I am vastly aware that I will likely misspell every single one of my attempts at the “correct name” for some of these moves.  But what can I say… I’m a brand new “little dragon” mom!   So… here we go!

 JUNEBEE!

Fighting Stance!

FRONT KICK!

PUNCH!

and I have no idea what this move is… but she ended it with a very authoritative sounding shreek.

And blocking the master…. she is grasshopper!

So there you have it.   The birth of a little dragon.      She is so over the moon in love with Tang Soo Do!

I have much to update about and will get those up tomorrow.

Okay… so I said I wouldn’t say anything… but isn’t there something so amazing about a child’s smile when they don’t know you are looking????  (insert heart exploding feeling here).

I am thankful, that in a declining economy, our business is growing by leaps and bounds.

I am thankful, that the offspring officially became a “little dragon” yesterday… when she was accepted into the private martial arts academy.

I am thankful that my health is coming around. WOO HOO!!!!!

I am thankful to have such an amazing and supportive family, even if we are spread all over the place.

What are YOU thankful for?

A dear friend of mine ordered me a subscription to this magazine.  I can’t recommend it enough!  It’s filled with tons of really great recipes.   Lots of articles on organic eating, gardening, etc.   If you get a chance I highly recommend it!

And for you low carbers… here is a favorite in this house.   I’m actually going to make it for our neighbors on friday night, since hubby bragged it up so much.   Two thumbs up!  We originally saw it on Rachel Ray, but I’ve done some modifying since then.

• 3/4  pounds ground turkey breast, 3/4 pounds lean ground beef 
• Salt and pepper
• 6 crimini mushrooms (baby portobellos), stems removed and finely chopped
• 1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed away from skin and finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Romano cheese (a couple of handfuls)
• A handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
• Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), for drizzling
  
• 4 large portobello mushroom caps, stems removed
• Coarse salt and black pepper
• 2 cups arugula leaves, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 pound fresh mozzarella or fresh smoked mozzarella, thinly sliced
• Sliced red onion and sliced yellow and plum tomatoes, for garnish

Preparation

Pre-heat oven to 450°F. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.Combine meat with salt and pepper, chopped crimini mushrooms, chopped bell pepper, chopped onion, garlic, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, crushed red pepper flakes, cheese and parsley. Score and form meat into four large 1-inch thick patties.Wash your hands after handling the raw poultry.Drizzle EVOO on top of the patties, then fry 5-6 minutes on each side in the hot skillet.Place portobello caps on a small baking sheet gill side up and drizzle EVOO over them. Roast the caps 12 minutes. Remove them from the oven and season them with salt and pepper.

Turn the oven off. Top each cap with about 1/2 cup arugula and a burger. Cap burger with mozzarella and place back in the still-warm oven. Melt the cheese for one minute.

Transfer burgers on “bun” bottoms to plates. Top with onions and tomatoes and serve.

ENJOY!

Well, it appears she’s got herself in a bit of a pickle.    A few weeks ago, she fired our states “top cop”, the head over the entire Alaska State Troopers.   She appointed a no name police chief from a very small town in Alaska.   Everyone was in shock.

Well…. it turns out, that her ex BIL is a State Trooper.   It also turns out that her ex BIL and his wife (her sister) had a VERY nasty divorce.   It appears that our governor and her family filed dozens of reports against this officer, to the extent that the judge warned them to knock it off.    It also turns out that the governors husband approached our “top cop” to ask that his ex BIL be fired.    He refused to do such a thing.    So the rumor that is out right now is that he was fired because he refused to fire her ex BIL.     Our senate today voted 12 to zero to spend up to 100k on an internal investigation to see if our governor abused her power in office.    Between this and half of our political representatives going to prison in the last year or so…… AND our longest standing senator, Ted Stevens… was just indicted today on 7 charges!  Politics in Alaska are getting INTERESTING!

In addition to THAT drama, the new top cop evidently lied about a little “sexual harassment” complaint that was filed against him.  Well, lie isn’t a fair term.   Exclusion of the truth is a better term.   I mean seriously…. when my DH was hired as law enforcement, his background check was so extensive that they knew if he failed a test in the 5th grade.  HOW ON EARTH does one get appointed for the highest position in law enforcement in this state and have THAT hidden in his file????     When the media hounded him and our governor repeatedly about this finding, he resigned from his position after two weeks.    So now we have no one leading our law enforcement and lord knows what will happen with that poor department now!   Did I mention I’m so glad my hubby doesn’t work for them anymore?

