Monthly Archives: June 2016

It rained most of the week.  We had a down day of me falling asleep on the couch after work and not getting out of my uniform until after 3:00pm, that’s embarrassing.  The next day it was still raining we slept in and then visited the library to restore our book stockpile.  The kids signed up for a beach art class and the librarian asked Caleb if he would be around for the school year since she had a friend who would be teaching a Lego robotics class during the school year that she thought he would enjoy.  That would be cool…maybe they have something like that in Salem.  We do love this place.  Granted, we have not been here in the winter, but if we did not have so much family and a home in Oregon we would be more than tempted to stay here.  We went home and read most of the rest of the day away thinking that maybe perhaps the next day would be a little dryer and the forcast gave us some hope.  The next day Chad admitted to being a little stir crazy and there was a break in the weather so we headed out with the fishing poles stopping at McD’s for lunch it started to down pour.  So instead we decided to look around Ray’s which is an outdoor sport store.  I was able to talk a while with Suzanne, but Eve was over tired from keeping herself up too late at night and her behavior just not acceptable so we had to move on.  Caleb found some awesome tackle boxes that he bought for keeping his legos organized and then promptly filled them.  They were the perfect size and he thinks that he will be getting more of those for organizational purposes later.  We went home and Eve took a nap.  The rest of us read more.  I have three big books on my plate and am a slow reader.  Besides the Bible which both Chad and I are reading through on a three month program (that is a lot of reading every day) I am also working on “The Well Trained Mind” by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer to help me make school plans for this year  and “The Last Run” by Todd Lewan which is a true story about an Alaska seas rescue.  

Reading these guys at my speed is a full time job, and maybe only a warm up for school.  The kids have been making more art projects and haven’t complained too much about not being out and busy.  

We stopped yesterday and took pictures with the ginormous crab pots that have been on our to do list for the last month. 
The kids made Alutiiq masks here is Hannah showing off her seal mask!more reading and a bit of dog pile on mommy.Watching the movies Hannah recieved as a birthday gift. 
It has rained in other ways too in the last couple of weeks.  Our roof at home has been leaking and the contractor we hired to look at it said he can patch it for $1,100 but it is going to need to be replaced in the next couple of years.  Eve will have Dr. bills coming from her broken arm.  Our schooling when we get home plans have fallen through.  We started Caleb in Kindergarten at four because he was ready for it.  He could write all of his letters, his name, count change, and his favorite book was the unabridged “Black Beauty” by Anna Sewell and “Charlottes’s Web” which he had read all by himself.  Since then we have progressed him one grade each year not skipping a single one and now getting ready to go into Seventh grade we have been told by our homeschool co-op that we can’t put him in seventh grade until he is 12.  I suppose there is a little humor in this because the whole reason we started homeschooling to begin with is because we were going to get that same answer from public school in Kindergarten even though he was reading at a 6th grade level.  We have never regretted this decision, but now we have to decide if the program has enough merit to be worth the good money it costs to put him in sixth grade for a second year, just put the little ones in, or none at all.  Chad took the car in for a front end alignment on Monday and was told a list of things need to be replaced first.  Parts and labor will be $2000.  Chad is handy with a car though (with everything really) and will be able to get the parts for much less and replace them when he is in Homer at a friends house who has the tools in August.  I am starting to grieve that I will not be working with my first love, Silverton Family Birth Center, when we get home as the likely hood that a perdiem position will open up is slim to none and let’s face it I have so much on my plate already I can’t do any more than that. 

The good news is that we serve the provider of all providers this re-entry into the atmosphere of normal life is going to be turbulent and most likely burn but what ever is burned off we didn’t need anyway.  May we keep our eyes on you Father God. Your plans are to keep us, to prosper us, and not to harm us. 

