June already??

So, it's been a while since the last post. We have been busy out enjoying the quick Alaskan summer, which leaves little time to do the necessary things like clean the house, weed the garden, and post on your blog. Many exciting events have happened in our family, all of which I hope to get pictures of and post later, but I wanted to start documenting the process of building our new house on Whisper lake. So far, we have met with our builder and have viewed the first set of plans. They look good, but our issue is trying to take the house we need and making it fit on our long and narrow, one acre lot. We made a few changes to the first set of plans and Jeff (our builder) hopefully will get us the next set in a few days.

Part of the process of building our home is to liquidate most of our assets, more specifically our rental properties. We just sold one of our four-plexes a few weeks ago, so all we have left to sell are 2 more four-plexes, a house in Eagle River, and the home we are in now. This is all a little scary, but I am sure it will be worth it in the end. Aaron and I both are getting tired of being landlords after doing it for the last 5 years, so we will be happy when the rentals are sold. Aaron is also selling his river boat that we hardly ever use (he would rather be in a drift boat, but I want to keep the river boat for dip netting). Aaron is also selling his play car, the BMW convertible (it is worth a well and septic) so if anyone is interested, you know who to call. :)

Besides the money issues, the first phase of getting our house built is the lot prep. The guy we bought the lot from was kind enough to cut down every single tree on the lot (I haven't decided if that is a good thing yet) and he left the trees in a neat pile. We are in the process of cutting that huge pile into logs, hauling the logs down the lot via 4 wheeler, and stacking the logs in a pile where they will eventually need to be split into firewood. We have invested about 2 Saturdays so far and we are about half way through the pile. Thanks to the Hansens, we have been able to get a lot more done, and if anyone wants a good work out by hauling wood, you know who to call. :) (again, boy I sound like a salesperson in this post). This project is proving to be a daunting family project where we hope we can teach our kids the value of hard work, sacrifice, diligence, and long suffering. Mostly Aaron and I just hope to get through this with our sanity still in tact after hearing "Are we done yet", "I'm... (tired, hot, thirsty, you fill in the blanks)", "So and so is picking on me", and "can I quit now" about a million and one times.

Here are some pics of the first weekend Aaron tried tackling the wood pile.

On a side note, Brady and I ran our first run of the summer yesterday at the Kenai River Festival. I did this 5K last year when Jolee was 7 weeks old, and this year my Brady ran it with me, or should I say, ran ahead of me and totally kicked my butt. He started about 10 feet in front of me and about a 1/4 mile in I yelled to him, "Brady, pace yourself", and that was the last I saw of him. I figured he could follow the crowd and I would either find him passed out along the course, or see him at the finish line. He did me proud, finishing first in his age group with a time of 29:06. I told him he might think about switching from hockey to x-country running, it sure is cheaper. He did great and we both had a blast even though we are walking pretty sore today.