So anyway…. there is a quick little politically drama and gossip for anyone who cares

I never thought I would find a day that I would worry about the most innocuous of things.   I never thought it was possible to love my child more than the day before.  There are times I look at her and I swear my heart feels like it’s going to explode.  Those times are usually when she doesn’t even realize I’m looking at her.    There are times that she just blows me away.   Of course, I say these things like I’m the only mother in the world that has had these feelings towards their children!

I love that she still lets me hug and kiss on her and she’s not embarrassed yet.   She was playing independently earlier and I asked her to please come here.   She walks up and I give her a huge hug and tell her that my love meter was low and I needed a recharge.  I was charging charging charging my love meter!  She laughed so hard and then says “But wait mommy!!!  You can’t charge too much… because if you do, I won’t have any love left for Daddy!”  Isn’t that the sweetest???  So we agreed to make sure and save enough love for Daddy to recharge his love meter too.   (insert that heart feeling like it’s going to explode sensation again).

I will openly admit though, that yesterday she really BLEW ME AWAY.    We’ve known for a while now that she pretty much falls into the “freaky smart” category.   Maybe we should have noticed when she started her fascination with books as soon as she could sit up.  (yeah! I have an excuse to put one of my favorite pictures here as a reference!)

But I still have moments when I guess I live in denial and she brings that reality rushing right back to me.   Last night,  I’m cozied up on the couch watching her play “Big Brain Academy” on the Wii.   She can’t be happy with an easy level, which we repeatedly *tried* to get her to do.   She has this really bad habit of wanting to push herself beyond her ability, but then getting frustrated when she can’t figure it out…. so we try to cut it off at the pass.   I learned an amazing lesson last night while trying to cut her off at the pass.   I really don’t give her enough credit :(   Okay… so where was I???  Oh yeah, so she’s playing big brain academy and insists on playing the hard level.   I sit on the couch, preparing for the onslaught of outrage when her frustration kicks in, from not knowing the answers.   I sat and watched.  I watched her whiz through these games, one after the other.  My jaw started to hang lower and lower.    I watched her identify a screen full of balloons in which she had to select the lowest to the highest number and pop them in that order.  I looked at that screen and saw numbers like -97, -44, 62, 4, 59, 23, 25, -17, etc.  *I* was having a hard time visually identifying them with the time ticker counting down as added pressure.   She FLEW through them, not missing a single one.   She moved onto the memory games where she nailed every single one of them.   She moved onto the math games, which.. understandably, she missed several, but she GOT some of them!  I’m not talking easy addition, I’m talking about adding double digit numbers, multiples of times, in a 10 second span.   I was shocked.

I learned last night, that I need to stop thinking of her in terms of what is “normal” for her age, and start giving her the credit that she deserves.  I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for a child, for them to KNOW they can do something, but repeatedly be told by adults that “they can’t do that, they aren’t old enough”.     Like her various science experiments LOL!  

 She’s going in…..

I hope this doesn’t cause any permanent brain damage….

You see, that is the other thing no one ever told me about being a mother…. that my little girl would teach me so much every day.   I’m in awe of how much I learn from her every day.   What I would give to look at the world through her eyes.  

Not to sound like a ridiculous sap….. but I am so blessed to have been chosen in this world as her mother.  My only hope in this world is that I’m capable of teaching her as much as she’s already taught me in her 4 years on this earth. 

Here are some highlights from her last game.

“okay kiddo… see this big white ball… keep your eye on it… umkay???”

Remember?????   Watch the ball…. ummkay????

Ohhhhh… you mean THAT ball?????? OKAY!

HOLY SMOKES!!!!   SHE KICKED IT!!!!

And they’re off!  Notice the facial expression… LOL

And they SCORE!!!!  The cheerleader emerges.

She fights for the ball…

but decides that she’d rather be an airplane….

Still wants to be an airplane… afterall, soccer is over rated.

and still……. an airplane.   “What was it that I was suppose to watch again??”

Of course, you can’t have a soccer game, without sharing the love with your team mates!

And of course, you must do the “good job”

So… that ends our soccer season.   I have to say… there is nothing cuter than 4 year old soccer.   Well… I shouldn’t say that, because we are on to karate and hockey next

At any rate…. if there is anyone left, subscribed to this pathetic little neglected blog… here goes

Seward, Alaska… the continuation.   A little Seward tidbit/history:

Seward is situated on Resurrection Bay on the southeast coast of the Kenai Peninsula, 125 highway miles south of Anchorage. It lies at the foot of Mount Marathon, and is the gateway to the Kenai Fjords National Park. It lies at approximately 60° 07′ N Latitude, 149° 26′ W Longitude (Sec. 10, T001S, R001W, Seward Meridian). The community is located in the Seward Recording District. The area encompasses 15 sq. miles of land and 7 sq. miles of water.

