Baby arrives and blog revisited.

Last winter we vacationed in Panama and discovered I was pregnant!  So who would've thought we'd be having a baby (us included) but now we do and the 3 of us are vacationing in Mexico.  Our vacations are going to be a bit different now, so this year we rented a house in La Manzanilla, Jalisco, Mexico and had the family come to us.  Alaska Airlines flies into Manzanillo so we booked 2 tix and brought the lap infant named Nina and hopped a $50 airport taxi with a TON of luggage (stollers, carseat, crib, baby toys, diapers, etc. .....) to the little town of La Manzanilla, 25 miles north of Manzanillo.  No more traveling light for us.... now its about traveling w/ a baby.

 On the flight from LAX to Mexico

 Hanging out on the rooftop palapa

 checking out the beach

 trying to get a siesta

 view from our place

 getting used to the water

 taking a stroll near our house

view above town

Summer 2011

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

Well we enjoyed another Alaskan summer! Last spring in March, Luke's mom came up for a visit and we enjoyed cross country skiing, great weather, and northern lights. She was our first winter visitor and our first visitor in our new house.

Speaking of the new house, we have been very happy with the performance of the house over winter. There were a few quirks that were taken care of (a frozen pipe, which our builder repaired) and a heating outage because we turned off the water pump while on vacation, which apparently is a no-no for our boiler. Luckily our good friends, J. and H. headed over there in the middle of the night to check things out when our autodialer called us in Mexico to tell us the house temp had dropped below 45 degrees! Anyways, all was fine and we are happy to report that we haven't had to heat the house with anything but the sun (passive solar) between March and September! Starting in about mid February, we were able to just heat the house with a few fires (and no propane) and then starting in mid-March, we didn't need any fires or propane, just sunny days! Total propane use for 1 year (includes heating house, domestic hot water year round, and cooking w/ propane on stove/range/grill year round) totaled 225 gallons. We estimate we burned about 1 cord of wood between Sept 2010 and March 2011. It is now October 11 and we have had a very sunny fall so we only had 2 small fires so far. I anticipate we will start using our woodstove very soon because it is about to get colder and cloudy.

This summer we spent alot of time and money working on the yard; vegetating the lawn area and creating a perennial garden. We also built a wood and storage shed and stacked/split 2+ cords of wood in the new wood shed.

In early July, we headed down to Missoula, Montana for Julie's wedding and then rented a car and drove to Jackson WY for a little family reunion with Emily's family.

We also had Luke's family (all 7 of them) up from Wisconsin and they rented a 30 foot RV and we jumped into our camper to cruise down to Valdez. It was quite the adventure!

Now we are getting geared up for winter, and I just bought some new skis and so we now wait for the snow. This winter we are planning a vacation to La Paz and the East Cape of the Baja Sur (Mexico). The more we read about the place, the more I cannot believe we have not yet travelled there. It sounds very similar to Hawaii with tons of fishing (including flyfishing), kayaking, snorkeling, hiking, biking, etc. To top it off, we are going to get in a week of sailing in the Sea of Cortez as well.

I'll post some photos soon.

Winter 2010-2011

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

Well, it has been a long time since the last post. We are settled into our new house and already back from our winter vacation!

This fall Luke had a nice hunting trip to SE Alaska for mountain goats and a great hunt down the Chatanika River where he shot his first moose. We have had an exciting time of sausage making since we butchered our pigs and then all the game meat!

In December, we went to San Francisco for AGU conference where Emily presented some of her current work and Luke just rode bikes around town and went sightseeing. We love going to San Francisco and sampling the cuisine that we don't get in Fairbanks. Indian, Italian, Turkish, Yucatan, Moroccan/Yemenese, and of course Dim Sum wear our favorites. In fact, I don't think we had one bad meal on that trip. Then we flew to Guadalajara, Mexico, to visit Emily's parents in Lake Chapala, where they recently moved. Emily's Aunt Joanne met us there also and we had a nice Norwegian christmas feast, despite Luke and Emily both sick in bed with a bad cold. Luke had to cut his trip short (he ran out of vacation time due to all the hunting trips!) and Emily and her family went to the lovely colonial city of Guanajuato for the New Year and enjoyed walking through the narrow streets, catching vistas of the entire city from the ridges above, a new year's dinner overlooking the colonial architecture, and the singing and drinking callejoneadas . After Mexico, Emily flew to visit sister Anika and Joe and her 16 month old niece, Victoria, which was such a treat because she just started walking.

Now we are settling into winter with some skiing, movie watching, dinner with friends, and weekend Packer games every Sunday at our house. Luke is really excited about the Superbowl!

Luke's mom will be up in March and she will get the award for the first friend/family member to visit us during the winter! We are very excited to show her what our life is usually like in the winter and the ice art, winter hot springs, dog mushing, and skiing into a cabin for an overnight adventure!

