Christmas Celebrations

We have spent the month of December celebrating in all sorts of ways. I think the best way to share our experiences is through pictures, so here's a little picture diary of our last 2 weeks.


This is "Joseph the Shepherd". Last Sunday Dane's preschool performed a little nativity play at the church. They let all the little brothers and sisters dress up too. Dane was insistent on being a donkey and Ty a Shepherd. As they were all getting in costumes the little boy who was supposed to be Joseph decided he wanted to be a donkey too, so we needed a new Joseph. Ty looked somewhat the part, but when asked if he would be Joseph he refused because he was supposed to be a shepherd. We fixed the situation by asking him if he would be Joseph the shepherd and he thought that was a pretty good idea. Their little play was so cute, all the kids were adorable. Mary was holding the doll Jesus through the play and Ty thought the manger was a chair so he tried to sit on it and fell over, then he jumped up and ran off. I wish I had gotten a few better pictures. These are a few picures of Gingerbread house decorating at Grannie's house. I had to keep the boys from putting 10 pounds of candyon the house, and in their mouths.

Last week we went to the Library to see Santa. We waited in line for about an hour. When we finally got to him Ty was busting at the seams and ran and jumped onto his lap. They loved seeing him and even got really cool toys from Santa, an older man in town who makes these wooden toys all year, then gives them out to kids at Christmas. This year he made dogs that you pull with a string and they have hinges so they wiggle as they move along. Make sure to check out how cute the toy is in the picture, it's so nice of him to do that, all the kids there were so excited to get a toy early.

Dane told Santa that he wanted a big remote control truck, but really anything Santa decided would be good for him.Lee took this picture the other day from the living room, we get such a gorgeous view everyday!


Lee is working on remodeling one of the bathrooms in the house and Dane and Ty stepped in to help with the demolition. They are such hard workers!

North To Alaska!

That's right, we moved to Alaska for all who haven't heard yet. As you can tell, we are not very good bloggers and we let a lot happen in our lives before we write about it. Our recent move to Alaska happened really fast. We sold our home in Nibley the end of August and moved into a small apartment in Logan while we transitioned and were deciding where we were headed. We contemplated moving to Portland, Oregon for a while, or to Alaska, or staying in Logan, and even considered Star Valley, Wyoming. Lee was ready to do something a little different for work and was looking into several options when he came upon some opportunities in Alaska. The week before Halloween he flew to Alaska for some job interviews and came home with 3 solid offers. We were really excited about 2 of them and after some contemplation, he accepted a job with The Berry Company in their advertisement and marketing department. The company wanted him in 2 weeks so we decided to pack up and move as soon as we could. We were also trying to leave before it got any colder and the roads got worse. We packed up everything we own, got a trailer, and were on the road 8 days after deciding to move. It was a lot harder to leave Logan than we expected. We have so many great friends there and incredible family. Lee and I both cried a lot that week as we had to say goodbyes, but we're hopeful for what lies ahead, and excited to give Alaska a try for a while.

The route we took to Alaska is about 3200 miles and we were hoping to make the drive in less than a week. We made it about 400 miles the first day and ended up on the side of the road with an oil leak. Thanks to Lee's handy iphone we found a mechanic right away, spent the night in a motel and were on the road the next day. We made it to Portland that night and stayed with our good friends Nick and Michelle. Portland is so beautiful, it made us want to stay for a while. Our next leg of the journey ended up being from Portland to Quesnel, Canada where we found ourselves broken down again. This time it was the same problem, but much worse. We checked into a motel again and found a mechanic on Monday morning. By that evening he had determined that if we were going to make it to Alaska we would need a new transmission, and that would have to be ordered from Vancouver. When the part came a few days later it was defective and a new one had to be ordered. We spent 7 days in that little town holed up in a little motel. It was a little crazy but we tried to make it fun, we went swimming in the pool everyday, went for walks around town, played games, went to a movie, and even discovered some delicious local cuisine. Our favorite was the poutine which is fries with mozzarella cheese and brown gravy. It is apparently very popular in Canada and a yummy little snack.

