July around the house

As August arrives we are enjoying our 2nd week of near constant rain and stories of flooding rivers, flooding homes, and flooding roads. Even our work parking lot is washing away! Exciting times. Luckily we are living in the hills now and are not faced this year with a flooding outhouse! (Although the sink holes around our yard are getting a bit worrisome) On to brighter topics...

Since returning from vacation Kieran has been making great strides in his quest toward independent mobility. He spends much of his days standing (while clinging to something solid), asking to be helped to standing, or protesting our removing him from a precarious standing position. He's close to crawling and might have figured that out by now if he wasn't so focused on getting directly to his feet!


Bath time has become a highlight of any day. If he could run his own bath I think he'd bathe until the water tank ran dry.

Can't beat toys, bath, and Daddy all together!

Hmmm, now what can I make for dinner? A little cereal, a little gatorade, a few crackers...and now for my secret ingredient...

I said SECRET ingredient! Put the camera away Mommy!

How about a little after dinner music? BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG.

In mid July we tackled the canning of last year's leftover salmon. There was quite a lot left this year - my pregnant tummy wasn't interested in salmon for much of '07. Thankfully, that's changed and Max will have plenty of help eating the 12 dozen(!) jars of salmon we packed away this year.

It was a long day of preparing the fish, smoking, peeling skin, packing jars, and finally cooking them. It went into the wee hours of the morning.

Kieran had enough of canning way before the job was finished. At about this point in the day I was feeling pretty envious of little K. He gets a pass this year, but next year he's running the canner!

The next week Max made an overnight trip to Chitina to round up this year's fish for the freezer. Here's the Copper River from the road north of the fishing area. The fireweed still has some life left in it down there - maybe we'll still have some summer left after this rain stops falling!

The Tracer made another trip to Chitina too, completely loaded down and totally uncomplaining. This car must be happy in Alaska. I don't know how else to explain its longevity with everything we've put it through over the years. I think it has Max's attitude...you're not living unless you're pushing yourself.

Max caught all the fish we needed in a few hours but spent a bit more time cleaning it before loading everyone into coolers and heading for home. What a big job for one person! I need to remember that when I start thinking about how easy Max has it when he's on work trips and I'm single parenting at home. He does contribute big in other ways!

The smoker finally made the trip from the cabin to the new house and it was there to greet the fish when they arrived. We did a smaller batch than normal this year but it was the best batch we've had in a long time. Maybe the smoker likes it in the hills too?

Mmmm, lovely smoked salmon. It was a new experience squirreling away the annual salmon stores with an active and curious infant in the house. I think he had a good time sitting in the backpack and peering over Max's shoulder as he filleted fish and hanging out in his high chair watching me pack jars. He was more cooperative than we expected, taking naps during critical busy times and waking up cheerful and ready to take in the action for a few more hours. Good that he enjoyed the experience. He'll be experiencing it all again...and again, and again :)