Fall update - We are moved in!

bathroom

guest room

bathroom

outside view

loft

dining nook

bathroom

living room

living room

kitchen

Well, it has definately been a crazy 2 months. We spent several weeks in August working on the house to get all the flooring and tilework done. We had help from Adam C., who came up for a fishing trip w/ Luke and buddies on the Kenai, then we convinced him we needed his expertise to help us do some finish work.

Our old house was sold on August 31 and then we waited to move into the new house, with everything in the storage unit and a U-haul truck for about a week.

Finally we moved in, right after labor day weekend. What an experience that was.... We are so glad to be done with the whole building experience. What a money and time sink -- don't recommend it! But here are some photos & overall we are happy with the way the house turned out, just not too happy about the pricetag.

We are unpacking and doing a few small projects on the house, but mostly just getting ready for winter. We had an amazing "Indian Summer" in September - 3 weeks of 70 degree weather. But now it is getting COLD! (It was 22 degrees F at my house this a.m.).... High temps have been in the upper 30's and low 40's. It could snow any day now.

The most exciting part of the new house is that we haven't turned on the heat yet! We have been getting some great blue / clear skies & the sun comes in the south facing windows and really heats up the house to 70 degrees or more (for free). The superinsulated house is holding the heat well, it is 66 F when I woke up in the morning. It is great!

More house progress 7/22

Living room

Small bathroom

deck sonotubes

living room

kitchen

loft, looking down to living area

Metal siding color for the bumpout (copper), burgandy dark trim piece in the back) will be around the rest of the house. Roof / accent colors are grey.

garage

carport area, that we will be building this weekend ourselves, to save $1700 in labor costs!

The house is flying along. Sheetrock is up and mudding and taping will begin soon. We have to stop by the house 2x per day to check on everything. It seems we discover something new everyday..... Yesterday we noticed a vast cavernous area above the stairs from the 2nd floor to 3rd floor. Why didn't we notice it before??? It is a perfect storage loft for our camping equipment! Emailed the builder right away and we'll be adding a storage loft (for another $$$.... of course). Today I stopped by and noticed a poor job on the concrete board installation for the tile shower surrounds. Luckily I know a thing or two about tiling and so I caught it right away. Pretty obvious though, if it isn't fixed, our tile shower would most definately be leaking behind the wall...... I guess just don't have your sheetrockers install the cementboard for a shower! They don't have a clue about tiling..... Anyways, we check everything in the evening and then email our general contractor about it and also stop by the house the next morning to tell the lead framer. You have to tell as many people as you can find, so that someone remembers to fix things..... Our lead framer is pretty good though, he usually catches most things. At any given time there can be at least 10 people working on the house. The framing crew, who does all the framing, siding, roofing, etc. Then the plumbing crew of 3-4 guys, then the electrical crew of 4-6 guys, then the sheetrock hangers, next it will be the mudder and tapers and after that the painters! Luke had to work pretty closely with the plumber because of our super neat greywater recycle system (shower water will be reused to flush our toilets) and our rainwater catchment and drinking water treatment system.

Right now we are trying to decide if we should get the above ground propane tank or the below ground propane tank. Propane gels at -44 F or so, and becomes unusable. Our friend Brian who has propane puts on a heat pad/heat trace to resolve that problem, but burying the tank would resolve all those problems. However, it would be a very rare occasion for the temperature to get that cold where we live due to the temperature inversion. Maybe once every 10-15 years (?). Especially if global warming continues .... then we will be fine! :)

Pretty soon, we'll take over by doing some of our jobs - acid staining our concrete floors and tiling the bathrooms / showers etc. This weekend we will be building a carport off the backside of the house to store our camper, etc. Should be kind of fun!

Summer update

Joe and Della came up for a visit around July 4 weekend. We spent the time relaxing, floating the Chatanika, and fishing. Here Luke and Joe tie up some flies for arctic grayling fishing on the Chena. They caught and then released several. We grilled brats over a campfire.

A float trip down the Chatanika, Luke Della Emily Heather Jeff and their dogs

Luke and I went to Manley Hot Springs, about 170 miles from Fairbanks to the northwest, a hotspring bath inside a a tropical greenhouse

Grapes! growing in the greenhouse! Amazing!

Flowers in the hotsprings greenhouse

Beautiful flowers in the greenhouse, it smelled like we were in the tropics!

The new house, with 6 inches of rigid foam insulation on the outside. Another 6 inches of insulation will go inside the 2x6 stud cavity for a total of 12 inches of insulation (R-48 wall).

The new house week of July 12. It's coming along quickly.

The new house, the rough plumbing and electrical is pretty much finished. Next, insulation in 2x6 wall and sheetrocking!

This fire on the other side of the Tanana River is pushing smoke into Fairbanks, we need some rain to put it out.