Veterans Day has come and gone but I thought I'd post a couple pictures anyway. Courtesy of our summer trip and someone else being in charge of the camera. :) This is Mike and his Dad at a memorial by Denali. It was such a beautiful day, incredible really. We saw Denali and only about 10% of visitors really get to see it, so we felt lucky. Mike's really enjoyed being able to relate some of his military experiences with his Dad. Their jobs were totally different but they've been to some of the same places and it's sweet to hear when they talk of their memories/experiences. Mike's been to Japan a couple times now and his Dad served there for a time. It's fun to think that these father/son experiences continue even when we're all grown up.

Mike's official photo. He no longer has the glasses though. I'm still getting used to seeing his eyes all the time. It's nice though.

hmmmm

Some people's kids look like mutants and that's all there is to it.

My Monkey Boys

Jack in action on the monkey bars. I remember that hurting my hands as a kid and am always amazed when I see kids do it over and over again. Jack's not one of those kids but he will do it every once in a while.

Brotherly love. I love this picture.

Mike VS Wild

Many of you know that we don't have TV, no reception whatsoever, not even a fuzzy one. We've pretty much never really had TV the 11 years we've been married. Anytime we go to hotels we stay up late watching episodes of Man vs. Wild. My kids love it. We're always grossed out at the stuff he eats. Since living here in AK Mike is a bit more Wild. While his parents and sister visited this summer we had to try and go fishing at least a little bit.

We started at shipcreek which is my least favorite spot. It's the only non-pretty place to fish in AK. It's really muddy, which the kids LOVE. No success there. So on the way home we stopped by another spot. One kid was only in a sweatshirt of mine since he fell in the muddy waters and was freezing. We kinda hopped out of the car later then everyone else. The scene we saw was Mike catching fish with his bare hands. I've never seen this done before. It was actually quite amusing. He caught one and threw it up at us and hit his poor mother. So she was "fish slapped" Shameful really. :) She laughed it off pretty good.

As you can see from this picture Mike decided to give it a go in all his wildness. He said it's a lot tougher then he thought to bite through the fish skin.

Japan

Mike gets to travel the world without me. I think it's totally unfair but I do like that he has a job that allows him to do what he loves to do. And I also like to hear the experiences he has on these travels. These are some friends he made in Japan. Doesn't he look fetching in this traditional Japanese attire? I think so. Note there are no glasses, he got some of that fancy eye surgery and can see pretty good now, though they say it'll be about 6 months till he's totally healed.

Last time he came home from Japan he had all kinds of edible treats that we didn't know how to eat since we can't read Japanese but it sure was a lot of fun. My kids love using the kid chop sticks he got. They're normal just smaller. Jack is officially a fan of wasabi and can eat it plain. Silly boy. If you ever visit us we'll make our little American version of sushi and you can watch my kids who don't eat much, eat a lot of sushi with wasabi. It's pretty fun.

Naming

Tonight at dinner my boys were telling me names they would give their daughters if they have them. David announced that he WILL NOT get married but he'll adopt some kids. Jack said he'd name his daughter Kamber, which is the name we gave the baby we lost. I tell him that's sweet and David pipes in and says "I'll name one of my daughters Mary" Which I of course have to gush over. Then Sam pipes in and says he's going to have 4 daughters and he'll name them "Amber, Charlotte, Mary and is that 4 Mom?". Me -"No that's only 3". Sam says -" and Scribbity doo" We all bust a gut on that one and he is obviously proud of himself for making us all laugh so hard. So then they all come up with totally ridiculous names. It was very entertaining.
Here I thought little girls were the only ones who thought about naming future children.

quitter

So I was out with my little Sam man this morning. We couldn't get the oil changed on the car so we were just hanging out outside. He wanted to rake the leaves and I thought "why not". Now the leaves here are a bit frosty especially in the morning and it's probably not the best time to rake but Sam thought it was fun so we did.

As I was raking I looked at my yard and thought "ah, I don't feel like finishing this". This thought sparked some thoughts on quitting. I am a quitter. I quit many things. I have numerous unfinished projects in ALL areas of my home. When I do laundry I always leave some socks out. When I do dishes I don't like to finish off the job all the way. I don't know why but I don't. So I started to make this mental list of all the things I quit. Work out schedules, pottery projects, sewing projects, cleaning projects. Sometimes I think just get bored and don't feel like doing it anymore. I looked at my yard and the leaves on the outskirts and everything in me wanted to quit. I thought to myself, as annoying as it is to rake frozen leaves that are sparsely scattered on the edges of my yard I WILL finish this job.

So I as I raked (not meticulously mind you) I made my mental list of things I have not quit. I actually finished a mission and college. I haven't quit being a wife or mother. I haven't quit going to church or fulfilling my responsibilities there. And I do actually finish a few projects here and there when a deadline pushes me to. I haven't quit on family or friends even when I sometimes want to. So perhaps I'm a quitter of nonessential things. Who cares if I always leave out a few pieces of laundry? Well my husband but that's okay because I sometimes pick up his black socks from the floor that dump little black sock boogers there EVERY time, requiring me to ignore them or vacuum.