I’m literally 2 min. Drive from the hospital and can walk to work all though I have only done it twice.  So when my second day of medsurge orientation started with a call from the hospital saying that they had zero patients on the acute care floor (medical/surgical/ICU/psych) and my preceptor was on call.  OB had their own nurse and backup who was NRP certified and they also only had one postpartum couplet.  I felt bad with the hospital needing to pay for an extra body (I am gauranteed 36 hours of work each week) when there was no patients so I offered to be on call.  My company was not impressed, but I already knew they wouldn’t.  I had already picked up an extra shift for the next week hopefully they will forgive me.  I never did get called all night which meant that I could go to church with my family and be awake for Hannah’s birthday.  She had chosen hashbrowns eggs and bacon for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and mussels for dinner.  There were no mussels at Safeway that were still in the shell and that is the way she wanted them so instead we had sandwiches for lunch and saved the pizza for dinner.  At church Irlinda had given her a box of cookies for her birthday and a five dollar bill which she was able to buy a bracelet kit that had rubber bands and beads in it and has been since making jewelry.  We watched “Rio” and “Rio 2” which were gifts from us and the kids made pages of drawings with the pens and glitter glue also included in her gift.  She recieved a few other cards and gifts of clothes and stuffed malamute she named “Floan” after a wolf in a book series she has been reading.  It sounds like a lot but it was low key.  You could see the joy that each of these letters, phone calls, and gifts brought her.  Thank you everyone for making her feel so special this week.  Nine is a big number half way to adulthood is too grown up for me.  This fist half had passed so quickly what a gift she had been to our family.  I looked through old photos this morning and pulled out several of the good ones to share.  Bear with me…

I kind of forgot that I had two days of Med/Surg orientation this week.  It has been over 10 years now since I have worked on a Med/Surg floor and have only had to float as helping hands two times in those 10+ years.  To say the least I’m no longer comfortable with my sick people critical thinking, meds or lab values. Even the swing bed, rehab and waiting for a room at the Elder House patients are a stretch for me.  This is a good opportunity for me even though I don’t really want to do it. I’m going to just have to remind myself throughout the shift that it doesn’t hurt me to have this experience.   We had a mini, cake only birthday party for Hannah.  She doesn’t want her birthday presents until her birthday and well, I can’t blame her for that.  Chad had picked out the most amazing colorful cake he could find.  The kids were in awe. 

This was yesterday when he brought it home.  

We made left over fish fillet sandwiches for lunch from our rock fish. Then the cake for dessert. 

It was so fun to celebrate our birthday girl.  I can’t believe it has been 9 years.  We love you Hannah Banana Noelle Owens

Thursday morning I had the privilege to attend an Anna Voskamp 1000 gifts bible study at The Chapel By The Sea on the Coat Gaurd base with a family I met through the birth of their son.  It was quite a process getting my car onto the base so next time I think I will just park at the parking lot by the gate and meet my friend there.  She was hoping we could get a pass for the other days of the study all at one time and it was worth a try.  This first week was about thankfulness and how it is necessary to experiencing God’s joy.  I am looking forward to reading the book.  Chad bought if for me on the kindle yay!  I got home around noon, it was lightly raining and had been all day.  We needed a rainy day to force us to take it easy.  I was so thankful for the excuse to just lay around the house reading to the kids, and checking out the contents of the Alutiiq History educational box.  Shortly after I came home I checked my email to discover that after nearly a year of waiting I had recieved an offer for grad school  (it is my fault, I applied for the fall class of 2016 because I didn’t think we could handle traveling with full time grad school).  I’m still in a little bit of shock over the acceptance. My course work will start shortly after we return home in September.  Sandra called and said, “you know the fresh crab we ordered?  They said they will have it at the docks today at 6:30pm.”  Neither one of us were wanting to do a big old crab dinner today… I work the whole weekend though and with fresh crab either we needed to eat it today or freeze it. It would mean another late night.  We decided that we would have it at our place as it is much closer to the dock (45 minutes closer) and so we could start earlier.  Chad bought the other things necessary for the crab boil that we didn’t have at our house and watched a few YouTube videos on how to cook and pepair the crab.  Sandra called 30 min. Early to say that the boat was in and we could pick up our crabs so we jumped into the car and met them down at the dock. It was fun to buy them right off of the boat. They were way larger than we expected and we were thankful that they included a thick plastic bag  to take them home in as we had no buckets.  
​​They were such a beautiful color of purple and feisty as all get out.  They had poked a whole bunch of holes in the bag before I could get them to the car so they could spill their nasty stinkyness in our car.  I’m just glad they didn’t get out.  ​
​​​The bag contains the shrimp and clams (not fresh local, but frozen from Safeway due to the recent health hazard warning for local).  The crab was bright red after cooking, no longer deep purple.
It was so delicious.  We had a whole crab each plus the other fixings, salad and garlic bread…we were all stuffed with much left over.  There wasn’t many pictures of the actual meal since we were all busy in preparation as well as shelling crab for the little ones.  It was such a blast. We all forgot that we had even felt too tired to get together.  We were able to pick up the crab a half hour early and didn’t keep anyone up too late.  Infact, Chad and I stayed up watching some “Friends” after the kids went to bed.  Thank you Lord for your reminder to be thankful, good friends, crab, grad school acceptance, and getting to bed early enough to get a full night sleep! 😍 We love you!!!

