A return to "normal"

What a whirlwind year we've had.  One year ago today, the kids and I were moved out of our Homer house and living in temporary quarters while waiting for the HICKORY to return home from an extended trip to the Bering Sea.  Less than two weeks later, we drove out of town on our way to California.  Today we are waiting on a ship to return again, this time from a dry dock period that has had it away from homeport for over three months.  And somewhere in the middle, we lived in California for 7 months, and moved back to Alaska.  We still can't quite wrap our minds around how this all came about.  Our time in California seems sort of like a dream at this point--did we really live there, or was it just a vacation?

My unpacking "help"

 We've had people question our choice to pull the kids out of school mid-year, especially since we knew ahead of time that the ship would be going to dry dock pretty much right after we arrived, leaving us essentially as a single-parent household while trying to settle into a new town.  It seemed even crazier to some since we first were told that the dry dock would be occurring in Alameda, the very same town we were moving away from.  But we would do it all again, in exactly the same way.    Yes, Mike left after we were only in Sitka for two weeks, before we even had our furniture in our house.  The poor guy hasn't slept in his own bed on a regular basis since January.  But since it hadn't been that long since we lived the ship life, we were able to slide right back into routine.  It helped immensely that we had school and other activities to keep us busy and help us meet people.  We all made more friends here in two months than we made in seven months in CA.  We even have a nice older neighbor across the street who brings us cookies and dog treats.  The kids excelled in school, thanks to their new teachers jumping right in to assess their abilities and taking the time to challenge them.

A fish out of water

Mike was able to come back to visit for two separate weeks over the 3-month period, but his time here was anything but normal.  The first week was consumed by probably the first ever honey-do list I've given him, full of moving-in chores that I ran out of steam to complete on my own.  The second week was all about our boat.  Yes, our boat. We're doing Alaska the right way this time, which to us means having the ability to fully take advantage of the amazing natural resources around us.  So the time in Seattle afforded Mike the opportunity to find us just the right boat for fishing, camping, and exploring.  We had to put the boat on a barge to get it here, and it conveniently came during a time that Mike was here to help get it fully outfitted and in the water.

Our new money pit

Somehow, we managed to be together for Mothers Day

In the past four months, Emerson turned 6 and Midas turned 11.  Charlie grew into a full-sized dog.  Ava had a fabulous ballet recital, Emerson played on his first t-ball team, and both kids have been participating in regular swim lessons.  Mike and I celebrated 11 crazy years of marriage, with many crazier years to come.  It snowed and melted, spring sprung, and our garden grew.  Summer has come, and I now have a first grader and a third grader.  How is that possible??

Only in Alaska do you spend the last day of kindergarten digging pits for crabs with your classmates at the beach.

Ava loved her teacher so much that she wanted her again for third grade.

Rough life these guys have.

When we are all finally reunited and the ship is back where it belongs, we will get back to "normal."  We are all looking forward to our first regular weekend of regular things, like coffee and pancakes, and a morning trip together to the beach.  Just to have a week with work during the day and coming home in the evening will be fabulous.  Even some normal time with the ship deployed, doing real work, will be a welcome routine for its new captain.  We have quite a bit of fun planned for what I see as our "bonus year" of Alaskan summertime, and I can't wait to get started!

Another Adventure Ahead

We have lived in California for about seven months now.  And as I type, there are packers in all rooms of my house, boxing up our belongings.  Yes, we're moving.  Again.

Family and most friends know what's up, but I thought I'd better catch up here because it's been far too long.

Just a few months ago, we were mostly settled in to living in California.  But a very unusual situation came up on a Coast Guard ship in Alaska, resulting in the need of a new commanding officer. I'll spare you all of the military procedural details, but in short, my newly-promoted lieutenant commander husband was the right rank with the right experience to take on such a job. And his bosses here in California knew what an opportunity this could be for him.  The stars aligned, and as of tomorrow he will be the new commanding officer of a buoy tender in Sitka, Alaska.  This is the position we have been working toward ever since his first tour over ten years ago aboard a buoy tender in Kodiak.  It's definitely not something you turn down. So, off we go!

We have been to Sitka once before...on our ferry trip to move to CA!  We even went for a little hike while there.

Sitka view

This move holds several firsts for us.  It's the first time in six moves that we are traveling separately.  Mike is already in Sitka, living aboard the ship, while I am back in California handling the move of all of our stuff.  It's the first time we have moved in the middle of a school year.  I'm sure some people would have chosen to wait out the rest of the year and head to the new location when school lets out for the summer, but keeping our family together as much as possible is more important to us.  And honestly, both of the kids are excited to move now.  At least one of them could benefit from the smaller classes and new set of friends waiting in Sitka.  While California has been a fun break in the "real world," our hearts are really in Alaska...and this is quite possibly our last chance to go back.

