Early 90's Birthday

This past week I turned 24 years old... to celebrate I thought it would be fun to have an early 90's themed get together. I'm not the only one who had a birthday this month. Conrad turned 32 on the 8th of November, so the 90's gathering was a combined birthday celebration for the both of us. After the invitations were sent out, the biggest question on people's minds was what did people wear in the 90's, and do I have any 90's clothes here in my house? I was amazed, people came through in impressive style. Two guests even cut their hair into 90's hair cuts...that's dedication! 

Remember the spice girls? They were totally 90's! Jessica, Ann Marie and I dressed up as three of the five spice girls. I was Posh Spice, Jess was Ginger Spice, and Ann Marie was Baby Spice. After the initial meet, greet, and socialize time we played "Name That Tune, 90's Edition"  lead by Ryan and Conrad. Everyone thought I would come in last because I was only 5 years old in 1990. But, to everyone's surprise (even my own), I came in 2nd! 

Heidi and Damon were adorable as always sporting the 90's grunge look. 

Again, Conrad had one of the best looks of the night. He represented more of the "jock" look while Ryan was totally 90's grunge. Overall, I thought the party was a huge hit! I look forward to planning another themed get together next year! Now, on to the next event...Thanksgiving! 

Halloween

Halloween is always a busy time of year packed with lots of fun activities. This year the holiday was on a Saturday, so the annual carnival was held on the Friday before. I was the advisor for two booths: FEA held a bake sale and the freshman class ran the football toss. The freshman are getting really good at doing their own thing, while I just come over every so often to make sure things are going smoothly. So, I spent most of my time sitting at the bake sale chit chatting with Chasity and Heidi.

The 10th grade class ran the pie toss. I have to say this event was a total money maker! They ran out of whipped cream about an hour into the carnival. Next time, they'll have to plan for more pie filling!

This is a shot of the whole community packed into the covenant gym. It was cozy for sure! Usually the carnival is in the high school gym, but since our gym is under construction it was held down at the covenant gym which is significantly smaller. A really positive aspect is that despite the smallness, the community still got together and celebrated Halloween.

Since I was in Anchorage the week before Halloween I had the opportunity to buy a pumpkin and bring it back to the village as my hand carry on Penair. I haven't carved a pumpkin since my early years in college. I was super excited that I had the opportunity to get my hands on one this year!

Ryan and I decided to make the pumpkin a sad/scary face. I thought we did a great job! Plus, it looked really cool perched in my window with a candle inside.

Halloween night arrived, and Ojo and I got ready to pass out candy. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to bust out her new sweater. She pretty much hated it! I thought she looked adorable, but she pouted the entire night until I took the sweater off her.

Ryan ended up as a rock star for half the night, then he morphed into the unabomber later on. Conrad showed up dressed as a hillbilly gangster.

My costume was pretty lame...I was "it's raining cats and dogs". Hannah dressed up as Mr. Howard, which I thought was hilarious. And Ryan looked great after his final transformation into his unabomber costume.

What you've missed in the past three months...

One day after arriving home from the Mother-Daughter trip, my mom was out riding her motorcycle with my Dad. She had a small accident and ended up driving her bike into a lawn near Jefferson. Things could have been a lot worse! She was really lucky, but ended up in a wheel chair with a broken thumb and ankle. I thought she looked pretty darn cute with matching casts on her hand and leg. Since her casts were red she also needed to have matching toe nails, so I painted those so she could coordinate :) Ojo liked Mom's situation. It gave her the perfect place to sit and be pampered.

Nicaragua:

First week in July I traveled to Nicaragua to visit my college friend Alli. I pretty much didn't know what to expect and was in for an eye-opening experience.

Picture of me the night I arrived in Managua, Nicaragua. I fit all my belongings (9 days worth) into my backpack. I was pretty impressed with myself, and so was Alli!

This is a picture of Alli's backyard and in the distance her latrine.

This is Alli's sink/washing machine/dish washer. Yep, she does it all right here. Also, in her town they only have running water for about 2 hours a day. You have to take a shower when there's water and make sure to fill up the basin so you can have the water you need throughout the rest of the day.

Yumm...Gallo Pinto. This is the traditional Nicaraguan dish Gallo Pinto (rice and beans). This is pretty much what I ate the whole time I was there. Occasionally I would have some fried plantains also, but mostly it was Gallo Pinto.

This is a picture of Alli's adult class. I was a part of her lesson on conversation skills. They practiced asking me questions such as: Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend? How old are you? Classic!

One of my favorite pictures from the trip... This is Alli's latrine. That's right, this is where I went to the bathroom for nine days. It was a rockin good time, let me tell you. Actually, it wasn't as scary as it looks. Nothing crawls out of the hole and it doesn't smell too bad.

