Sunday

I was just reading another blog which had some height and weight on a child and forgot to mention Rainey's. She went to the doctor on Wed ( ear infection) and she is 37 3/4 inches tall and 30.5 pounds. She is really tall for her age. I just did not realize exactly how tall. I know she has giant feet (size 8) and she is wearing a 4t and she is not even 3 yet. With her momma and daddy being so tall I would expect RB will be as well. Just some specifics.
She is going canoeing on the lake with her dad today. Should be a nice day out for it. We have not put the boat in the water yet but should in the next week or so ... getting ready for book club. I am going to need a few minute nap before I go. I have been tossing and turning since 4:30 and finally got up at 6 am. I like not having a covering on the window in the winter but in the summer is pretty much sucks because of the sun .. it is pretty to see the green trees but not pretty enough to give up a darkened room. :)

Tuesday

I was just reading a blog from someone who was talking about having friends but feeling pretty anti-social. I think I am a bit like that. I like to do things but only things that I want to do. I think that is ok. I am thinking that if you are sitting at home and doing nothing all day then yes you might need some activities but if you can spend all day by yourself and fill it up with one activity after another (by yourself) and enjoy being by yourself than that is ok. I went to town today for class.. Love this class by the way. I stopped in ER for my STarbucks... which I downed before getting to class. Then I had to check the mail at the office and drive  home.. I got home at 2:45pm.  and Tom was gone... ( had a meeting) and so I decided to take a quick nap. Which lasted about 10 min before he called to say he was on his way home from meeting..  how did class go... any mail  ... stuff like that.. I then decided to close my eyes and try to go to sleep again but then REnae and Rainey arrived. Renae had to come up to the bedroom to get medicine.. clomp, clomp, clomp all the way up the steps.. RB crying at the bottom and well.. .guess what .. nap over... anyhoo... to the person whos blog I read if you read this.. it is ok to enjoy spending time by yourself..

Monday May 16th

First day of summer semester today. I am going to love my class. I have an art  history 1 the first 5 weeks and an art history 2 the second 5 weeks and then an online class which I am not seeing on blackboard yet and am getting a bit concerned since it is an online class. I will call tomorrow if I do not see it. I did manage to get the books today and not one person asked me if they could help me.. thank goodness.  I must have had a don't talk to me look on my face ...either that or I was focused and went to get my books and left.  Normally I have more than 5 people asking me if they can help me. At any rate going to love the class. Same teacher for both classes. She knows her stuff.  The main requirement is to go to class every day or rather 4 days a week for the next 10 weeks. I can handle that. Beautiful drive in today. I stopped in Eagle River for a coffee.. listened to my book on the way in and the way home.. had a great time.

Planting flowers

RB and grandma planting the first flowers of the year.

she had on her special gloves and  her Dora scooper ect and helped me plant our flowers

Rainey watering her flowers.

Saturday morning

Another beautiful day here in Alaska or at least that is what it appears to be at 7 in the morning. Tomorrow is book club I think. I have not had any emails so maybe I better check my schedule. I was pretty sure it was tomorrow.

Guitar lessons are going pretty good. We are going to be turning the family room into a music room. Going to be adding a drum set and a piano pretty soon. We want to start Rainey B in piano lessons here at the house when she turns 3 and since I have always wanted to play the piano I will be having them as well and that will justify the person coming over here rather than us having to go somewhere. Speaking of the house, it has been staying really clean. Renae cleaned it the other day and she does one of those knock down super good shining everywhere cleaning jobs. :)

I did not say much about my trip to Seattle. One thing that I love to do is look up used clothing stores for children. I find them on my phone and then plug in the address on the GPS and I am off on an adventure. I found one in this building called the Wallingford Center which must have been an old school or some sort of government building .. not really sure but they have turned the building into a "swanky, somewhat hippy" sort of shopping environment. I LOVED it.It was really cute with all the different stores inside of this building. Not like your usual mall or strip mall sort of setting just really unique. I got Rainey some really cute stuff for a really cheap price. The one thing I did pay full price for was this little blanket that was like 11 by 17 size of paper and it had all the tags sewn around it .. tags like it in ribbon handles. She said a lady in the neighborhood makes them and they are called a tag blanket. Super cute. The other place I found was only about a blog away in a downtown 45th ave group of stores and it was ok but did not have that great feel of the other place but I picked up a few items there.

