3/1/2009

Arrived back in Anchorage today after an incredible vacation in Hawaii.  We visited Oahu and Kauai.  Check out the February journal to see what we did while we were there.

3/4/2009

The kids were at Awanna tonight and during the game time, Danny collided with another kid and the repair to his front tooth broke off.  There was no pain since his two front teeth have had root canal done to them, however, he was still pretty upset about it.

3/7/2009

Danny had his tooth repaired yesterday and the dentist did a pretty good job.  Not good enough.  He had a basketball game today and as he went up for a rebound, the ball came back and hit him in the face pretty hard.  Hard enough to give him a bloody nose and hard enough to break the tooth that was just repaired yesterday.  Again ... no pain, but he was mad this time.  But, he got back in there and played the rest of the game!

After the game, we got home and I finished writing my journal entries for our Hawaii vacation.  You can find them in the February 2009 Journal .. click here.

Pictures will be coming in a couple of days.

3/14/2009

We spent Friday night at Lake Visnaw.  The house that we stayed at belongs to a friend who I work with.  The lake is just north of Wasilla a little over an hour away from our house.  The house we stayed at was right on the lake and it is really a beautiful house right on the lake.

Friday night, Jim let me use one of his snowmobiles and he took me out for a ride out on the lake and then he took me through some really tight trails through the woods out to another lake and then back on the trails to the house.  What a great experience!

Today, Jim and his wife Robin allowed us to borrow two snowmobiles and all six of us went out for a ride.  Jim had Andrew on the back of his sled and Robin had Danny on the back of her sled.  We all out through the trails to the other lake where Danny and Andrew were able to practice driving all by themselves.  They did a great job and had a great time!  On the way back, Andrew drove with Jim on the back of his sled and Danny drove with me on the back of another sled.  The boys did great!

Aside from all of the fun we had with the snow machines (Alaskan for snowmobiles), we had a great time just hanging out with Jim and Robin.

3/16/2009

FINALLY got all of the pictures from Hawaii loaded.  Loading stuff up to the website is getting slower and slower.  I am not sure if it is due to the website provider or if it is due to my computer.  Anyway ... it has been quite a task!

Click here to check out the Hawaii pictures.

3/17/2009

I took a picture of Mt Redoubt on Sunday night because it looked like there was a little cloud over the mountain.  I wondered if it was an eruption.  Mt Redoubt is the volcano that has been threatening to erupt since January.  I found out today that it was an eruption.  It was a really small eruption of steam and ash.  Check out the picture here.

I took Danny to basketball practice tonight and he gave it all he had which is typical for Danny at Basketball practices and games.  He has really impressed everyone with how hard he is trying to get better and trying to win.  At the end of practice, the coach gathered everyone at center court and talked to them about the upcoming tournament and what he thought they had to do in order to win the whole thing.  As part of his talk, he pointed to Danny and said, "If you all tried as hard as him, we would have never lost a game this season."  It was great to hear that and Danny had a smile from ear to ear!

3/19/2009

I just loaded pictures from our trip to see the official start of the 2009 Iditarod in Willow, AK.  Check out the pictures here.  The race was not nearly as much fun as last year.  Last year, there were plenty of opportunities to get up close to the sled dog teams and to watch them charge down the chute from the starting line off into the wilderness.  This year, it was much more crowded and we could not get close to anything.  It was still a neat experience though.

I also loaded the pictures from our visit to the Krajnik's house on Lake Visnaw.  Check them out here.

3/28/2009

Well ... it has been a pretty crazy week. We spent last weekend up in the Palmer/Wasilla area for Andrew's hockey tournament.  He played a game on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  His team was eliminated in the first round, but it was a great experience for them.  Saturday night I start getting a virus that lasted through Tuesday.  Actually still feel it now, but I am pretty much functional.

Danny started his basketball tournament this week and his team was eliminated last night in a heartbreaking loss.

In addition to all of the sports going on this week, we have also experienced several eruptions from Mt Redoubt.  It started on Sunday night and has been going strong ever since with 2 to 3 eruptions per day (actually 5 on Friday!).  Not much ash here in the Anchorage area yet.  We are supposed to get 80 mph winds tonight and tomorrow.  Not sure if that is going to affect us at all.

We ended up with about a foot of snow last Sunday and then another 8 inches or so last night.  Looks like Spring is coming in like a lion!

3/29/2009

Yesterday, Mt. Redoubt erupted at about 4:30 pm and we had to leave the house around 5:15 for Danny's basketball banquet.  As we were coming down our mountain, we saw a thick cloud blowing our way from the south (the direction of the volcano).  At that time, we did not know that the volcano erupted at 4:30, so we were unsure if the cloud was ash or just a storm cloud.

As we got to the bottom of the mountain, we could see cars on the highway coming from the south with their lights on and as they were coming towards us, it looked like a movie.  First you could see their lights only and then as they got closer, you could see the rest of the vehicle appear from the ash cloud.  And .. .remember that the sun does not go down until around 8:00pm at this time of year so it should have been very bright at that time of day.

We pulled onto the highway and we could see the ash blowing around on the highway behind us and we could also see the ash cloud "following" us as we headed north to Danny's basketball banquet.  We were at the banquet for about 2 hours and when we came out, the car was covered in a light dusting of volcanic ash.

I imagined ash to be light and soft like the ash that you sweep out of the bottom of a wood burning fireplace.  Volcanic ash is not like that at all.  Volcanic ash is pulverized rock.  So, imagine scraping all of the grit off of fine sandpaper.  That is what volcanic ash feels like.  It is very fine, but very course material that can cause damage to everything ... windows (if you use your windshield wipers, or roll down your windows), the car's engine if it gets sucked in, computers, jet engines  .... you name it.

Because of the danger to jets, the airport shutdown last night around 6:00 pm as soon as the ash cloud rolled into Anchorage.  It is still not open as of now (2:45 pm).  They are planning to wait until most of the ash settles and then they are going to put snow on the taxiways and runways so that it will mix with the ash and then they will plow everything clean.  This will prevent the ash from blowing around and into the engines.  They expect to be able to open the airport later this afternoon/evening.

There was a small eruption this afternoon, but we do not expect any ash in Anchorage right now.