Volleyball

We all got to play a little volleyball this fall.  The kids and Josh A. made up a homeschooling volleyball team. They flew with Paul to play in Newhalen, Port Alsworth and they played the team here in Nondalton.  They won all three matches and had a great time

Josh A.

Abigail

 We also played a couple of scrimmages here in Nondalton.  The parents and teachers played against the kids.  Vince & Marylil Spady, good friends from Soldotna came to visit us one day.  They happened to come on a scrimmage day and played with us.  Vince is in the picture below.  Vince is a bit older than me and I would like to say that I hope I'm playing as quick and sharp as he is when I'm his age but I can't say that.  Because, even though he's a bit older than me he's already way quicker and sharper.  He's good!

Group picture of the volleyball players.

Thanksgiving and My Blog

Hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Ours was full of food.

So... I made a blog of my own.  Mostly because I had nothing to do at the moment☺but it will also be nice to have when I'm not at home, like when I was working in Port Alsworth.  For now it just has random stuff on it, like a photography challenge I'm doing.  But check it out, - Consumed With The Creator.

Dirt, Dirt and more Dirt

Posted by - Deborah

These past couple weeks we've really been working hard on getting our house project done before winter sets in. Well, more than it has already.
We've been doing a lot of shoveling, helping to fill in our big hole we have back there.

Mom's new root cellar

We shoveled for so long one day that it hurt when we pried our fingers off our shovels.

And we shoveled in the rain.

Not to brag at how big our muscles are getting. :)

Quentin and Abigail

Anna and Josh

Quentin, Abigail, and Josh

Quentin and I

We didn't get all the stuff done on the wall and the root cellar till the ground was pretty much frozen solid.

Dad and Quentin working on putting the membrane up, it was so cold out that they had to use a blow torch to heat it up before it would stick .

Dad putting up the ground cloth that covered the drain tile.

So Dad rented the backhoe from the city so it could give us some much needed help in filling in our hole.

Dad in the backhoe (he had fun :)

The backhoe didn't work too good, he tried a couple different buckets but the ground was too hard for it
to do much good.
So we got this big guy, the excavator, and it did the trick. It helped that it warmed up some so the ground wasn't as hard (I mentioned the raining right?).
We didn't have to do too much more shoveling after we got the excavator, which was nice.

The excavator

We all had some fun while we watched Dad and the excavator work. 

Benjamin got the not so fun part of being the target.

Joshua decided to help him out.

 The next day all we had to do was go out and level everything out.

Look! There's no hole!

Now we can spend the rest of the winter working on the inside, getting the floor down, putting the walls up, and maybe doing some painting?

Quentin putting insulation up in the root cellar. 

Getting Wood

    A couple weeks ago before the lake froze we (Anna, Dad, Quentin, Joshua, and Benjamin)  went up the Tazimina river and got some wood.

Dad

Joshua and Benjamin loading the boat.

Joshua

We brought a gun to go duck hunting too, Quentin was the only one that hit anything though.

Joshua ready to shoot a duck.

No, this is not a duck.

Nondalton

Trip to Homer

Before I came home from Port Alsworth the five of us that were still at the Lodge spent a few days in Anchorage.  We spent one day driving to Homer and spent a few hours exploring the town.  It was a cold day.  The first stop we made on the spit was a store to buy hats and gloves.

The Spit poking out.

We walked along the dock some.

We ate lunch at Lands End on the very end of the spit.

There were a lot of otters swimming along the spit, but as soon as I'd turn on my camera they would disappear and not come back till I turned it off.  Seriously, it happened to often to be a coincidence. So, no otter pictures.

It would have been fun to be on a boat that day.

We saw lots of moose on the trip.  It funny how you have to go to town to see big wild moose.

The drive down is beautiful.  The road runs along Cook Inlet so you can see all the mountains on both sides. If the tide's up you can see beluga whales swimming around.

Mt. Redoubt, the volcano that was going off a few years ago, in the background.

It was fun spending a few days in Anchorage doing touristy things.  Living in Alaska I've never been to most of the place people come to see.

The worlds largest chocolate fountain at Alaska Wild Berry Products.

We got to eat at restaurants (which having a family of 11 never happens), go see The Bourne Legacy in theaters (yay ♥), stay in a hotel, go shopping and go to lots of fun places like The Alaskan Fur Exchange.  It was a ton of fun!! ☺