We have a New Neighbor

A noisy owl has moved into our housing addition and apparently the best "who who" -ing time is about 1am. I heard it one other morning and thought it was the wind blowing through something. Last night though, the owl was calling for quite a while - long enough for me to wake up Robert and say "Hear the owl?". I'm not sure Robert truly appreciated the notice!

Anyway, from the information off of the Alaska Wildlife Conservation site, it appears we have 3 common possibilities:

1. Great Grey Owl
2. Northern Hawk Owl
3. Great Horned Owl

While I was hoping it would be a Snowy Owl, my guess is it is a Great Horned Owl because the site talks about them nesting in old raven's nests and we have a plethora of trash scattering ravens here. (Just so you know, our ravens can tell days of the week. Trash day is normally on Wednesday but was delayed to Thursday due to holidays and no one bothered to tell them. They were here Wednesday and were hungry!)

Regardless, I now have another animal to watch for and try to capture on film. If he/she only shows up at night though, chances of that are slim!

Skiing Today!

Finally!

Enough snow fell to hit the slopes. While I still skied over grass here and there and it was a little icy, we were downhill skiing. It was beautiful.

Bonus!

I only fell one time!

Of course it was the last run of the day and Robert had zoomed off down the hill. Yet I succeeded in getting my skis off, getting up, getting the skis back on and successfully catching up with him.

By that time, it had started to get busy and we were cold. Time to go home!

However, I see some more ski runs in the near future!

Merry Christmas to All!

Our turkey is in the oven and it is snowing like mad. It just doesn't get any better!

Have a wonderful day!

Squirt and his Christmas presents

Someone was a bad little boy yesterday.

Sure enough, Squirt opened not one but two of his Christmas presents early and repeatedly. I caught him one time...the telltale rustle, rustle, rustle of tissue paper ripping even though he was completely under the tree and couldn't be seen. Just the occasional movement of a bottom branch and a swinging ornament.

He was extraordinarily repentent and asked me not to tell Santa.

Now I am wrapping them again.....

Eagles, Moose, Bears - Oh My

And now, add one more thing to the list of things we (especially Squirt) need to be wary of....wolf attacks. Anchorage and Fairbanks have had a huge increase in wolves attacking and killing dogs this year over last year. Up until yesterday, the reports have always been of dogs either loose on a walk where they run into the woods or dogs on a lead in a yard when no people were around. This time, the dogs were on leashes and there were people attached to the dogs.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/12/22/alaska.wolf.attack.cnn

According to the experts, Anchorage has about 25 - 30 wolves in 5 packs (related story) and this behavior is more common when there is minimal snow and the moose can maneuver quickly to get away from the packs. However, Anchorage coveres a LOT of ground and I have no idea how close any of the packs live to us. So far, the attacks have all been in East Anchorage about 9 miles away as the crow flies (or the wolf runs) and we live in West Anchorage. However, I will probably start carrying pepper spary on our forays.

On a brighter note, Mars will be playing peek-a-boo behind the moon today. It will happen between 4:52 and 5:43 pm this afternoon (8-9pm hour CST). If it is clear and not windy (dark isn't a problem), we may have to dig out the telescope for better viewing!

Welcome to the shortest day of the year!!!

We will have about 4.5 hours of good sunshine here today (unless it's cloudy....I can't tell yet) and a brisk 7 degrees. We have already been out to shovel last night's 1" dumping of snow.

Christmas vacation has started! Twelve whole play days with Squirt. Robert actually gets 17 days. (I have to go back early for a special project...it's good to be wanted!) Regardless, after 17 fun filled play days, Squirt will be extraordinarily tired and very thankful for that first day when we leave him to "guard" again.

We will have to go check out the ski area tomorrow and maybe do a few runs!!!

Something new to try…

OK – the next time it gets down to -30, I’m trying these things!

http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/news/news_shorts/icebubbles.php

We have only hit -11 so far this year! Another 20 degrees will be a tad chilly!

The Grouse lived to see another day!

