Totem Park (with pictures!)

Yesterday, we went for our first walk through Totem Park. We've been in Sitka for nearly a year, so it was definitely about time that we made this happen. The kids seemed to love the hike, we enjoyed the weather and the scenery (and, of course, the totems), and the dog really was happy to get out and walk a bit. Until she got completely winded, because she never gets walks this long.

Now, pictures!

It's a little-known fact that our children are hamadryads.

It's really hard to go 200 feet without seeing something incredibly beautiful in the temperate rainforest. Jo and Nika got a bit ahead of the rest of us as they both were excited to be stretching their legs.

The neat thing about these rainforests is the way that there's not really any soil. Everything grows out of the trees - the moss, the plants, the fungi, the new trees. The dead logs are called "nurse logs" for just this reason.

"Daddy, come on!"

"...but I'm trying to take a picture of you guys ahead- oh, never mind."

Seren was pretty excited to take a turn at walking the dog. Ever since we got Nika a new leash and collar, she stays right with anybody who's holding the other end of the leash, even if that person weighs only about as much as the dog!

I feel like Matthew Modine should have taken this picture of one of the few open spaces in the Park. You wouldn't guess it, but there's a trailer park about 25 feet to the right of the kids.

Remember what I said about how easy that leash/collar combo is? Porter proved to love helping with walking the dog. It also meant that there was an easy way to keep pulling him along and keep him with us!

Porter gets up close and personal with one of our most cuddly invasive species - the banana slug! Right after this picture, he touched it and freaked out. No amount of pants-wiping could get the slime off well enough to keep him from fixating on how much he wanted it gone.

Oh, the joy of an open trail.

Indian River. In a couple of months, this'll be the perfect spot to see many thousands of salmon swim upstream, spawn, and die.

The bridge over said river.

An extreme example of a nurse log. I want to come back here in 40 years and see this root structure!

Another example of the awesome root structures that come about from tree cannibalism.

Seren taking in one of the many totem poles in the park. It's fascinating to see so many different ones, created in so many different styles and over so much time. I can see how artists and historians could find themselves captivated and spend many hours studying these.

You get two versions of this picture. We managed to get the kids straightened out for the second picture, but I snapped it when Jo was distracted. Right after this, Porter kicked off his Xtratufs (yes, he's the first REAL Alaskan in the family) and refused to hold still for any more pictures.

That's it! As usual, feel free to link this page, comment, or email. If you want to borrow one of the pictures, let us know of your intention and we'll work something out!

good news and bad

It's about 10:30pm on Tuesday night, as I am writing this. I'm home and the kids are asleep. Stephen, however, is in the emergency room dealing with a bout of what we believe might be a nasty case of pink eye. He's been screened, but the doc has not yet seen him, so I am just waiting for him to message me with the final verdict so we can plan out the rest of the week (whether or not he will be working, etc.). If you're like me, the very thought of pink eye gets your nerves to twitching and you're now doing everything you can to keep from reaching up and rubbing that phantom itch out of your eye.

In other news, we have just about the best landlords imaginable. Yesterday I was talking to Joe (Joe and his wife, Micki, are our landlords) about the goings on with our house. He wanted to let me know that he was going to have some scaffolding up to power wash and paint the exterior of the house over the next few days and I wanted to ask him about shelving solutions for our living room. The result was unbelievable: Joe offered to build and paint us some shelving at his own expense. Additionally, since the road crew will be on our street this week to repave it, Joe and Micki are paying to have our driveway paved at the same time. Again, this will not affect our rent agreement or payment schedule in any way. We are pretty excited to have a brand new driveway before winter sets in because our current gravel driveway will prove difficult if it gets icy. It's about a 10-foot vertical drive from street-level to our parking spot.

Even better news is that Porter took his first two steps today. After Stephen picked me up from work today, I took Porter out of the car and brought him inside the house. I set him down on the floor of the living room on his feet (he was still standing when I let go of him) and he squatted down to set the toy he was holding on the floor and stood back up without any assistance. I was standing about 5 feet away from him and watching him do all of this, so I took a step toward him and knelt down to call him to me. He reached out, took two big steps and landed a giant hug on me, before collapsing on the floor and crawling off to do something else. To be fair, Porter is now 14½ months old, which already puts him almost 2 months behind Seren at the same stage, but he has quite a bit more bulk to haul around than his sister did. Seren took her first steps at about 13 months and started fully walking about a month after that. So we'll keep you updated, but as those of you who have been through this before already know, learning to trust the feet beneath you is a long and trying process.

Update: Stephen has just returned from seeing the doc and he does not have pink eye. It appears to be a "corneal irritation," meaning something entered his eye under his contact lens and scratched his cornea, causing the redness and pain. This also means that Stephen is not contagious and will be able to return to work tomorrow. As a side note, I'd like to mention that this is the quickest e.r. visit I've heard of in a long time. Total time spent from the time he left to the time he returned home: ~1 hour.