Springtime fun, Alaskan style!

Spring is here in Fairbanks, and it's LOVELY! The temps have been in the 50's and it's been t-shirt and capri weather lately! I busted out my sandals for church today, it was great! (Although it made me realize I desperately need a pedicure)!

We're enjoying the new season at our house and property and having fun exploring, Alaskan style! Bobo seems to like 4-wheeling, it's built-in white noise for him!

Here's some pics from the past week:

A Sunday stroll up to our neighbors' house

Bobo quickly fell asleep as we began the walk!

Borrowing a cup of sugar (actually a can of tomatoes) from our neighbors,

 Alaskan style!

Cute moosie sweatshirt (size 9 months!)

Sweet little smile

Can we say Daddy's "mini-me"?!

All content and happy on Daddy's back!

We put a pair of  my socks on his little legs to keep him toasty

We sure enjoy going 4-wheeling and being able to come home right away as compared to last year when we would play around at the property then have to drive 30 minutes to go home! 

We'll be getting our raised garden bed boxes set up here in the next couple of weeks. I sure am looking forward to having a garden again this year! I have some seeds started in a friend's greenhouse, we'll see how they turn out!

My cute little seedlings! 

Tomatoes, peppers, celery and broccoli

My friend's amazing greenhouse!

random odds & ends (a catch up post)

I had lots of time last week to blog but no energy to do so (or much of anything). So, I'll use this post as a sort of "catch up on my life" post. Here goes (warning, it may be kinda random!)

Last Tuesday, we had our 21 week ultrasound and found out we're having a boy! We're so excited! That same evening, I ended up back at First Care feeling worse than I did on Sunday (when I spent 7 hours in the ER). The antibiotic I was given last Sunday didn't touch the UTI (urinary tract infection), so they put me on a different one and refilled my pain pills. It was a long, not very fun week, but I finally started feeling MUCH better and more myself on Saturday. I drank a LOT of water and went through 1 1/2 gallons of cranberry juice last week, I think it helped!

Our son officially has a nickname....it's "Bobo". Don't worry, it's not derived from any possible name we're considering. It came about because when my love called to tell his mom we're expecting a son, he said "oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!". Bobo has stuck and we like calling him that! He's moving around quite a bit (especially when I try to fall asleep or early in the morning!) and my love got to feel a big kick the other day, fun!

I am down in Anchorage this week visiting my dear friends and their 5 kids (3 biological and 2 foster twins who are 6 weeks old). I was supposed to come here last week to help Mindy out while Josh was away for 8 days but my UTI prevented that. I drove down on Tuesday this week instead and will stay through the weekend. The twins are amazing and I am getting some good practice in caring for tiny babies! I have always wanted twins (still do) but I'm grateful we're just having one little guy this time around! Mindy and I were able to have some time on our own today and I registered at Target for Bobo's baby shower.

Construction on our house has officially started and we're so excited! I have some pics I'll post when I can, hopefully soon. We are building a 2-car garage with a 1000 sq ft, 2 bedroom apartment over it this summer. A friend is building it and my love is overseeing everything. We hope to be in by the end of September!

This summer is flying by! I always love summers in Alaska and this one is no exception. It's been a bit wetter than other ones, but being a Portland girl, I don't mind at all. It's nice when God waters my garden for me! I fly to Oregon in just under two weeks to spend 9 days there. I get to see family and friends and go camping with my mother-in-law and her extended family. My mom and sister-in-law are throwing Bobo a baby shower while I'm there too so that will be special.

My garden is thriving and we enjoyed our first home grown tomato the other night, absolutely delicious! We are having fun eating the lettuce, spinach, herbs and peas that are ready.

Oh ya, this is Week 22 and Bobo is "Patrick Papaya" this week. As you can imagine, all the future "names of the week" will be of the boy gender now, yay! I'm not sure how easy it'll be to find a papaya in Alaska, but I'll try to take a pic and post it!

All right, I think that's all for now. I'll post some pics when I can (between holding and feeding the cute twins!).

Pretty garden!

I've never thought of myself as having a "green thumb" so I wasn't sure how it'd go starting a garden this year. However, thanks to a handy book (Mel Bartholomew's "All New Square Foot Gardening") and long Alaskan summer days, our garden has started off well and is flourishing! We decided to put our garden in my love's mom's backyard (I have an awesome mother-in-law and not just because she lets us use her backyard!). My love worked hard at constructing the boxes (we did two 4 foot x 8 foot boxes) and put them on pallets we got for free from Lowe's. The size is great and they will be portable when we move out to our new house on our 10 acres hopefully this fall!

I had some squash and cucumbers to plant but didn't have room in the garden boxes. My love and his dad and brother constructed garden boxes for his mom for Mother's Day over 20 years ago and they're still in good shape so we decided to use them!

Look how fast everything is growing - the long sunny days of Alaska sure help with a short growing season!

The beets, onions, broccoli and cauliflower have really taken off!

Tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, peas and beans are all looking great!

Catching up

I haven't done a very good job of keeping up on blogging since I came back from my trip. I have plenty of stuff to share but just haven't taken the time to write!

The most exciting thing to share (if you haven't heard yet!) is that my love and I are expecting a baby! I am 16 weeks along and we are going to have a Thanksgiving baby! We are due on Nov 25th. We found out 2 weeks before I left on my big trip that I was pregnant. Happily, I didn't have any adverse first trimester symptoms while I was away, except being pretty tired. I paced myself well and was able to take a nap almost every day which was great! I had a bit of morning sickness after I returned but have been really blessed to not be too sick! I didn't have much energy in the first trimester but am happily finding my motivation and gaining energy again now!

We had our first doctor's appointment the week after I got back from my trip the first week of May. The dr. did an ultrasound to make sure there is just one baby (yes, just 1!). It was very cool to see the baby on the ultrasound and to see his/her beating heart. He/she did a bit of dance for us at the end, it was really fun! We had another dr. appt last week and got to hear the heartbeat. The baby seems to be growing just fine and I'm starting to get the tiniest start of a bump. We'll have another dr. appt in about a month then get our 22 week ultrasound scheduled (yes, we'll probably find out the gender). We are thrilled to be parents and have been praying for this for a long time!

Summer is in full swing in Fairbanks and we are enjoying it! My love has been very busy renting out cars to tourists and the fire service (Alaska has a lot of forest fires and they need trucks and cars to transport people to the fires). We embarked on a fun project this summer...we started a garden! My sister in law loaned me the book "The All-New Square Foot Garden" by Mel Bartholomew and it's been really helpful in getting us started. My love built two 4 ft x 8 ft boxes for us so we have 64 squares to plant things in! I've had a lot of fun finding all sorts of veggies to try. We have really long days in Alaska so things grow pretty well up here!

Here's a few pics of our pretty garden:

We placed the garden boxes on free pallets we got from Lowe's - makes access really easy!

Box 1 - mostly plants but some seeds, they're already taking off so well!

I'll try to write more regularly and post pics of the expanding belly :-)