This was another quirk about Nicaragua, they call ice cream Eskimo. Anytime you want ice cream you would say "I want an Eskimo." Since I teach Eskimos I thought this was particularly funny. I took this picture for them. They are ice cream :)

The mango lady... Mangoes were one of my favorite foods while in Nicaragua. They slice them into stripes, then pour a hot sauce over top and sprinkle with salt. It sounds strange, but it was delicious!!

Back to Alaska:


By the first of August I was headed back to Alaska. Of course, my first few weeks back were full of lots of fishing, hiking, biking, and berry picking. Salmon fishing was slow this year. I probably only caught 3 fish of my own. The one in the picture above was an amazing fish! I swear it weighed 15lbs. It was so heaving Conrad had to help me hold it up for the picture!!


While passing through Anchorage this year, I decided to buy a mountain bike. It was expensive but totally worth it. I've done a lot of biking in the past three months, and I'm glad to have something to ride around town for quick trips to the store or post office.


Me, with a fish on my line. Yay!

Heidi and I fishing... we fished all day and only caught spawned out Silvers. Why do the boys have all the luck?

The crew. We headed up river for a picnic and fishing.

Labor Day Weekend (The Triathlon) :


Labor day weekend, Ryan and I planned a small outing that ended up being quite the adventure.
The plan was to bike out 8 miles to the North River bridge, have a bonfire dinner with Heidi and Damon, camp up on the ridge, then in the morning we would raft down North River back to Unalakleet.

The tundra was showing beautiful fall colors.

Cranberries were ripe and ready for picking. Ryan and I picked two nalgene bottles FULL of berries. It was awesome!

The campsite. Our tent was nestled in the trees, but I was nervous all night long... There were a lot of Grizzly Bears in the area and I was scared that we were going to get eaten.

In the morning we hiked up to the top of the ridge to get a better looks at the valley. We really lucked out with amazing weather the whole weekend!

After our hike and berry picking we made our way to the raft to float down the river back to town.

Myself and the Oj in the raft.

Captain Ryan with Ojo keeping watch for logs and branches.

On the way down the river we spotted a bald eagle up in the tree.

This is the bonfire crew! Good times. I haven't been keeping up with picture taking...my apologies. I am going to try and get better at keeping up with my blog!

Mother - Daughter Trip to the Adirondacks

The mother-daughter trip for 2009 ended up being a week long excursion to the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York. We left on Saturday and stayed for the entire week. As usual, my Mom made me wake up before the crack of dawn to get started. The picture above shows us at 6:00am ready to hit the road.

We had to stop in Erie for breakfast, and more importantly, to pick up our listening material for the trip. Last year, we listened to Twilight so this year we continued the series with New Moon. Of course, mom loved the tales of Bella, Edward, and Jacob Black. We are looking forward to watching the movie when it comes out in November.

I ended up doing most of the driving. As you can see from this picture it rained almost the entire drive to New York! It really wasn't the most fun driving in those conditions but we made it work.

So, the original plan was to drive all day and get to our condo, check-in, then sight see around the Adirondack National Park. Well, as we are driving my mom starts to read the fine print of the condo agreement and finds out that we aren't allowed to check in until Sunday (it's Saturday when all this is happening). We decided to make the best of it and stop off in the finger lakes and go wine tasting! I mean, it wouldn't be a mother-daughter vacation without wine tasting.

We decided drive the Cayuga wine trail since we have both done the Seneca wine trail. We thought the wineries were beautiful, but we didn't really care for their wines. They all had a bitter flavor. After a day of wine tasting we ended up staying in Rome, New York. Sunday morning we got an early start and continued the journey to the Adirondacks.

Before we went to our condo we drove north to see Lake Placid. The town was really small and cute. Lake Placid was also the home of the winter Olympics sometime in the 90's. We saw the facilities for the winter sports. We checked into our condo that night. It was really nice, and was more than enough room for just my mom and I. After we got settle and unpacked we went into town for dinner. From here the creepiest story from the trip occurred. It is really best told in person, so if you want to know about it you'll have to call me. It was crazy!

Monday morning we slept in and eventually got ourselves some breakfast. While we were eating, my mom throws this brochure of local day hikes my way and tells me to pick one. I was feeling kinda sick from the malaria pills I have to take for my Nicaragua trip, so I wasn't in the most chipper of moods. I looked briefly at the pamphlet and decided on the Blue Mtn. Trail.

The brochure said it was 4 miles round trip, was not for small children, that it got a little steep towards the top, and had amazing scenic vistas. A little steep was the understatement of the century. This trail was like nature's StairMaster! It was two miles of climbing bedrock strait to the top of this mountain.