None came home with Robert.

Thank goodness we have grocery stores! (hahaha)

While Robert was out hunting, Squirt decided to nap on the Christmas decorations. It's a good thing Grandma made a bear or he wouldn't have anything to sleep on!!!

And...He's Off!

It's clear, dark and cool this morning....no wind and 4 degrees and Robert just left to go Grouse hunting. He has the ATV, guns, ammo, hunting license, snow shoes and arctic gear. I cooked him a hearty biscuit and red-eye gravy this morning and off he went. He will be driving to Wasilla to meet up with his hunting partners and then they will head north. (Guess I should get out the Alaska recipe book and see how to cook grouse!)

Since we have only one car that runs on ice, Squirt and I are on foot today. I am sure we will get a lot done around the house!

What should I do with the extra eggs???

As a continuation of last post....

There are some things you just can't find here such as Head Country BBQ Sauce, Williams Chili Seasoning (as a starting point for chili), spices at a reasonable price ($13 for a store brand, large garlic powder - we have to watch for sales!) and Reams Frozen Egg noodles to name a few. Because of the expense and sometimes lack of products, I have cooked a LOT more staple type items since moving here.

Most of the time, regular old American Beauty Pasta works fine. However homemade chicken noodle soup is the exception. It requires something different. Since we had extra eggs we weren't going to eat very fast and it is winter, sounds like the perfect time to have soup with homemade noodles.

Making noodles is similar to making bread. It requires lots of flour and I always manage to wear dark clothes so it is obvious where I am covered with it. Mix, roll them out, let dry for a couple of hours. Cut them to what ever size you want and toss around so the other side can get dry. (I should write a cookbook.) And this is where the mistake started....

I was going to put 1/2 in the fridge and the other in the freezer. Ziplocks have always worked fine but we have a vacuum sealer and trying to improve on the original idea I thought we should seal them instead. The sealing went fine. Two days later when ready to dump them in the soup to cook, we opened the package and had a brick. A solid, you could build a house with this - brick.

Luckily, after warming for a few minutes, I could pick them apart one by one from the brick making noodles again. However, dinner was late as it took a good 1/2 hour to do it.

BTW - our simple chicken noodle soup recipe....

Water
Cut up chicken breasts
little celery
salt, pepper to taste
Bring to a boil and let simmer for 30 minutes
add noodles (whatever your preference)
serve when noodles are done!

Freezes great!

Note to young chefs...

Don't use the vacuum packer to seal home made egg noodles.

Ziplock Bags do just fine and you don't have one giant noodle when you open it up.

WooWoo! Here comes the Pineapple Express!!

It's that time of year! We have our first Pineapple Express going on right now. All of those warm winds from Hawaii swing up here for a visit to our beautiful state and they come with a vengeance! You can hear it coming, roaring down the mountains and when it hits the house, it sounds exactly like a freight train passing. Right now, we have a steady wind of about 25-30mph gusting to 75 mph or so and it went on most of the night. Our huge, ~300 pound, 'we can feed and army', stainless steel grill rolled across the deck last night. Thank goodness it didn't move into the yard. I wonder if our reindeer are still in the raspberry patch? Too dark to tell now. These are the days I just hope all of our shingles stay on!

And to top it off, it is 42 degrees at our house. The tiny, tiny dusting of snow in our yard is gone. The ice on the deck is gone (which is good!). Of course, we are supposed to have rain turning to snow later today but this eliminates any skiing for another couple of weeks.

We are coming up to the shortest days of the year now. Only 14 left before we start having more sunlight signifying summer is on its' way! Of course one of the best things about this time of the year is I get to see most of the sunrises and sunsets. The other day we had a sunset so spectacular, I had to email my friends in their offices to go look out the window. The setting sun was a giant ball of bright orange coloring the low hanging clouds an amazing hue. Other days, the alpenglow is spectacular. Well worth the few minutes away from the computer.

Time to go see what treasures blew into our yard last night. Maybe we have new lawn furniture now!