Sophie, one of the ladies from church who is Alutiiq by heritage, a former homeschool mom, and heavily involved with the Native association here in Kodiak arranged a guided tour of the museum for us and our kids as well as her daughter-in-law, daughter and four grandkids.  We were so thankful for the opportunity, and although it didn’t start until 11:00am due to our late night and rough morning (it was a tuff morning for pain management with Eve) we were dragging.  We decided we had better pick up coffee on the way.  

The tour was great!  We learned a lot of things we wouldn’t have picked out on our own.  My favorite thing was Hannah (Sophie’s daughter) telling us about the native regalia on display that she was a part of making.  She was able to tell us about each fur that was used.  An how they went about making it as authentic as possible even though things like the pelican beaks are no longer legal to collect.  In this case they used a 3D printer to create pelican beaks then painted them to look like the real thing. And really you can’t tell the difference. 

The main body of the regalia is baby caribou, the curly decorative fringe is land otter.  The little white puffs are ermine (a little white weasel like critter).  The long white wisps were mountain goat and the thick dark brown cuffs and decorative puffs are sea otter.  The brown and black is for the land red for the blood line of the people, and white for the snow. The dance regalia that the Alutiiq dancers wear has awesome puffy stripes of white that is really eye catchingly beautiful.  Hannah (Sophie’s Hannah) wore this outfit and danced at it’s unveiling here at the museum.  Such an amazing project.  Caleb’s favorite part was the videos on how to prepare octopus, chiton, seaweed and many other sea provisions for consumption.  They would go from start to finish and were quite detailed and below the display was recipe cards it is too bad that there is a health warning on shell fish in this area right now and it is not advised to eat local mussels, clams, or chiton at this time. 

Eve loved the petroglyph rubbings and kids play area with Alutiiq animals and games and Hannah was loving the gift store section the most. 

The masks below are from a French explorer that traded with the Alutiiq people on the island of Kodiak.  They are on a five year loan rotating through the masks with other museums. 

A map of their territory and a break down of their language although the letters look familier the sounds are not.  The letter L makes a TH sound.  

These canoes would be single hull most of the time and could transport a whole family through frigid water.  They must have been so skilled to not tip and spill the whole family (you die quickly in water this cold).  The double hulled boats (some times triple) would be so they could send a Russian “supervisor” with an Alutiiq hunter as the Alutiiq people were inslaved by the Russians and forced to hunt sea otters for their pelts the population was almost completely wiped out by this and the culture, hope, traditions, and language was stripped away from the Alutiiq people.  The kyacks are designed with a bifurcated tip to break through the waves and was a wooden body wrapped in seal skin.  Below is a traditional bent wood hat.  Thin pieces of wood were soaked and bent to fit a worriers head and then decorated.  

The museum gave me information about their education boxes that you can check out they are mostly for schools to check out and include in their education plans, but they encouraged me to check them out and then they sent us home with the history one.  I’m a little nervous to have it as it is a big responsibility.  We have watched the dancing video which included a lot of elders telling what they remember and were told by their parents about Alutiiq life before the Russian enslavement and then we listened to the songs included.  The language sounds like it would be very challenging to learn it includes many sounds my mouth has not ever practiced making. 

 We then headed to the health food place (McDonalds ☺️) to grab some lunch to eat at the harbor.  I walked across to Harborside to meet the church ladies for Wednesday coffee and it ended up only being the Fretts, Me and Sandra.  The place was full and there were no tables big enough for our group so we took our coffees and walked over to the harbor and as a group enjoyed the boats and sun.  Sandra took the kids to walk the docks.  It is one of their new favorite activities.  The people who live and work on the boats are friendly and will answer any questions the kids have and make sure to say hi waving as you walk by.  Chad took his turn to get a break walking over to True Value to look for paint pens.  Rock painting is a big thing around here and we would love to try that sometime soon.

