Wonder where we've been?

View of Anchorage city lights from the top of a favorite nearby trail in Chugach State Park. Our love of cross country skiing seems to be contagious as both kids love getting on their own skis and get very excited about new snow. Liam just recently graduated to Natalie's old skis and is doing remarkably well. Natalie will be more than ready for Junior Nordic next year. After much utilization over the past 5 years, the Chariot may be seeing some of its last days of Winter use.

The Hood family celebrating Russell's brother, Kevin's, 4oth birthday at Sheep Mountain.

The big Kindergartner! Natalie is thriving at Bear Valley Elementary. She has a wonderful teacher and only 14 kids in her class. She loves school and it is just amazing and so fun to watch how much she is learning and absorbing!

Natalie enjoying the pony rides at the fair. She and Liam got to ride horses again in the fall. Natalie has developed a particular interest in horses. Not so far as to inquire about riding lessons, but finds them interesting and the little ones fun to play with.

Hiking among the fall colors in late September. I'm loving my new schedule and enjoy my array of jobs. Russell still enjoys his part time schedule and likes just teaching physics. He does have the bumps and trial of learning a new school to contend with.

Playing fairies after school was a favorite game for a while. Liam, of course, adds his own flair with John Deere slippers, sunglasses, and some matchbox cars.

More Dress-Up for Halloween. No princess or fairy outfits for Halloween though. Natalie was firm about wanting to be a jaguar!

Natalie's Thanksgiving special at school. Gotta love the drumstick hats!

We jam packed our two week winter break in California visiting both sets of parents, both brothers and their families, and all the cousins. It was fabulous. The cousins had a ton of fun together. And, of course, our kids enjoyed opening presents about every fourth day for over two weeks.

The Wilson cousins - Rachael and Shelby flanking Natalie.

And the Hood cousins - Atagan looking for an escape route?

Atagan saluting the beautiful California weather. He turned one in December.

Liam busy with some puzzles.

The kids and I enjoying tidepooling.

I guess the Blue Moon in December brought out another side of Granddad My

I can hardly believe our boy turned THREE on the third of January!

The Blonde Babes - Rachael (3), Natalie (5), and Shelby (7).

We're meeting my parents in Hawaii in a couple of weeks. Although we are having a lovely winter, I can't wait for the sunshine and water. Both kids are in swim lessons and I'm sure will have an absolute ball. Will likely post again when we are back. Happy 2010!

A Rich and Bountiful August

Our plans to do a multi-day float down an Alaskan river with our kids this summer fell through a second time. Russell and I were both off for the week and it was begging for some sort of adventure. The forecast for Juneau, oddly enough, was high 70s to low 80s and clear skies for most of the week. What the heck? When can I ever get tickets to the Lower 48 with miles anymore anyway, why not use them to fly the whole family to our lovely capitol? Especially now that Sarah Palin has moved back to the Valley where she belongs. Russell's brother and family live there as does one of Russell's cousins. I haven't been to Juneau in 8 or 9 years (which also speaks to how long I've now been in Alaska!) and the kids had never been.

The forecast did not disappoint. Forest fires from Canada made it a bit hazy a couple of days, but we could hardly complain. We were in shorts all week. Kevin went swimming in the ocean and Russell in a nearby lake. The kids and I played on a sandy beach and waded in the ocean as well. I do NOT usually swim in any outdoor body of water in Alaska and was amazed at how pleasant the temperature was! Aleria and Kevin live right on the beach and with the amazing weather it was the perfect place to camp. Natalie was beside herself with excitement about getting to sleep in her own tent by herself. It was only the prospect of a sleep over with her second cousin, Stella, and the fact that the next high tide would lap at our toes, that lured her away from sleeping in the tent all four nights. The ocean was so calm that we canoed with the kids to one of the nearby islands on one day. Russell caught up with one of his old Forest Service friends, Harry, during a fishing turned whale watching expedition. Natalie and I kayaked that day and explored the neighboring harbor.

Despite being totally sleep deprived due to Atagan's schedule, Aleria and Kevin were the most gracious hosts and entertained us and friends several nights with beach barbecues. The multitude of berries that one can harvest this time of year is overwhelming. We returned with quarts of blueberries. But, there were also raspberries, thimble berries, watermelon berries, salmon berries, huckleberries, elderberries, cranberries, currants. Not only are all Alaskans thrilled to have this summer as repayment for the absence of summer last year, but the gardens everywhere seem to be bursting with gratitude as well!

The warm weather has given us wildflowers like I've never seen. The lupine in June and fireweed in July were unprecedented in their brilliance. I've also never experimented much with eating flowers before. We had a salad with fireweed blossoms and one with nasturiums while in Juneau. I'm inspired enough to try stirfrying some stuffed squash blossoms from our garden tomorrow night. And, Natalie has been all over adding nasturiums to our salads since we got home. Of course, in addition to the berries and flowers are all the salmon. We took the kids to one of several streams where the water is literally roiling with fish. The ones that have spawned and are in their waning days of life are swimming around as their flesh hangs rotting from them. I heard Liam tell his preschool teacher when we returned, "I saw some fish. Some of them were broken." So true, my little man. But, the not-so-broken ones are mighty tasty eating.

My last hurrah with OB was that I had the honor of being the obstetrician for one or our resident physicians. Their timing was impeccable in that she went into labor the day after I returned from Juneau and the day before I was to leave for a weekend Seward stint. It was a beautiful, uncomplicated, healthy delivery of a gorgeous little boy. They are a fabulous couple that love to sail and be on the water and named their son Calder (which means 'of the water'). It was such a privilege to be a part of his welcome to the world and reminded me why I did OB for so long. Yet, also a wonderful way to end that chapter of my life... for a while.