My mom was a trooper! I can't think of too many 56 year old ladies that could handle this hike. I was mega impressed with her and kept hoping that when I'm her age, that I too am climbing hardcore mountains.


Once you got to the top you had to climb this fire tower to see the scenic vistas described in the brochure. You can see my mom on the stairs in the picture.

Scenic vista number 1

Scenic vista number 2

The next two days were filled with bike adventures. Tuesday we biked the Buttermilk Falls trail which has a cute waterfall at the end. After the bike trail we ended up going to the BBQ place near Scandaga lake.

They had this cool Adirondack chair made out of old skis. I think Nancy and Christian need to make one of these for their porch!

Myself after our bike ride to Buttermilk Falls.

This was the scenic waterfall.

Mom and I near the falls.

Wednesday we biked 18 miles round trip from Lake George to Glenn Falls. It was a rails to trails trail so there weren't too many hills. It was really pretty and scenic. When we got to Glenn Falls we had lunch and saw the sights then headed back to Lake George.

On Thursday we went white water rafting!!! It was SO much fun. Definitely the highlight of the trip for me. I've always wanted to go. We rafted the Hudson river (yes, the same river that runs through New York city). We were out on the water from about 10:00 to 3:00. Neither my mom or me fell out!

Friday we took a day trip to Montreal, Canada. We toured the city, were yelled at in French, and saw Cirque du Soleil!!

Now I'm back home and I'm revving up for my next adventure to Nicaragua. I leave on Friday July 3, and I'll be there for 9 days until the 12th! I'm really excited.

Chicago Times

This past weekend I took a trip to Chicago to visit my high school friend Katie. She moved to Chicago in September of last year and I haven't had the opportunity to visit, so I decided to make it happen. I decided to go for the weekend: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Since I don't have a car I looked up alternative forms of transportation. Flying was going to cost me about $286, I've never been a fan of buses, so I looked up what the train schedule from Cleveland to Chicago. Round trip a train ticket costs about $100 and takes about 7 hours to get to Chicago. I booked my ticket and was set to depart at 3:30am on Friday morning. The picture above shows Union Station in Chicago at 9:00am when I arrived.

Katie picked me up at the train station. She was wearing almost the exact same outfit as me! It was crazy, so we had to take a picture. We went to lunch at this awesome Mexican place, then back to her place for a shower and to get ready for our busy day.

One of our first stops was the conservatory. Katie and I both love plants, so this was a fun place to visit.

Me, pointing at the fiddlehead of the fern. (We were in the "Fern Room")

I think this was my favorite part of the conservatory. I love moss. We nicknamed it "nature's carpet".

After the conservatory we went downtown to sight see. We walked Michigan Ave, talked, and checked out the Blues Festival in Millennium Park.

Katie was great and let me be a tourist and take pictures the whole trip. She was the best tourguide! She took me to all the cool places and didn't get annoyed when I didn't know stuff about the city.

After Michigan Ave we decided that we wanted to have sushi for dinner. We hopped on the El and went somewhere else in the city (I pretty much never knew where we were at any point during my whole visit) to this AWESOME sushi restaurant. We both decided that this was the best meal from the trip.

I ate my typical California roll and Katie ordered this awesome spicy vegetable roll that had tempura sweet potato, cucumber, and spicy mayo...it was so delicious!

After dinner we walked down the street for dessert.

The following morning we woke up to rain :( It really sucks when it rains in the city and you have to walk a few blocks to the bus station. Katie had an umbrella and I had my rain jacket so we made it work. We decided to get Chicago pizza for lunch then go shopping in the afternoon ( a good activity for a rainy day).

Our pizza was half pepperoni and half tomato/basil. It was so yummy! I ate six pieces throughout the day it was insane! By the end of the day I didn't want to hear the word pizza for a while.

That evening we ended up going to Andersonville for the mid-summer festival. A friend of Katie's told her about this band that would be playing called Too White Crew they are a cover band that plays 90's rap music. They were AMAZING! This was the best part of the weekend. Their concert was such a nostalgic walk down memory lane, and they were so high energy! All and all made for a great concert. I highly recommend checking them out.

Sunday morning we slept in. After we finally got moving we went to a local taqueria for steak tacos. OMG, this place was also really good! That was the theme of the weekend: amazing food. After lunch we headed downtown for the Blues Festival. We laid out a big blanket, took our books, and soaked up the sunshine while listening to music. It was a great end to the weekend.


For dinner I had to try a Chicago-style hot dog. These are all beef hot dogs with relish, peppers, mustard, tomato, and a pickle on top. I was skeptical at first, but pleasantly surprised.


