Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Newest Member of our home: The Puppy

Lets start from the beginning this time. We have pets. It's always been a problem of mine. I like animals and I cannot function properly without them. I tried once. I made it one whole semester at school before I got a fish. As such I've been enjoying my share of pets in Alaska. You all know by now that I have a pet tortoise named Octavious who rules the house and stubbornly tries to walk through furniture.
Well, I wanted something more cuddly. And I was stressed and I have a weakness and I was already at petco buying tortoise hay when I saw some guinea pigs. And I wouldn't have gotten them, but Gordon wanted to play with them, and then I was hooked. So we got two pigs. And we introduced the pigs to the tortoise and I got a couple funny videos. The first is the tortoise trying to escape the pen by climbing anything and everything. (the pigs tried it soon after, but they think it's too exposed). The second is the tortoise trying to enter the pig's hide out, but his shell is too wide.



Here is a picture of the two pigs hanging out in Gordon's pocket. The are super soft and cute and love to cuddle.



The the era of the guinea pigs was coming to an end. After watching our friends dog in the summer, we realized that having a dog would be tons of fun. And we could make it happen. One day, I noticed a posting for a dog. The dog was at the shelter after being a stray. It looked like that puppy we saved last year! We were wondering if it was the same one so curiosity got the best of us and we went and asked. From what we know the dog is the same age - to the month, the dog is the same size, shape, color of mutt. The dog had also been at the shelter when he was 5 (when we dropped him off). So we spent some time with him and talked to each other about it. I was a little terrified of being responsible for a dog, but Gordon thought it would be a good addition to our little family. So we said yes. We had him for a trial month, and just kept keeping him. He is a good puppy.




This is a mushroom I saw while walking Sitka the dog. We have also seen a least weasel, 5 momma moose, 4 baby moose, a boreal owl, tons of squirrels and a few ptarmigan.






Gordon and I participated in some Lumber "MAN" Games. We did log cutting and log tossing and axe throwing. This is gordon throwing the axe.


Denali mountain south view from our temple trip to anchorage.

The flats below the mountain.

Sitka is 34 lbs. He is shorter than he is long. 

We're will go skijoring later this winter :)

Summer Trips (Anchorage with Spencers and Utah for Wedding)

I've managed to post all of my pictures in reverse order. My last day in Utah, I went to the temple with my sister and had so much fun hanging out with her. Also please note in the below photo that i have a really bad neck tan line. No I am not wearing a white shirt under the purple shirt. I am just that pale. It was nice going to Utah to visit family and get a tan.

I was in Utah for my sister's wedding. She and her husband (middle guy) are great for each other. They will enjoy their eternities together. I'm not sure what was happening in this picture, but it's a realistic wedding photo.


My sister and her kids and mom and grandma and grandpa.

Another 3 generation. These facial expressions are perfectly hilarious!

So picture of me and my dad and grandpa. oh and my nephew!

Beautiful flowers! This wedding was beautiful! The flowers were so pretty that I took the succulent from my bouquet and it's growing at home. I might gift it back to the newly weds as a piece of their wedding that can continue to grow like their love. (or something sappy like that, I am a romantic after all)

Apparently blogger doesn't know how to rotate photos. Here is one of my favorites with me and my younger sister. 

I also was able to celebrate my birthday while in Utah. It was great celebrating it with family. I got my nails and hair done and got a great cake from my sister and a yummy brownies and ice cream from a different sister. It was perfect!

Again, I can't rotate this photo. And if I don't post this now, it will never happen.
This is a picture of the Timp Temple from one of my many visits.

My new haircut!!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE

My favorite picture of my mother and me when we got our hairs cut together 

This was from when the Spencer's visited us. This photo was taken in Santa's house in North Pole, Alaska. It was all things Christmas in there. SO SO SO loverly!

This is the anchorage temple.