Unfortunately, my Seward weekend did not impart the same warm fuzzies as the visit to Juneau and the birth of baby Calder. As bountiful and full of life that August was seeming, death, too, is part of life. Revisit the salmon. On more than one occassion that weekend I thought of Liam's comment. Some of them are broken. I saw some mildly broken lives. A couple of lives very analagous to the end of life struggle of the salmon. And I was witness to a life that got very, very badly broken prematurely. I cover the ER in Seward. It is a small town so sheer chance has it that I'm not very often going to come across the major trauma seen in bigger cities. But, it is still an ER. And it is 130 miles from the big city of Anchorage. And trauma happens everywhere. And so luck ran out. For me. But, more so for him. There is a mountain that looms above the hospital called Mount Marathon. It is somewhat famous in Seward in that there is a big to-do every 4th of July when runners, many of them elite, race to the top and back. The top being 3000 feet above sea level (where the race begins) in a mile and a half.

This man at the peak of life missed his chance to race up Mount Marathon a decade ago. He was back visiting Alaska with his family and decided to climb it with his kids. Some fatal footing sent him tumbling violently down a perilously steep chute for 30+ feet. He sustained a multitude of injuries and while another Seward physician and I did all we could for him, he passed away a couple of days after being medivac'd to Anchorage from the massive head injuries that he had sustained.

Life is bountiful, beautiful, resilient, fragile, finite, and yet infinite. What an amazing privilege and challenge to be so intimately involved with its beginning and its end.

In front of Nugget Falls at Mendenhall Glacier.


Fritz Cove Campout
Our canoe expedition

Natalie's "Thimple" berries on the half shell

Followed by spinach salad with nasturium and fireweed blossoms and more thimble berries

At the JensenHood Bistro on Fritz Cove

The Cousins

Playing Hide and Seek in the Skunk Cabbage



Russell's whale watching

Puffin in Seward


Natalie showing off our own garden's bounty after our week away. Cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, chard, beets, zucchini, radishes, peas, and, of course, the nasturiums on top.

Northeast Reunions

We started our 2 weeks in the Northeast in Maine visiting our great friends, the Banks. Our one gorgeous day of weather in Maine was spent soaking up the sun and enjoying the Maine coast at Reid Beach State Park. Brought to a delicious end with lobster, of course.

Look at those kids! Where did our babies go? (Liam, Cole, Birch, and Natalie)

They morphed into Superheroes! ..... and Cookie Monster.



From Maine we traveled to the White Mountains of New Hampshire to stay with some other old friends from residency days, Jill and Lou and their girls, Emily and Catherine.

The falls at Flume Gorge in Franconia.

Liam was psyched about the tricycle and having more big kids to chase after. Natalie and Catherine, who is just a few months older, hit it off great. They were delighted to discover they had the same wonderful purple Angel pillow. I love it that Natalie can equally have fun dressing as a Ninja turtle with the boys and playing with fairies and enjoying purple angel pillows!

Then, on to Long Pond to spend a week with Russell's family. Grandmother/Elaine/GiGi (short for Great-Grandmother ala Natalie) fortunately was able to make the long journey from the DC area to visit with us all and meet her newest great grandchild, Atagan.


GiGi and Atagan
Natalie showing her drawings to GiGi.

Liam very excited to show GiGi a very cool truck.

Although the lake was much cooler than a couple of years ago when we visited it didn't deter us from getting out on it. Maybe deterred us a bit from swimming quite as much. Liam was Atagan's age 2 years ago when we last visited. It was great to be able to all be out on the water together this year! Maybe a kayak trip in Alaska next year? Liam continuously asked, "Can I paddle by myself?"

I served as Natalie's kayak chaffeur to the various little islands in the lake. We'd paddle over and she would get out and "explore" the island why I circumnavigated it and returned to pick her up. Our intrepid explorer had a ball.



Natalie watching as Liam gets his turn out on the sailboat with Mom and Dad .

"Look, it's windy!"

Saying good-bye to the pond until another year...

Summer in Paradise

Russell and I threw together some very last minute plans and took a float plane into a remote lake in the Kenai Mountains to stay in a Forest Service cabin. The lake is very appropriately named, Upper Paradise, and our weather cooperated with the lake's name as well. Our spirits were only hampered by about 30,000 mosquitoes also enjoying the early melt and unseasonably warm summer. Up to this point my children's skin had never felt DEET - even in Central America. When weighing the evils of 20-30 mosquito bites that already existed on Liam's face and neck with DEET, I suddently couldn't recall why 20% DEET was a bad thing and began to use it without restraint.

We enjoyed a pair of loons on our lake and explored the numerous beaver lodges and their ponds. We spotted Dall sheep and mountain goats high above us on the peaks around the lake, a moose browsing the willow, had a porcupine living under the cabin, and saw a black bear swimming in the lake. He was definitively larger than the beavers we had seen earlier.

While the setting of the cabin on the lake was gorgeous and idyllic, we had to retreat from Upper Paradise every day to escape its mosquito ambassadors. A short paddle on the lake and a little quarter mile hike through the brush dropped us out onto a massive gravel bar. An abandoned braid of the Snow River kept us all entertained with throwing rocks, gathering rocks, hiking, playing in the sand, seeking out animal tracks like bear and wolf, admiring the stupendous peaks around us, and soaking in the sun without bugs.

Russell, the kids, and I all agreed it was a successful last minute trip and then some.

Happy Summer everyone!













l



l