A moose, an igloo, and a concertina

Tyler and Gretel went skiing last Sunday, while I sadly had to shovel snow at work. They saw two moose on the trail, though, and although this picture's far away, you can see two moose behind the little Gretels!

This is a better shot when they got up close. Moose are so big they don't really care about anything, so they went right about their business of eating sticks while they skiid by. 

My concertina (an instrument like a small accordian) came this week! I've been excited to start learning how to play! You can see Gretel's not so excited. She howled for the first time, then started whimpering as though she thought I was dying. I think Tyler's been quite happy to work during my off time the past few days, too :o)

Last week we thought spring was here--no snow on the roads, easy driving, even temps in the low 40s! The past two days have proven us very wrong, unfortunatly. We had a blizzard yesterday, and got about 15 inches of snow before things started warming up to rain last night. Tyler and I had the early afternoon off, so we decided to build an igloo with the large amounts of perfectly wet snow! Tyler started on construction, here he's measuring his circle to make sure it'll be big enough. We used the large blue bin to pack blocks from and started stacking them!

Gretel really wanted to help. Unfortunately, being non-human, she had no desire to build something, only to destroy it! She was quickly fired from her temp igloo-helper job and came to help me do some exterior decorating by our cabin driveway. 

You can't have all that snow and not make a snow man! Well, a snow-porcupine to be precise. Holding my birthday flowers. Isn't the porcupine cute??

I went to help Tyler with igloo construction when the perky porky was complete. Once you start stacking bricks, it gets tricky because you have to angle them inwards to make a dome. Technically speaking, you're supposed to stack them in a spiral, but we sort of forgot until we were halfway through. She still turned out beautiful, though!

Just before we put the last blocks on, I took my few last breaths of fresh air from inside the dome. 

Once the top's complete, I cut myself out and made a door-hole! Whew! 

Tyler finished off the igloo with this nice entry-way.

Inside the igloo, our body temps quickly raised the humidity levels, so my camera instantly fogged. It was quite cozy in there! We briefly discussed sub-leasing the igloo, but we sadly warmed up last night and it caved in. We'll have to rebuild tomorrow! We cooled off again, and it's been snowing all day. We'll try again for that igloo!

Our little update

*sigh* Our new Alaskan cabin makes updating this blog much harder! It took 1 1/2 hours to load these pictures from our cabin this afternoon. Good thing I had a hat to finish knitting! The warmth of the wooden cabin walls does make the knitting cozy, and makes me want wooden walls for all eternity. So cozy and nice! 

I had a few pictures left from when PapaStein came to visit. Gretel's exploring the Snow River when we snowshoed out there on a nice sunny day. Gretel loved exploring the ice and was very much the Olympian in training. Watch that triple quad lux!

PapaStein terrorized his grandpuppy at every opportunity, even while on snowshoes. She loved it so much! When she heard his voice on the phone last night, she literally attacked my face and the phone at the same time in excitement. Unfortunately for me, I was wearing glasses at the time and could no longer see due to puppy slobber. 

Dad also cooked up a tasty pork shoulder on the barby. The barby turned into a smoke machine and filled the cabin with eye-watering aromas. 

We've been busily keeping up with a puppy, playing volleyball, and planning a Ducks Unlimited event since Dad left, so we haven't had much to document for everyone. On Valentine's Day, though, Tyler got me a cute new pet to put in my mouth!

A little chocolate hedgehog! Isn't he cute? He was even cuter when I disembowled half his body and let him melt in my mouth. Thank you local Sewardian choclatiers! 

Last weekend, we took down Tyler's traps. He ran a line a few miles from our cabin, and would go check them every other day. This is one of his traps, both of which were 'instant kill' traps to ensure the animals would suffer as little as possible. Unfortunately for him, nothing took the bait. He found some bunny and lynx tracks, and did get to do some hunting in the woods, though!

We took a family portrait while we were out. Gretel was very excited to play in the snow, and consequently did NOT want to sit still for our little picture. She wasn't so happy with the result: Tyler holding her in his lap.

Since Tyler was hunting rabbits along the way, we wanted to make sure little Gretels stood out in the crowd, so we gave her this yellow bandana. As you can see, a war ensued, and the bandana won. Such a silly puppy!

Cabin et. al.

Here by popular request: pictures of the cabin we just moved into! It's a much better "all alaskan" experience than the moldy gross apartment we lived in before. Here's the outside of the log cabin, right at Christmas when we had some lights in the tree outside.

The main level. We have a dining room table (painted like an Ande's Mint) next to the little oven on the left, and a couch instead of the large grey chair the cabin was furnished with.

