July 2014

July has been a blur!  We got back from Ireland in June and headed to Fairbanks, AK for a swim meet.  I think one visit to Fairbanks is enough for me.  The car ride there was awesome!  We went thru Denali State and National Parks to get there.  The views were amazing.  The city of Fairbanks though is a less than desirable place to be.  It's very run down (boarded up buildings and such) and not many choices for dining (we ended up at Subway to get food after our bad dining experience).  We went to one that was recommend and known for their calzones.  It was the worst  food we've ever gotten.  It tasted like it was leftovers.  Blah!  I don't think we will go back to Fairbanks (we won't be signing up for any more swim meets there)!

July 4th was fun.  We BBQ and hung out with our neighbors.  It was weird to not have any fireworks or see any.  With it being light so much, there really is no point to fireworks, you can't see them any way.

Girls on July 4th

The girls and I did our first big hike in AK.  We hiked what is called Flat Top.  It was much harder than I expected.  It was neat to hike in the middle of Anchorage and see the views we did though.  Maybe when I'm in better shape, I'll try it again.  After an uphill hike, stairs (yes, wooden stairs going up), 2 rest areas (in AK they call them summits), and a practically rock climb to the top (which I could only make half way up bcuz it was a bit more than I wanted to do) we arrived at "Flat Top" then had to go back down.  Here are some views...

Stopping point for us mid way up "rock climb"

1st summit view

more picts

2nd summit view (can you see the plane? black spot in clouds)

The rest of July was pretty low key with swim practice and getting back into the gym.  We have some visitors coming in August and school starts mid August, so we did school shopping for clothes and supplies.  School is different up here.  You have to register EACH year for the school your child will attend whether you are zoned to it or not.  I guess because they have so many people move in and out of the state they do that.  Both girls will be attending the schools they went to last school year when we moved up. 

I get asked all the time about the "light all day".  It's starting to get dark now a days (early Aug), but in July it was pretty bright most of the day.  I think we had 23 hours of light.  Check out this picture.  Can you guess the time of day I took it?  I'll post answer at bottom of blog:

 

This month I cooked two new things.  I tried to make scones like we had in Ireland.  Definitely not the same, so I'll have to keep trying recipes.  They didn't turn out terrible, but were more dry than biscuit like.

Next I cooked a whole Salmon!  I've never cooked a whole fish on the BBQ before.  It turned out yummy!

OK here are a few plates we captured this month:

 

Thanks for reading and I hope everyone is doing well.  The answer to "What time of day" is 11:05pm.