Just a Note

Hello all not much new to report today should have some more interesting stuff to post on by the weekend. Thought I would give a little update on the house. The roof in on, the outside doors and windows are up. A few more finishing touches and then start working on the inside.

                                                                        Back

Front

Some new berries that we have found in the yard.

Highbush Cranberries

Timberberries

The boys are now potty training wearing pull ups or underpants. So far Oak has pooped in the potty once and they have both peed a few times. Wish us luck and if you have any advise for potty training boys I would love to hear it. I have a double challenge.

Exploring & Fish

Sometimes we work so hard that we can't even stay awake until super, even though we're hungry.

We have been told by many people that our property is actually considered to be in the community of Eureka. Map from "The Mile Post" Eureka from what we have been told was once a thriving mining community with a landing strip, store, post office and gas station. Now the only thing left is the airstrip that is unmaintained. All the other buildings have been torn down and there is no sign of them. We drove down Eureka road about as far as you can go in a car. After that you would need a 4-wheeler or something to get all the way to Rampart near the Yukon river. I think that would be a fun trip to do some day. It was 16 miles to the end of the "road" it is also 16 miles to Manley Hot Springs. Though we are closer to Eureka, Manley Hot Springs is the closest currently established community. That is why our address is Manley and we get our mail there. A good site to check out for town info in the Manley Roadhouse site. It has some great pictures, a calander of events and links to other local businesses. Manley Road House. Here are a few pictures from our drive. One is of an area we came across with two cars down off the road upsidedown. Then there is a picture from the return of the sun switchback and one of a moose who was jogging down the road in front of our car at about 25 MPH for about half a mile.

Yesterday we did our weekly trip into Manley Hot Springs to take the kids to the school for story time. We also stoped by to see Mr. Joe Redington Jr, who gave us a whole Salmon. Joe and his wife have been very welcoming to us since we arrived here and we are very thankful for their Salmon donation. Here is a link to Joe's website: Joe Redington Joe's family has an interesting history, his father started the Iditarod and Joe Jr is a man of many talents.

Prior to this wonderful donation I had never cleaned, gutted, or cut up a whole fish. It was an interesting experiance. The fish had so much more blood than I was expecting and alot more inards than the chickens I'm used to butchering. We cut it into steaks and cooked about half. They turned out wonderful. Lisa was funny the entire time I'm cleaning it. She was going "EWWWWW thats gross, look at all the blood, that stinks I think I'm going to throw up". Then 2 seconds later she would start asking when I would cut her off a piece so she could eat it. She is such a funny kid (she had 3 helpings).

Thanks again to Joe for the wonderful Salmon.

I also want to give a shout out to Ms. Connie at the school who conducts the toddler story time. Connie is such an amazing woman, she works at the school and the roadhouse and is building her own cabin by herself. She is great with the kids and really makes the storiess come alive. A big thanks to Connie just for being you ;)

A short update on the house: All upstairs walls are framed and stood minus one that they are leaving down for the moment so that they can use the backhoe to lift the siding and rooffing materials up and put them on the upper floor. If we could have some clear days they could have the roof on in no time. Today between rain showers they are putting up siding on the second floor.

A Great Crew

The weather has been nice the past few days but hot. As you can see at 6:30pm it was about 83*F in the 5th wheel. It's made for some hot working conditions especially for the guys hanging the siding.

Let Me introduce you to our building crew starting with the security team.

Diesel                     Dozer                          Tank

And now for the workers

The Supervisors

The Camp Cook, Caretaker and Go-fer

Hard Work pays off by means of progress

This Will be the view from my kitchen window. Yes, that is the Outhouse.

This will be the view from our living room window, minus the lumber.

This will be the view from our back door.

They are framing the upstairs walls today.

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.

http://susanstevenson.com/blog/2010/07/july-gets-off-to-a-busy-start/

 

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