If you read part one and two of our long drive from the Eastern US back home to Alaska, you know that we were in the Yukon Territory on Monday, hoping to get to the Alaska border that night. It was close to 8 PM when we reached the Alaska border, and thankfully we had no trouble going through customs and were quickly on our way once more.  It was so nice to be back in our own familiar country where the gas is sold by the gallon instead of the liter, and distance is measured by miles instead of kilometers. The road during the last hundred or so kilometers in the Yukon Territory, and the fi ..read more

In my last blog post, we had just reached the Colorado border and were heading for Andy’s Uncle John’s ranch in Hillside, CO. It took us a little longer to get there than we expected, because motor homes just move slower on winding mountain roads. It was around 3:30 PM when we arrived, but the drive there was beautiful! Boulder filled creeks, mountains covered in shrub trees, and deep canyons with sheer rocky cliffs. At one point we had to stop to let a herd of mule deer get off the road. They are not afraid of vehicles, apparently! We had taken some of our Alaska salmon for Uncle John, so onc ..read more

During our stay in Ohio, Andy searched Facebook Marketplace tirelessly until we found a decent motor home in our price range. Once the sale was complete, plans could go forward to drive back to AK instead of flying. The perks of driving a motor home are having beds and bathroom plus a kitchen along with you on the long drive, plus being able to sell a motor home for a pretty decent price in Alaska (usually) and be able to cover or at least offset the cost of fuel on the trip up. That’s the hope anyway. On March 7, we left Ohio to visit the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum in Kentucky befo ..read more

I will be doing a book signing with my cookbook at Jitters Coffee House in Millersburg, OH on March 2! Come anytime between 9:30 AM and 1 PM to grab some coffee and chat. Pick up a signed copy of my book, The Alaskan Housewife Cookbook there, or if you already have a copy, bring it along so I can sign it for you! Hope to see some of you there ..read more

Well, here we are in warm, sunny Ohio! The trip to get here was long, with one flight getting canceled and spending 5 extra hours in the airport before our new flight, but we made it here in a little under 29 hours of travel and were happy to sleep hard and long in the house our family had gotten ready for us to stay in. Speaking of our house, we are able to stay at an unused staff house belonging to the Boys Camp some of my family still works at. It has been so nice to have our own space as we continue to try to get some school done and have somewhat of a routine in between visiting with fam ..read more

Honestly, looking forward at the year 2024 is rather scary. We had big plans for this year. The shop build was scheduled for the end of January, and we were drawing up house plans, hoping to put up the shell and roof in July or August. Then the week before Christmas we got the news that my mom’s colon cancer is back and bigger than it was last March when she got it removed. The doctors did a biopsy to confirm that it was actually cancer, but since she decided not to treat it aggressively with chemo, they didn’t think she had much longer. Suddenly we’re planning a trip to Ohio to make memories ..read more

For almost a year now, I’ve been compiling a list of good children’s books – titles I want my own children to read, and ones I would love to keep in our home library. My children are new readers, but I know that once they take off it’ll be difficult to keep them supplied with good books that are appropriate for their age. Some of these titles are books I read as a girl, others I’ve discovered in the last few years. You may not agree with my age classifications, but books in the older age group are there because they are more intense, or have deeper themes that a younger child may not grasp, or ..read more

I’ve had this blog post in the back of my mind for a week now. “I’ll write about productivity and things I do to get all the housework and cooking and homeschooling done etc on Monday, ” I thought. Monday came, and around 9 am the batteries ran out of power. We are fully off grid here, so if we want electricity we either need our batteries charged up with power from the solar panels, or start the generator. I got the generator started, but the engine kept coughing and dying within a few minutes. Andy had already left for work, and the 4 oldest children were all working on school at the table a ..read more

My world has been sound-proofed. A thick blanket of snow covers the ground, the trees, the vehicles, and whatever random item were left in the yard. We’ll rediscover them come spring, but for now the world is white and magical and sounds are muffled and distant as though we are living in a snow globe. Life slows with the awareness that only important things must be done – paths shoveled, animals fed, the stove stocked with wood and warm food for hungry bellies. The children play outside for hours and come in excited about a cave they dug, or a path they discovered, or how they slid down the sn ..read more

Relationships are the sum of the little everyday things. Sure, the big events are exciting – the flutters on the first date, the passion as newly weds, those special days, like birthdays and anniversaries and all the remembering and celebration of your life together. But those special times are not what a relationship is made up of. It is instead those mundane moments, and the interactions with each other as we live day in and day out together. If we spend our everyday moments getting aggravated with each other, or expecting the other person to do what we could do ourselves, or simply seeing t ..read more