Trip to WA, Part I (June)

Sorry we haven't posted for so long. End of school, moving, the trip to WA, Jonah becoming more mobile, trying to enjoy the good weather when it comes... well, being on the computer becomes less and less of a priority. =) Any any case, here is the first installment/post to make up for my slovenly and sluggish blogging habits.

Deej on his first pony ride @ the Anchorage Downtown Market

We took a 3-wk trip to WA state starting mid June. On our way down, we visited with both Gayle and Jessica (and of course went to The Downtown Market, Chuck E. Cheese, and Bouncing Bears) in Anchorage. When we arrived in Anchorage, Jake and I realized we had forgotten both cameras (these things seem to happen when you're traveling with 2 little guys)... we had been planning to get a cheap digital camera for Daniel anyway, but when we went shopping for them, the "cheap" ones were still $60, and were poorly made with minimal features... so, we opted for a regular little Coolpix Nikon (with the insurance against bumping, dropping, H2O immersion, etc.) and bought a ridiculously nice camera for our 3-yr-old. It has actually proved an awesome investment. Daniel has been a little photographer for over a month now, and aside from a slight obsession with feet and foot pictures, he has done quite well. His is careful with his camera, and has taken several of the photos you'll see in this and subsequent posts. Go DJ!

Daniel's favorite subject when he's behind the camera lens: the feet

(For those of you who don't recognize the sexy toes in the above picture, they're mine.)

DJ riding the push train cars @ the Downtown Anchorage Market

My sister Teya came to SeaTac to pick us up, and we spent a few nights @ her new house with her, Jeff, Brennan, their new beagle puppy, Buttercup, and their ever-psycho cat, Mr. Binks. We went to a Mariner's game together. They lost, but the game was at least interesting for the last 3 innings, and we had fun anyway.

DJ, Brennan, Jonah, and Buttercup (who was amazingly well-behaved for a puppy)

At the M's game

My Aunt Lynette and Uncle Kent came to dinner for a bbq while we were there, and we got to visit with them. Uncle Kent helped me decorate my patriotic angelfood cake. The white raspberries just weren't working out until he stepped in and saved the day. ;-)

Next we drove to Port Townsend to visit my parents, Pat and Gary, @ their retirement house (under construction). On the drive, we had lunch with my MS/HS friend Megan in Seattle, and then met up for coffee with our good friends Mons and Sarah (with their kids Serina, Ben, and a baby on board) @ a coffee shop for a few hours since they were on that side of the state visiting her parents anyway.

DJ enjoying the waves and sand @ the beach in Fort Warden State Park

Jonah on the deck @ his Papa Gary and Grandma Pat's houseDJ on a real John Deere tractor that was doing construction @ the site

Jonah posing with his Grandma Pat so Deej could take a picture

We stayed in Port Townsend for one night, and then left Daniel and Jonah with them and took a trip with just Jake and I to Orcas Island. We stayed in our own little cabin with a private hot tub in the back. Jake arranged for roses, chocolates, and champagne to surprise me when we opened the door. As you may have heard, we had an eventful first night there: as Jake started to open the wire on the bottle of bubbly, the cork came out on its own, bounced off the ceiling, bopped me in the shoulder, and landed way across the room... then later, our king-size bed broke (while we were SLEEPING, thank you) at about 6:30 in the morning... so our dreams of sleeping in with no kids never materialized. But we had fun anyway. The guy running the resort gave us a pretty hard time, but just joking... the bed had been broken before we got there, and we just helped get it all the way to the floor. Jake and I had great fun hiking, sea kayaking, and going up to Mt. Constitution (we could even see Rainier from the top).

Our cabin

The bed we broke

On a hike on Orcas Island

Sea KayakingWe stayed one more night with a fixed bed, then took an early ferry back to PT and spent a few more days visiting with my parents all together. It was great to see my folks' dream house on the ocean materializing right in front of us. They're very excited to start their retirement. The most fun we had was probably swimming at the clubhouse. Daniel actually got in the water and had fun (an impossibility last summer) and Jonah had a blast too.
Me, DJ, my dad, and Jonah swimming @ the clubhouse

Me on my parents' deck @ sunset (Protection Island in the background)

More to come...

Blurry April

Things got a little crazy-busy there for a while. I entirely missed my monthly post to our blog, and Jonah turning 6 months. I remember month 5, and he's 7 months now... Jonah morphing from a cute little blob to his very active little self (rolling both ways, creeping, and wiggling constantly) is a blur... where did the time go?