Resurrection Bay was named in 1792 by Russian fur trader and explorer Alexander Baranof. While sailing from Kodiak to Yakutat, he found unexpected shelter in this bay for a storm. He named the Bay Resurrection because it was the Russian Sunday of the Resurrection. The City of Seward was named for U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, 1861-69, who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia during the Lincoln administration. In the 1890s, Capt. Frank Lowell arrived with his family. In 1903, John and Frank Ballaine and a group of settlers arrived to begin construction of a railroad. Seward became an incorporated City in 1912. The Alaska Railroad was constructed between 1915 and 1923, and Seward developed as the ocean terminus and supply center. By 1960, Seward was the largest community on the Peninsula. Tsunamis generated after the 1964 earthquake destroyed the railroad terminal and killed several residents. As an ice-free harbor, Seward has become an important supply center for Interior Alaska.   The information source is found here .

Sooooo…. the weather over the weekend was some what dismal, but amazingly, as we set sail on our bay cruise, the clouds broke and the sun shone.  It was beautiful.   I have to giggle a bit though, because as we were getting ready to sail, a young woman announced to the whole ship that she had prayed that we would have nice weather that day (that wasn’t the funny part) and that she was thankful to god for giving us such beautiful weather (again, not the funny part).   She DID however, neglect to pray to God to keep her from barfing all over the back of the boat.  I would have taken a picture, but I feel that would have been in bad taste *giggle*.   Okay… so silly school girl mentality aside.   Here is a photo montage of our day.

This is how the weather started this morning:

And although quite dismal, it’s still got some breathtaking beauty.   I adore this waterfall……

I really wish we had that kind of beauty in the burbs that we live.  I can’t complain though…. the beauty we have within a few hours drive is well worth the lackluster surrounds we have.    NOW.. remember how I said the weather cleared that day.  This is literally 2 hours later!  You have to love ocean towns and ocean weather fronts.

 Hello little sea otter….. aren’t they CUTE!

Oh… and can you say BOAT ENVY????   I don’t even want to know how expensive this little “blow boat” is.   Interestingly enough, the boat is from South Africa.   Nothing like be a tad bit from home huh?

Boat envy aside, it was a beautiful day and the seas were somewhat calm (well, except for that poor girl *giggle*)  Here is the boat we set sail on.

So much pretty scenery.  That is the one thing that you will just never run out of in South East Alaska.

One thing I don’t truly understand about this area of the state is the agriculture.  I’m a little dumbfounded as to how vegitation will grow on rocks…. with no dirt, surrounded by extreme weather and salt water, but it really does happen.   We have flowers that grow on rocks…..

And we have trees that grow on rocks….

and then we have ADORABLE  seals that are cute as can be…. and oh my holy heavens do these things STINK!  We got close enough on the boat to truly catch a wiff.   OY VEY!

And lets not forget big papa… the Stellar Sea Lion (he’s the very large mass at the bottom of the rocks)

 We were fortunate to see an amazing waterfall with a rainbow.  It truly was beautiful and I wish I could have captured it better on camera.

Then we can’t forget our glaciers.   We have thousands of them.  Here is one of the smaller ones that we passed as we were cruising back into the bay.

 Did I mention we have some pretty kick butt fishing????   Can you say HOLY HALIBUT????

Fish & Chips anyone?

So there you have it.  A little recap of a great weekend in a great little town in Alaska!   

I’ve witnessed this race twice now.   It’s broken into several classes (Juniors, Men’s, Women’s, etc.) and it’s amazing to see how torn up and muddy these folks are when they reach the finish line.   The trek up the mountain is so high, that they are in the snow at the top and many times are sliding down that snow on the way down.   Sliding down snow while wearing running shorts is never a good combination and thus the reason you see so many people bleeding on their return.

Here is a link to a full history of the race.    And here are pictures that we took.

The race start.

Remember the mountain I said they had to climb???  Well, here it is.  All the way to the top!

The beginning of the men’s race.

More men…..

 In addition to the race, they have their 4th of July parade as well.   Parades in Seward, just aren’t like the parades you are used to if you are from an area with a population greater than a thousand, but they are cute nonetheless!  

Take this float for example.   This is an actual couple, actually getting married, on this float.

and no parade is complete without a trolley car…

Or a whale!

Or best yet…. the senior citizen rock band!  (and they ROCKED!!!)

All in all… it was a good day!    I have more pictures from the rest of the trip, but I’ll save those for another day… as they are all about the absolute beauty of south east Alaska!!!!  (and I promise… they are PERTY!!)