Promise of Spring

Today started out pretty badly, I woke up in pain and unable to get comfortable.  Standing, sitting it didn't make any difference, my whole right sciatic nerve was just throbbing with stabbing pain.  Not only was I in pain, I was thoroughly frustrated with not being able to move without hurting badly.

Steve got me (and Riggs) set up in his comfy chair, tucked in with his cozy down sleeping bag and a full glass of water before he headed off to work, and we napped for about 40 minutes.  When I woke up to sharp pain in my pelvic area and the back of my leg, which turned to stabbing pain when I tried to move to get up, I just cried.  Riggs was fussing and needed his diaper changed and I could barely move.  I was miserable for the next two hours, crying in frustration more than once when pain got the better of me.

I had physical therapy later in the morning, and left there feeling a little bit better.  My physical therapist strongly recommended that I take some ibuprofen to keep the inflammation down, so I took some before I got in the car, desperate to get a little relief so I could take care of my son and get some chores done.  Luckily the ibuprofen took the edge off, and I felt only a dull ache for the next couple of hours.

But I was frustrated still, because I really don't feel comfortable taking too much of any medication while breast-feeding Riggs.  I couldn't help feeling that I was somehow failing him by choosing to take the ibuprofen instead of just dealing with the pain.

Somehow I managed to push those thoughts to the back of my mind and got some chores done while Riggs napped in his crib.  When he woke up, I bundled him up and we headed outside with Beau.  I would have loved to carry him in the ergo, but still felt a little too strained, so in the stroller he went.

I felt the tension slowly melt in the heat of the sun shining down on my face and shoulders.  As I walked I was reminded of memories, memories long buried under snow, of seasons filled with heat and sunshine and that smell...that fresh, earthy, calming smell of things warmed by the sun.

As I walked along, slowly along, I saw around me the promise of spring.  I saw it in the group of chickens, basking in the sliver of sunlight that made it into their coup.

I saw it in those newly uncovered objects, hidden for so long under the deep and silent layer of snow, and I thanked God for these signs of spring and for that beautiful sun beaming so beautifully in the sky above me.

Riggs observed quietly during the entire walk, looking out of his stroller with a wide, serious eyes that moved about slowly taking in the quickly changing landscape.  Our thoughts on the walk must have worn as both out, as I took to the couch to write this post as soon as we got home, and he quickly snuggled in to his blanket to take a cat nap, still warmed by the rays of sun flooding through our window.

What a beautiful world we are so blessed to live in and enjoy...I am filled with peace and in awe of our creator, the perfect architect of life, beauty and love.  I hope you had a blessed Monday as well with at least a few moments of peace.

At our house...

Not much is going on here at our house right now.  I did rearrange our bedroom, but it's not that different or exciting.  There has been a lot of moose activity going on outside.  I have been finding fresh tracks outside by our car nearly every morning.  Two nights ago we saw the actual moose as it brushed up against our car to get to the tree nearby.

The poor moose have had a rough winter this year.  With the extra snow load, it is hard for them to walk through the snowbanks and deep snow and a lot of the shrubs that they like to eat are covered up.  Poor guys!  I'm glad they come to our neighborhood to eat from all the shrubs, bushes and trees.

Riggs has really changed a lot this past week.  He is sleeping even longer at night and we switched his to his convertible car seat this today - goodbye infant seat, I will not miss you! (it's a great seat, but since Riggs is now about 16 pounds, it's just too heavy to be carrying him around in).  Also, he has been enjoying so much more time on the floor on his tummy - he loves to roll over onto his back.  He's such an independent baby - when I'm cooking dinner, he'd much rather be on a blanket on the floor in the kitchen than in the Ergo carrier, where he squirms and fusses.

Every evening when Steve gets home he loves to sit in his chair with Riggs, and Riggs seems to like it too :)

My little tummy-time boy - such a happy guy

We thought we were headed down to Homer again this weekend but it looks like we will be doing snow removal around here instead.  Happy Friday and I hope everyone has had a happy week.

New Sled and a Moose Parade

This has been a busy week.  Steve finally found the perfect deal he was looking for and purchased another snowmachine.  I've been busing moving us back into our home and getting baby's room even more ready for him to get here (more on that later).  Plus last night I went to Fiddler on the Roof with my mom and older sister, Kelsey.  We had a blast!  We went to dinner at a fancy restaurant, Saks Cafe, then walked over to the Performing Arts Center for the show.  I wish now that I would have gotten a picture of us all dressed up and enjoying the evening, but alas, I did not.

