Out, out! Everybody out!

We're now well into summer.  Seemingly overnight everything is a brilliant, blazing green, striped with pale birch and stippled with blue and pink flowers.  The days are still getting longer and brighter.  It is impossible to stay inside--and for those of you who know me, who am almost a professional homebody, that's saying something. 

The forest primeval

The girls decided these are "aurora flowers"

These trees look like copper.  I have no idea what they're called but they are so freaking pretty.

Birch bark.  What a cool texture.

The girls are at the park everyday.  I've given them the summer off (sort of) so that they can make the most of it.  They tried camping in our backyard with mixed success (the first night they wouldn't shut up so we brought them in at midnight and made them wait until the weekend to try again).  The picture below was taken at about 11 pm, if you're curious.

Leah, on a whim, decided to teach herself how to ride a bike one afternoon. 

They also had a blast playing in a dust pit with some of our friends' kids--which later became a mud pit thanks to one of the infrequent but unpredictable storms up here.  It took over two hours to get everyone showered.  We've still got lots to do, but I think they've got a good start on enjoying their summer.  They're even--gasp--making friends.

The cleanest of the bunch.  It doesn't look like it, but it took three showers over two days to clean her hair.

A few days ago, I got a wild hair and decided to take them out on a nature walk.  Leah rode her bike, Echo rode in the stroller, Claudia was in the chest-pack, and the rest of us walked. Everything was great until we got about a mile from the house and I realized that it was baby-moose season. Now, most of you are probably going, "Awwww, baby moose, how cute!"  Wrong.  With baby moose come mama moose, and mama moose are not exactly friendly.  They tend to move quietly, stomp first, and not ask questions. I hadn't seen any moose yet this spring, but I'd seen plenty of other wildlife in this same area and gotten the warning emails from housing about moose spotted already on post.   Once I remembered this, it was like being in a horror movie--the beautiful green treeline suddenly seemed ominous, every rustle and sinister whisper of the leaves meant a moose lurking in the shadows.  I was abruptly aware that Jane was lagging behind (it was "too hot"--a whopping 70 degrees--and she wanted to turn around much earlier), and Leah's out of sight around a corner.  I rounded everybody up, and then together--singing to make sure we won't surprise anybody--we set down a shady little foot path that I knew would cut back to the road and get us closer to people-territory, if there is such a thing in Alaska.

Big mistake.  Now, I'm not too familiar with mosquitos, but apparently they prefer darker, cooler places to hang out because that's where animals (aka "lunch") tend to be during the day.  We figured this out the hard way.  I had neither packed bug spray nor applied it before we left, because I'm an idiot, and I'm sure I looked the part as we erupted from the woods onto the side of the road with me dragging a five year old behind me and beating maniacally with a stick around my two-year-old's head while she snapped like a dog at the mosquitos clouding her face.  But we survived.  Mostly.

 A few of our injuries.  Echo also had a huge bite, right between her eyes; she looked like a unicorn.

Our other ventures into the Alaskan summer have been much more successful.  There is so much going on that it's hard to choose what to do!  People really do try to make the most out of the few short months when Alaska isn't actively trying to kill you, and are out literally all day long. 

Homemade ice cream stand--pricey but delicious.  I recommend the Pipeline Swirl.

Roadside produce, Alaska-style.

We visited the Tanana Valley Farmer's market today and it was amazing.  People spend their winters making the coolest things. The girls got to take turns stripping bark at a wood-worker's stall and try home made locally sourced marshmallows.  My favorite was the poet selling original poems written for each customer that she'd type on the spot with an old school typewriter.  (If you were wondering, my least favorite was the balloon animal maker, because the balloons inevitably pop fifteen minutes later because the kids bump them on things.  Worst waste of money ever.)

With all of the hustle and bustle and infernal 24-hour birdsong, I can see why people might not look forward to winter again, and why they play so hard during these months of midnight sun.  I'm just trying to keep up.