceeded to climb inside. I pushed him around the floor in it for about 5 minutes.

Boyd can't get enough of his own image. We watch a lot of videos and take many, many photos of him so that he can look at them later.

These two are D's biggest fans - they get incredibly excited with he gets home. Here they are both peering through the baby gate trying to get a glimpse of him!

Snowpocalypse 2013

D and Gabe left town this past weekend to fish the Homer Winter King Tournament. Although they didn't win the top prize ($40,000!!!) a nice white king was brought home and we all enjoyed a lovely family dinner last night. I don't think there is anything better than fresh king salmon - it just melts in your mouth with each bite.

While the boys were fishing hard in Kachemak Bay, Boyd and I had a busy weekend around town. On Saturday, he and I joined my mom and Risha for brunch at Simon & Seafort's downtown. Our table overlooked the Coastal Trail, Cook Inlet and Sleeping Lady (mountain). Even saw the AK Railroad train go by - Boyd got a kick out of that. Boyd did really well that day - two naps and I was even able to organize his clothes and closet. He is mostly wearing 18 month sizes now!

Sunday I attended another mama brunch at a friend's house. Our third mama and baby decided to stay home due to sickness, which I'm happy about. I don't need an illness on top of an already teething and nap-refusing baby. Monday was our first official Music Together class. Boyd was totally into it and I'm looking forward to a fun semester. The classes run through May 13th, so we'll be done well in advance of Memorial Day.

Oh and we also had an epic snow dump beginning Sunday and continuing on into Monday evening. Over a foot of snow at our house. I cleared a few inches late Sunday afternoon and D did the rest on Monday. Boyd had a fun time hanging out in the sled and then crawling around while watching me shovel. Even got a few giggles out of him as I showed off my snow-removal techniques.

Another new hat! I got it on super sale from the Gap for around $8. I do love it, but need to affix some sort of ribbon to the flaps so it stays put and snug on Boyd's little head.

Our back deck was almost completely bare in some places. Not anymore.

Since diabetes has robbed our dog of sight, he makes his way around by memory. The snow really messed with his paths around the deck and backyard.

Randoms

Just a few photos from the last couple weeks...

My friend Susan took this while we were at her house for a play date. We were all laughing because Boyd was CHEESING it up once he figured out she was taking his photo. What a ham!

Another installment of "Grumpy Dog and the Baby."

"YUM, I love puppies! Nom, nom, nom."

"Heehee."

It's clear and ridiculously cold at our house. Almost 14 degrees BELOW zero.

I will give this kid almost anything to play with if it means keeping him happy during a diaper change.

Goodbye Sammy

My oldest cat, Sammy, (aka Smee, Cow Kitty, Fatty) crossed over the Rainbow Bridge a couple weeks ago. She had been declining for quite a while - arthritis, I think, along with an old-kitty condition in which claws curve around to grow into the foot pad, which is pretty painful. Sammy had a good long life - at least 16 years - so my sister and I decided to take her to the vet to have them take care of her.

The day before her procedure, I fed her as much canned food as she could eat and gave her lots of love. The next day my sister and I drove to the vet's office, and I was fine until we put her on the table. So, so sad to put a beloved pet to sleep. It's heartbreaking. Thankfully the process was quick and she drifted off without any pain. We chose to bring Sammy home and bury her in our backyard.

After losing Pepper 2 years ago, we're now we're a 1 cat, 1 dog household - which is plenty now that we have a little 2-legged troublemaker!

Boyd and Sammy on her last day.

Christmas tree

As promised - a photo of our little Christmas tree. Not quite a Charlie Brown tree, since it has too many boughs and greenery and ornaments! I love that it gives off a hint of the piney smell.

And a Drift photo taken this morning. He loves when I leave the house because it means he receives a treat! For Christmas, Santa brings him a new throwing dummy (like the green one below) and soft toy every year.

Baby bump - 22 weeks

Another health fair tomorrow, another long day. But one thing to look forward to is Risha's arrival today...yay! She'll be here in Anchorage for good. Gabe is coming up with her but just staying for the weekend - she needed another person on the plane to accompany her 2nd cat. Looking forward to seeing them both.

For those of you on belly watch - here's the latest...