So there are a gazillion landscape pictures from anchorage. That area has huge blue glaciers, birds, exotic animals, and all sorts of beauty. That will all be a later post about Denali and Anchorage Glacier Tour and Alaska Animal Conservation Reserve.

Summer 2015 Muskoxen and Leaf Miners

This past summer, I have had the privilege of working at UAF Large Animal Research Station (LARS). LARS has muskoxen, caribou, domesticated reindeer and a couple chubby marmots that live under the barns. I was a tour guide and gift shop attendant that had the wonderful opportunity to meet people from all around the world. I encountered quite a few language barriers, but one of my coworkers knew some french, and I knew some sign language so overall with lots of visuals and pantomiming, we were able to communicate some of the basic ideas of LARS. Which brings me to the basic ideas of LARS. The muskoxen became extinct in Alaska in the 1900s due to over harvesting. They are easy to hunt because they don't run away and their hide is extremely expensive. After a hundred years a reintroduction program began to reintroduce them back. (Luckily some muskoxen survived in northern Greenland and on the islands in northern Canada.) The population in Alaska is doing well and will continue to do well if there is no more rain during their calving season. (The calves are usually born with a thick fluffy undercoat that insulates them from the early spring cold, but if wet will cause the calve to freeze). LARS has the population for research, they do diet studies, herd movement studies, foraging behavior studies and other studies to get information about the species so Alaska's Board of Game can make educated decisions about how the wild muskoxen are impacting and will be impacted by various decisions. 
These muskoxen weight between 600-800 lbs but aren't very tall. They live in high wind and short vegetation.  They are the only large herbivore that doesn't migrate in the arctic circle.

^^These are baby muskoxen. They are so fluffy!!!^^
A local bumblebee enjoying some pink flora.


My other summer job was working for a professor looking at Aspen Leaf Miners. These moths lay their eggs on aspen tree leaves. The eggs have this cool enzyme that eats away at the top layer of the leaf. When the eggs hatch and the caterpillars crawl out, they are in the middle of the leaf. They eat the insides of the leaf (pictured left) until they are fully grown then they curl the leaf over, pupate, and hatch and little white moths that are a centimeter long.
Sometimes however, that little caterpillar gets a parasite. These parasites come from a couple special species of wasps. The wasps lay tiny eggs on the caterpillar which eats the caterpillar and hatch instead. I had the opportunity to do caterpillar autopsies to figure out how each caterpillar died. Here are some of the wasps that hatched from mt caterpillars. They are next to a milometer ruler. The largest ones were a centimeter long and the shortest were less than half a centimeter.




This past summer I had the opportunity to watch my friend's dog. My friend is also studying wildlife biology and she had a lot of out of town field work looking at Alaskan bats. While she was away, her dog and I had lots of good fun going for walks, joining me on my field work in town and overall enjoying having a canine companion. She is at least 7 years old and she was a stray so we don't know her breed, but we assume she is part husky and what looks like part Chihuahua. 

This year I went to Girls Camp. Our theme was Anchored to Christ and each ward had a marine mascot. We were the Steller Sea Lions. For the first day we all dressed as lions with face paint of lions and these cute headbands for our manes and a letter C in duct tape to be "sea lions." We had tons of fun. We only had one good scare when one of my girls knocked herself out. We have great youth in this ward.

Oh yes. This gal. This is a Northern Redback Vole. It is one of the most common little mouses here in Fairbanks and somehow we get one as a house guest each spring. Last year we used a drowning trap, this year I borrowed a live trap. This is the sweet thing that was stealing out guinea pig food and causing much anxiety in our friend's dog. We released her a mile (or so) away. 

I really should update my blog more recently. I remember braiding his hair, but that's about it. He shaved in late July and had been growing his beard since. It is quite long now.

"No comment."




And last, but not least, I went on Trek. I was a ma with a second ma (our husbands were serving missions). It was a great experience. Many of the youth still call me 'ma' in the halls at church.