An infant nutrition class this morning was informative and will help with giving parents accurate information on formula use and nutrition.  It definately has it’s place and is not evil.  I wish we could take marketing out of it though.  Class was out just before lunch and it took me all of two minutes to get home….I am loving the commute here.   After lunch we printed off, signed, scanned, and sent back the tax forms completed yesterday.  We managed to get the keys to our mailbox, and grocery shopping.  The kids have been working full time on getting their library books read.  Hannah is finished already, but she only checked out three books so she has started in on Caleb’s books and has exclaimed that she will be checking out more books next time.  Caleb checked out surprisingly many nonfiction books.  Usually I have to pull teeth to get him to read anything nonfiction.  Eve has declared that Hannah may not read her books unless she reads them out loud to her.  Chad made it out to a movie for an evening away, and I think we are ready to dig into these next three days of work. 

First thing is first.  Our morning started with a phone conference appointment with our tax preparer.  Travel Tax is booked so far in advance that by the time we had all of our tax documents from all the different states and companies in early March the next available appointment was in June.  That went well, we are finally done with taxes for this year.  We made plans to meet a lady from church at the library at 11:30.  The kids found lots of fun books and signed up for the summer reading program.  We managed to get a library card with my work ID and the email copy of our lease.  Eve was on a mission to find as many books as possible on bears.  One of the volunteers picked up on her bear love and kept bringing her more bear books. She was thrilled.  Sophie invited me to go to coffee with a women’s group from church.  It ended up being just us and her grown up daughter who works nearby the coffee house, but that was perfect.  I love her perspective on life.  It is amazing how much in our lives end up being out of our control.  Aren’t you so amazed by those who keep on plugging away and doing their best no matter how much resistance and upsetting developments get thrown at them never blaming or making excuses?  As good as it was to go out and have girl time I know it is Chad who needs the guy time away from the kids.  I am hoping the community here will have opportunities for that soon.  He is so good to me, and such a good daddy.  We are blessed with him for sure.  

In the evening near dark 7:30-9:30pm of course it wasn’t really dark, but it was overcast and so it felt like late evening.  There were animals out and we made it to the end of the public road past Chiniak.  We saw four deer, bald eagles one who was pretty close to us, otters playing in the surf, brush moving from a animal who moved quickly from the road at the sound of the car coming, an old WWII runway, and miles of green rich forest and coastline, but no bears.  Still, so fun. 

We have been watching the forcast for Kodiak off and on since the middle of March.  It has been rain almost every single day since we started watching it.  Everyone this last week has told us how unusal all this sunny weather that we have been having for over a week is.  Some how I have managed to get a sunburn in Kodiak from what I hear that is supposed to be impossible.  All this to say that we knew the rain would come and we’re suprised it hasn’t come sooner.  The forcast for this whole week is rain every day.  The positive side is that because of all the clouds it gets dark sooner and stays dark longer.  I slept until almost noon when I recieved two phone calls from the kids dentist and payroll.  When I only work one shift in a row I try not to sleep the whole day after.  We had made some play date plans with a family we met on the ferry then visited with again at the crab fest.  My coworkers had recommended a few hands on learning opportunities here in town that are free and would be good alternatives to playing at the playground in the rain.  During lunch Sandra text me and said that she was not feeling well so they would not be able to make it.  Chad had been working all morning on getting internet and getting it all set up and was now ready to go out and explore.  We made a plan to go to the touch tanks by the Department of Fish and Game then headed that way.  The Science center is on Near Island right next to the Department of Fish and Game building.  We had been told that there was a place you can go to see all the different kinds of crabs and touch them.  I didn’t realize the ones we could touch were going to be mostly silver dollar sized.  The touch tank was much cool than I could have expected.  There was so many things in it to touch, feel and hold that even though it was one and done (the only real attraction to this educational stop). The kids (Chad and I also) were completely amazed by each creature.  We couldn’t take lots of time and enjoy each one. If our hands could handle the cold water brrrr it made them ache even after just a few seconds.  It is like the big aquariums are Christmas with a lot of presents and this touch tank is like Christmas with one present.  Some how when there is many you rush through them seeing each one briefly not really appreciating any of them completely.  When you have that one gift that you have plenty of time to play with and explore every facet of you find that you get even more joy from the experience than when there were many gifts.  