Then I put in the troll under the bridge coordinates into the gps  because it was only a mile from where I was. It was dark, overcast, and I have no idea what to expect .. It was really dark under the long bridge as well.. so here I am driving up these roads with cars on both sides , it is pouring down rain, dark and boom.. there he is .. sitting under the bridge.. really creepy. Scared the crap out of me.. I hated it.. I just think it was that long dark bridge and not knowing what to expect but that would be awful at night.. I did go back the next day with Tom so he could see it and in the sunlight with another person it was not as bad.. Not sure I would take a little kid to see it... It would make the three billy goats gruff way to real....

Off to another clothing store but it was somewhere in downtown Seattle on 5th and I could not find it and with all the rain I just decided to return the car to the hotel and walk up to Pikes and see if I could not find the store just by walking.. so into my phone went the coordinates for walking. I had an umbrella that the valet guys gave to me and off I went.. wow.. what a miserable experience walking in the rain, wind blowing, cold and wet... I know I live in Alaska.. but that is a different cold than what we have.. anyway I made it to Pikes.. I bought.. a rock that says "grandmas rock" ... cheesy but cute.. than I bought 3 teeshirts for RB.. one says " My auntie rocks " (this for when she goes places with Adrienne).. one that says " If you think I am cute .. you should see my grandma", and then one that says " if mom says no.. and grandma says no.. than go ask grandpa.. " she loves that one.. I am not sure what else I picked up down there.. But it was fun walking through all the wares.. almost like the state fair..

Friday

How does time go by so fast?it seems just like yesterday that I had just gotten home from camping and it was Friday and now here it is Friday a week later and I am wondering where the week went ? Or maybe my question should be where did my 2 weeks of summer vacation go? Time to start back on Monday.

We went to Seattle for a few days this week. Terrible, terrible weather .. not really a fun trip at all but rather a chore. I am thrilled to be home.. I guess that is a good thing. I know lots of people who go on vacation that do not want to come home and I just want to come home. It was daylight and beautiful at 9:30 pm when we landed. So, happy to be home. I had to drive to town today and it is amazing  how green it is getting so fast. Just really, really pretty. The lake is completely melted and wonderful looking. WE  have had someone working around the yard getting it all clean and organized for summer.

I have to start with the beginning here to finish this up because it is way to complicated to go backwards when I am stopping and starting. So here is the deal. It is Mothers day week and the girls and I like to go somewhere but the challenge this year was that Adrienne only had Wed and Thursday off and did not get off until 9:30 pm on Tuesday so it seemed like a lot of work to go to  Fairbanks. The other part  is that we would have Rainey with us this year since it was during the week. Hmmmm what to do.. again ran into the problem of most everything touristy not opening until May 15th and I was still finishing up my 40 days on HCG so a ton of eating and enjoying fun libations was out and so was massage and swimming.. which pretty much left Alyeska out for me.. and finally I thought.. wow.. lets go camping. I have always wanted to rent a motor home and go camping and so that is what we did.. I called on Tuesday morning and they said they had one and so Renae and I piled in the car to go get the camper.. 50 miles to Anchorage.. and then 50 miles back to the valley.. then shopping and packing and organizing and putting stuff in the camper. We had to wait until 9:30 pm to leave. I had this great idea we would make it to Seward that night.. Ha, ha, ha, ha ha ... we made it to Beluga point. These pictures.. the first three are from Beluga point on Wed morning. The camper has to go slower than a car.. it wiggles and wobbles.. it is a huge pain in the ass and that was just the first hour.. :) so we all go to bed at midnight.. well.. brilliant me did not think about the fact that semi trucks would be going by all night long.. :) and I had no idea about how much propane we had so we did not  have the heat on and froze.. finally renae got up at 5 am and said I am freezing and this sucks.. which was true so we loaded up at 5am and headed to Seward.. but now it had changed to Kenai (Soldotna) because I had forgotten my phone charger and needed to get to a Fred Meyers to buy one.. it was cold, it was snowing and we had to wait at Girdwood for the store to open to get coffee.. I will stop there and continue the story later.. believe me.. it was eventful..

These were taken at the end of the road ... North Kenai .. in the Cook Inlet Rec area which by the way was closed and only this overlook was open which said no camping and who would want to camp in your overlook area anyway... when it was freezing cold and the wind was blowing like there was no tomorrow.. it was my idea to try there and it was a long, long, long drive and it was about noon and so we did make a fire and roasted a hot dog but it was too cold to be outside very long so after lunch we put everything back in the camper and went onto our next stop which happened to be Seward :)