Steve excited about his new sled:
2010 Polaris Assault 800

30w and 3d pregnant, blocking part of Steve's new toy with my big belly

Steve and I were out in the yard, putting the cover on his new sled.

We heard some crunching and looked over to see this moose staring at us

as it walked by...

Then we hear more crunching, and see that there are actually three (3!) moose

in our yard.  They walked slowly up the hill, stopping to watch us every few

steps or so.

Goodbye moose!
This is one of the reasons I love winter at my house, the moose just love our
little circle for some reason!  I just have to be careful not to let Beau run out
into the yard without checking for big ol' moose first.  

Hope you all had a great week, I am just amazed again at how fast time is flying by.  Next week is November!

Relaxation

Been feeling pretty moody/edgy lately, waiting for so many things to happen.  One of those things being the end of my last semester of college!  Which is dragging by slowly, in case you were wondering.  That's why I haven't been blogging this month.  Don't feel bad, you haven't missed much.  I've just been moping around the house in my yoga pants trying to avoid doing my homework by laying very still in my recliner with a blanket over my face.

BUT I put those yoga pants to good use today at the peak of my moodiness!  I decided to take a break from trying to start my homework (aka FBing, Craigslisting, and blog stalking), and take a bath, then some Yoga and Pilates for an hour.  It was so nice, and I highly recommend it if you are feeling out of sorts for any reason.  I feel so much better now, honest!  Plus, I saw our little neighborhood moose on the way home from work/school today; I'll be nice and share some pictures :)

 Pretty cute little moose, been with us since it was just a little(er) guy!

Done with this semester...

I'm finished with the fall semester at UAA and am happy to announce that I got a 4.0! I am so relieved about that since the only class I thought I might have a "B" in was Senior Seminar, which was also the one class I needed an "A" in to graduate with Honors in history through PHI ALPHA THETA, the history honor society. So I breathed one big sigh of relief and am now on my first day off from work post-school. I've been skiing a bunch this past week, and would go today except it is ridiculously windy and we need to wax our skis, which we will do this evening.
I've spent the entire day cleaning my house. Not just cleaning I guess, but also going through stuff and getting rid of stuff. I cleaned the bathroom, the kitchen, our bedroom, washed all our bedding, towels and clothes, and cleaned up our living room and put everything back in its place. Then I went through our second bedroom and threw away/got rid of about three garbage bags full of stuff. Another huge sigh of relief, since we will be moving sometime next year and need to start weeding stuff out that we don't want to move. I've also been baking cookies like crazy, and can't wait to bake even more for those who are flying in to appreciate.
Here's a few pictures of everything I've been up to:

Molasses Cookie baking...

Moose family that has been hanging out in my parents neighborhood

Skiing at Russian Jack Park with Steven

Beautiful!

Me (and Steve) at Hiltop

The little shortcut we took at Hiltop...

It's a winter wonderland here! Hope everyone else is having a fabulous winter and a happy holiday season

moose blog

Mileage: 10.2

total June Mileage: 92.3

Started my day early compared to the rest of this week. I was out of the house by 9:00am, shopping at Target with my little sister.

Steve and I went to Costco (my favorite store) Monday after he got off work. As he walked through the snack aisle, he grabbed everything that looked good to him and threw it in the cart. "I'm sick of fast food and spending money on buying lunch. I'm going to start packing my lunch." He said as he grabbed another box, this time a 24 pack of sour patch kids. "Okay..." I replied as I watched in a daze as he threw more stuff in the cart. After just ten minutes of shopping, there was already the sour patch kids, a box of Hershey's bars, fruit crisps, fruit leathers, and Ritz/cheese packs (all Costco size, of course).

We continued walking and I continued to monitor what he put in the cart: sliced turkey, yogurt, avocados, onions, cherry tomatoes, snap peas...he went to throw a huge pack of asparagus in the cart and I couldn't handle it anymore. "You cannot get the asparagus! You won't eat all of this fresh stuff before it goes bad and then the food and our money will be wasted." I reached out and stopped him from grabbing them. "But steamed asparagus are soo good!" He replied. "No." I was holding my ground. "Ok..." He replied with a huge grin on his face. Then he moved on the the bakery area. In went oatmeal raisin cookies and a pineapple upside down cake. As I saw him reach for the Sunny Delights, I had to step in again. "Those are all sugar! You cannot get those." He whined back, "But they have 100% vitamin C!" I just rolled my eyes and showed him the label. High Fructose Corn Syrup was the second ingredient. "See?" I said, eyebrows raised. He just made a face and went back to prowling. It was a harrying trip, as you can imagine.