So much more fun than I had hoped it would be.  We may be back depending on if we get stir crazy on the rainy days ahead of us.  
Next we headed toward the Kodiak Natural Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center down town.  On the way we got side tracked at Pikled Willys.  Not two minutes before we drove past it Caleb was reading to us out of a visitor’s guide about Pickled Willys so when we passed it we decided that we had to turn around and check it out.  I should have taken a picture of the store front, but I didn’t.  The gentleman there gave us samples of pickled cod, halibut, salmon, and king crab.  Chad liked the Cod the best, but he got out voted four to one so we purchased the pickled halibut.  The other things they had were different smoked fish and fillets so we picked out ling cod fillets and then smoked sable tips which is some kind of muscle, two per fish, that is on the sides of the back of their throat.  

We are excited to try to grill these local fillets.  

Kodiak National Wildlife refuge takes up about 3/4 of the island but there are no roads to it,  there is one other portion of it that is on the roaded side of the island, but for whatever reason the visitor center is in town.  It also is way cooler than we expected and the kids, who usually groan at having to do the Jounior Ranger program homework eagerly took the volunteers up on doing the scavenger hunt they offered.  They were too cute going around and mostly finding the answers on their own.  Listening to Eve explain her answers and drawings to the ranger was the best.

This is a gray whale that washed up on the beach.  They dug a big grave for him then uncovered him again four years later after the amazing decomposers in ourecosystem  had picked the skeleton clean and so now it hangs in the visitor center on display (pictured above).  We decided to stroll across the street when we left to the Kodiak Visitor’s center where we picked up some pamphlets and maps of more things to do in town.  As small as the car-accessible side of this island is I still don’t think we will run out of things to do here in three months time, but as usual we will try to do it justice as much as we can anyway.
 It was dinner time when we finished up exploring the visitor’s center so we headed home.  Eve requested that we find a special on Netflix or YouTube on bears as she wanted to learn more about them and since we have internet we can now do that.  We enjoyed our smoked sable tips and rice for dinner the girls weren’t completely sold as they were a bit spicy, but Chad and Caleb are wanting to do those again.  I am more than okay with that.  We settled down and learned about bears until bed time.  What a “There are multiple pearls in this oyster!” kind of day.  

Fort Abercrombie state park and the Military History museum were our main plan for the day as well as to hopefully find the “WWII Cemetery”.  The museum was open from 1:00-4:00pm, so there was no need to get too early of a start.  We looked for the cemetery first but it wasn’t on googlemaps we discovered later that is because it is just called the Old American Cemetery.  We decided to do Taco Bell/KFC taken to Mill Beach for a in the car picnic (it was spitting a bit and looking like rain).  We watched the waves come in and go out.  Some people were combing the beach, so we watched them too.  After we finished eating we explored a little.  The sights were amazing, but with the breeze off of the water it was a little cold.  

After our early lunch we headed to Fort Abercrombie, we could hike around until the museum opened. 

We found this on our hike up to the museum.  It was cool to peak around inside of it.  It is hard to imagine it in use. 

Miller point is supposed to be an excellent place to whale watch. We didn’t see anything while we were watching, but we will if we keep watching. 

There were fun wild flowers blooming.  Below you can see my fingers holding a Chocolate lily. And the one below that we are thinking must be the fire weed although it is hard to tell, it doesn’t exactly look like the pictures I have seen. 

The view again just down the trail from Miller point. 

When the clock struck 1:01pm we headed back to check out the museum. 

This dress up station kept the kids busy for quite some time.  I love it when museums have this kind of hands on learning opportunities. 

Matthew gave these kids a love of jeeps so this was extra fun to pretend drive those military jeep. 

I didn’t ever realize that the Japanese occupied some of the Aleutian Islands. 
The communications room was the favorite by far! So so cool!

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Thank you Military History museum you were awesome!

We hiked down to the lake on our way back to the car. There are many beautiful hikes in Fort Abercrombie park. 

The Old American Cemetery was our last stop for the day. 

So this post will probably mostly be pictures but we may have just found our new favorite place on this planet. It was so gorgeous, the warm sunshine and cool breeze made it perfect!!!  It is at the end of the road headed north (I think that is the right direction).  The sand was black, but somehow looked white from a distance.  We enjoyed the views, climbing on the rocks, watching a snorkeler who was spear fishing, and skipping rocks.   

We probably let the kids climb a little too high, but I couldn’t get pictures of that.  We wouldn’t want to scare grandma 😉.  The kids had a blast, Chad had a blast, I could not imagine a better way to spend the day.  We came home and had left over watermelon and cake from the potluck at church for dinner.  We have been eyeing the forcast and expect that we will see much more rain this up coming week! 

