long time, no post

our last post was in september. how sad! i've made it one of my new year's resolutions to update our blog more frequently. mark and i had a great christmas! although we were originally planning to spend christmas in washington, we ended up spending the holidays at home. but after hearing about all the hullabaloo with snow and delayed flights, i'm glad we were home away from the chaos! 

we spent a couple of days with my parents in my hometown of

eagle river. we were lucky enough to spend christmas with the walkers (stephanie, michael and katelin), our good family friends. steve was stuck working on the slope, so the walker family will have a delayed christmas celebration with the whole family later this week. every year, the walker/dobson/hamlin clan does a gag gift exchange, which is always entertaining! steve drew me this year... i got a hannah montana make-up set. lucky me! ;) 

we got a nintendo ds from mark's family, so we'v

e had a lot of fun playing with that. we now have a cooking game, brain game (sudoku included), mario kart and yoga! the nintendo ds is like a new version of gameboy, which craig and i used to have when we were younger.  fun, fun!!  here's a pic of mark trying to figure it out, with our feline helpers, of course!

my brother, craig, got us a great cookbook called amuse-bouche.  he's in culinary school at cook street in denver right now... maybe he thinks i can actually cook things that are in this book (???)  amuse bouche means single, bite-sized hors d'oeuvre.  i told him that it's a bit over my head, but we will see. it's always fun to try new taste treats!

Babies

I went to Washington a few weeks ago to visit family and friends.  My best friend, Lisa, is about to pop, so I wanted to see her pregnant.  She had a baby shower on August 30, so I flew down to surprise her for that.  It was so much fun, and I totally got her good!  Mark and I will be traveling down south again in mid-October to attend Mark's cousin Lisa's wedding, and to hopefully welcome Ashlynn Jones into the world!  I'm so excited!

It's coming...

Winter, that is.  Mark and I got up early to go to the gym this morning, and there was LOTS of frost on the windshield.  Yesterday, the begonias on our front porch were still happy and perky, but the frost killed them overnight.  

We're bracing for the cold.  We put away the patio furniture and chiminea this past weekend.  The garage has been cleaned of all things camping to make room for the ice scrapers, snow tires and engine block heater extension cords.  I'm shivering already!!

'08 Dobson Family Reunion

The Dobson Family came together for a few days at Bench Lake.  We had a great time!  I helped mom paint the doors red to match the roof of the cabin.  Mom, Dad and Craig worked on the kitchen cabinets, and we got to do a bit of fishing as well (I caught two).  Craig and I saw three black bears while we were in the canoe - a momma and two cubs.  It was cool!  Mom worked on her "goddess" statue... It now has a head and some hair.  Craig built a nice bench for around the big fire pit that Mom dug out.  Craig and I put up the hammock we got Dad.  Sure is nice!  We walked out behind the cabin to a pretty spot and took a family photo... We all looked fabulous!  Wish Mark coulda been there! 

4th of July 2008

This year for the 4th of July, Mark and I drove down to Trail River Campground to meet up with our longtime friends Michael and Katelin Walker.  They had been down there all week, so they already had a primo camp site staked out for us.  Their parents, Steve and Stephanie, weren't there for the camping because they were out in Resurrection Bay on a sailboat... Too bad for them!  Us "kids" had a good time taking over the motorhome, having camp fires, playing games, and going into Seward to watch the big Mount Marathon race on the 4th.  These people are crazy - the winner of the men's race went up and down a 3,022-foot-tall mountain in less than 45 minutes.  How is that even possible?  It would probably take me half the day. ;)

We took our two dogs into Seward with us, and they both did surprisingly well around the crowd of people.  Both Mark and I were really surprised.

Our campground was about 25 miles north of Seward, and situated right next to the beautiful Kenai Lake (16 miles long and 600' deep in places -- tidbits from my tour guide days coming out!).  Here are some pics from our 4th weekend.  Enjoy! 

3eB - Solstice 2008

This year to celebrate Summer Solstice, Moose's Tooth brought up Third Eye Blind to give us a show.  It was a great concert, and the sun did actually show its face for awhile.  It was a great time hanging out with family and friends!  It's amazing how many people they can cram into their parking lot!  :)

Tree of pets.

Buddy, Remy, Gus and Skagit... Our "kids."  It took a little posing, but we got them all to sit still for a quick photo. 

Out front.

It has been awhile since we last posted... We've done a lot of things since May 11, but we wanted to show you how the front of our house turned out.  It was a lot of work moving all the rock and dirt (and lilac bush), but we finally did it, and we're really happy with the way it turned out!  

Flowers, finally!

Stephanie and I went shopping for summer flowers yesterday.  We went to Alaska Mill and Feed and Bell's Nursery.  I got a cheery yellow and white hanging basket for out front, and a selection of flowers for the pots out back.  It should be lovely once I get everything in place!  :)  The next step is to figure out what we're going to do out front... It'll be a blank slate to play with!  

Big Nasty Bush Gone!

After a year and a half of walking around a huge Lilac bush just to get to the front door, we decided to tear it out and start fresh. So, on this Mother's Day 2008, we decided that it was as good a time as any to get started. Little did we realize just how big of a pain it was going to be just to dig out the darn bush. 

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Shiny new appliances

Impulse buy... a new dishwasher and range.  When we bought our house, we had three mix-matched appliances.  We decided that, to add value to our house, we'd buy some new appliances now so we can still enjoy them while we live here.  And, the best part?  No more coils!  

April Showers bring... May flowers?

It's April 25 and we have 16"+ of new snow on the ground. This is not the kind of April shower we need to make our May flowers grow.  Yesterday we could see all of the grass in our front yard, and the recent sun and warm(er) weather had made some serious progress on the backyard. Funny thing... The deadline to have snow tires off is next Wednesday, April 30. It's looking like that might need to be extended a bit! Good thing we've been lazy and still have ours on. I'll give it this... It is beautiful.  But enough already! We're ready for some flip-flop and BBQ weather.

Mark and I are planning on doing some landscaping this spring/summer, so we're anxious to get started on that.  We ripped up all of the old nasty planter boxes in our backyard the other day, but the ground was still partially frozen, so we didn't get that far. Ahh, life in Alaska.