I’m kind of surprised we managed to keep Eve’s arm dry. 
The kids exchanged books at the library and then we chilled at the house, picked salmon berries and played at the playground.  Waiting until the Wednesday market opened at 6:00pm.  At 6:00pm we parked across from the market.  There was nothing there.  Then slowly people started showing up with tables and all of the sudden it was a full blown market. We found some yummy tea but didn’t buy any this time.  We bought more fireweed jelly, jalapeño jelly, two cupcakes and Caleb bought a few cookies.  The kids did an art project at the art table then we headed home so wiped out and tired still from the day before. 

While I was at work Monday night another nurse who was on call and quite the nature enthusiast (Jessica, the same one that took us to the Boy Scout Lake tide pools) text messaged me about taking the kids up Old Women’s in the morning around 10:00AM.  That would mean no to very little sleep after working all night.  We could stay up and go on the hike and then just turn in early I wanted to sleep that night anyway.  It would be worth it.  Jessica is so fun, her kids and my kids are the same ages and get along really well.  It was supposed to be a sunny and hot day too these were the reasons as to why we could not turn down this offer.   I was able to sneak in about 35-40 minutes of sleep after getting my crew up and ready to go.  We piled into the car when I checked my text messages I noticed that Jessica had bumped the hike time back an hour so that I could get a bit more sleep.  We then unpiled out of the car.  I was able to get another 45 minutes of sleep Yay!  I wasn’t feeling too good but it was going to be fine once we started hiking.  Sure enough it was.  I perked back up and actually felt more than energized for the climb.  Those precious minutes of sleep helped.  Look at all these fun hikes…too many to do in three months 😟. 

 The climb seemed like less work than the last time.  I thought the kids would have a little more trouble with it, they did so well and loved it. It seemed like they could have hiked another four miles.  

Isn’t this the sweetest little lake.  We loved the hike up to the lake it was beautiful.  It was so sunny and nice and it was tucked down from the summit enough that it was protected from the wind.  The kids played, we picnicked, and then took a little nap in the sun.  We could have stayed all day. 

Aren’t these two mini hikers super cute!?!  They did four miles without any complaints.  They loved it.  
We went home and changed out of our sweaty clothes and showered before heading out to Chiniak.  We had a dinner date and our job was to pick up some fire wood.  We stopped and picked up two presto logs because that is all Walmart had and a bag of ice.  We planned to stop and pick up drift wood from the beach on the way to have a campfire and roast hot dogs and marshmallows.  We loaded up with a few logs from Mayflower beach then continued on our way.  It was a little too early for dinner so we walked on the beach first then came back and started the fire. 

The drift wood and a few pieces of actual firewood was perfect for getting the fire going and cooking the dogs and marshmallows.  After the cooking was all done we threw on the presto logs and enjoyed watching the fire burn while visiting and drinking coffee.  It doesn’t get dark here until after midnight so we ended up staying pretty late until the (3 hour) presto logs were pretty much done burning. 

We have been missing all of our normal summer camping opportunities so this Was quite a treat.  The photo below was taken at exactly 10:00pm Chad would not look so dark, but I’m shooting right into the sun. 

The kids were playing really well together with their favorite activity being jumping off the stumps around camp into the tall grass.  Around 8:15pm in eagerness Logan gave Eve a push off the stump before she was quite ready and she landed wrong.  She was crying pretty hard, but her arm was still pretty straight so we iced her arm and gave her some ibuprofen.  She sat in my lap and after a bit of crying fell asleep.  She woke up before we left and was for the most part ok as long as there were no position changes, but if there was a change in position or anything touched her arm she would scream.  At that point we knew we would be making a very late night trip to the ER.  The sky on our way back to Kodiak (1hr drive). Taken about 11:45pm. 

We were the only ones in the ER so we were in and out pretty quick.  Eve was tired it had been a long day. 

Sure enough her arm was broken.  The right radius had a buckle fracture that would require immobilization and possibly casting for at least four weeks.  She was a trooper answering all the Dr. and nurses questions by herself with us only having to add a few things. We discharged home at 12:20 AM. 