The striped shirt is from Old Navy Maternity - still have lots of room to grow into it. More people at work are noticing my pregnancy, especially when I wear clothes like this. Lately I've been very thankful for the private bathroom in my office. My increased water intake and the little guy is forcing me in there every 30 minutes or so! Baby is moving around, which I usually feel while sitting at work or at night in bed. My appetite is good - still craving meat. I had lunch with a friend this week and just about devoured the entirety a HUGE hamburger. Weight gain so far is hovering around the 13-14 pound mark.

The other night Drift had a renewed interest in his toy basket and practically pulled out every item all the way to the bottom. He ate a whole bone that sat in the basket for almost a year and then carried around a few toys before depositing them around the living room. Every few minutes we'd look over to see this:

Fall Moose Hunt 1

It's not even winter yet and I feel like cabin fever is hitting me already. So when D asked if I wanted to tag along on his moose hunt this past weekend, I jumped at the chance! We had a nice dinner out at Club Paris (arguably the best steaks in town) on Friday night to celebrate our summer birthdays, and then got up at 4 a.m. (!!!) on Saturday to start the 3 hour drive north. 

We came to this area last year to hunt for bull moose. It's so beautiful in the fall and we got lucky again with the clear, crisp weather.

D decided to launch the boat from another area on the lake - it was a little deeper than the State Park launch we used last September and much better for our v-bottom boat. Most people out here had river boats (flat bottoms with a jet motor). 

Ready to go! That is D's canoe - we pulled it behind the boat.

Our first stop was a beach near the shallow lake channel.

  

Lots of yummy blueberries out here! At one point D and I were literally sitting on our butts, cramming blueberries into our mouths by the handfuls. They were huge and delicious.

All the red leaves were hiding blueberries underneath.

Nice sandy beach.

The weather was so great. During our drive I slept for a bit and D says it was 35 degrees out, even with the sunrise. It warmed up a little to the low 60's by midday.

Tuesday update

Peeps, I'm exhausted! This baby is sapping my energy. I may ask the doc to check my iron levels at the next appointment to see if anemia is present, although I should be fine because of the prenatal vitamins I take every day (aka horse pills - they're huge!). Lately I've been falling asleep at the normal time (before 10 p.m.) but waking up in the wee hours of the night and then laying in bed awake for a few hours. It's maddening.

I keep forgetting to take belly photos. Worst mom ever, already. Currently I'm between 17 and 18 weeks. Only a few more weeks and we'll know if Baby P is a boy or girl. My pants are all getting tight and I've started to wear more skirts and dresses to accommodate my growing belly. It's that in-between stage where I don't quite look pregnant yet - just fat.

It's cold and rainy across Southcentral Alaska. Mushrooms have popped up in yards all across town (they love the wet weather) and I picked the very last batch of raspberries from the backyard. Our rhubarb did so well this year and picked a few more stalks for the freezer. I like to freeze them in 1 and 2 cup packages for easy baking. We also put away most of the deck furniture since winter is on the way. I left one chair and most of my flowers out - the first hard frost will take out most of my plants and I'll dispose of them after that.

A friend asked me if Drift had picked up on the baby yet. Her dog is very sensitive/nervous and started acting very weird toward her close to the 4th month of pregnancy. Drift, on the other hand, is still as happy-go-lucky as usual! We'll see if that changes as I get bigger in the coming months.

Drift in sled dog booties. D finds these on the trails during walks and brings them home. They protect puppy feet from prolonged running outdoors.

My new addiction

What a nice weekend! Lots of sunshine and the days are getting longer. D went snowmachining and hunting up north while I stayed home to do housework, errands and take the dog on a nice long walk. The streets are all clear but the trails still have snow and are fairly muddy in some places. I wore my xtra-tuffs and they were a mess by the time we got home - Drift was too, so he slept in the garage.

The quality of these photos isn't the best - they were taken with my iPhone...

Taking the shortcut.

You can see the difference between springtime and winter in these two photos. Same area - even the dog is in a similar position! Unfortunately the tree couldn't handle the weight of the snow and broke off.

The snow melts in mysterious ways. It's like a snow Stonehenge.

I usually bring my phone with me on hikes, just in case - and also like to listen to my iPod on my phone. For part of the trek we were back in the woods and the bears are starting to wake up. I ended up removing one earbud and turning the music down so I could hear any unusual forest sounds - like a charging black bear or angry moose. It's ideal to make noise and not sneak up on wildlife so singing out loud to Katy Perry seemed like a good idea.