We slept in, and I was behind on my reading so we hung at the house until around 10:30am then headed to the famed, in Kodiak at least, Crab Fest.  It turned out that we just missed the parade, oops, but the the rest of the Saturday festivities were just picking up.  We felt lucky to have found close parking.  The very first thing this morning was the Coast Gaurd rescue demonstration.  It was awesome!  I don’t think the pictures do it justice at all and my phone just doesn’t have enough memory to do more than a couple minutes of video. Bear with me I will try to post both. 

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The kids were able to touch some crabs that were being pulled up from a boat that just came in.  They are dungeonous crabs.  The picture below that we bought two pounds of king crab for our Crab Fest appetizer.  It was soooo good, the best crab I have ever eaten for sure. 

Then we tried Soda Jerk which was recommended by a patient.  So fun.  I hope this picture is good enough quality for you to see the menu. 

Since everything that we bought was shared with all five of us we felt like we were eating all day.  Chad bought a pollock burger (he and the kids had explored the crab fest Thursday too and they had already tried the famed Bruen burger) and we bought some sushi.  Then we sat down to watch the survival suite races. ​

​I think Eve’s favorite part was playing in the water of the harbor next to the dock.  She found the little boy that she was playing trains with on the ferry and they played for maybe a couple of hours.  Chad watched the fish toss and the big kids checked out the carnival games and could go around the festival together with just checking back in with me every 15 minutes.  I was enjoying the sun and watching Eve play.  Chad and I visited with the parents of Eve’s little friend to see how they were settling in after their first week of living in the island and their new job.  We exchanged numbers and bought a big bag of kettle corn before leaving making it home just before 6:00pm.  

Chad and the kids made lunch and brought it to the hospital to spend lunch break with me Friday. It was fun as several people had asked to meet my family.  We talked to my new boss for a while and then headed to the cafeteria to pick out a drink for everyone.  Then, we sat outside in the sun and took in the beautiful view.  

I have worked in two hospitals in California where I was the second Sarah Owens in their system which confused them a bit and made getting my logins and accesses a little more difficult.  The Providence system is way way too big to only have one Sarah Owens of course that has really confused things.  The first time they created my access it was under a student, or some other clinical but limited access who happened to share my name, well mostly she didn’t have the S at the end of her name, then they did have a Sarah Owens in their system but was a social worker in Oregon providence system.  Which they set me up as… Needless to say I spent a good bit of my day today on the phone with providence clinical support hotline and an equal amount of it in the nursing manager’s office and some of the time doing both… It isn’t completely fixed yet but at least they figured out that they were setting me up with someone else’s account before we got much further.  Oh the joys of getting me all set up here, and oh the joys of having such a common name (I wouldn’t want a different name though even if it did make things easier).

We found the end of the road today.  It had been recommended by an OB/charge nurse to go to fossil beach and where they encourage you to chisel out a fossil to take home.  We stopped at Walmart and picked up two $0.78 flat head screw drivers and two $3.00 hammers so the kids could chisel out their fossils.  We also finally purchased a can of bear spray.   Instead of turning left toward Chiniak like we did last time we turned right and headed toward the launch site past Pasagshak recreation site where there is a really cute community.  The fossils where easy to find and we also enjoyed the heard of bison that roamed free at the end of the road.  We saw several bald eagles that I didn’t even try to get pictures of but when we saw one sitting in a nest I had to try.  

There are soft sponge everywhere. Can you see the fossils?

This little worm was fun to watch squirm around. Here is a picture of the end of the road and the bison. 

Dark all winter and light all summer, everyone knows this is part of the seasonal cycles in Alaska.  I thought it would be more like sleeping in the day after a night shift but really it is nothing like that.  It is more like getting your kids to bed at 3:00pm when they don’t feel tired.  If you aren’t watching the time closely you don’t notice how late it is as it doesn’t get dark until midnight.  You think it is 5 or 6:00pm and nope it’s 10:00pm. If you happen to notice in time to get your kids into bed at a decent hour they can not get to sleep and spend hours getting into trouble and being noisy in their room.  Yesterday Eve finally put herself in the closet and closed the door so it would be dark enough for her to go to sleep.  I don’t want to be taking melatonin too frequently so I’m trying to avoid that but I’m lucky to get to sleep before midnight even when I work the next day.  I’m thinking very soon we are going to have to Jerryrig something to darken the rooms.  The one part about it that I am liking is that the kids are taking so long to get to sleep that they are sleeping in late consistently.  I am glad we are getting to experience this first hand it is part of living here.