Muller Mountain

On Sunday afternoon, the weather warmed up to above 0 degrees and was really sunny, so we decided that it would a nice day for a drive out to Muller Mountain. It is a small mountain... or hill that is about 16 miles outside of Galena. I had never been out to the mountain so Keith wanted to take me and with the warmer day I was up for it. Our good friends Wendy and Ross Tulloch decided they would join us so we found 2 teens to babysit at our house and headed out. What a beautiful trip! The trail is an easy one and full of beautiful landscapes. Here are some pictures of our adventure.

Keith and I on the trail to Muller

 Galena mountain in the distance! BEAUTIFUL!

 Nice trail

 Our crazy friends! =)

 View from the top of Muller Mountain

 View from the top

 From the top

 Our snow machine. Very comfy ride!

 Ross and Wendy at the top

 Wendy and I

 Me at the top

My handsome husband

 Good friends

 Ross braving the trail up to the very top. Can you see him?

What a wonderful trip! 

A Week of Love

Last week we got to host a mission team from our "home" church in Lake Jackson Texas. They came up to put on our annual Marriage Conference. There were seven wonderful people that came. Chad Alexander was the teacher at the conference. The others held a Kids camp for the kids while the parents were at the conference. Not only did the kids LOVE it but the parents loved being able to attend without worrying about finding someone to watch them. It was nice to sit and listen to wonderful information to apply to our marriages. We also got to enjoy a Date night where we got to enjoy a 5 course meal and spend time with each other with out kids. It was wonderful!! Besides the marriage conference, the team did some work with Young Life and they also helped with a community Valentines dinner. They were pretty busy. I got to enjoy 3 of them staying at our house while 4 stayed at Shell and Chris Kopps. It was so nice to have them here! My boys LOVED having friends here. They were the kind of mission teams you want to have. The kind that, besides the 7 extra people in your house, you really don't feel like they are invading your space. It was like having a big family here. So many laughs and fun! And every one made themselves comfortable  and that made hosting them really easy. I loved every minute of it! Here are some pictures of the group when we took them on an adventure to the Mall.

Rosana and Mark climbing to the top of Galena at the mall.... aka the dump.

 Sawnra at the top

 

 The view from the top

 Down by the river.... can you see the group... the little black dots on the river.

   Mark and Rosana Chamblee ~ The new Alaskan pioneers =)

Kelly Alexander showing what happens to mascara in -15 degrees.

Me, Sawnra and Rosana down by the river with our frosted faces.

 The Lake Jackson team

 The team and Chris and us

WE MISS YOU!!!!

A Weekend With 5 Children

This last weekend we had an awesome time getting to watch the 3 Tulloch girls. These girls are precious to us and for the weekend we got to keep them. Their Mom and Dad had to travel to town for some business for a week and their time was divided and we got them on the weekend. Let me say it was exciting! After having only boys in the house, having 3 girls join us was different but so much fun. I as a mommy of boys FORGOT many things about having girls in the house. But altogether we survived AND we even got to church on time! But here are a few things I learned with having 5 children in my house.

~It takes twice as long to get out the door! One because with 5 kids all in the Arctic entry trying to get on their gear is crowded plus with 5 in the Arctic entry, they like to talk, tell jokes, giggle or come up with the LONGEST word they can think of. This takes time to stop and pause. So the first day while we headed to Aubrey's basketball game it took us a LOT longer to get them into the truck. I must say the conversations they had were quite interesting.

~ Keeping 5 kids all in your line of sight is hard. At the gym or at church it was quite challenging. Kind of makes you eyes cross! Thankfully we live in a small community where we know most everybody and there is not that far for the kids to run at least not in freezing temperatures. Everytime we left a room or building I would do a head count. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.  then 1. 2. 3. 4. oh wait where is number 5?  Got it!

~ Getting them all fed and dressed on time took planning. It meant laying out their clothes the night before and planning breakfast a head of time. Heading to church on Sunday morning worked great, we even got there on time! Since church is right across the street, we got the fed dressed and told them get your gear on and head out to the church. Worked great since the problem of having 5 in the Arctic entry was not a problem when the older ones got dressed they got outside and out of the way. I must say getting 4 out of 5 kids teeth brushed made me do a little pat on the back... till I realized that with 3 girls I forgot to brush and fix their hair...Opps. Oh well glad they have beautiful hair and a few tangles were not so out of place. On Monday before school, I was on top of that. While they ate I fixed their hair. Again that is something I forgot with having boys. Their hair seldom needs to be brushed and fixed!

~ Bed time takes longer too. I thought getting 2 kids into bed was hard! Adding 3 more to the mix gave us a challenge. Brushing teeth, going potty, getting a drink, getting pjs on, then get on the couch for story time. In theory that should work great, except they all needed the sink at the same time. With 5 kids I would definitely have to have a system...or 2 bathrooms.  But we all settled down for reading time and then they jumped into bed. I forget how much kids love to talk and it seemed like this step took forever. But we enjoyed prayer time and I got a kick out of some of the prayers prayed. Kids say some cute things!

~My Barbies got played with. I am sure if toys were a live like on Toy Story, my barbies would feel like they had been abandoned, but this weekend they got to be played with! Nothing like having 3 girls in the house to spread pink around!

~ Movie Night with five kids is SUPER FUN!! Break out the pillows, blankets and popcorn. I introduced them to an old classic of Pete's Dragon. It was exciting and I love how these kids love old movies as much as I do!