When we finally got back on the road our Trooper was running great and we were ready to leave our little Canadian home. We drove til late in the night then stopped and slept in the Trooper with the seats all folded down. Even though it was below freezing we stayed pretty warm and were on the road again early the next morning. The next day was our most eventful on the road, we saw so much wildlife. We saw a wolf, moose, caribou, elk, deer, coyotes, and buffalo. It was scary to come around a corner or down hills and see a herd of caribou in the road. The buffalo were all out at night and they were really hard to see, so we had to keep our eyes peeled for their glowing eyes. I have to add that that day we had the worst roads we encountered as well, it was snowing and blowing and in a few places we couldn't even see the road.

Our final two days of the trip were a lot less scary. My parents were worried about us and very anxious for our arrival so they drove 12 hours to Whitehorse, Canada to meet us. We were very happy to see familiar faces and we switched the trailer to the back of my dad's big truck and cruised home to Palmer. Oh- and my parents took Dane and Ty in their truck so Lee and I had a peaceful 12 hour drive home.

All in all the trip was very memorable. We had a lot of fun, a lot of scares, and lots of good laughs. Dane and Ty were so good, they watched plenty of movies and we distracted them from the drive with lots of fun treats and a few new toys.

We made it to Alaska 2 days before Thanksgiving, over a week later than we had planned, but we made it safely and in one piece. Lee and I have traveled that road several times, but it's totally different in the winter and with kids!

Now we're working on settling in to Alaska life. It's very cold here with lots of snow. We are staying with my parents for now in their basement and the boys love being around "PaPa Chuck" and "Wha" as Ty calls them. They also love being around their cousins Andy, Daisy, and Avery. We have spent a lot of time outside sledding, actually mostly Dane, he usually stays outside playing for an hour or two after everyone else has already come in. The other day he said "I wish it could be winter all the time". I told him he was in the right place then. Dane started preschool last week and is really excited about his part in their nativity performance. He chose to be the donkey!

Because of our car trouble, we missed the training for Lee's job, the next one starts in January so for the month of December he is working/playing at the Sportsman's Warehouse. He talks with people about camping, fishing, and hunting all day and is learning all the Alaska hot spots and secrets. He is loving it so much he wants to keep working there part time after his other job starts just for the fun of it and for the discount.

I have signed up to substitute teach and am working on getting my Alaska Teachers Certificate. I have my first job this Friday and plan to work just 1 day each week.

So that's our update! I know we didn't even get to tell a lot of our friends that we were moving, and we certainly didn't get to see everyone before we took off, but we love all of you and hope we get some visitors here in Alaska! We also plan on making it back to Logan once a year to visit!

Ty in the Trooper, we put headphones on the boys for their movies. Then Lee and I were able to listen to books on tape.This is our beautiful motel room!A stop somewhere in Canada to get out and stretch.At a park in Canada

It was difficult to get good pictures of the wildlife, but this is small herd of caribou.

Our trusty, or not so trusty rig!

Can you see the buffalo? We saw well over 100 that night in the dark like this, right on the road and to the side of it!

A postcard view of Teslin Lake in Canada!

More in the car.

Quickie!

Okay, this is just a quick post to try to get back in the swing of things. We just moved and have gone without the internet for a month and so we are finally getting reconnected. I have just been getting caught up with everyone else's news and figured I better post something. It's getting quite late, so for tonight I'm just going to post a picture or two. We'll write the news later.






Ty hanging on the door, his new time out spot.









Dane going hunting for night crawlers with Lee.





Dane and Ty Driving a semi.

Dane & Ty Chaos

Well it has been a little while since I have posted anything here, but I still guarantee that its much better than if Amy was still in charge of this thing. Some of you have posted comments on my previous entries, but I don't have some of your emails or blog info to add you to our friend list, so anyone who checks this out and we don't have you in our list let me know, because I would like to add all of our friends and family who have blogs as well. Thanks!

