Anchorage

Out for a hike

Loving my boy!

Sam's new hat that he never wanted to take off

Sam and I finally made it back from Anchorage yesterday.  We were scheduled to fly back Thursday, were weathered out and had to stay another day in town....darn.  The weather yesterday looked good, so we flew out in the morning.  By the time we made it to Saint Marys, Mountain was socked in with fog and blowing snow.  They told us to wait around for a few hours to see if the fog lifted, but no suck luck.  We didn't have any gear with us to stay at the school, so we had no choice....we had to snow machine over to Mountain.  I called Joe, and tracked down a snow machine to drive over.  Mike, our neighbor, rode over with his snow machine too.  They got there around 5:00, and we loaded up for the ride.  Sandra had Merlin with her, so the sled was pretty weighted down with our duffles, totes, and the dog in his kennel.  Since Mike's machine is a big Bear Cat that holds 3 people, Sam and I rode with him, Sandra rode the smaller machine with Joe.  Normally you would take the river over, but I was too scared to do that with Sam.  So we took the long way across the tundra where the road normally is.  It took a good hour and a half, but it was warm and we made it home safely.  Joe and I always said we would never make that trip with Sam, but this time we had no choice.  So glad to be home. 

Silly guy

Anchorage was nice.  We went to town to take care of Sandra after she had surgery.  She had a cyst on her salivary gland that had to be removed.  She was in surgery for about 5 hours, but was able to come home the same day.  She had a pretty wicked 5 inch gash on her throat, but it's healing up pretty nicely.  We found out after surgery that her surgeon was a certified plastic surgeon, and he only did the surgery by chance.  So she totally lucked out.  We spent our time in Anchorage playing outside with the dogs, doing a little shopping, and hanging out at the house.  But there was constant running water so I was perfectly content.  I think Joe only had 2 showers in the 10 days that I was gone.  Yuck.

Now that we're back in the village for 5 weeks, Sam and I are
going to work on packing up what we can and getting ready for the big move.  Joe has the job fair in April, so fingers crossed that we'll know where we're going by the time we

Spaghetti time!

leave in May. 

Sam is doing awesome and gets more fun every single day.  He loves to play chase, or hide and seek.  He has a pop-up tunnel that he crawls through constantly.  Unfortunately he also pooped all through the tunnel when he escaped mid-diaper change, but that hasn't stopped Sam from loving it.  He's learned how to run, so that's pretty cute.  He likes to run in place to get you to chase him.  His new favorite word is "shoe."  Or more like "shhhhh" but he will carry around his shoes all day long saying "shhhhh" or point to yours and say it.  He really loves books and will bring one over to you to read.  If you're sitting on the floor, he'll bring a book over and crawl into your lap.

Chilling with dog-dog

So darn cute. When we were stuck in Saint Marys for 5 hours, he made friends with all the other people stuck there and would walk back and forth babbling to each person as he went.  He was quite the charmer.