Ballyhoo

Fresh tracks.

The view down to the ocean from the summit.



Hog Island.




And just like that, the weather moves in and you can barely see.

New Plans....

So I think when we last left off, it was stormy and we were going to live in a boat. Plans and weather both change fast in this neck of the woods. No more boat-wife. Now I'm going to be a yurt-wife. We might even build a yurt empire. The possibilities are endless. And we had another string of very nice days with some blue sky and backcountry hiking/snowboarding. Dawson even got a ride to the top of a mountain from a friendly snowmachiner who had a tremendous ability to hill-climb on his machine.

In other news, Pax Rev took his first tastes of food other than milk! Mmmmm...a tablespoon of rice cereal. He found it quite delicious and seems to think he should eat everything we do now.

In less exciting news, Angelina and Brad are at it again and this time they've named him........Pax! Dawson felt cheated out of his cool name when this came out, but this is a low blow too. Well, we were first and Revel is much cooler than Thein. And at least people will know that Pax means peace. Maybe we can have a little more peace in the world.

And yesterday, we celebrated Dawson's 33 years of trips around the sun. Now he's officially as old as me again. Whew. We celebrated with lots of bacon and sugar.

Happy Birthday Dawson!!

A Sunday Stroll

For a large portion of the last three days, the spectacular view out our front window has looked like this:

Fortunately, it's a constant 85 degrees inside, magically, without turning on the thermostat. So Paxson Revel can hang around naked and get in touch with his Missoula hippy roots.

Happy Funny Guy:

He's part turtle when we head out in the windy cold:

For Aileen, who loves industrial remnants set against dramatic backdrops:

We walked north towards the end of Amaknak island, exploring.

Eagles were checking us out.



I've decided I'm not a "home maker" anymore....that carries too much responsibility and it's too PC. I was listening to one of my favorite Michelle Shocked songs this morning, Anchored Down in Anchorage, and it's a story about her best friend writing her a letter and the update of her life is "Kevin lost a tooth and now he's started school, I got a brand new 8 month old baby girl....I sound like a housewife, Hey Shell, I think I'm a housewife..." So, if you want to address me correctly, I'm now officially a housewife.

On other news, we took Pax Rev to the gym today. We got huge lifting the few weights that can be lifted with a baby in the Bjorn (mostly biceps, my favorite) and he took a little bouncy trip on the eliptical machine as well. Then we went across the street for his first swimming lesson. Little mermaid swimming diapers and the size 12 month swimsuit Sasha got him from the Patagonia outlet and he was looking pretty stylish. He enjoyed it....especially the fact that it's a salt water pool so there's no chlorine. And there's a big slide for when he gets a little more daring.

On the housing front, we're back to the idea of living on a boat. Does that mean my status will officially change to "boat-wife"? Dawson will be able to say, "Hello, I'm Dawson, this is my son Paxson Revel and my boat-wife, Genevieve."

Well, I better go, I've got a big day of house-wifeing tomorrow.

Catching up is hard to do

Since we don't want to go cold turkey on blogging about Tom and Bethel, here's a few shots from the infamous Bethel Dog Show which we attended right before we left town. Who would ever imagine some of these dogs live in Bethel? Kusko was one of the top finalists for a repeat championship for Best Delta Mix and Aileen's Puck nearly won Best Tail Wagger, but alas neither took home one of those shiny trophies....

The Big City.....That's Salt Lake City!

Pax Rev Meets His Great-Grandma

The 4 Generations!

We had a nice weekend staying in a big house with 22 of our closet friends and Pax Rev's girlfriend Liza, and we didn't take hardly any pics. So even though these aren't the greatest pictures, they capture the scene of our last day snowboarding (18 inches of new snow) and switching off the child care duty with Greg, Sonya, and Kristen. That's Ivan all tuckered out after Dawson took him on 5 skiing runs down from the lodge to the parking lot. Thanks Sam for organizing the event!

And of course, on to the big event and our arrival in Unalaska!!

Here's the view from the window of our apartment. It captures the spirit of Dutch Harbor....lots of industrial seafood infrastructure and lots of beautiful snowy mountains.

The backcountry snowboarding possibilities are surely endless....

And the big reason why everyone lives here....CRAB!

Pax Rev graduates from the Bjorn to the backpack for some beach walking (though we often still use the Bjorn...especially when it's windy and the Bjorn can shelter him from the gales!) That's Mt. Ballyhoo in the background (the mountain that Dawson snowboarded earlier in the afternoon.

Here's an evening after-work walk along the spit. Since we're on the far far western end of the timezone, it doesn't get light here until about 8:30 and it stays light into the evening until about 8:30 or so....just think what will happen in a week when daylight savings time kicks in!

There's some fun community activities at the library such as last weekend's celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday with a reenactment of the Cat in the Hat! Pax Rev loved it. The twins worked perfectly as Thing 1 and Thing 2.

A cute sleeping baby pic...

And did I mention that I'm a "home maker" now??? Sweet.