In December 2022 we made it back to the beaches of Mexico for the first time in nearly 3 years. We met friends from Fairbanks in Rincon de Guayabitos and spent our days at the beach, walking and shopping, eating Mexican food, and practicing Spanish.
Emily's sister and neice also met us down there and we visited with our Dad, who came down from Tepic for a few days.
In May, Emily had to do an 8 day quarantine before heading north to Toolik to do field work for a week (she wasn't thrilled about the quarantine requirements).
After field work, we went to Minneapolis to visit Emily's mom in the nursing home and Luke's family. Our trip was cut a few days short due to more airline fiascos. Travel is not as fun as it used to be!
Anyway, it was still a nice visit and we enjoyed seeing family and friends.
June was a bit hot and of course the smoke from nearby forest fires rolled in. The garden loved the heat but we ran out of rain water in our catchment system and spent a lot of time hauling water to water our garden! We decided to take a camping trip down to Valdez the first week of July to escape the smoke and we spent the week down there. Luke returned to Fairbanks with COVID, if course the rest of us caught it from him shortly after. We were stuck at home for the next 1-2 weeks.
Luckily our cases weren't too bad. We were all fully vaxxed. We definitely felt quite sick but it was more like a bad flu which then turned into a bad head cold.
In late August our daughter started 3rd grade and began many activities so we were quite busy in the fall and early winter.
Emily got back into jewelry making, taking the UAF metalsmithing class and spent a lot of time in the lab.
We also were able to take another trip to MN/WI to visit family, although Luke spent too much time working on a rental property renovation. It was also Linda's 75th birthday so we had a nice birthday party and a special cake decorated by her grand daughter. It meant a lot to her that we were there.
Again, we bought season tickets to the local ski hill, Moose Mountain, for winter 2021-2022 and spent most weekends skiing and snowboarding. Our daughter was doing both, but really started to love snowboarding more, so now we all mostly just snowboard.
Despite a fiasco getting back to Alaska from Minneapolis in January 2022 (flight cancellations etc), we decided to go to Honolulu in April, our first warm weather getaway in over 2 years! We were hoping to go back to the Big Island but we booked a bit late and it was too expensive. So we booked a condo in Honolulu and thoroughly enjoyed it! Walked everywhere, rented a car for a 2 days and visited some other Oahu beaches, but mostly we loved hanging out at the condo pool and local Honolulu beach. So many kids at the condo and beach and our daughter made friends every day and really enjoyed improving on her swimming. Other highlights were snorkeling at Hanama Bay, visiting the beaches to the NE of Honolulu, the zoo, seeing sea turtles on a city beach on the North Shore, eating shave ice, and just soaking up the sun and vitamin D. Alaska airlines didn't get us our luggage for a few days, so we had a fun $300 shopping spree (courtesy the airline) at Ross for Less to get swimsuits and summer clothes.
In March 2021, Luke and I were vaccinated, and our daughter was attending in person 1st grade. Thanks to our efforts, she was doing fine in school. We spent late winter skiing and snowboarding at Moose Mountain nearly every weekend.
Once we were fully vaccinated in March, we shuttered our home offices and returned to our regular offices. Neither of us enjoyed working from home, and never returned to it.
In summer 2021, Luke took a new job within ADOT, in the bridge section, which involved a fair amount of field work. We still had not gotten COVID and were still taking precautions. Kids summer camps opened up and we took advantage of camps every week, as many outdoors camps as possible.
In July, Emily's sister and neice flew up, our first visitors in awhile and their first time to Alaska in many years. We rented a giant 30 ft RV and went down to Valdez. Took a glacier and sealife tour and saw numerous whales, sea lions, etc. as well as shrinking glaciers.
In the fall, our daughter started 2nd grade. Around that time Emily's family decided to move her mom to a nursing home in Minneapolis as caregiving was to hard on her dad. She had been living with Victor since the COVID pandemic hit (he pulled her out of the Ajijic nursing home and brought her home). Despite his great efforts, and the hired in home nursing services, it was too much to care for her at home.
Emily spent much time searching for a nursing home (all were full due to Covid) and Linda spent much time in physical therapy, learning to take a few small steps with a 3 legged came, preparing herself for the airplane ride back to the States in December. She was put on many nursing home waitlists, including one in Jackson Hole, near her other daughter.
