Ezra

We love you baby Ezra!

June 25 - August 29, 2007

We will be having a memorial service for baby Ezra on Tuesday September 4th, 2007 at 10:00 am at the Luby Bay Day use area at Priest Lake. Dress is very casual and if you don't want to sit in sand please bring a lawn chair. We welcome you to bring a picnic and spend the afternoon if you can.

Directions: Take Hwy 2 North to Priest River Idaho, Turn left on Hwy 57 for aprox 33 miles. We will try an post markers along the way. If you have any questions you can call us at 509-710-1319 (John, my dad).

2 Year Old Josiah

Josiah turned 2 on Aug 9th. Needless to say, time is flying. We made birthday hats and had

Cody's trama's finger Jello, on request of the birthday boy. His favorite color is green...so he picked lime.

We're Home

For those of you who are anxiously awaiting the next Alaskan adventure, we're sorry the journey has ended it's AK chapter. We're back in Spokane and a new adventure has begun. We're back at our house on Lacrosse street living with Seth and Sarah and their two kids, Owen and Paisley. It's a houseful and so far it's been really great.

Wynn Nature Center

While Daddy has to go to work we've been taking Papa and Grandma to the fun places here in Homer. This was actually our first time at the Nature center and it ended up being really fun. We got there just as toddler story time was starting and it was all about moose! We found moose tracks in the woods (and poop!) and made our own moose hats with Grandmas artistic help.

Papa and Trama are here!!!!

I think the boys have been waiting for Papa and Trama to get here since the day we left Spokane....and finally I don't have to try and exexplain how much longer till they get here....because THEY ARE HERE!! I think it took us a couple days to recover from a night of being awake ALL night! I think we crawled into bed at 4:30 am on July 4th. We're having fun!

Brothers

Sometimes it's a fight over who gets to have the baby. Malachi calls him "MY baby brother" and Josiah just mumbles "I hold it..." for a moment we got them to share.

Alaskan Boy!

It's cool up here because Alaskans are very proud of the fact that they're Alaskans...and they should be, this is an amazing place. The crib card for Ezra (as you can see) says, I'm an Alaskan boy! and we're kinda proud of that, especially Abe. We've had a wonderful adventure and him being born here in Homer is a huge part of that.

Cheeks!

Josiah is now a cheek holder, kinda like Mal does the ears. He falls asleep with his hands holding both of my cheeks. He LOVES Ezras cheeks...he pokes them, holds them, kisses them. I think he's a smart little dude...he just has to gain a greater awarness of where the cheek ends and the eyeball begins.

He's got hair!

When I was delivering Ezra the midwife made a coment about him having hair. Abe and I both made stupid comments in response to the effect that our kids don't have hair when they're born....but here it is, Ezra's hair. It's not as much as Carter Beason....but we like to pet it.

This picture makes it look kinda red....maybe he's more Hickman than I first thought :)

(rewind some more) Josiah the super Potty Boy!

So, Josiah decided to start potty training himself. I'm not complaining....but it hasn't been easy and he's still troopin. This is just one of the several battle wounds he has gotten trying to do it by himself. I think there was a little bath water on the floor and he cracked his eye on the rim of the toilet.... didn't slow him down too bad. I haven't had to change a poopy diaper for quite a while (maybe one).

Rewind Just a Bit

Just before Ezra was born and stole the show Malachi caught his very own king salmon. It was the last night the river was open and Abe hooked it but Malachi played it for about 15 min holding the rod totally on his own. I think Abe was in charge of the realing...so it was a small team effort. Malachi was very vocal and had all the local fisherman chearing him on. The fish was longer than him but he out weighed it by about 10 pounds. GO MAL!!!!

Henderson Boys

I think Ezra has more Henderson features than Malachi and Josiah... espeically his ears. Oh! and he has brown hair.

Mommas Boys

Baby Ezra Lucas decided to catch the family off guard and arrive a little early. I wasn't even sure I was in labor and waited almost too long to go to the hospital. When I did decide we might need to go it was 4 in the am and we didn't have a baby sitter ready so we loaded up the whole fam and when I got there I was 8 cm and about an hour away from a family of 5. We're so glad he's here! He weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces and was 19 3/4 in long. It was definatly the easiest labor and so far the recovery is going well.

Midnight In Alaska

Didn't get much darker than this the night we tried to camp. Needless to say it didn't go so well... there wasn't much we could do to make the tent dark so the boys only slept from about midnight to 4am. I think we're going to bag camping....we were only 15 min from home.

Josiah's Fish....which ones bigger

THE FISH!!!

Abes Office

This is where Abe has to work everyday. He's feeling ok about the new office. He sees all kinds of critters, the mountains, the water....all in a days work.

Abes 2nd King- Anchor River

Abe's 2nd king, he caught the same night I caugh my big one. He has the most but I still have the biggest :)

Here you go Dad- Proof!