Katie ended up getting really sunburned. I had to catch my train back to Cleveland at 9:00pm Chicago time. I left Chicago at 9:00pm and arrived in Cleveland at 5:05am Monday morning. Overall, the trip was amazing. I really enjoyed my time in the big city and getting to hangout with my good friend. I've been home for this week, but I'm revving up for my next trip to the Adirondack mountains in New York. Stay posted for the next blog post!

June is in Full Swing

I feel like summer is finally in full swing! It's warm, the sun is shinning, and I am in complete relaxation mode. I've been home from Alaska now for about a month and I've totally been loving the lack of responsibility and the amazing freedom that summer entails. In many ways I've been really busy, but in generally my days are pretty quiet and uneventful. I pass my time in a couple of different ways: I usually sleep in, go workout, read, eat dinner with my family, take Ojo on walks, play bridge with my grandma, or watch movies with my brother. The end of May and beginning of June have not been too busy but this weekend on I'm pretty much booked for the rest of the summer! I've posted a few pictures documenting my fun summertime activities. Enjoy!


In Ashtabula we have this really awesome foot/bike path. It was made as part of the rails to trails program where they turned old abandoned railroads into trails for bikers and walkers. I enjoy biking the path (with my mom's bike).


Richard and I biked some miles the other day and enjoyed the amazing weather and time to catch up.

Ojo has been LOVING her time at home. Her number one, favorite activity is greeting people. She loves it when any member of the family comes home. It doesn't matter if you've been gone for five minutes or five days, she gets SO excited when people walk through the door. We've titled her the official Anderson house greeter. Her second, favorite summer pass time is begging for food. Yes, she has perfected the art of looking starving and trying to get my mom to give her little bits of whatever she's eating. The picture above shows Ojo hard at work...

My mother loves to read the newspaper. Her newspaper is like my novel...it's just what she enjoys reading. My dad likes to give her a hard time about it. Here's a picture of my mom and I posing while she reads her paper and eats her lunch.

This has to be one of MY favorite summer time activities. Yep, I love to read out on the back deck while soaking up the sunshine. I spend quite a bit of time out on the deck. It doesn't get much better than this. Enjoying the beautiful Ohio weather while immersed in a great book.

Southwest egg rolls come to Ohio! That's right Heidi and Damon, I shared your recipe with the family, and they LOVED it! We even had home made sweet pepper jelly. My Grandma wants to use the recipe for her next bridge gathering. This is another thing I love about summer: family dinners. Good times.


For my mom's mother's day present I decided to wait until I got home from AK and I would take her out to dinner and then we would head out for a night of shopping. We decided to go to downtown Willoughby for dinner then Mentor for shopping. I thought our food was amazing, but our drinks were super strong. Neither of us could finish our martinis.

The first weekend we were back Ojo went to the groomer for her summer haircut. I always think she looks so cute when she gets back, and this time they sent her back sporting a USA bandanna. I love it! I think she needs a bandanna for every occasion.

My grandparents live right down the street from my parents, so it's a short walk to go over and visit. One afternoon I stopped by and ended up helping my grandpa mow his back field. I picked up big sticks and he mowed with his tractor.

I personally think turkeys are the ugliest birds ever! They look like dinosaur birds and they look really weird when they run. Anyway, there were two just hanging out in my neighbor's front lawn so I thought I'd take a picture.

Summer is here!

I left Unalakleet on May 18th and headed to Anchorage. Jessica and Kira were both on my plane and had some time to kill between flights so we all decided to go out for dinner and drinks. It was awesome to be back in civilization having someone else cook for once! The girls provided some awesome company! I'm really looking forward to the hangout time we will have next year.

I had to stay overnight in Anchorage so Ojo could be vet checked before our flight the next day. She enjoyed the amenities at our hotel as you can see in the picture above.

While we were in town we took a walk on the coastal trail that circles Anchorage.


Ojo had lots of fun sniffing all the greenery and I enjoyed just being outside. While we were walking back to our car we saw a moose alongside the trail. It was pretty crazy to see a moose that close!

We arrived in Cleveland on Wednesday. I was super exhausted, but SO glad to be back home. Ojo is loving being back with her Grandparents and people who give her lots of love and attention (me too for that matter!). We've done lots of sleeping and relaxing since we've been back. It's so nice to not have an agenda or schedule. My family has kept me pretty busy with fun activities.


Of course we've also been out motorcycling. It's not summer without bike riding. We rode out to the White Turkey Drive Inn for root beer floats and cheeseburgers. Richard, my Mom, and Darl have their own bikes, and I ride on the back of Darl's bike and take pictures.

Another fun get together was when Katie came to visit from Chicago. We went to Ferrante's Winery and shared a bottle of wine and a Margarita pizza. It was so nice to see her and catch up. We also started planning a trip to Chicago where I can visit her. Summer has been amazing so far. I love being home!