We had so much fun with the girls being here! Glad we had such a fun weekend with them. Thanks for sharing them with us Ross and Wendy!

Honesty and Tabbyness

Well it is past the new year and February is already here! This last year has been a busy year full of fun and then a flood. And if I am honest with you, the flood took A LOT out of me! I have not really had anything I have wanted to say. Maybe that is why I have not been blogging like I did before the flood or BF(before flood). Life got in the way of blogging. Though our house was not badly damaged in the flood, everything in our yard was and so was our entire town. So after arriving back in Galena in August, life filled up!

Life filled up with mucking out mud, washing inches of silt off of everything that the water touched. Life became re-stacking firewood(which was nicely stacked BF) all 6 cords of our wood floated AWAY.... into the woods. And it took many friends throwing one piece at a time a few feet to a pile and then throwing that pile a few more feet and then a few more feet and so on until it got to our yard where we had to re-stack it again.  Life filled with replacing parts to bikes, snow-machines, wood splitters, gas tanks, four-wheelers and anything else mechanical that the water touched. Life became a butchery to cut thousands of pounds of meat for people that didn't have time to get moose meat while they were rebuilding their homes. Life became feeding volunteers and so many other things that happened after the major disaster.

Life also got filled up with trying to forget some of the scary parts of our flood. Forgetting the real danger of freezing water rising with giant ice chunks coming at you. Forgetting that my husband put us in a boat to send us to the airport thinking we were safe, while we in reality we were stranded at the airport, in basically a bowl, because no planes were coming and we had no way of getting in contact with each other. Or I try to forget that feeling as we took off from the airport in a small missionary plane with my children safely in the back, but knowing my husband was facing the river and that fear of I might not see him again.(Maybe those memories stick with me because I know what cold water can do to a person. That is how my grandfather died in 1996. A boating accident where he fell in the water and died of hypothermia. So during the evacuation all I could think of was DON'T fall in that water!) I try to forget all those scary moments. Again maybe that is why I have not really wanted to blog a lot. I have been trying to get back in to my "Tabbyness." The fun, adventurous side of me that somehow got lost this last year.   I still get very shaky when someone asks about what went on and how we escaped to safety. But like all of us that live here, we are Galena strong and are all getting over it. It might take a while but bare with us we will get there! and one of these days it will be just some awesome story that I tell my grand-kids.

 I spent a month in Texas with my parents this December, which was nice to get away from it all. But it is really hard to be somewhere when most of the people around you have NO idea what happened or how dangerous it was and the slightest thing can send you into a panic.  Like the fire alarm at a building that sounded just like the emergency siren here. And the first thing you do is grab your children and start looking for higher ground... or a boat.  Thankfully I was surrounded by many of the volunteers that came to help rebuild our community and so they knew the damage done, they knew what the pictures looked like and they would just gather me in a hug and say "You are being prayed for." How special that makes me feel! Thank you friends! I believe HUGS ARE THE BEST MEDICINE!!! It was fun to have many in church come up and say the first thing they do in the morning is check the weather in Galena. Funny. First thing I do in the morning is check the weather in Texas. And lately with all the snow and cold they are having, I am glad I live in warm Galena! Seriously while the Polar Vortex is having a vacation in the south, we are enjoying the "warmer" weather here in Galena. 24 degrees was our high yesterday! When our February is normally -40 degrees I am really enjoying this spring like weather. I think God new our wood supply would not have held out if the weather would have been normal so he gave us a break. Snow forts and ice skating have been our daily play times. And the sun is coming out again! We are enjoying the warm sun shining in our windows again. And this morning it actually woke me up shining in my window. YAY for the Sun! My Avocado tree is soaking it up!( Yes I do have an avocado tree growing in my window. It makes me feel like the Tropics are in my living room. 7 more years and maybe I will get some fruit off of it! ... Maybe not. We will see.) So after a month in Texas I returned, very reluctantly if I am honest. At the airport I did NOT want to come back to Galena. Yes I said it! I didn't want to leave the comfort of "home". It was TERRIBLE standing in line at the airport security with my 2 kids crying for their Oma and Opa. I wanted to cry and it never fails that I get the longest line and it takes twice as long standing there with my parents so close but still so far away and my kids crying to go stay with them. Goodbyes have always been a part of my life but they never get easier! I think they get harder with kids. But I know God has a plan and I think one of the reasons he made Alaska so far away from anywhere is that by the time we get to Seattle, we are so ready to be off the plane for good that I am ready to get home that we forget that just some hours ago we didn't want to leave in the first place. And by the time Galena come into the window of our Beech Craft 1900 it is a relief to say we are home. We are back to the routine of life here.

Do we still have flash backs to the Flood? Yes all the time but we are getting over it.

Am I back to my Tabbyness? Getting there!

I know many of you follow our blog and I have not been good about blogging the going ons in Galena. I am very far behind in things that we have been doing so hopefully I will get caught up. My blogs may not be in any order but hey, that's the way I am. People who know me say I write like I talk. So I am going to talk! hehehe I can see my husband's eyes rolling already. But seriously I am hoping to get back in to the groove of blogging the exciting and maybe the not so exciting things going on in our lives. So here is to the honesty and the getting back to the Tabbyness that was BF. Before Flood.  See you all soon!