Alaska & Photography

I'd forgotten how beautiful Alaska was. Last year ended on a very rough note for us...and I'd simply forgotten. I pretty much gave up on seeing the beauty in anything after losing the twins and lost my drive to take pictures. My husband, being the rock that he is, must have sensed my "fever" as the days get longer and the weather gets warmer and warmer. He took me out and bought me a camera and then took me out two days in a row to get me "snapping pics" again. I love this man SOOO much!


When you live somewere as beautiful as Alaska, if you like photography, you couldn't ask for a better back drop. I wanted to post some of my newer pictures on here for you to see. Stay tuned, as I "get my groove back" I will post some more! This will be our last summer in Alaska, and I plan to really live it up! We will doing lots of camping and hiking, which will surely entail lots of great pictures.

Sunday Ice Cream Run

The weather here was BEAUTIFUL today, and boy do I have Spring Fever! I simply could not take another day sitting cooped up inside our house, so I begged hubby to get us all out of the house. We ended up doing our once infamous Sunday Ice Cream Runs. This is a beautiful drive, about 1 hour south of Anchorage, down the Seward Highway. This drive runs along the coast line the entire way, and we get to see glaciers and ice chunks moving in the ocean along beside us. Today though, the tide was out, and we got to see the mud flats with chunks of ice beached! It was pretty awesome to see.

We saw a few dall sheep as well, but they were just too high to get a good picture of. Overall though, it was just a great day to spend hanging with the family enjoying the sites. I tried to get Kyle to do some family pictures by the water, but it was really windy and he thought it was too cold.....gee, it was only about 45 degrees.... that's a heat wave for us! Anyway so only Kristina and I got some pictures, she's my little dare devil!

The ice cream was delicious at our turn around point! I had the "polar bear", which was a coconut...that tasted a lot like the coconut snow cream I make myself out of snow! Kenton and Kyle had the sweet black cherry, and Kristina had a blueberry cheesecake and cookie dough - odd combination! Kenton literally savored the flavor of his for the next 15 miles home!

Just couldn't have asked for a better day! I love my husband, I love my kids, and I love Alaska scenary on perfect weather days. Summer is coming and I can't wait!

The Viking Saute Pan

Since it was my birthday last week and Kyle didn't have time to get my a gift, I went shopping for myself and bought a pan I've been wanting for a LONG TIME! I went to Allen & Peterson's here and got this perfect Viking Saute Pan. It's something like 16" and holds 5.5 quarts. It is the perfect depth, width, weight, and everything! I love it, love it, love it! So now that I had the perfect pan, I set out to make a delicious dinner to check it out! I ended up making Pork Meatballs over Jasmine rice with vegetables. I thought I'd share the recipe here because it turned out perfect and my whole family loved it. It was super easy to make too! It just had a very clean, nice Asian flair to it that was really great!

The pork meatballs are made by Kirtland and can be found at Costco and probably Sam's or Wal-Mart too. They come in one package but with two inner containers of meatballs, I started using only one package, but it wasn't enough for us, so the next day I made the rest of them to finish up the rice! They are made with lemon grass and ginger with habanero peppers. TASTY! I simply chopped up 5-6 stalks of celery, one onion, approximately 5-6 cloves of garlic, about 2 tablespoons of cilantro, and then thinly sliced/peeled about 5-6 large carrots. Next I saute'd all these covered with vegetable oil until starting to get soft, stirring often, and then added about 1/4 - 1/2 cups of chicken stock. After these were tender and soft, I added the meatballs and simmered about 10 more minutes uncovered waiting for the chicken stock to thicken up slightly. Meanwhile, while I was doing the vegetables I had the Jasmine rice cooking in a rice cooker, but instead of water I used chicken stock to make the rice. After the rice was done I mixed it with the meatballs and vegetables, and added about 1/2 cup or so of pine nuts, and then simmered about another 5 minutes. Serve immediately and enjoy! This recipes makes a lot - you will have leftovers. My husband liked adding some soy sauce also, while I had mine served over a bed of fresh spinach. I think the meatballs are what made this dish so yummy! You'll have to try it out and let me know what you think! Maybe it was just my new pan...LOL!