Some or most of you may know of our families latest events that have added quite the excitement to our already busy lives. The chaos started with the little punk, Ty. He had been just slightly sick, but became dehydrated and when him, Dane and I went to the store to get him some medicine he had a seizure. It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life. He has never done anything like this and I knew that it was something I was unfamiliar with, so I just started yelling as loud as I could for some help, knowing that someone in the store must have some medical experience. It was quite dramatic and scared myself as well as Dane pretty badly. It ended up with an ambulance ride to the emergency room and really just some Tylenol. It was a febrile seizure which was caused by a dramatic rise in his temperature that his little body could not handle and thus gave all of us quite a scare.

He is doing very well now and is back to his normal, sneaky, punk self. The kid is so funny, I cannot believe it. He really is so sneaky and mischievous that it amazes me. He will punk Dane and get him to the point where he is crying and Ty just keeps bugging the tar out of him. So it is nice to have him healthy and continuing in his menacing ways.

After everything settled down, a few days later we had some more excitement occur with Dane. He and Ty often go out on the deck to hollar and play with our puppy. Well, Dane had grabbed one of the deck chairs and pulled it up to the rail so he could see better and as he messed around on the chair it slipped away from the rail and sent him headlong over the edge. Amy was a little ways off and watched the entire thing happen as if in slow motion. He fell head first and continued to rotate until landing on his back approximately twelve feet down, on concrete of course. Amy of course could not get to him fast enough, but by the time she did he had already gotten up and was just balling his eyes out. He had put his two front teeth through his tongue and we didn't know what he had done to his back or ribs, so we helped him all we could and decided to watch him really close to know whether we should make another emergency room trip. He ended up being okay, which is incredibly lucky and I cannot believe that he landed on the hard concrete in such a way that the only after effects were some holes in his tongue and some sore ribs. Again we are so lucky that both him and Ty are doing okay and we can continue with our fun summer here in Utah.

Well, I am going to have to post a lot more about our summer so far, because we have been doing a lot of other things and not just dealing with scary accidents. It definitely has been a couple weeks to remember,... or forget I guess. Anyway, I will be sure to go ever a few more things here soon, but I did want to post about these events that have given Amy and I some gray hair.

The Hog e Z o

The Hog e Z o was what the sign read upon entering the parking lot. Those of you familiar with Salt Lake area can gather that we went to Hogle Zoo. We spent two days down in SLC with Grandpa and Grandma Kenley. They were able to visit us for a few days here in Utah and Amy planned a few activities that none of us had really done before to shake things up a tad. We went to the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point the first day and while we were there we watched a 3D dinosaur movie that Ty was not a big fan of, but it was quite funny at first when he was trying to grab the pictures in front of him. Dane thought the Dinosaurs were awesome and was quite loud about sharing it with everyone, (he does have Oberg in him).

That night we stayed at a hotel near downtown Salt Lake, and having Keith's little woman with him made all of us boys sleep in one room and the ladies in the other. It was quite some time before I could fall asleep due to the crazy loud snoring of Dad on the floor, (I don't know why he slept on the floor for half the night). Anyway, at one point I chucked a pillow over in Dad's direction and evidently hit Keith who wasn't asleep either. It rustled Dad enough for him to stop snoring long enough for me to fall asleep, however not too long after I fell asleep did I get a pillow right in the face, so for the rest of the night it was basically a snoring battle between myself and Dad, with Keith and Calvin not getting any sleep. The morning was quite funny in who was trying to blame who, but definitely not the best night of sleep I have ever had.

The next day we went to Hogle Zoo and spent almost the entire day walking back and forth, keeping track of the boys and seeing all kinds of animals. Dane and Ty had a lot of fun and it was great for them to hang out with their Grandpa and Grandma Kenley. All of us rode the little train that goes around a small part of the Zoo and nobody was more excited about that than Dane of course. He even sat in the front seat next to the trains engineer with Calvin.







Calvin was excited as Dane and Ty about the animals and all of the fun stuff he was able to do. He was running from place to place and was super excited, though his face in this picture doesn't show it and is in fact kind of ugly.

A HoStle BloG TaKoveR

Ty got into my hair goop, (globs allover his head), so I punked it out and he has been obsessed with the glasses, and of course is a stud anyway.

