Holiday Roads
Traveling is always a chore with a large family. Shoot, it takes us 25 minutes to figure out how we are getting to church every Sunday, and we go every Sunday! Are we taking the van or two cars? Do you need to be there early? Do we have any extra kids? Who is riding with dad? Are you getting a coffee? No, you can’t all ride with mom! No you can’t all go in later! Where are we going to eat? Where did all these extra kids come from?
Now imagine trying to take a vacation. Just finding 10 seats is daunting, but then try and use your handy-dandy super simple companion fare in combination with you Alaska Airlines miles and find the cheapest fare. This always leads to a conversation with a ticket agent ( yes they still exist, near extinction, but those still alive have managed to maintain the skills their ancestors have passed down to them)explaining my fate and frustration of attempting to bring it all together. The result is always at least two separate flights. Two long separate flights arriving several hours apart, and arriving late, always.
Traveling is definitely a chore for a family our size, but it is almost always worth it. Our last family trip was to Orlando, and the end result was great, even though it did involve two travel teams changing planes twice each way and going through different cities and arriving at different times. I think it must be somewhat like childbirth. You forget the crying, the vomiting ( in the aisle of the plane), the nasty smells ( usually sitting by the bathroom) and the kicking and screaming in desire of breaking free from captivity, and then you have worry about the kids too. But alas, all that goes away as soon as you lay your head on the lounge chair by the pool.
I write this as we get ready to head to Anchorage for Thanksgiving, our yearly tradition. The kids love staying with Nana, going to the shootout, shopping, hitting up old Charles E. Fromage, and maybe even making an appearance at H2Oasis, a great place for a hairy old overweight man like myself to hang out. Alas, I have to keep this short because we are getting ready to leave and I need to open an Excel spreadsheet to figure out who is going to ride with who and who gets to bring what laptop, and who gets to sit in what seat, and where we will stop and potty, and where Tracy will want to stop and take some pictures…… oops we were suppose to leave an hour ago.
Have a great Thanksgiving weekend, and don’t forget to whom you are thankful.
Happy Birthday Nana
Nana, we wish you a fantastic, awesome, joy filled happy birthday. Now you need to forgive me, because I don’t have a lot of digital pictures of you, so for the following video I was scraping the depths of my computer’s hard drive, and this is what I could come up with. You know they used to use film and disposable flash back in your day. We love you and can’t wait to see you!
Her blood runs strong
So we had a great surprise today, my Grandma stopped in for a quick visit on her way to Homer. Let me tell you a little something about my Grandma. You see, I grew up commercial fishing in the summers, literally I grew up on boats. I started with my Grandpa and Grandma, 3-4 months out of the year on a 42 foot boat with them for the summer. I have already explained how influential my Grandpa was, but all along Grandma was there right by his side. I thought she was old back then, of course everyone is old when you are pre-teen. But there she was stacking seine gear, pitching fish, scrubbing decks, cleaning salmon, digging clams, hiking mountains to pick berries amongst the legendary Kodiak Brown Bear, cooking for all of us and living on a boat with 3-4 guys. She was the Deadliest Catch before there was a Deadliest Catch. And she did this for decades. That, my blogging audience, is a true Alaskan woman. My Grandma was born and raised here, emerging a strong Christian woman from the small village of Ouzinkie on Kodiak Island. I remember her stories of WW II alarms and drills as a child. Stories of her sisters, cousins and more. She grew up in a tough time, and she emerged as a tough woman raising four kids along the way.
Grandma mixing it up with the Kodiak buffalo
Grandma taking care of Ben's fishing needs
I share this with you because of her latest escapade that she shared with us today, laughing her patented chortle the whole time. As you all know, my grandfather recently passed away and for the first time in, um I don’t know, probably at least 60 years, my Grandma is somewhat alone. So what do Grandmas do then? Sit and knit, rock and talk, move to a home? Not my Grandma. I don’t know how old she is, but she is darn close to 80 if not past. She decided that she needed to go to Menominee Wisconsin to visit some relatives. So she hops on a plane, by herself, from Anchorage bound to Missouri to visit some friends, and then decides that she should take a bus to Wisconsin. Well she has never taken a bus before, and especially not from downtown St. Louis. So here is Grandma at the bus station in St. Louis. Now, I have been to that bus station, and all I remember is me and my buddies, strong strapping college men, hiding all our jewelry ( yes we had a lot of jewelry in college, it was the 80s) and banding together in case we had to “throw down’. The bus ride itself was near torturous, the smells, the stares, coughing, hacking, cussing, music, babies crying and pit stops at the truck stops, which are a whole story unto themselves. It was an adventure fit for a college guy. Now picture the same thing with an 80-year-old woman by herself, not only in a strange town, but in a strange state. Sitting on a bench, by herself, luggage close by, patiently waiting for her bus to arrive and eyeballing those around her. I would not be surprised if she was knitting or crocheting while she waited. That’s my Grandma. Not only did she do it, she had to spend a night in Chicago by herself, something she did not know when she boarded the bus. She was quickly able to discern which people who wanted to be her “friends” were not the right kind of friends, and she was able to befriend a couple of genuinely nice gentlemen to aid her along the way. She ended up spending over 8 hours at the bus depots, a good time for adventurer, and slightly stressful for Grandma. And here she sits laughing her head off relaying the story to us.
