A Father's Day greeting

Happy Falker Satherhood to all the dads out there! :^)

How did we spend Falker Satherhood* Day here at our house? We packed. Duh. But we kicked some serious box bootie today, and I think we're within, oh, six weeks of being ready leave.

What's that you say? I only have nine more days? Killjoy.

On the bright side, I talked to my mom's husband Stan yesterday. Turns out we were going to miss my sister and her family, who are also stopping by Mom's in Colorado on their way elsewhere, by about two days or so. Sister rearranged her schedule, Stan called friends with a B&B, and suddenly it's a surprise family reunion!

Our special last-Father's-Day-in-Texas treat today was certainly not cake, since all my cake stuff is packed, but we did indeed have a treat: ice cream. What flavors of ice cream, you might ask?

Waaaaaait for it.....

Caramel Carabou and Extreme Moose Tracks!!

LOL! I crack me so up!

*You should really go check out Cake Wrecks. Start with the oldest posts and work your way forward. And be prepared to laugh until you pee.

Some days... are a struggle.

I have ten more days to be a Texan.

Yesterday, my cake pans and chocolate molds went into boxes. My last Texas cake orders were picked up yesterday, too. Today, the last of Grandma's china is going into boxes, as most likely are my stand mixers and cake supplies.

And today, we said goodbye to yet more friends we may never see again in person...

Lately, I've been doing okay with the packing and moving and goodbyes and the stress that comes with all of that. A bit testy, perhaps; a bit frazzled, most definitely. And today, I'm teary.

Seeing the area where I live as if I've never been here before, trying to see if there is some special part of it that I should have experienced or at least made more note of is making me melancholy, I suppose. And looking at the faces of my friends as if it might be the last time is fairly breaking my heart. Trying to memorize without staring, trying to soak up while still appearing to be casual...

The tears running down my cheeks are silent begs for you to come visit us, okay?

My favorite chapels

One of the things that always intrigues me are these little chapels near our Alaska home. 

This is Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Church. According to their parish listing, this building was constructed between 1894 and 1896 (although the church was founded even earlier), and is the oldest standing Orthodox church in Alaska. Services are regularly held here, and the building has had restoration work done to it.  However, restoration is still needed to preserve the ornamentation and artifacts inside it.

This the interior of the church.

This is the St. Nicholas Memorial Chapel across the street from the Holy Assumption Church. It was built in 1906 to honor the memory of Fr. Igumen Nikolai Militov and Makary Ivanov, Catholic missionaries who worked during the mid-1800s to inoculate the Dena'ina people from smallpox. This chapel was constructed on the site of the original 1849 church, which was located in the northwest corner of the Fort St. Nicholas, the original Russian fur trading post. (see the link above)

The interior of the St. Nicholas Memorial Chapel.

It is with some embarrassment that I admit I do not remember which church this little stick chapel is affiliated with. It's located on the Kenai Spur Highway and sits quite near the road in the corner of the main church's parking lot. I just love this one. I've never seen it open but hope to some day be there at the right time so I can go inside it. The entire footprint of the chapel is not as large as the living room in my current house, and is built log-style, except instead of logs, there are skinny sticks. If you look closely at the right front corner of the building, you can see the interleaving sticks of wood.

The interior of the stick chapel. There are only three pews in it.

The Trinity Hall home session players are coming over again today -

And we remember what happened last time they were here. Hopefully no large purchases are made this time!  LOL

Eye candy

Alaska photos, as promised. Finally!  :^)

This is from our very first trip to Alaska. We visited the weir at Bear Creek, and followed the shady, almost primeval, creek into the woods. Can you imagine seeing so many salmon like this?

This is Tern Lake.

This is Mt. Redoubt, our local volcano. It was such a gorgeous day to see it.

Mt. Redoubt again:

Peeking through the fireweed at Mt. Redoubt.

Kinda boring, huh?

I was just looking over my recent blog entries, and there certainly aren't many photos on here lately.  I'll fix that soon, I promise!

Nothing really exciting...

It's been a while since I've had anything to post - or rather, anything that I thought was worth a post all by itself. Let's see...  What's been happening lately...  [thoughtful tapping of chin]

Well, we've had an offer accepted on our Texas house, which is great, because the housing market is not exactly seller-friendly right now. The view out our windows over the golf course and Lake Lewisville are selling the place for us. There's still many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, as Grandma Lyden used to say, so we're not considering the house actually sold until money changes hands at the end of the month and we pull out of the driveway with all our worldly possessions.

We have a firm move-out date of June 30. The moving transport company should be here on the 27th, I think, and they'll take away most of what we own. We're towing a few things with us that we'll need to set up house before the moving truck arrives in Nikiski sometime late in July (we hope).

For those wondering, the Metropolitan will go with the transport company, but Tate and the budgies will all be riding along with us. Tate loves Jim's new Ridgeline and I keep trying to talk Jim into letting her ride with him, rather than with James and me in the CR-V. Heh heh heh. Tate is not the world's best traveler, even on short jaunts around town, and when she goes to the vet this week for her check-up and paperwork to cross the Canadian border, I'll be begging for doggie tranquilizers.  For Tate.  Yeah, for Tate.  Uh huh.

That's about it. I'm packing a lot, as are the guys. We sure do have a lot of stuff that it turns out we don't really need. The thrift store loooooooves me. I feel like I'm single-handedly stocking their shelves now. I hope I've learned a lesson!  LOL

There are some more pictures that I can post later, but I haven't had time to go back and sort and select yet. Check back in a few days and maybe I'll have them up by then!