Driving to Alaska

We began the final leg of our trip the 2nd week of July. The drive from Shelley to Anchorage took us a full week and 2900 miles.

Here we are all ready to leave! The first night we stayed in Shelby, MT. It was cold and windy when we arrived and there were lots of bugs so we set up the tent as fast as we could and ate our dinner of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and rolls inside the tent. We were all really cold that night and we were doubting our plans of camping each night all the way to Alaska.

The next day we crossed the border and stay the night in Edmonton at my uncle's house. We were so excited to sleep warmly and the kids even got to play in the hot tub. What happens when you realize that the back of the car is much too quiet...

Then we realized that the trailer brakes weren't working again. So Todd had to pull over at the top of a mountain and re-wire the brakes again before we began our way down the mountain. This involved unloading part of the trailer to find the wire and tools to re-wire. Needless to say, Todd was not happy and the trailer company has since repaired the trailer the way it should have been wired the first time.

We arrived our 3rd night in Ft. St. John and it was raining and miserable. So once again we set up the tent as fast as we could and heated up some more soup since we couldn't roast our hotdogs on a fire. Our 4th day we started to see animals along our drive...

We also realized how incredibly uncomfortable the kids must have been in those car seats... We camped the 4th night in Watson Lake

We camped the 4th night in Watson Lake, YT. We finally had good weather to build a campfire and the kids were able to play on the playground at the campground. The 5th night we had reservations at a hotel in Haines Junction and we were so excited to get a good night of sleep. We had run out of clothes for Allie and Jace so I had to wash clothes in the bathtub.

Here is some of the views we had along the drive...

The 6th day we crossed into Alaska...

That night we stayed at the Sourdough campground in Tok, AK where they have a pancake toss overnight and if you make it into the bucket you get a free breakfast in the morning. Both Sadie and Todd got their pancakes in the bucket.

Here are the views heading into Anchorage...

That concludes our trip to Anchorage, stay tuned for the month of August update...

July

From Texas we headed to Shelley, ID to visit Todd's parents. We kept our fingers crossed for no more car trouble, but as we started our trip we realized the brake for the trailer was not working. We made it to Todd's brothers house in Ft. Collins, CO where Todd was able to re-wire the trailer brakes. The next day we made it to Shelley where we had family pictures and then headed up to Island Park for our family reunion. Aunt Talya and Aunt Ivy kept the kids entertained by making the kids foil crowns.

We did lots of 4-wheeling thanks to Aunt Talya and Uncle Ryan.

We also taught Sadie how to drive the 4-wheeler all be herself. She was pretty proud of herself!

A big update

I realize that it has been awhile. Todd has been pestering me to update the blog so we can print it out in a set of books. So here is the first post in an effort to recap the last 6 months....

Back in March we found out we were pregnant after having a miscarriage in January. The first week of May I started having complications and I was put on bedrest...but I was supposed to be packing up the house and attending graduation parties and selling our house and preparing for all the company that were flying in. The day before graduation the doctors lifted my bedrest sentence and I was able to attend graduation.

After graduation we quickly finished selling all our furniture and packed the rest of the house in a whirlwind. Then we headed to Dallas to spend 5 weeks at my parents' house. The drive took a little longer than planned due to some major car trouble somewhere in Georgia. We loved our time in Dallas since we had our choice of 5 different pools to visit whenever we wanted.

Sadie worked really hard in those 5 weeks to learn how to swim well enough so she could go down the water slide. We spent the last week at the slide pool so that she could go down as many times as she wanted.

They also really enjoyed all of Grandma's dress-ups!

That sums up our May and June, Stay tuned for the month of July update....

More repurposing

Maybe it's sad to admit that we still have every alarm shirt that Todd has received. So a lot of them have become leggings!


My old shirt became a shirt for Allie.

And no, when I sew my children do not get their hair done. I can't be bothered with such trivial matters.

Her favorite are the pockets I added to the front. I didn't think something so simple could make her so happy.

And she also always has to do a cute pose.

This is how our Easter morning went. I think each child had at least 3 safety pins holding together their outfits. I didn't try Jace's pants on him before yesterday and they were huge! They were rolled 2 times and then safety pinned to his vest so they wouldn't fall down. I only got 1 picture before my camera died. And Allie was just having a sad day. Then I picked Jace up from nursery and they had given him a blue raspberry sucker so his entire vest and tie was covered in blue drool! I went all out on the outfits because they are also supposed to be Todd's graduation. Here's hoping that the blue sucker comes out! Things never seem to go right when daddy is gone!

Repurposing

On Sunday I asked Todd to go through his closet and take out clothes that we can get rid of. I am determined not to move a bunch of crap we don't use! I was just going to put all the clothes in the garage sale and what didn't sell I was going to give to Goodwill. But since we have a lack of funds, I started thinking of ways I could reuse all of Todd's old clothes. So Monday I got busy using all of the clothes he said he wanted to get rid of.

I didn't take a a before picture of Allie's dress. It was just a men's button-up, collared shirt.

The back became the front. The front of the shirt is the back of the dress. The yoke made a great lined bodice. I wanted the top to cover a little higher so I inserted pleats (or squiggles as Allie calls them).



Before picture:


I promise he likes the pants, but he had just woken up from a nap that was too short. The pants are actually 5 inches too long but he doesn't need pants right now so I left myself lots of room to hem them when he needs some pants.


I was worried the material was too thin, so I used an white shirt of Todd's to line the pants.