Easter was fun. We went to Damon and Heidi's, and Damon's folks got little E-baskets with stuffed animals for both boys. It was nice to pray, eat, and celebrate with friends. We have some cute Easter footage, but our internet is too slow to upload it for you, so you'll just have to wait, I guess.
Well, spring is finally in the air a bit. We had new snow in the beginning of May, so we're not holding our breath for warm summer breezes, but Jake is starting to wear shorts, and there's a lot of open water across Norton Sound, so the river ice is bound to break up soon. (Thank goodness. We are SO ready for a boat ride.)
Jake's finals for his classes were last week, and of course the end of the year is always busy for his job too. We've both been sleep deprived, but doing fine other than that.

Daniel went to "ECE Roundup" this week to see his classroom for next year and officially meet his teacher (our current next-door neighbor) and his classmates. He's excited to go to school.
We are SO excited that we'll be seeing many of you shortly!!! And GO Mariners! (Not that any Mariners read our blog... but we're excited to come see a game again.)

Bodie is definitely part of the family now. He has shown his true colors (like sneaking food off the table, licking Jonah on the head, being HYPER [and a little weird, but cool] whenever we let him in or out, and barking or growling every once in a while). He's also developing attachment to us... friendly to everyone he meets, but protective of us in a good way, and he whimpers whenever one of us leaves. The few nights we were all gone on the emergency trip into Anchorage/Fairbanks while Redoubt was blowing, Bodie spent all night howling (which we've never heard him do), refused to eat anything, and shed like crazy. Within 10 minutes of our being home, he laid down in front of his bowl and ate every bite, and the shedding got better within a few days even though the weather was still warming up.
My cousin Karrie's daughter Nikki did a Flat Stanley project for her class in Deer Park, and so Jake and I showed her friend around UNK town. This is Karis, Me, and Adrianna posing with "Flat Nikki" for the project we sent.
My music students did well at regional festival in Bethel and qualified for state again this year, so I'm in Anchorage for State Festival right now. I'll be missing commencement ceremony for the class I've been with since they were 7th graders (and am their class advisor), so I'm sad about that... but my music students deserve to be here. We return the Sunday (before the last week of school), and then I'm packing up my entire music room because it's going to be bulldozed along with the gym and weight room to make way for our new HS. (My English room will be bulldozed too, but not until Dec. or whenever the 1st half of the rebuild is complete, so I don't have to move that yet.) My new room will also be a similarly appalling shape to what I have now (something like a bowling alley), but should be almost 2x longer than my current room, so I'm planning to use it for English as well, and still have enough space for instrument storage, a piano lab set-up, and movement lessons primary classes.

We just found out we're moving into Rick and Tiff Holt's old place, which we're excited about! And since we're going to have a little more elbow room, we finally said yes to the other catahoula owner in Anchorage, and we're adopting Molly. I'm actually planning to bring her back on the plane with me on Sunday when we return from our state trip. So Bodie has a playmate coming. Woo-hoo!

My Unalakleet concert went. It always does. There were some nice spots, but overall, I am consistently and thoroughly disappointed with our productions. Part of the problem is the acoustics are horrible and no one can hear even with a sound system and nice condenser mics. Part of the problem is that I only see 1st-8th graders for 40 min 1/wk, several of whom are sharing instruments and never practice. Part of the problem is that my name and students are attached to the entire program, and there are 3-6 other people in charge of over half the concert--none of whom have as high of expectations as I do for what a concert should look or sound like. There are actually lots of other problems, but I'm only going for the mini-series version here. At the end of the concert, my principal announced my recent award, "Region 1 Music Teacher of the Year", and although it was nice of him to acknowledge all the work I do, it felt like a big joke after everyone had to sit through 90 min of music, at least 1/2 of which was audial torture. My potential as a music teacher was recognized by several people during my student teaching and practicum, and I probably could have landed a position in Dist. 81 right out of college. I consistently help my students in UNK rise above multiple disadvantages of our circumstances, but our JOINT school concerts are a pain to organize, and are rarely pleasurable to listen to. It is hard not to be disheartened when my efforts don't produce results anywhere close to expectations. Oh, and then, my only groups who DO meet expectations (sometimes) are my HS classes who I get to see 4x/wk... and generally half the audience has left the joint concerts before those students even start performing. So out of about 20 performances, there are maybe 5 that I feel proud of, and a lot of people don't even stay to hear them. Okay... done venting. On a happy note, Adrianna french-braided my hair for the concert. :-) Maybe it's just the end-of-yr blues talking. After all, I'm at state festival, and my kiddos here are going to do well and have fun. Hopefully, I didn't offend any readers with this paragraph. But after all, it's my blog, and if you're here reading it, then I'm hoping you love me enough not to take anything personally. I am just frustrated. Teaching English full-time is very appealing, especially every concert season.

More later. It is already tomorrow, and I need to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.

Love you all. Take Care.