So this is the big one. Bigger than the ones Abe has caught. It weighed 29 pounds and was taller than Malachi. My fish was bigger than my kid :)

Sharing Spaces

So we don't fish alone here in Alaska. The two spotswe've been to, the Homer fishing hole and Anchor River, get pretty busy but we've heard it can get worse. I don't really like to tangle lines so I try and wait for more down times but Abe gets right in the middle of it of course. He's a little better at casting so it works for him. He's met some really awesome people on the River. They're a lot like him. Alaska attracts similar folks I guess. This weekend we actually ended up camping with a crew of people he met and it was really fun.

New Hats

So we came to Homer a little unprepared for the elements. I wasn't able to find good hats to buy... they were either to pricey or not worth buying. So I decided to use the yarn I brought to make Ezra a blankie to make hats for the boys. We think they turned out pretty cute! :) Thanks for sending more yarn Mom!

Abe's 1st King

This was Abe's first king. He caught it down at the fishing hole here in Homer. The boys were standing on the beach cheering for him the whole time. It was really cute. "GET IT DADDY!!!" I think they had everyone's attention... not too much pressure for Abe. He landed it on a muscle bed since the tide was so low. Kinda hard not to walk on the poor little guys sometimes. Oops!

Taking Ezra Fishing

So I've been taking Ezra Fishing. He likes it.

True Alaska Fashion!

You'll notice, as in this picture, that the men in the family are sporting new brown mud boots. They're not just any mud boots... they're XtraTufs! (extra tuoughs) We quickly learned that they are the THING around here. Abe actually really had to get some for work. They so popular here that they're a fashion statement. I opted for some cheap black mud boots a lot like the ones the kids had before. Maybe before we leave I'll splurge and become part of the practical fad. Oh and of course camo...wouldn't want some wild thing to see you.

The KING!

Last night at 7:30 Nathan and Melissa called us and said they went to check out a local camp ground next to a fishing river that opened last weekend for king salmon. We've been fishing for them all week here in Homer so we decided to run up and join them for the night even though we had heard the beach has a reuptation for parties with memorial day weekend. Camping wasn't so great because it was never dark and the kids didn't go to sleep until midnight and I think the parties died down around 5 and I actually went to sleep.

BUT! It was all worth it because Malachi and I got our first king salmon. The way it all works here in Alaska is everyone under 16 gets a catch card but doesn't have to pay the money for a license. Abe and I on the other hand paid an outrageous amount to be able to catch these guys...I suppose if we get our fill of salmon it will be grocery money. Anyway, it's hard for Malachi to pay attention long enough to fish for long so he'll fish for a while then throw rocks and what not on the beach. The cast that caught the fish was a team effort and whoever "sets the hook" gets the catch on their card. Once you catch a fish you have to be done for the day so we wrote it on Mals card and I kept fishing....but we didn't catch any other fish. It was REALLY fun to catch!

Oh, and we ate some for dinner :)

Missing Cousins

We're having lots of fun and this will definatly be a summer we cherish, but we do miss Spokane a lot at times. Malachi really misses the cousins, he says, and yesterday he told me "it's taking a long time to get back to Spokane." We look at your picture often and definatly miss Papa's house. We'll all have to have a big birthday party for Malachi when we get home.

Love you all!

Jessica

Wooden Boat/Kyak Festival

Every year they have a wooden boat/kyak festival here in Homer. We went down there today and the boys got to make their own wooden boat. There were hammers, nails, drills, string... FUN STUFF and of course paint! :)

Malachi made a blue ferry boat, which he has been into ever since we rode the one in British Columbia. Abe tried to get Malachi to name his boat but he didn't want to. Anti-labels kinda kid. Josiah named his Kyak "o'tt" at least thats what we're interpreting.

PS. I made a friend at the Kyak festival. I'm pretty excited. She reminds me of Jean Sporin.

Spring in Homer

So it's spring here officially because the moose are having their babies. We stopped to grab a few pictures of this one Momma that had twins.

Last night Abe was bear hunting across the bay and the boys and I were at home eating dinner with a moose. She was a younger moose and she was eating the strawberries and raspberries that grow along our building. If I would of opened the window I could have touched her. It was pretty cool. The boys LOVE to see the moose.

First Fishes

So far Abe is the only successful fisher in the family. He caught this flounder off the end of the Spit. While Abe and I were fishing Malachi "caught" this purple starfish with some kind of wading method. I'm pretty sure that both of the boys have been in the water up past their boots at some point. Josiah even made it up to his waist at one point. I think they're convinced that they should just walk until they feel water...and then if it's not too cold... What the heck!

Abe did get a king salmon up as far as the beach and then it shook and broke his line. I think he almost jumped in after it. He was pretty bummed!

Cleaning Clams

So once you catch them you have to bring them home and clean them. Abe didn't really know how so we stopped and asked this old guy who was a "clam cleaner" along the road for a lesson. It only cost us $5 but I think I would have paid that just to meet this old timer. No kidding he was a real back woods Alaskan...with a trailer and a grunt to prove it. He had some boards leaned up on some trees with an old counter top and running water so he was definatly "advanced" for his parts.