In December, kids under 12 could finally be vaccinated! Luke and I received our first booster shot (we still had not gotten COVID) and now we felt better about travelling and staying with our elderly family members (with omicron raging).
In mid-December, Emily's brother flew down to Puerto Vallarta and met Linda and Victor and brought Linda to her sisters house in Minneapolis to wait for a spot on a nursing home to open up. Omicron was very high in MN at that time and we were all quite nervous about our parents, and we continued taking precautions (wearing n95 masks, limited socializing, vaxed/boosted, etc.). We flew down to Minneapolis, as did Emily's sister. Linda still required constant care, so we all did shifts caring for her. After 1 month staying at her sister's house, a spot opened up for Linda at Catholic Eldercare nursing home in NE Minneapolis and she was accepted to state the medicaid program. Victor went back to Mexico.
Then school was cancelled after spring break and soon they shifted the last quarter of kindergarten to remote learning. This was essentially parent teaching / homeschooling. Luke and Emily moved their office to the house, setting up Luke's office in the bedroom and my office in the office off the living room. Emily dropped down to practically 10 hrs of work per week for the next 9 months and Luke worked 30 hours per week. Emily's field season came to a stop. We patiently waited and hoped for vaccines. We spent most of the summer at Tanana Lakes, along with most of Fairbanks. We bought a stand up paddle board and a sit on top kids kayak. All summer camps were cancelled. Everyone moved outside and the beach was packed with swimming and kayaking kids. Despite a great fear of illness, we did have some good fun.
In the fall, 1st grade was 1 hour on zoom with her teacher and then another hour with me or Luke as the teacher. Then we arranged for outdoor playdates nearly every day with neighbor kids and friends. We outfitted our patio with propane heaters and lighting and everyone developed a new love of winter and the outdoors. The local ski hill, Moose Mountain opened up to self shuttle, where you could drive yourself to the top and ski down, so we bought $100 season passes and Luke and I rotated driving and N. learned to ski and snowboard really well! Many of our friends did the same and you always had friends to ski with. Despite the continued anxiety and fear of getting sick, we really embraced the outdoor life and had a pretty good winter, partly due to Moose Mountain. Of course zoom school was miserable for everyone, so we spent a lot of time petitioning the school board to open the school back up. Many of our friends still wanted to keep their kids home but it wasn't working for us or my work situation and so we put her back into school as soon as they reopened to in person 1st grade in Jan. 2021.
In January 2019, we took a trip to Florida and New York City. We stayed with Emily's cousins in Orlando and visited St. Augustine, one of the oldest cities in the U.S.. Of course we also spent a day at Disneyland, with an excellent tour guide (Emily's cousin).
Then it was on to New York City, first with a visit to 90 year old Uncle Zeke's (on Emily's dad's side of the family) house on Rockland county. Enjoying our time with him and listening to old family stories was a highlight. Then onto New York City, staying at his apartment on the Upper East Side. We visited the Natural History Museum, Lower Manhattan and the tenament museum (in Emily's great-grandparents neighborhood). Went to see the Big Apple circus as well as Ellis island and we made the hike up to the pedastal of the Statue of Liberty. A trip to Zabars and we enjoyed knishes and numerous other Jewish delicacies! N. especially enjoyed riding the subway and eating authentic dim sum.
We had a couple of visits to Ajijic this year. In fact, we luckily overlapped a few days with Emily's sister and her daughter and spent some time at a wonderful carnival where the kids enjoyed rides. On this trip, Emily's mom was in a new nursing home, a smaller home where she would maybe get more personalized care. In Mexico the nursing homes are all pretty small and less institutionalized, more like a home setting. All private rooms with private bathrooms and home cooked meals.
In December 2019, we met Victor and Linda and her nurse at Melaque, about 1 hour north of Manzanillo. Victor wanted to meet there because of the nearby handicap accessible beach, the only one in Mexico. Here they have floating wheelchairs, and after a lot of tears, we pushed Linda into the ocean to float in the wheelchair. She did NOT enjoy being in the water at all, but she traveled so far we felt she had to get in the water! She laughs now, thinking back on it, but admits she wouldn't do it again if she had the choice! After 5 days there, we bussed back to Ajijic to spend Christmas there, where we prepared Linda's favorite, Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce and ris crem for dessert. By this time, Linda had moved into her 3rd nursing home, a beautiful room on the 3rd floor right on Lake Chapala. Here she can roll out of her room to her patio and watch the birds and see the lake. This would be the last time we see Linda and Victor for a few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then in January (2020) the 3 of us said goodbye to Emily's parents in Ajijic and took the bus from Guadalajara to Los Ayala, where we met Luke's family. We were staying at the house we usually stay at and they rented a big house on the beach to accommodate his parents as well as his brother's family. It was a great time, spent at the beach and our pool, and the kids trying the Mexican cuisine, shopping, and lighting off fireworks on the beach just like the Mexican tourists!