Janelle

Bodie, Blizzards, the Boys... We're Busy!

For those who haven't heard, we recently added a new member to our Snyder family. Bodie came to us all the way from the New Hope Cattle Dog Rescue Shelter in AZ. He went from 80 degree temps to AK, during (ironically) the worst winter Unalakleet has had in decades... but he has been the perfect addition to our family; he is an awesome dog! Part blue healer, part catahoula; he's mellow but playful, protective and watchful but gentle and easily accepting of new friends, very tolerant and obviously handsome. We got very lucky... he's been a blessing already. He wasn't sure what to think of all the snow at first, and when it's blizzarding outside, we can barely convince him to get off the porch, but he has a lot of fun playing in the snow when the temps and wind are reasonable (-15 F or warmer including wind chill). Yesterday, DJ and Jake took Bodie across the ice at the mouth of the river so he could run free, and Bodie spotted a rabbit... Woo-hoo!!! off he went. He had great fun in the chase, but is well-behaved enough that when a snowmachine approached and Jake called to him, he halted pursuit and came right away. He also got an "owie" as Daniel put it... broke one of his nails (the dog clippers still haven't arrived yet) on the ice... it bled at first, but it is healing. We also found a tic on his ear shortly after his arrival... quite the news for us, as tics aren't a common problem here, especially in the dead of winter. In any case, getting Bodie has been a great success all around, thanks to Bodie (he's awesome), all the people who dealt with us and Bodie who are connected to the New Hope Shelter (esp. Katie & Robin), Gayle (our Anchorage friend who picked him up from the airport after his flight from AZ and had him play with her dogs Snoop & Sebastian until she put him on the flight to UNK), Ted and Jim (our personnel director and sup. from our district who took Bodie from Gayle and saw him out to us), and of course Ginger, who inspired us to find Bodie in the first place.

So, as you can see from our picts (the first one below is of our store and old post office--you can only catch a glimpse of their roofs because of the drifts), we've had a lot of snowfall... more than normal. We've also had incredible storms with crazy high winds and 0 visibility, as well as huge temp. fluctuations. The sea level of our village always goes up a few feet during the winter, and we get drifts from the wind... but this year is a little bit crazy. School was even canceled for a day, and we had an early release due to weather--to our knowledge, that's the first "snow day" in the history of our school.

Speaking of school, here are a few picts of my school spirit and fundraising efforts. Our mascot is the "Wolfpack" or "Wolfy" and so my music students did pawprint facepainting, and I made sugar cookies to match. -Fun for the little kids, anyway. BTW: if you've never tried to make black frosting, I highly recommend using dry powder rather than liquid... but it still takes a lot if you want to get it dark.
We've been enjoying every moment of nice weather available when Jake and I aren't working. Although summer is definitely our favorite time in UNK, winter can be a lot of fun here too when the temps rise a bit and the winds die down at the same time. Deej and I took his TONKA Dump Truck out in the backyard... makes a great snow hauler. :-) And we have a perfect-for-a-3-year-old sledding hill (a 4 ft drift with a sheer drop one side) just off our back porch, so that's been fun.

Since becoming Full Circle Farm clients, we have not only been able to enjoy fresh produce on a regular basis--we also have been able to get varieties that are rarely to never at our store (leeks, artichokes, coconut, apples that are actually crispy, fresh green beans, super-sweet citrus fruit, etc.), and we've also been exposed to some obscure fruits and veggies that we haven't even heard of until now: persimmons, sunchokes, cara-cara oranges, and purple potatoes, among other things. So in honor of our love of FCF, we post this picture of Jake's purple potato soup. It looks questionable, I know, but it was actually quite tasty (once we stopped looking at it and smiling in dismay-this picture really doesn't do the very PURPLE color of the soup justice).
And it just wouldn't be a post on our blog if we didn't include a shameless collection of DJ and JD pictures. We know we're biased, but we just can't get enough of them. Hope you enjoy.




All is well with us. I just had my spring break this week, but aside from a few minutes of this post and one nice shower Jake gave me time for (shaving my legs is almost as rejuvenating as a workout, and much more relaxing), I have not had many non-sleeping moments of ME time. Gone are the days when break from work means a true break... but the time with the boys all week has been great; I'm very thankful for it, and look forward to 8 weeks from now when summer vacation starts. DJ starts school next year, so this is our last summer to enjoy both boys at home before he starts meeting more friends and wanting to play with them instead of us. He's already very excited about starting school, and he still has 5 months to wait.

Jake and I are planning to be in Western WA June 22/23-July 1, and Eastern WA July 2-9/10. If you'll be in the region and would like to meet up with us, just give us a ring, email, or you can even post a comment here; we'll do our best to see you on our trip! Love you all. Take care.

Janelle