So this happened...

Here is the before...

Here is the after.

If you see a difference, there isn't anything wrong with your eyes.  My Sedona has not been experimenting with steroids, isn't pregnant, and hasn't been hit by gamma radiation and turned into a Hulk-van.  No, we traded in my sweet, zippy little minivan for Big Bertha.

I'm less than thrilled.

You see, I used to think minivans were big, and any of you who think so may be forgiven for doing so.  They certainly are larger than any of the cute little Mazdas and Hondas choking the highways, and positively monstrous compared to a Prius, but they have decent pick-up and braking capability, good gas mileage, are actually rather comfortably appointed, and fit into regular size parking spaces.

However, they have a limitation--seating.  Coming up through Canada, we had enough seatbelts for everyone, but we were at capacity; as sparingly as I packed, even with a roof rack we had luggage underfoot and cats crammed between seats.  With the new baby on the way, we were faced with two choices--buy a bigger car, or caravan everywhere we wanted to go.

Neither was appealing.  We had just paid off the Sedona, and I reveled in not having a car payment.  The second choice, though, meant that Rick and I would never drive together long distance again--which sucks, considering that everything besides the grocery store up here in the Great White North is a couple of hours away. Over the years, we've traveled thousands of miles, and having another adult in the car is often the only thing that keeps the children alive.  8-12 hours a day in a car is bearable when you have someone else to talk to, read with, and hand out juice boxes.  I've done my share of driving solo with kids, and let me tell you--there are only so many times that you can sing Old MacDonald.

We briefly considered an SUV or 8-seater minivan, but quickly dismissed it.  They have the eight seats we need; however, there is little to no extra storage space. They are just as gas guzzling.  Most importantly, they are stupid expensive.

So, painfully, we started the search for a full size van.  The new ones start at about $34k for the no-windows kidnapper base model, and the passenger models are even higher.  We finally found a 2014 GMC Savana 12-seat model locally for a decent price, so we went to the dealer.  I don't know what I expected, but this wasn't it.  Whoever did the listing couldn't count, and it was a fifteen pack van, not a twelve, and those three and a half extra feet make a big difference when you're backing out or shifting lanes.  It wasn't as plush as my minivan, though the plastic floors will be much easier to clean than carpet. Everything was harder to reach because the van was much wider, and while the space was appreciated, the van was freaking massive.

I didn't love it.  Rick and I decided to go through with it, though, for the simple facts that A, we did need a bigger family car, B, we needed one soon and this was the best available, and, C, it was much, much more comfortable to our wallet than a brand new, posher (but not smaller) version.  And, yes, I realize that needing a bigger car is entirely my (and Rick's) fault, and that this is also a uniquely first world problem.  Any way, I left my awesome minivan who has carried us safely from AZ through Texas, Kansas, Canada, everything in between, and gotten us through most of an Alaskan winter with no issues, and drove home this beast.

The kids are thrilled--as they point out, if someone comes to visit we can fit everyone in the van, and when it's just us, well, everybody gets their own row.  It's been a harder transition for me.  I took off a side mirror backing her out of the garage.  She decided her brakes didn't want to work going through an intersection.  We've reached a ceasefire: I stop mentioning how much I hate her, and she stops trying to kill me.  So far, it's been working, though I was hard pressed to keep my end of the deal when she got stuck in a parking lot yesterday, though I guess in fairness it should be mentioned that we had just gotten 8 inches of snow and we weren't the only ones to get stuck. (Shout out to the two awesome guys who helped Rick shove us out of the snow.)

So we have a new addition to the family.  We're trying to make the best of it.  My cousin suggested I add some ears and turn it into a polar bear.  Personally, I find the bottom image helpful. 

(I'm Bugs in this scenario, if you weren't sure.)

And now we wait for the next (hopefully more compact) addition with varying levels of excitement and anxiety.  At least we'll have room, right?

Winter adventures

The kids haven't been particularly interesting lately, so I guess I'll have to talk about Alaskan winters, the gift that keeps on giving.

To sum up: it snows.  A lot.

Don't believe me?  This is a picture of our driveway shortly after we moved in, roughly in mid-November, the first time we shoveled the driveway.  Please note the height of the snow, and the fact that you can still see the plants by the house.

This is about three months later, after the 4' snow brims have already been removed once.  Frankly, as happy as the snow makes me, keeping the driveway clean is positively Sisyphean.