This move has the shortest turnaround time of any of our moves so far.  Thanks to all of the extra hoops to jump through when moving OCONUS (Outside of the Continental United States), we didn't have the official travel orders in hand until about 5 weeks ago.  One week later, we had already sent one shipment of basic essentials to our new address, and Mike's brand-new Subaru with only 400 miles on it was dropped off in Richmond, CA to make its way north.  Thank goodness we have done this enough times to know how an Alaska move works, because there is quite a bit involved in arranging everything.

Things have actually gone very smoothly so far.  We found a new house to rent in Sitka almost immediately.  It's a bit small for all of our stuff, but we have learned that you have to compromise when living in Alaska.  It meets our major requirements: single family house, fenced yard, pet friendly, energy efficient, and not on an icy-in-winter hill.  As a bonus, this one is even on a paved cul-de-sac and has mail delivery right to the house.  Those things aren't standard in all AK locations.

The moving company we were assigned this time seems to know their stuff, and even started packing a day earlier than planned.  The only downfall of moving to Alaska in the winter, though, is that it can take up to 6 weeks for our shipment to Sitka.  Like Kodiak, Sitka is an island, only accessible by boat or plane.  From what I hear, there is a barge once a week on which our household goods will need to take a ride to get to us.  So, we are sending everything this week, but we don't depart CA until the second week of February.  We'll be "glamping" in our house until then.  We have a stash of air mattresses and basic kitchenware in our "do not pack" closet.  We managed to mix chocolate chip cookies last night in our camp pot with a fork and bake them 6 at a time on our one small baking sheet, so I think we'll survive.

Seeing as I have two more days to "supervise" the packing up of our home, I'll fill you in on the details our upcoming trip to Sitka tomorrow.

All in a Homer Summer Saturday

Summer has finally arrived in Homer. So much that I got a surprise sunburn while staying out of the way of the movers last week. The kids even ventured into the sprinkler...and came out shivering, of course, since 58 degrees now feels hot to us. 

The moving truck loaded up and moved on out a day early (Two guys packed and loaded our 2000+sq ft house in two days! Love SourdoughTransfer!), leaving us camped out on air mattresses for three nights while cleaning out the house. This is the first time I have done all of the movers and clean out solo. I hope I never have to do so again! Whew. 

We were technically homeless for about 6 hours today, after leaving the house and waiting to check into the furnished apartment we are staying in. Packing the car this morning was unbelievable. I usually stay out of the way while the man with the muscles does it. I wonder if any neighbors sat inside laughing with their morning coffee while watching me try to hoist bags into the rooftop box on our Honda Pilot. I'm 5'0". I'd like to think that if anyone did see me teetering on my toes on the back bumper that they'd have offered assistance. 

We had several hours to kill, so we started at the Bagel Shop on East End Rd. Michela always knows our order! Sooo delicious. Then it was on to the beach to let the poor dog run off some energy before being stuck in the car for the rest if the day. Don't worry, it was about 45 degrees and overcast today. No doggy danger. 

Next up was an event at the library where the little man got to measure his height against the tires of a grader and a dump truck before taking to the driver's seat of an excavator. 

Then it was on the the garden club's plant sale, where the kids volunteered as cashiers selling plants grown at their school's greenhouse. All by 10:30am!

We stopped by our favorite Saturday place, the farmers market, to help plant starts in the children's garden and eat some kettle corn. Every single place we went, we ran into friends. That's one if the best things about small-town living. 

We headed to Cosmic Kitchen for some real food to balance out our popcorn, and then spent the rest of our wait at the playground. It's hard to believe that it's been open a year now! And we were the only ones there at 1:30 on a Saturday afternoon. Weird. 

What a day! There's so much going on here in the summertime that its hard to do it all. But we will do our best in the less than 3 weeks we have left here. After unloading the entire car, we are settled into our temporary quarters and I am beat. The neighborhood is a little sketchy. We saw a pair of young bull moose fighting on the street corner. Ha! I'm going to miss small-town Alaska "problems".

Getting to the fun part

This is a test post from my phone, since that is usually how I post from the road. Lesson 1 learned: the Blogger app doesn't auto save a post in progress if you switch to another app. Grrr! 