So today at Target my task was to get him a "man-size" lunch box, some cold packs and sandwich size Tupperware. After that was accomplished, Beka dropped me back off at home and headed for work. I putted around the house for about an hour, ate lunch, then headed out on my MTB for some therapy. I found myself back at the Airport Dog park, and I was loving being there on my super-V rather than my roadie, as had been the case yesterday. I hadn't brought my camera, because I doubted I would see anything worth taking a picture of. I was wrong, of course. About 3/4 of the way down the trail, I saw a month-old calf in the middle of the trail. Since I couldn't see her mamma, I stopped and took my earphones out. I did not want to get near that calf without knowing where her extremely protective cow was.

(I did manage to snap a few pictures with my iphone. They are really bad and make it seem like the calf is a mile away when she was really like 20 ft away, max)
The calf meandered around eating, looking up at me every once in a while, but didn't really move out of the way. I'd been waiting for about 20 minutes and had walked all around trying out different vantage point to try and locate the cow. Finally I yelled, "Please move baby! I'm just trying to bike by, I'm not going to hurt you!!!!" Nothing. So I kept talking to her, begging her to move. I yelled "PLEASE MOVE!" one more time and I heard some movement in the brush near the calf. Suddenly there was a very large cow standing there next to her calf, and yet another calf followed behind her. She glanced at me, snorted and ran past into the meadow, her twins running behind as fast as they could on their gangly legs. I just stood there, eyebrows raised in surprise and watched them run out of sight. Man was I glad that I didn't try biking past! With all my moose encounters and pictures, you'd think that this was turning into a moose-sighting blog, but it's not, I promise. Although I do love getting pictures of them. And because of that I'm just going to bring my point and shoot everywhere from now on. You never know what you're going to see while biking around Anchorage and Alaska in general...

so excited!

Mileage: 14.9

Hours: 1:16.59 (includes the time spent watching the moose, ect.)

time in the saddle: 55 minutes

Total June Mileage: 82.1

I GOT THE JOB! Can you tell I'm excited? Thanks for all the good thoughts sent my way and REI dances.

Here's how my day went:

9:00 AM: Typical Pepper. I hear the crinkling sound of her getting into something and find her with the bag of bones in her kennel. As you can see, she had already removed three by the time I walked over.
10:40AM: Rode through the Airport Dog Park. Definitely was not very comfortable on my road bike. I'll bring my MTB next time.
10:50AM: Enjoying being off the streets, until a swarm of mosquitoes surrounded me and starting biting. Time to get back on the bike.
11:00AM: A big moose just stuffing its face.

4:48PM GOT THE JOB AT REI

later that day...

mileage: 13.4

total June mileage since I got batteries for my bike computer: 37.6

I rode out the coastal trail today. It was beautiful and I wanted to go all the way to Kincaid and back. I love riding the coastal trail, once I get about four miles out, right at the Point Woronzoff parking lot. The four miles from my house to there are filled with people, either walking, running around the trail screaming (usually the kids), biking really slow, swerving all over the trail while biking really slow, ect. It's nice to see people out having fun, but it's frustrating if you wanna get a good workout in. Once I got to mile four, I stopped for some water and to take the above picture. I headed back down to the path to keep going towards Kincaid, and saw movement down the trail. A small cow and her two new calves were slowly walking across the path 100 feet in front of me.
It was such a pleasure to just stand there and watch them, and interesting to observe just how protective the cow was. She came out first, stopped, looked around then looked back at her calves, who quickly trotted out to stand close to her. Then they walked the rest of the way together, slowly enough that I got a few good pictures. They hung out on the side of the trail for a bit, so I decided to go around via the road to the water processing plant and I continued on my way.
I kept going for about two and a half more miles down the bumpy Kincaid half of the Coastal Trail. I stopped for water and realized that one of my newly installed caps had come out of my newly taped handlebars. I didn't want the tape to unravel at the bottom, so I decided to turn around and head back. Going back was FUN. I pushed hard and kept my speed above about 18mph the entire way. There were two uphills that had me down to 12mph, but then I was quickly cruising back up. For most of the flat stretches, I was cruising around 20mph, my thighs and lungs burning, but it felt great. I got home, recapped my handlebars, and had an apple with PB while I uploaded my pictures. I lifted weights and am now debating what I should spend the rest of the beautiful day doing. Hmmm...