So what do we do to keep from going insane?  Well, besides being a natural at ignoring the snow I should be shoveling, I happen to be a champion Putterer.  I can amuse myself all day with a glue-gun, a box of stuff to file, Netflix, and a toddler to throw popcorn on the floor behind me. Rick says that I'm a vole at heart, content to run through my warm burrow and eat my way through the winter.  He's really not far off except that voles don't have to make their own popcorn.  On the other hand, I don't worry about getting eaten by foxes.  It all works out.

This is Brenna, getting ready to learn all about physics and how cold a face-full of snow really is.

The kids have to divert themselves in other ways.  Their favorite outdoor activity so far consists of trying to build a snow fort.  This is harder than you expect, because the snow up here is so dry that it doesn't stick together.  The forts (or "nest-holes," depending on how recently I made them watch a nature documentary) may hold up for a while, but ultimately always crumble.  There are few snowpeople up here for the same reason--inevitably they are snow-piles with carrots stuck half-heartedly in the middle of the pile, made by transplants from the southern 48 who don't know better yet.  The one successful snowman we've seen was about 8" tall, made by some bored gate guards.  I complimented them on it, and they admitted they'd had to melt the snow a little bit in front of their giant heaters to make it hold its shape.  Yes, you read that right.  It is so cold and dry up here that snow has to be heated up to make a snowball.

What about homeschool science experiments, you say?  Well, to be quite honest, there's only so many things you can freeze.  We did do the colored water-balloons, and I look forward to the bizarre Easter egg hunt we'll have in April when the snow starts melting; right now the remaining "eggs" (the ones that weren't smashed by hooligan kids traipsing across my yard on the way to school) are buried under around 18 inches of snow.  The bubbles tend to crack and wither, not freeze solid, and we'll be trying the boiling water "cloud" experiment in the next few days when we can expect lows of -30 again. If anyone has other ideas, I'm all ears. 

The wildlife occasionally suffices for entertainment.  I have seen a grand total of five and a half moose since my arrival--one and a half of them in Canada--but though they have so far proven elusive, it's always really awesome to see one.  Now, I'm from rural Arizona, so I'm no stranger to horse or cow-sized critters wandering through my yard, but let's be honest--moose are much cooler than cows.

This is Momma moose.

Her "baby" is around 5 feet at the shoulder.

Driving is always an adventure. A friend also new to Alaska shared a meme a few weeks ago.

...aaaaaand that pretty much covers it.  Seriously.  The picture below is of an actual 4 lane road on post. 

The roads are intermittently scraped off, but I've been driving on an average of 2 inches of ice since late November.  You generally guess where the spaces are in the parking lots, and people are driving half-way on the shoulder as often as they are between the lines on the highway. People expect you to drive through the red lights because it's safer than braking. I'm not ashamed to say I kinda dig it and will be sad to have law and order return when the snow melts.

Another way to fill the time is to cruelly amuse myself at the expense of the kids.  While those who know me and my physical prowess might question the decision to strap razors to my kids' feet, I recently put the oldest three in ice-skating lessons.  It's probably the funniest and meanest thing I've done to them in a long time.  Leah spent the first ten minutes flailing on the ice; all I could see was the occasional hand, struggling to grab the side of the rink, or a pony tail flipping backwards.  Aeryn kept trying to walk in her skates, high-stepping across the ice, while Bren kept inching forward, stiff-legged, arms out stiff like airplane wings.  Whenever one would fall, at least one of the others would fall too, apparently in sympathy as they weren't close enough to knock each other over.  Every week they stay up longer and get fewer bruises, for which I am both glad and disappointed. *Aside--I have a new appreciation for the difficulty of skating, and have at least temporarily repented of my laughing.  More on that at a later date.*

Three guesses as to which kid is mine.

The Northern Lights are one of my favorite things.  They don't usually start until after 10 pm or so, but between Rick being gone and me being eight months preggo, I have champion-level insomnia, and I get to see them often.  I wish I had a decent enough camera to get a picture. It's really pretty amazing to see what you're pretty sure is smoke from some poor sod's fireplace suddenly flare lime-turquoise green and zag across the sky.  I've watched it for hours a couple of nights, and it just doesn't get old.  To me, anyway.  Rick seems pretty unimpressed, but he has to get up in the morning, so I guess that's fair. The girls were rather put out about missing it when I told them about it, but the next night when I woke them up to see it, they just grumbled and rolled over with a sleepy "I see it,  Ver' nice." Ingrates.

Well, that's about it fo this week.  Nothing profound, but life doesn't always come with a pithy lesson; sometimes all you get is popcorn and a documentary, and that isn't too shabby, is it?