We took a break the other day from prepping for the movers to finalize our upcoming trip. The adventure of getting to and from Alaska always allows us to explore places we have never been. This time, we are driving from Homer to Anchorage, Tok, and Haines, where we will board the ferry with our people, dog, and SUV. We'll cruise for three and a half days to Bellingham, WA. Then we plan to spend time in Seattle, Portland, and the redwoods of Northern California on the way to Alameda. It will take us 12 days. If you have any suggestions of places not to miss along our route, please let us know!

We have spent the last 4 days getting as ready as possible for the moving crew, which arrives Tuesday. They drive a tractor trailer down from Anchorage and load everything into wooden crates. 

When you do a military contracted move, the moving company does all the packing. We aren't actually allowed to pack anything ourselves. If we do, they will re-pack it. But we do have to weed out anything we don't want packed (food, chemicals, trash, etc), and remove everything from our walls. We also have to unhook all electronics. We try to organize everything as much as we can, trying to avoid opening up boxes of random stuff packed together on the other end.  When we moved to CT, it took us 6 months to find our Crock Pot because it was packed with an old computer in a box labeled "books" that sat unpacked in our garage. We have heard horror stories of live cats and full trash cans getting packed in boxes and loaded on the truck. 

Tomorrow it's one last day of prep, and then 3 days of mayhem before cleaning out a gloriously empty house on Friday. I'm really looking forward to this week being done, because then we move into a vacation rental for the rest of our time in Homer and just enjoy being at the end of the road. 

Purging excess so we can stock up...does that even make sense??

Those who know me know that I am an organizer, a planner, and a list-maker. When it comes to our household, I am the one who keeps things on track, so naturally when it's time to PCS (or move, in civilian speak) much of the planning falls to me. Friends and family will not be surprised at all to learn that, 48 hours after learning of our new locale, I have already researched the necessities:

-What our monthly allowances will be (housing, cost of living)

-Potential sources of rental homes

-Preschools for Little Man

-Elementary schools (!!!) for Princess A

-An indoor ice rink and swimming pool (hooray) so the kids can keep up with their favorite activities

-A Starbucks in the local grocery store for when we need a little taste of the "real world"

-The daily catch limit on halibut (2 per person per day, or enough to feed a small army)

It is so nice to be going somewhere that we have visited before; we are familiar enough with the town to feel like we don't have to do much legwork ahead of time. But now that all of that is taken care of, I need something to do right-this-instant to get this show on the road. We still have about 3 more months here, about half of which will involve The LT being away at training for his new job...and there is a TON that needs to be done. Of course, I have a list:

Things to do

1. Apply for Alaskan Airlines mileage credit card and start using it ASAP to rack up the miles, making trips back to Florida (where all of our family lives) as cheap as possible.

2. Get passports for the kids. We will be going through Canada and it will be much easier if they have passports.

3. Get rid of everything we don't need.

4. Acquire all of the stuff we will need in Alaska.

Of course, there are sub-lists. Purging the house of all the extra stuff is going to be a big job. When we moved from NC to CT, we up-sized our house by about 1200 square feet. That means we bought new furniture without getting rid of any old furniture (and ended up with more house than we can clean or use). We also have 4 years worth of toddler toys that we have outgrown, and boxes and bags of clothing that didn't make the cut for resale at the consignment shop. Today it is all going on Craigslist or being boxed up for Goodwill. I am just SO thankful that a house is not of the list of things that need to be sold this time!

The basement in its current state...ALL of this needs to go.

There are also several things that need to be purchased in advance of the move, as things in Alaska are much more expensive than in the Lower 48 (although CT has proven to be a pricey place to live, so we may not experience as much sticker-shock as others).

-A car-top box for the 2-4 week road trip. We contemplated a pop-up camper instead, but I decided that my sanity would be in jeopardy if I had to be in the same car all day with the little people and then have to share an equally-tiny space with them at night, not to mention the thought of campground showers for 3 weeks.

-A "big boy bed" for Little Man (Thinking about the one here so that our future visitors will have the rare opportunity to share a room with a restless 3-year-old)

-Possibly a new television, since the one we have now is the "old-fashioned" non-flatscreen type from 2003

- A two-year supply of dog food

- A digital SLR camera, as my old-fashioned Canon Rebel that uses real film is now slightly outdated and in need of servicing. Recommendations welcome...I don't need anything fancy but do need to be able to take great photos of our journey.

-An entire pallet of Trader Joe's peanut butter

-As many K-Cups as we can stockpile, especially Island Coconut

I'm sure there is more...hopefully we can sell some of the old to fund some of the new. Off to Craigslist...