Monday, July 5, 2010

House Update and July 4th

** PLEASE ** Check out my friend Susan's blog about her 4th of July spent visiting us for a great story and WONDERFUL pictures of the kids and the Manley Hot Springs area.

 
Building on the house is comming right along. They have all the lower level walls up and are ready to start on the second story floor. Rain today is keepng them from working on it so Ken is brining in rock. If the weather were better I would say they could have it dried in by the end of next week.
A BIG thanks to our neighbors Mark and Genine for comming and helping us stand the back 60 ft wall. I have really enjoyed talking with them and think that they will be fun neighbors and look forward to working with them getting some livestock (chickens, goats, and pigs) going out here.

My Sexy Working Man
All 1st floor walls are up!
Ken did some work on the Smith stall in ther outhouse making places for reading material, supplies, potty seat tops and hanging jackets.

Outhouse Stall After Ken added shelves and hooks.

Lisa is working on identifying the local plants. There are several now that she knows by heart. She really likes the soft underside of the colts foot and Labrador tea.

Dwarf DogwoodFireweed
Labrador Tea                                                              Birtch Bolletes

The 4th of July was a fun and interesting experiance. In the morning we worked on the house. In the early afternoon we had some visitors from Fairbanks. Our friends Susan and Lori that we met through the Alaska Living on-line group. It was so nice to meet them it was nice just to have company and the fact that they were so awsome made it even better. Susan is an amazing photographer I strongly recomend checking out her photos for some amazing shots of Alaska as well as other places. http://www.susanstevenson.com/
We went with our company to check out Manley and the Tanana. Susan treated us to soda's at the Roadhouse (Lisa had icecream) then they headed home for the 3 hour drive back to Fairbanks. After the vistit Ken chatted with some of the other volunteer Firemen the cheif and assistant chief. Then we headed accross the street to the park for the community potluck. I couldn't beleive how many kids were there. Lisa had a blast running around introducing herself. "Hi I'm Lisa Louise Smith" she would say. Most of the kids just looked at her like she was crazy. All the kids seemed to know eachother and to them we are still outsiders. A few kids warmed up to us and were fascinated with the twins asking questions and playing with them. Icluding 2 little ladies who we're very selfless and gave up their party beads to the boys so they could have some to play with since Lisa wouldn't share with her brother. Wyatt kept wandering off he has no fear. He wanders into the area were kids are swinging, into the woods, the parking lot were ever. He doesn't care if he can see me or not he just goes. I really need to figure out how to make him stay with me. The other two just stay close they don't like to have me or Ken too far away. After the picnic and being introduced to so many folks, who regretably I forget their names so soon after hearing, we headed home. At home Ken and Lisa played with some little fireworks and had a good time. Most of Ken's fireworks shoot up and we didn't want to risk fire so we decided to save them for New Years. It will be more enjoyable in the dark anyway fireworks in daylight are pretty much waisted. Well that pretty much wrapped up our day. 
Lisa Doing fireworks

6 comments:

  1. It was so nice to finally meet you in person. Lori and I really enjoyed our visit to Manley. I'm looking forward to following your adventures of life in remote AK. Make sure you let us know when your travels bring you to Fairbanks so we can get together again.

    Give the kids a hug! Precious babies! You are blessed.

    Susan

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  2. We had a great time also. I'm sure Lisa would love to be your model any time ;) She has really enjoyed looking at all the wonderful pictures of herself.

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  3. I started reading about your new life in AK through my long time on-line friend Susan.

    You guys are really making progress! I look forward to following your blog. Know that you have a friend here in Virginia.

    Kat

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  4. Thanks Kat :)My older Sister Rebecca and my younger brother Jacob are both in VA. My brother is in the Navy. You can check out my sister on the link for Desert Diamond Crochet. She has lived in VA for many years.

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  5. ARE YOU SELLING YOUR HOUSE? I SEE IT IS LISTED?

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  6. The house you see us building here is for sale. Trapper decided he wanted to move and sell it so we were forced to move out and have started over in another location in the same general area. It has been a huge challenge for our family. As you can see from more recent posts we spent last winter in our 5th wheel travel trailer with a half cabin attached. The summer prior we were homeless for a short a couple of months living in our travel trailer. It has been and still is a challenge. We were hoping to build the other half of our cabin this summer. However my husband was blessed with a job that is 7 days a week 12 hour days so at this point we are still in the 5th wheel with partial cabin. Here is a link to the house that is for sale. We would love to see it go to good people so that we have some nice new neighbors.
    http://www.coldwellbanker.com/property?countryId=1&freeTextAddress=99756&minPrice=&maxPrice=&numberOfBeds=Any&numberOfBaths=Any&radius=0&keywords=&newlyListedDays=1&streetAddress=&mls=

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