There are two lofts in the cabin, with one ladder that swivels between the two. Here's the spare loft that Dad is currently staying in. Now that we've moved in, you can't see much but shelves and the bed up there.

This is on the creek just a couple blocks from the cabin during Gretel's first snowshoe excursion. We had super fun, and she really liked chasing the snow! It's a perfect spot to go for a nice long energy-burning walk with our little hyper puppy.

Doggon fishin

Papa Steinmetzer has been in Anchorage for the past three weeks, and now he's down in Seward spending a week of winter fun with us! To celebrate, we went on an ice fishing excursion today. We had perfect sunny, wind-free weather for it. Gorgeous!

Our darling little Gretel was quite excited to play in the snow all day. I didn't think it was possible for a dog to eat so much ice. Her belly became a mini-cooler--we should have strapped some beer to her.  Gretel ate so much ice she almost got hypothermia and couldn't stop shaking....silly puppy! Do you like her ears? They can't decide if they want to be German Shepherd stand-up ears or lab floppy ears, so right now they just stick straight out from her head in her own dopey rendition of a Yoda impression.

Tyler and I took Dad to Hope today...the last town we had to visit on the Kenai Penninsula! It was a beautiful day and we all enjoyed a little romp in the snow.

On our way to and from Hope we stopped to do our ice fishing. Gretel tried really hard to help, but only succeeded in falling into the ice fishing hole. Dad got the catch of the day today, and it was Gretel's first experience with a real live fish! She didn't treat it much differently than a vegetable...we have some work to do to get her excited to attack things. :o)

Gretel even tried carrying around the ice hole scoop for us. It didn't work out too well. It became a chew toy. We had a wonderful day in our winter wonderland, and hope to have some more outdoor fun while dad's here!

PUPPY!!!

So, here's a few pictures for you to enjoy of our new little lady! She's half lab, half german shephard, and the little princess is named "Gretel". She really likes gingerbread.

Exhausted after her first move-in day. She's sleeping!

Her first taste of BACON! She fell instantly in love

Puppy and papa cuddling in the new cabin. See the swivel staircase behind them?? It goes between our two lofts. Perfect home!!

Sunrise, Sunset

We are quite lucky to have beautiful, gorgeous landscapes frequently in Seward. A few days ago, this exceptional sunrise made me quite happy to get to live in such a breathtaking place. This was about 9:30am from the back deck of the Alaska SeaLife Center.

Our perfect Storms!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We hope you all enjoyed good food and good company, we certainly did! (although we did miss family being close, and not just for Dad's tastey pumpkin soup!) We spent the day frolicking in the  snow banks around Seward and went ice fishing on Grouse Lake, just out of town. This is a picture of all those who went, standing astutely around the fishing holes.

I took a picture down the fishing hole! It's just a little black hole of shineyness. If you keep your face close to the hole, you can watch the fish come check out your lure. I have the misfortune of only attracting fish the same size as my lure, but it's funny to watch them try and stick a big fake fish in their mouths!

Here Tyler models the close-face ice fishing technique. It gets pretty wet awefully fast.

Tyler caught a few Dolly Varden on the lake....aren't they pretty while they die in the snow? We fried them up to have on the side with Thanksgiving dinner.

We're house sitting for some friends right now, who graciously allowed us to have a few people over for a dinner feast. We had quite the turnout of food, and it was all amazing! Tyler and I provided all the meats...four kinds of birds, two kinds of fish, and clams.We spent all day cooking after the morning fishing, but it was well worth it.

Here we have the main course: a Turduckouse! Yes, that's right; a turkey, and duck, and a grouse all wrapped into one fabulous dish! I of course put a layer of thin bacon in the middle for a little extra 'umph' and coated the outside in my special herbed butter. It was amazingly good...we only ended up with one little leftover peice! In all, we had a marvelous Thanksgiving day.

The people we're housesitting for also have an adorable puppy. We made a snow kitten together the day after Thanksgiving. Immediatly after this picture, she jumped on it and ripped out its stick arm. I guess she already hates kitties....

I literally just took this picture at noon from the side of the SeaLife Center. We have a big storm surge right now, and all the snow is melting away and adding to the rain...it's rediculously wet outside! In the back of the picture is a concrete wall you can usually see much more of. The waves have been so intense we've actually had concrete blocks getting tossed to where I was standing to take this picture! It's a nasty, stormy Alaskan day, and it's not going to get any brighter than that...we're in for a few days of darkness!

This is Gwen (the co-worker who's sadly leaving for an awesome job in Oregon soon!) and I just after we braved the storm for 3 minutes to try for some pictures. It was brutal. We should have been in a video for a heavy metal band!