She made it safe and sound to Menominee, and had a great visit, and for some reason decided to skip the Greyhound for Jet on the return trip. But I share this with you because I am proud that my bloodline runs through a woman like that. A true pioneer of this state and a true blue tried and tested Alaskan woman, who decided she was up for a bus ride from Missouri to Wisconsin. Shoot, my kids don’t even like taking the bus to school ( and I can’t say that I blame them). I have seen her strength in my mother and my sisters and I can only pray that I get a taste of her strength to pass on to my kids.
Hay, Hay we’re the Monkee’s
Have you ever felt like you were lost, going in circles, unable to figure out where you should go next, then looking to heaven for guidance? Well I have, literally a couple of weeks ago. You see, apparently a yearly tradition around here is the hay maze at the Solid Rock Bible Camp. Now we had never heard of the hay maze, but it sounded like great fun. I envisioned a giant maze six feet high, dead ends, running aimlessly looking for exits, laughing, frolicking and all that great stuff. Well it wasn’t quite like that. You see the hay maze was definitely a maze, but instead of six feet high it was about 20 inches high in most of the maze.
bravely waiting our turn to enter the amazing maze of no return
once you enter the red barn you may never leave
Now if you have never been in a maze of hay that is 20 inches high, there are a couple things to think about. Hay absorbs sound like a Shamwow sucks up soda. So your screams for help, well all they do is get you more freaked out and make you short of breath. Bricks of hay block out light, all light, and believe me when I say lighters are not an option. When you only have 20 inches to work with, you cannot use your knees, especially if you are full-grown, or over grown as in my case. So the military slide is a necessity, and doing the military slide over hay, well let’s just say hay will find its way in every area of your body, and I mean everywhere, especially when it is hanging over head. So if hay absorbS sounds like a Shamwow, then it absorbs air like a Super Shamwow mop with a mega twist handle for only 3 payments of $9.99. There is not a lot of air to breath in the hay maze, and I am not even claustrophobic; Tracy is. So I must admit that I was extremely proud of her when she conquered her fears and entered the maze, after much self deliberation and an external internal conversation.
Following dad into the maze, what brave smiles.
the bridge is the only place you can stand straight up and see any natural light
Once inside there really is no turning around, there is one way and that way is unclear. Luckily for us we all had flashlights and me, with a Game Warden’s keen sense of direction. Now prior to entering the maze I was given a hot tip, “look up”. Hmmm, I can’t even turn my bloody head, how am I gonna look up? I thought to myself as I came to the first crossroads. Right or left, right it was, with Jake, Ben, Kassie and my gasping wife in tow. “Worry not” I yelled, to myself as they could not hear me. “Hmmmm, this looks familiar.” And I realized we had just done our first full circle, all the sudden I felt a little short of breath, worried not for myself of course, but for those bravely laughing as if they were having fun behind me. This time I quickly took a left. I must have been going a little fast as I left everyone behind, but of course I had to scout out an escape route. Then I remembered to glance up to heaven, and out of the corner of my eye, on the edge of my L.E.D light I could make out the shape of wood, “ladder”. I quickly climbed to make sure it could hold the weight of the others, and at the top I had a little more head room, and there seemed to be more air. I was sure Tracy was far behind screaming and thrashing about, kicking over bails of hay looking for an emergency exit. To my surprise, she showed up shortly after I had helped the little ones and scolded them for excessively laughing and giggling to hide their fears and embarrassing their mother.
Jake screaming with fear... or laughing with fear... maybe just laughing
ben & kassie in the bridge area, the area of breathing I like to call it
The maze continued on like that, with bridges and areas you could stand, and more crawling, crawling so tight you had to turn sideways to get through. It even had a slide, and a fireman’s pole at the end. A pvc one where I learned that you do not want to wrap hands tightly around pvc and slide, especially if you need to have readable fingerprints.
Tra bringing up the rear and doing a fine job
waiting for mom, boy the flash sure makes a difference
All in all it was a lot of fun, for the kids. Tracy and I even did it a second time with them, just to show them how they could be brave and conquer their fears, not having to hide them behind huge smiles, giggles and words like ” this is so much fun” “this is awesome!” ” can I lead this time”. The false bravado touches a father’s heart. The best part of the hay maze, between all of picking hay out of …… areas, is that we had enough to make quite the bedding for our rabbit. Did you know hay sticks to tears?
Escaping from the jaws of the evil beast! Note Jake running full speed away.