She was not impressed when I asked her to smile, lol.  At this point we had all been up too late.  I had been awake since about 1:00pm (36 hours by the time we got home and got everyone tucked into bed) the day before except for the brief morning nap between work and the hike. 

Tonight, I’m feeling tired of being a nurse…I know this feeling will pass.  I could not imagine being anything else, and I can’t think of anything that sounds particularly apealing to do for the rest of my life.  Work here has not been hard, the hospital is very pleasant and the people are great.  The island is beautiful and there is plenty to do.  Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and warm (72 degrees) everything will be better in the morning.  

I worked the night before and am not much of a party/event planner.  I think chad is okay with that it seemed like he was wanting a chill kind of day anyway.  I picked up coffee from Harborside on my way home from work. Our new favorite is “The Gary” it is named after the local guy who roasts the coffee beans here in town.  We are going to have to write down what all is in it so we can attempt to duplicate it when going to Harborside is no longer an option. 

I took a one hour nap before heading to church, so on Father’s Day Chad was the one getting the kids all ready to go and preparing our dish for the potluck breakfast.  He deserves to be way more spoiled on Father’s Day than he is.  

We made it to church on time and enjoyed the pre church breakfast potluck.  Chad’s dish turned out amazing.  I think we might have to cycle it into our regular breakfasts.  It was a breakfast casserole…yummy so good.  Our original plans to go kyacking after church were also canceled as the people we were going to go with were feeling under the weather.  I was wiped too from my all nighter, so we went home and Eve and I took a nap.  We woke up rather late. The kids had already had dinner.  We headed out for a short hike to the bunkers behind Boy Scout lake.  The walk was beautiful, not too difficult and not too long.  We didn’t have a whole lot of time so that was perfect. 

After our hike we stopped at Safeway and shopped for “after party food” (after the kids go to bed 😋) We cuddled on the couch enjoying our foodie type grocery picks and watching “Flip or Flop” it was fun and relaxing.  

Happy Father’s Day Chad Emerson Owens, to Chuck, and my to own dad Paul. Love you all so much. 

We woke up excited for our dinner plans.  We had invited a couple from church over for dinner and they had taken us up on it, but before we had even left the harbor last night they had instead invited us over to their home for dinner.  They live on their fishing boat. It is deffinately a different take on living in a tiny house or being a “fulltime family”.  After breakfast we walked up Rezanof picking salmon berries for our salad.  

After that we went to Walmart to get the girls some new leggings and pants as well as a fishing license for me.  It doesn’t seem real to have an Alaska fishing license, some how it seems like more of an accomplishment than an Alaska nursing license. 

We then headed to Safeway to get the fixings for our salad (dark romain, feta, apples, and chopped walnuts add to that the salmon berries…I know you are all drooling.  Don’t worry it was good and we enjoyed every bit of it.). 

Thinking we might be out late we had Eve lay down for a nap and Hannah and Caleb rest as well.  Eve was pretty excited about giving them cheese as a hostess gift.  Corrie is from Tillamook Oregon so we bought some Tillamook cheese as well as Dubliners which is one of our favorite types of cheese, crackers and some cranberry jalapeño jelly.  We stopped at the top of the ramp down into the harbor to pick out life jackets for the kids to wear on the boat. I loved the saying on the back of the vests. 

The plan was to catch fish and BBQ them for dinner.  We were going to catch some herring for bait out in front of cannery row, but the sonar wasn’t showing many down there so we only tried for a short time.  The lines that we used for that had three hooks on them each with a lure Corrie would drop them down the pull them up about 2.5-3 ft then down and back up making them dance through the water.  Since the sonar didn’t show many fish in the area we only did that a short time.  Then we headed out into the open water where Richard found a rockfish jackpot.  He showed Calwb how to do it and almost just as soon as Caleb had the pole in his hands he had a bite.  These poles only had one hook with a heavily weighted lure on it.  It took him about a minute to get the fish in the boat. The. He handed his pole off to Chad and Richard and I each dropped down another line also immediately getting bites.  We reeled them in landing them all three simultaneously.  They were all four similar in size.  Richard was guessing that they were probably about 40 year old fish.  It may have taken a whole five minutes to get all four fish.  As fun as it was to catch them we were only planning to catch enough for dinner so we put the poles up and ducked the boat into a cove on Long Island. 