I got Drift to run at a gallop down this long stretch of road near the Campbell Creek Science Center. We were both pooped afterwards. Need more exercise (the both of us).

Pretty blue skies - no clouds! This was around 8 p.m. Pretty glorious to have the sunshine back.

So, I have recently seen the light and joined the ranks of scores of Alaskan women who swear by their Danskos! Friends and coworkers have sung the praises of these clog-like shoes but I always thought they were a little ugly - still do actually. :-) But some styles are less awful and I have been needing really comfy shoes for those days that I am on my feet all day at work (e.g. health fairs).

REI had a sale last month and I used the 20% coupon plus a gift card and merchandise credit to get the brown pair below (the Marah mary jane's) for $16...they're normally $115! Even the checkout person was impressed. And then last week a Dansko vendor was in my workplace lobby and I purchased a black patent-leather Professional pair. They are SO COMFY. The height and clunky-ness take a little getting used to (they're clogs, after all) but now my other work shoes feel so uncomfortable after wearing these. I've heard that Danskos and Xtra-Tuffs are some of the most popular shoes sold in Alaska today.

 

A New Year

Happy New Year everyone! Here's to a year filled with new hope, life, health and experiences.

A warm front rolled in this weekend so now we have 35-40 degree temperatures! Our street is one big sheet of ice and my car slid down the melting hill to bypass our house the other day. Some people call the warm winds and weather a "pineapple express" because of their origin in Hawaii and the tropics. I say they are Chinook winds because I'm Alaskan. And that's how we roll.

Went showshoeing with a friend from work - 3 other ladies were slated to join us but the weather and other errands called them away. I was ridiculously hot since the temp that day was 45 degrees, but we had a good time regardless. My friend had never been snowshoeing before so it was neat to introduce her to a new experience. No moose or other critters on the trail.

My dad is getting a little better every day and finally got a good night's rest with the help of a sleep aid (doctor approved). His appetite is back and my mom is visiting the grocery store almost every day to make the meals he is craving. Cross your fingers that Mayo will let him travel home to Tennessee in the next week or so!

Our honeymoon plans are coming right along. I booked a one-night stay in Hana and used Hotwire.com to bid on a hotel room for our last night in Maui. We wanted to be close to the airport after driving back from Hana, and Hotwire actually came back with a great deal. Our all-day snorkel cruise is booked, as is our rental car (a jeep - yay!). I'm debating on whether we should do a luau - I've attended a few but D has never had the luau experience - but they are running $100-$116 per person! We could eat some amazing food in Maui restaurants for that much money.

I haven't blogged about this but my kitty Pepper passed away in September. We returned home from a moose hunting trip up north to find Pepper unresponsive and very sick. I was shuttling her to and from the vet every day for a week and she seemed to be improving. But at home she escaped outside and didn't come back. I am sure she was done with being sick with thyroid disease, feeling awful because of this new condition and dealing with a scary vet office - and wanted to pass away on her own terms. Oh man, I am getting teary-eyed just thinking about her right now! I try to remember that she was an older cat who had a good life and 12 years is a pretty good run. I adopted her from the South Texas SPCA as a senior in college and she survived 3 moves (including a 12 hour plane trip from San Antonio to Anchorage).

Snowy day skiing

The weather during Thanksgiving weekend was perfect! Lots of fresh powder after 24 straight hours of snow and it was the light, fluffy stuff. We packed up our x-c skis, the dog and headed out to Campbell Tract, which is conveniently less than 2 miles from our house.

I don't know if I've said this before, but I really do love the area we live in. It's close to everything we need (shopping, work, highway, etc.) and at the same time near the wilderness (Campbell Tract, Far North Bicentennial Park, Chugach National Park). Every year we see lots of moose in our yard (just 2 weeks ago, in fact) and last summer a black bear was spotted near the end of our little street.

Anyway - back to skiing. The temps hovered near 19-20 degrees and couldn't be more perfect. Any warmer than that and I just get so overheated after 15 minutes of outside exercise.

Blue sky and no clouds!

This is Campbell Airstrip. Small planes mostly land during the spring, summer and fall months but there are signs on this route that caution trail users to stay on one side of the airstrip year-round, lest they get run over by a Piper or SuperCub or something.

The majority of those we saw on this day were skiing but a few were just hiking or on snowshoes. Lots of dogs along too. Didn't see any dog sled teams though.