Rigorously Relaxing Routons

Ha!  At this moment Aaron is out finishing painting the eaves on our house, this morning at 4am he was out fishing.  When he isn't working in our yard he is training for one of the Sitka summer races, helping out his friends, fishing, working at his new place of employment, Sitka Young Life (a perfect fit for his ridiculously energized personality). 

Rigorous Relaxation is not something we have been able to do much of due to the endless days of sun.  Sitka summer 2013 has been more like living on a tropical Hawaiian island then in the Tongass national rain forest.  Rain hasn't been something we have seen much of, and because of that we may see a population boom.  I've always said Sitka would be a major metropolitan area if the sun came out more.  The entire town is sleep deprived and exhausted because of all the sunshine.  There has also be a serious heat wave.  The Routon household even turned off our heater 2 weeks ago, and lately have been sleeping with the window open and only a sheet on the bed!  It is currently 73 degrees in our house, sometimes I don't even know where I live any more.  Is this Alaska? 

When we aren't processing huge King Salmon (this might be an exaggeration, we are not great fisherpeople) here are some of the wonderful adventures we have had.  And we've got a lot more adventuring up our sleeves for the next 25 days until baby Routon appears... and then plenty of new adventures...

New best buds: Chena Puff and Puffin (their favorite place to play/ wrestle is on this foof)  Chena Puff is Emily and Ben's ridiculously well behaved new pup adopted on the same day as our Puff, and even had the same name... See the sun blasting in our windows!

Aaron and Puffin hangin out on top of Starrigaven Ridge

Ben, Emily and I again on top of Starrigaven... after a swim in an Alpine Lake

Our cooksight, the sunset was a dream!



The gang, headed down the mountain, never a fun thing to do on a beautiful day...

Unless when you return home you get to go on a beautiful boat ride! Aaron took this photo from a buoy

Aaron on top of the buoy.

Me and Aaron dip netting for Reds (salmon)

This is our friend David Bean on Gaven Ridge, a 17 mile loop he and Aaron did one morning.

 

Tanning in the sunshine.  Thank you Christener's for the use of your cabin! 

Aaron and Puff, leaving the Christner's cabin right before we went to float a river into a tidal lake.

Puffin living on the edge!

Puffin recovering after falling off the edge.

Puffin the wonder dog!

 

We do work a little sometimes.

Here I am scraping the eaves under the house.

Rural Alaska

I left last week on the ultimate Alaskan adventure... I went into Bethel and Chefornak to visit some dear friends and students of mine: charming Dolena Fox, goofy Larissa Flynn, and sweet heart Josephine Yohak, 3 girls that I've come to know really well over the coarse of my 3 years at Mnt. Edgecumbe High School.  It really was a trip to remember forever.  The Foxes, Flynns, and Yohaks were so hospitable, and would have given me the shirts of their backs.  (They did send me home with a whole backpack full of treasures.)

 

Truly bush Alaska is like visiting another country.  In the 5 days I was there I was offered: dried seal, dried ptarmigan, agooduck (Eskimo ice cream, totally delish: tundra berries and seal oil or in my case Criso), tundra greens, tundra eggs, bird soup, reindeer stew, bulga whale and blubber.  My cell phone did not work and all the people I met spoke to me in English and everyone else in Yupik.  My church service Sunday morning was all in Yupik and my students had to do some translating into Yupik to their siblings and parents when they didn't understand something I was saying in English.  Chefornak people took Mukays (steam baths) instead of showers and used honey buckets instead of toilets. 

 

Bethel is a hub village for the surrounding 56 villages, so it was a happening place.  Chefornak was one of those 56 villages and a 45 minute bush plane ride away.  It was hard to believe, looking out of the window on the flights that there would be any room for villages seeing all the water.  Some people call Alaska the land of 10 million lakes, and I think that maybe an underestimate.  Here are some of the highlights:

 

Dolena and her mother, Pauline at break-up.

Where village expectant mothers come to stay here so the can give birth in big city Bethel.

Bethel fuel prices.

Dolena, Kake and Pauline in their Bethel home.

A view of Bethel from the air.

My arrival committee and vehicle, there was only one car that I saw in Chefornak, and only one tree!  I saw 8 trees while in Bethel.

Dried seal, it was everywhere all over the village... so was the smell.

Josephine and Larissa on the boardwalk, the only road was to the airport, there was still lots of snow in some places. While we walked the boardwalk Josephine and Larissa were able to tell me who lived in every house in town! Totally wild!

The sun only went down a few hours out of the day, here is a Chefornak sunset, probably sometime after midnight.  Notice the snowmachines in the foreground, people were using their snowmachines when I was there to haul water back to their homes.

Spring had still just barely arrived, but we were able to go egg gathering on the tundra. I was informed that if I had come a week later we would have been able to get seagull, swan, and ptarmigan eggs, everyone's favorites, these they just call brown eggs.

We walked a long way off in the tundra. 

Notice how boggy the tundra is, even with extra tuffs on by the time we returned to the house my feet were soaked.

Josephine and her family: (from left) Nelson, Martha, Jimmy and Josephine.  Josephine has an older sister who doesn't live in town. 

Tundra greens that you rake out of tundra lakes.



Larissa's family: Darcy, Larissa, Mickel, Rosie (the puppy) Veronica, Martin, Natalia, and Ben

At the airport again, notice the lack of building, and here is the first car I saw my entire trip. 

