My4kids's Page

I've talked about how we have bears here before, right?

I haven't been able to get pictures of them yet though to show you any proof. Of course I am sure you believed me but when we were at camp this week I was able to catch some pictures of bears while we were there.

You can see there is water between us. The river though is not very wide at this point or very high either. I was standing on the porch when taking this picture as I had no desire to bring the bears attention to me to much but there weren't very far away. I was anxious to make sure I got the picture didn't zoom in very well.

I got a little closer on this one and was near the bank of the river when I took it's picture. I was a little more comfortable since this one wasn't looking straight at me.


Kelly, his brother and a friend of ours had an even closer encounter with a bear though. They were waiting for one of the skiffs to come back to get them and the bags since they had a big load. While they were waiting they kept hearing something close by but didn't have their flashlights out to see around them real well. Their friend was getting pretty nervous but Kelly always the tough guy wasn't acting to worried about it. Apparently he was making jokes to their friend saying that he didn't need to worry he just needed to run faster then his brother. Nice guy right? Anyway when the person driving the skiff came back and flashed the headlights they could finally see the bear. It was standing less then 15 feet from them! They were very anxious to get into the skiff!

I know I've been even quieter this last week. The reason for that is we were away at Family Camp on the Naha River. Really it's a beautiful place! We had tons of fun and I took over 700 pictures! Of course people kept borrowing my camera as it was apparently designated as the camp camera. People really liked it.

The week started out rainy as we were leaving. Getting to Naha is a little complicated. You have to take a boat for about an hour and a half to get to the other side of the island as there are no roads leading to it. Then a 1/2 mile hike over what they call "the hump" which is a bit of the island that as you can guess is going a little up hill then back down again to get the river. When you get to the river you take a small skiff for about a 1/2 hour to the actual camp site. It rained the whole way there but when we got there the sun popped out and it was gorgeous the entire time.

Here are the kids on the boat ride over. They usually play card games in the galley area of the boat. I spent most of the boat ride on the deck outside. I love the smell of the ocean and being able to see everything as we are going.


We arrived earlier then the rest of the church with another family, my friend Johanna. Some work needed to be done around the place before the rest of the campers arrived and the kids were great at helping out.

Here are the girls behind the little trailer we were using to clear some brush.


Of course during some of the working the girls found some muskegg mud to play in and got covered in mud.

Joshua working. He actually was really good during the camping trip and worked hard.

My niece Aidan was up for 2 weeks while we came up as well so she came up with me Wednesday, her dad came up on Friday after he got off of work. She got her first experiences catching salmon and riding rapids on the Naha.

Here she is tubing with Madison.


A lovely expression from Maddie....

More tubing with Madison

Kenzie coming up to the mess hall. The girls all had their hair braided while we were their along with little braids on the side that I put a bell on the end of. We could here them all running together often with 4 little bells ringing. It was funny.

Kenzie and Clarissa sitting on the edge of one of the skiffs on the little dock at camp.

There were tons of dragonflies around catching the mosquitoes and such that were flying near the river. Kenzies friend Clarissa kept wanting one to land on her, although I think she was a little surprised when it landed on her face right over her eye! She wanted me to get a picture of it for her and was having a lot of fun showing people the pictures afterwards. Personally if it had been me I would have probably had a panic attack or something!!

Here is Madison relaxing in one of the innertubes.


My 8 year old niece Aidan, isn't she a cutie? She was awesome at camp and has been a lot of fun to have around but she has to fly back to Portland on Saturday.


I know certain people here will ask wether or not I jumped and went down the rapids myself and the answer is yes, I did. It was fun. I was actually in the water with the kids alot since it is a river and pretty high this year we had to be pretty close by. The kids always had life jackets on when anywhere near the water.

And of course Kelly working with the boys. They were moving wood and the boys hitched a ride on the back of the trailer to the woodshed.


I have tons more pictures to share and plan to show some more in the next couple of days so I will be back soon.

This weeks fun Monday is brought to us by Lisa at Lisa's chaos here is her challenge

What is one thing you would like to ask your readers? Come up with a question to pose to your visitors and throw it out there on Monday. As we’re all visiting each other’s Fun Monday posts we should answer the various questions we come across. OR Show&Tell me about a bird, I’m easily made happy.

Hmm I thought this didn't sound to hard but I've spent all week trying to think of a question to ask and couldn't think of anything original really.

So here is my unoriginal question for you all.

If you could live anywhere you wanted where would you live? I'm not talking your house either. A second part of that question is why do you want to live there and is that where you are now?

My answer to that question is that I do! I don't know why but ever since I was little I was attracted to Alaska and wanted to live there. Kelly and I used to talk about it when we were dating and about 10 or 11 years ago he was sent to Alaska by his work for 2 weeks and he knew this was where we were supposed to be even then. It took us 10 years to get here and have been here for nearly a year now. Actually this weekend will be the anniversary of our leaving Oregon to come here, which might have something to do with why I chose this as my topic. I've been here only a year now and feel more like this is home to me then the 18 years combined I lived in Oregon.

Some of the reasons for that I will admit are the views. I'll share some more with you. I'm not sure if I've shown these on my blog before. They are some favorites though.Another...and another
and one of my many favorites
Oh and for Lisa who likes the bird shots. I thought I would add this since she had it in the challenge also.
Eagles are a common sight here in our little part of Alaska. We saw these two in a tree just off the road on our way to a hike we were headed to.

I almost forgot. I had a question from a blogger friend about the population of our island so I figured this was as good a time as any to tell. Our regular population is about 10,000 but that goes up and down depending on the season which is why I say "regular population" it goes up to about 12,000 or so during the tourist season in the summer because of the people who come up here to work. During the "winterest" months it can drop lower when the people leave for a warmer dryer climate.

This weeks Fun Monday is hosted by Aoj and the lurchers here is her challenge for this week:

Show me your favourite photograph and tell me why it's your favourite. It can be one you've taken yourself or one someone else has taken, a snapshot or a more professional image. Is there a story behind it? Do you love it for the memories it gives or just because it's pleasing to the eye? Show me and tell me

This is a hard challenge for me. I have tons of photos that are firm favorites for various reasons.

But since the challenge on this particular day is supposed to be for one picture I will do my try.

This picture I am choosing is of the my 2 girls McKenzie and Madison about 2 years ago. I love the picture itself because the girls are walking along together holding hands, something that doesn't happen very often anymore at 7 and 9. Some readers who have been around here awhile also know that one of my favorite things places to be is at the beach. Which is where we are in this picture. Everything about this picture when I look at it makes me happy. The beach and my 2 favorite little girls in the world.
Anther thing about this picture is that it is a reminder of the trip we were on when it was taken. Kelly had taken the boys out of state for the weekend for a truck thing (I can't remember what it was exactly) and the girls and I decided to get a yurt at the beach for the weekend for a girls weekend out alone with them. It was a great weekend for us. We got to spend several days alone just us girls which is something that doesn't happen and we were able to do a lot of girl stuff. It was just a really nice time for us that I don't know when we will get to have again free of any other duties or anything else to worry about like that.

Okay and I have to add one more picture....
This is a sunset from our new home in Alaska. We are nearing our one year anniversary of moving here and this picture was taken shortly after we moved here. I love this picture and I love our new home. We have beauty surrounding us all the time here on the island and things are so much different for us here. For me Alaska signifies a lot of changes for our family, the majority good ones. I have been happy here more so then I had been in a long time. I have been able to get back to my dream of being able to be home with my children as Kelly is able to make the money to support us and I am able to homeschool the kids as well which has been a very positive experience for all of us, especially Izzak who was struggling so much in school before and is flourishing now.