Here is a video of Caleb catching the first fish. ​

​Moses took his job of guarding the fish seriously.  

This guy was my catch.  He was flopping around so much we couldn’t get the treble hook out of his mouth.  The spines of the rock fish are venomous so we had to be a little careful.  Corrie showed us how to bleed the fish then cut off the fillet from either side of the fish.  They were still catching us off gaurd flip flopping around while we were cutting them.  
Now that is fresh fish!!! We pulled into a cove on Long Island where we were protected from the wind (which was blowing at 30 knotts).  Caleb and Eve kept fishing even though there are very few fish in that cove. 

The scales made the skin hard to cut through. 

Eve working hard scrubbing the blood off the deck of the boat. After everyone had eaten their fish and salad Corrie broke out the smore fixings. 
What a fun idea…snores out on the boat in a most beautiful protected code. 

The time passed quickly and soon it was after 9:00pm, passed time to get home.  The wind was out and the surf a little choppy. Whales were spouting around us and one minke whale headed straight for our boat.  We veeredaway from him and he passed behind us.  It was so amazing to watch his massive back beak the surface again and again. 

  The sea lions welcomed us back to the harbor. What an amazing experience.  We will be for ever greatful to Richard and Corrie. 

Getting the boat parked in the harbor.  

I was really impressed with the Kodiak Community Health Clinic today.  My company had told me that I needed an updated physical that states specifically that I am healthy and fit for work with out any limitations or restrictions, and I needed an update on my titers incase I get into grad school.  I was able to kill both birds with one stone. Thank you to the nurses upstairs who recommended KCHC.  The phlebotomist was new and maybe still in training.  She was missing some confidence.  And when she didn’t get me (I have good veins) with the second stick I asked her to leave the needle in and ask her partner for help.  She was close to the vein but wasn’t getting it and was going to pull out the needle and try again in another place.  Her parter was able to come behind her and slip it into the vein without an additional poke.  I had the first girl sweating and I did feel bad for that.  I’m good with being practiced on by students but maybe not for three pokes especially when she was so close to getting it.  

We finished there just in time for me to pick up Chad and the kids.  They dropped me off at Harborside for coffee with the church ladies and headed to toe library to refresh their book stash as has become our Wednesday routine.  After coffee we dropped the books off at the house and headed out to take advantage of the 72 degree weather that was so hot!  We decided on a walk through the boats in the harbor on near island.  We loved looking at all the boats.  A lot of people live in their boats, and Eve stopped and talked to anyone she passed.  She asked questions about their boats and what they were doing.  Everyone was nice and engaging, patiently answering her questions, seeming to enjoy her interest. 

We liked the name of this boat and found out later that we knew the owner. Yay! So cool. As we walked done one of the docks we saw a familier face working on one of the boats.  It was Richard from church.  He grew up in Oregon and still spends a lot of his off season there.  He was smiling and talking to us before we even realized who we were talking to.  He showed us around his boat/home the kids were just eating it up.  It was so interesting, they are working on a documentary and have a passion for educating the public on fishing and the fishing culture here in Alaska.  We have so much to learn we don’t really know anything about commercial fishing.  I believe h said his boat is a Sanger boat.  We are learning about which boats do what kind of fishing.  His crew doesn’t fly in for another two weeks so it is just him and his wife working on their documentary project and getting the boat ready for the season.  Here is a few pictures from our visit with them. 
It was such a fun surprise.  We finished walking through the rest of the boats in that pier then returned to their boat and invited them over for dinner some night. Eve was quite disappointed when they didn’t show up for dinner tonight.  But before we had even made it back to the house we had set up dinner plans for tomorrow.  

After dinner Hannah and I went out for a walk to see how long it would take to get to the hospital from our apartment.  To see if it would be feasible for me to walk to work.  Even walking this is one of the shortest commutes I have had in the last 2.5 years.  On the way home Hannah discovered the salmon berries along the path.  She kept scootering ahead of me, then stopping to pick berries until I was a little ways past her.  Then she would pass me and do the same thing all over again. 
I’m so glad we bought that $2 scooter from St. Mary’s thrift store. It has already earned it’s keep.