A week in photos

This was a busy week filled with many highs and lows... Puffin had mostly highs summiting not 1 but 2 mnts., hiking across and over to Shelikof, and playing on a gorgeous private beach all weekend! We went to Shelikof for a joint bachelor/ bachelorette weekend for our beautiful friends Sam and Kristin who are to be married on June 8th. 

 

Here is my week in photos:

Puffin on Picnic Rock

Some awesome friends about to hike over to Shelikof

Nearly there...

The couple of honor and baby Lucas, Dave and Shelley's jewel of a child!
 

Kristin and all her beauty!

Sam wondering what his friends are doing...

 

Our visiting friend Eileen soaking in the Sitka sunshine.

Edgecumbe with Saint Lazaria, a bird sanctuary in the foreground.

Saint Lazaria, our first trip, but NOT our last, isn't it surreal?

The whole family together with Saint Lazaria behind us.
 

The Happy Family

mile 20, or should I say week 30

I am sure many of my readers out there think my life is one big running analogy! Maybe it is?  But for me, for sure no question, being pregnant, has felt very similar to training for and running a marathon.  Its been an incredible experience, but has taken a lot of time and mental and physical energy to prepare for.  Also there are WAY too many books on the topic!

However, I have found 3 worth recommending (if there are any others worth knowing about I am up for suggestions)

I eased into the book reading because I was in the middle of a school year, it was too much information tooo quickly, and it turned into information overload.  I began with the classic

1) What to Expect when you are Expecting.  Just enough information to get to started in the right direction, confirm to you that you in reality are not crazy, but it doesn't go in depth on any one topic or concern.  Then a month or so ago I eased into another book, (courtesy of Shelley Adams) entitled

2) Spiritual Midwifery a fantastic read published sometime in the 1970s, Aaron and I got lots of laughs while I shared bits and pieces of this book because of the old fashion language, but also lots of great take home stuff/ comfort/ etc.  However, my new favorite and the book I really want aaron to read (much to his chagrin) is

3) Hyponobirthing.  This book has been empowering to me and something I think I would like to give all my pregnant friends, though I am sure many of them wouldn't resonate with this book at all.  It talks about the history of labor through time and culturally.  It also talks about the "curse" of labor supposedly given to Eve, was not actually being a curse at all but a beautiful gift from God.  It encourages meditation and relaxation techniques to be used through the process of pregnancy to avoid the "pains" of labor. 

When I am not reading pregnancy books you can also find me reading a few others (hooray for summer!) the classic Lord of the Rings trilogy is currently being devoured as well as a daily devotional Whiter than Snow.  And because of a mix of being pregnant and this book the last few weeks I have really been hung up on the idea of enough.

And what a strange looking word!  This week I had enough of school (we graduated our seniors a week ago!) but not enough energy for anything else, just ask Aaron.  And I hope I feel that one semester off is enough time with baby, who is now 3 pounds and measures in the 60th percentile in size.  I hope I feel like I have enough of what it takes to be a rockin mom!  I hope that each day I have the right amount of enough and know what to do and how to handle what I don't. 

Here is a quote from a book I was reading that spurred on my mediation on enough:

"Enough is the persistent problem this side of eternity.  Enough is what we seldom seem to get right.  Enough is what trips us up, again and again.  Enough is one of our deepest sources of trouble.  Enough is what we find such difficulty in being satisfied with.  Although the definition is different for each of us, the struggle with our enough is that it tends to keep expanding.  And when it does, we never seem to have enough."

Okay that is enough!

And here is a picture of me at 29 weeks (not 30, but close enough!)  I'll try to remember to take another one today to document mile 20, oops I mean the 3 quarters of the way to babydom mark! :)

Just the 4 of us

Well the past few Sitka weekends have been AMAZING, spring has finally arrived, at least for now until it snows again.  Today it is 50 degrees and sunny.  To put that in perspective to our down south family and friends the equivalent is 75 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze, warm but not hot, and refreshing.  Both of the last 2 weekends Aaron has found himself in a place where he can take off his shirt and soak in the sun.  Maybe a little too soon for me, but I am hopeful.  Today it was a warm sunny beach off a small island northwest of town, where neither Aaron or I had ever been.  Last weekend it was on the tip top of Gaven hill (Mnt.) snowshoeing.

 Above: Puffin's first day at sea (in our kayak, she's been on the skiff), below: one soggy dog!

On both of these excursions we brought our growing family, in the past 6 months we have doubled in numbers!  (Not in weight however, Puffin is right at 26# and baby just a pound and a half!)  Today the four of us were particularly adorable in our double kayak.  We didn't know how Puffin would take it, not being much of a water dog and being placed in the the center console.  Right before we landed on our island she accidentally fell out.  She swam for a while before Aaron scooped her out by her collar.  It was really cute and she handled the whole situation better than we had expected.  And boy did she like scoping out the island.  Every 5 or 10 minutes she would come back to make sure we were still around and then she'd trot off to do more exploring.  We didn't know if we'd get her back in the boat, but she loves us too much to be left behind so she begrudgingly (Aaron had to pick her up and place her back in) joined us back in the boat for the paddle home.  

Aaron and Puff, Puff is a much happier dog in the snow than on the water!

And I'm pretty happy in the snow too, maybe more so than Puff

I love my husband

...and Puffin "butterscotch" Routon!