Malachi actually got really good at picking out the sand. He was a good helper!

Clam Digging- or - Whatever you can find Digging

Basically, you gotta get down and get dirty if you want to take any of these little boogers home. It took us some time to get the hang of it, for some people it is serious business. There were probably a couple hundred other clam harvesters on the beach that morning. Some had quads and serious clam diggin set ups, us, we brought a shovel and a bucket and our two hands.

So imagine me.. on my hands and knees (granted I'm pushing 8 months prego right now) digging with two hands for some slimy creature thats bound for china as fast as all get out. But! we did catch some. Abe actually got pretty good at it, being the wild hunter gatherer that he is.

Oh! and these are razor clams. Abe and the boys ate them fried in batter and butter, of course I did not eat them...because well... technically I think they're meat and plus... yeah.. if you know me... they were slimey. YUCK!

Our friends here in Homer made up some steamer clams that they harvested across the bay. Rule of thumb is "DONT EAT THE ONES THAT DON'T OPEN." So, Abe really wanted to know why of course and no one could really tell him, so he ate two that didn't really open, but weren't all the way closed either. So in the middle of the night be had to get up and "let the clams out" and they were barkin at both doors. So don't ask why just "DON'T EAT THE ONES THAT DON'T OPEN." I told him it's probably the wisdom of the great natives passed down... and no one questions that. :)

(all joking aside... i guess it can be really seriuos this "clam poisioning.... people die....so I guess we're greatful?)

Shell Painting- A great way to pass time

So, while Abe is at work things can get a little boring around a completely empty apartment. SO! we created shell painting. It's a lot more involved then you might think. First, we have to take Daddy to work so we can have the truck to go collect shells, we haven't quite gotten to walking to the good shell collecting beaches and we probably won't, they're pretty far. THEN, we have to find all the good shells, not broken and for Josiah not dirty. Then we take them

home and wash all the sand off. And then we paint. After all the colors dry we paint sparkles on them and last but not least they are not complete until mommy writes Homer, AK on them. So far it's still fun. I've only painted one shell whithout the boys...hee hee hee.

Apology!

I'm sorry I've been a slacker on the photos here. I know you're all anxiously awaiting some updates so I'll do as many as I can for the time I have here on the internet while the boys are sleeping :)

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy Mothers Day!

Especially to my Mom but also to all the family and friends who are Moms; Cindy, Sarah, Amy, Adri....and the rest of you. I love you and you inspire me!


Love,
Jess

Mothers Day on the Spit

This afternoon we went down to the Spit to throw rocks and run on the beach. It's a good thing the boys have mud boots because there is plenty of it. It's the norm for you to take your shoes off almost everywhere here in Homer. Except for maybe Safeway :) (i'm exagerating).

Nathan and Josiah are buds. He lets Tuka throw the ball for the dogs Dakota nd Riley, and he'll carry him when Mommy and Daddy put him down.

Real Alaska Hunting

Here is Nathan's buddy Mark and his son Dillon, their boat and the bears they Mark and Nathan shot this weekend. Mark gave me a lot of crap about trying to shoot one with a bow. Everytime we saw a bear he would yell "SHOOT 'EM!!!" from the cabin. He told me he was going to name the boat Sea Scum and under that write "No F-ing bows and arrows allowed." We dug clams and slept under the stars, saw sea otters and porposes and waterfalls, eagles and loons, and plenty of bears! We ate salmon fillets cooked over the fire. It was rough. We can't decide if we should go clam digging and salmon fishing or bear hunting next weekend.

Alaska Bear Hunting

Nathan and Abe went for a spring bear hunt today. They were supposed to be gone for the weekend but Nathan got this nice chocolate phase bear within the first 20 min of hunting. The guy that they rode over across the bay with got one too so they all came home to bring the bears in and then they're back out tomorrow. Hopefully Abe will get one!

4047 Main St. Apt 107 Homer, AK 99603

I took these pictures at 10:40 here. No flash :)

So we're finally in our apartment. It's definatly a little more spendy than something you would find in Spokane, but the views and the neighbors (moose) are hard to beat.

This morning we went to drop off a load and let the kids run over the playground to stay busy while we worked. As soon as Mal was over there he yelled back to us at the truck, "Hey guys! I see a moose!" I hollered for him to COME BACK! Anyway, not really a big deal but you're not really supposed to hang around incase they have calves...they can get a little rowdy I guess.

Then this evening when the boys got out of the bath we were hanging out in our bedroom and I went to shut the blinds and there was a moose standing about 10 feet our our back window. Abe had taken the camera bear hunting so you'll just have to believe me. The kids were so excited that they called everyone, Cody's Trama got to hear it but all you Spokanites must have been having a wild Thursday night :) Malachi wanted me to take pictures of the moose bootie for uncle cracker. He thought it was really funny that you took a picture of the rhino's tushy...

So it's nothing fancy but plenty of room for visitors (hint, hint).

Love,

Jess