Kindergarten began in fall 2018 for our daughter!
In November 2018, we headed to Chacala, Nayarit for a week. We had stayed here back in 2006 with Linda and Victor and enjoyed the quiet and laid back vibe and beautiful bay on the north end of Jaltemba Bay. We rented an apartment with a shared pool and our own rooftop palapa. There were a couple of English speaking kids and N. made a friend for a day or two. We found a tiny restaurant that served chicken mole, and took a day trip in to nearby Las Vara's for groceries and a change of scenery.
We had arranged to meet Emily's Dad and Mom, and her nurse, as well as Emily's siblings, sister in law, and neice in Rincon de Guayabitos. This would be Linda's first outing away from Ajijic. Linda still could not walk or speak much and needed significant care. We rented a big B&B on the beach and Linda had a room on ground level overlooking the ocean. We had 5 nights and it was a great joy for Linda, to have all her family, her kids and grandchildren in one place and at the beach.
Emily enjoyed a trip with her Mom, Linda in February 2017, where they met in Seattle for a long weekend of genealogy research. They made great progress finding out the details of a missing branch of Emily's grandma Florence's side of the family. They rented a place in the University district and also met a distant cousin on Emily's father's side of the family. We shopped at Trader Joe's and ate Linda's favorite, Chocolate Peanut Butter Haagen Daz ice cream.
In March, a few weeks after returning to Ajijic from Seattle, Linda suffered a brain aneurysm and had to undergo surgery. During the surgery, she had a paralyzing stroke, and was in the ICU at hospital country 2000 in Guadalajara for a few weeks. Her 3 kids, as well as her sister, flew down for several weeks. When she came out of her medically induced coma, she was paralyzed on her right side and couldn't speak. She had left side brain damage and swelling from the stroke. She was put in a Guadalajara nursing home for a month after 3 weeks in the hospital, and then we moved her to a nursing home in Ajijic about 1 mile from her and Victor's rental house.
Over the year, Emily had at least 4 trips to Ajijic to check in on Victor and Linda. Luke and N. came along on several of the trips as well. We spent a fair bit of time in Guadalajara, as my mom spent almost 2 months there.
In 2016, N. started preschool at Bunnell House. Family visited us that summer and we did a few camper trips (Tangle Lakes, Valdez, Denali Park) and an early winter cabin trip to Coal Mine Lakes. There was no snow yet so we could drive the cabin and then we pushed our daughter the final few yards to the cabin in the chariot stroller. We brought ice skates for the lake.
In December we met family back in Los Ayala, Mexico, the the beach house. Both sets of grandparents met us down there and it was to be the last trip and family get together for all of us before Emily's mom, Linda, had a stroke. Linda enjoyed decorating the 2 foot tall fake Christmas tree with her 3 year old granddaughter.
.jpg "Linda and Victor enjoy their 3 year old grand daughter at a sushi restaurant during a summer visit.")
In 2013, we met family in La Manzanilla for a month, when N. was 3 months old.
In Dec. 2014, we traveled to Los Ayala for a month and rented a house 1 block off the beach with a pool. Here N. learned about geckos ("gecko 'side"), looking for them outside under wall decor. She found a scorpion and told us ohh bug. We had a nice time visiting all the grandparents at the beach.
Luke fishing on the Talkeetna this fall
Vegetation and wildflower growth on our front yard
Landscaping projects
more landscaping projects
Valdez in July
Jackson, WY family reunion
Hiking in the Tetons
Boating on the Snake
Our new wood shed
Luke and Emily kayaking on Lake Chapala, Mexico
View from the top, Guanajuato Mexico
Colonial Guanajuato Mexico
Callejoneadas singing, playing music and drinking in Guanajuato
Anika, Joe, and Victoria