Well, I guess this family blog is going to have to be taken over, because Amy is horrible at it. I have got my other blog that I have posted quite a lot to lately, the link on the top-right will take you right to it. It is filled mostly with experiences that I have of different things that are adventure based and things I do that my boys aren't quite able to yet. I guess this family blog will be where I start to write of those adventures, because this spring already we have done quite a few activities together and plan on doing a whole lot more this summer. I am actually really excited about this summer, because both Dane and Ty are a bit older and a bit more able to get out and do things with Amy and I. Last summer Dane, Ty and myself hiked to the wind caves here in Logan canyon, which I did write about in my blog, it can be found under the adventures link called, "Wind Caves Deluxe", there are some pretty cool pics of the boys on that post. Anyway, most of you that have looked at this family blog have probably given up on it, but from here on out I will be adding posts as we go, so look for more good stuff from the Harmon family in the future. Cheers!

Family Fishing Trip

Most folks think we are nuts, but on a good warm day, ice fishing can be incredibly fun. This winter Dane and Lee were able to go fishing together a couple of times and had a lot of fun. One Saturday morning we all decided to go on a family fishing outing on the "hard water" as they call it.

We tried to head out early, but with both of the kids and all the gear it took longer than we had hoped, but it made for a nice warm day as we made it to the lake about lunch time. It was a beautiful and sunny day with nearly no one else on the lake, we had it mostly to ourselves. Amy and the boys were able to build snowmen together and have lots of fun.

We even caught a fair amount of fish. Ty, who is usually in love with all animals freaked out when he saw the fish, and was basically scarred to death of them. Dane thinks they are pretty cool and loves to reel the big fish up all by himself. He is pretty good with the two foot long ice poles we use, I thought he was going to lose the pole a few times, but he did good and had a lot of fun. We drilled a few holes around the ice and had to watch the littlest monster, so he did not get too close.

Amy had packed lunch, tons of snacks and we even had hot chocolate that was oh so good right out of the thermos. After lunch and a couple hours of fishing, Ty had about enough of his waddling around. He is such a tiny, little dude that he is overwhelmed by his snow clothes and is quite funny to watch walk around on the ice. Both boys did great and it was super fun to get out and have a little winter adventure with the entire family. We plan on getting an ice hut next year and going a lot more.

Dane's Birthday!

So I know it's been a long time since I've written. I don't know where the time goes. But I figured everyone would want a full report on the birthday party. Dane has been counting down the days, since 14 days ago to his birthday and it finally came yesterday. He was awake all night coughing the night before so he slept in till 11 o'clock. The poor kid was sick all day and constantly wiping his nose and hacking his lungs out. So at 11:30 he had his birthday breakfast which was a train shaped pancake, his favorite. We spent the day preparing for the party, making pizza, bread sticks, and pasta. Dane specifically wanted pizza and noodles, for the third year in a row. At 6 everyone came over and we played a Thomas beanbag toss game, ate dinner, opened presents, and ate cake. Dane had tons of fun, he loved his train cake and all the presents. We did get the packages from Alaska and I let him open them earlier when Calvin was here because Calvin had to work last night. Today I promised him we would do some activities, as he calls it with all his new art supplies. He finally got a suspension bridge for his train set, and he's really excited about that. And Keith got him some new underwear, which he really needed. Some of his were still size 2/3, a little tight.

Ty loved the party and thought it was for him too. We made little coloring books and notebooks for all the kids and they loved those. Overall it was a success, although he was a little mad that Grandma and Grandpa Kenley weren't home when he tried to call them.
We've been getting a lot of snow lately, we even had to dig our renter out of our driveway yesterday morning cause he got stuck backing out. It's nice to have all the snow though, I won't complain. We found a great sledding hill and we've been going Ice fishing a lot, well mostly Lee, but we all go sometimes and sometimes just Lee and Dane go. Dane even reels them in by himself! Ty hates the fish though. He loves animals, but not fish I guess.
I've been taking a little begining cake decorating class and I'm posting a picture of my first cake. Not too fancy yet, but I'm learning lots of cool things.
I'll go post some pictures now, hope you like them!