Monday, April 23, 2012

April 22, 2012

Although Olivia is far to young to remember and take note of some of the things that we have been doing with her, Jessica and I have wanted to get into a good routine so that when Olivia begins to form her ideas about life, we have been practicing the things that we will 'preach' to her.  Some things we have both been doing the entire time, others Jessica has been doing her whole life, however we have decided to rededicate ourselves to stewardship of the world around us now that we have one more of us to care for.

So for 'Earth Day 2012' we decided to include Olivia in our activities.   First off we went to the FT Wainwright recycling center (well, place where they put the recycling dumpsters) and brought our bins.  Although the post community doesn't offer recycling at homes, they do have locations where you can drop off your own items.  We keep four bins in the garage, plastics, paper/cardboard, glass and aluminum/tin.  Today we filled the back of the car, put Olivia in her car seat, and we headed over by the Post Exchange (Army version of a Walmart) and sorted our items into the correct bins. 

After that we went for a quick bite to eat as one of Fairbank's premier roadside Coffee and Bagel hut.  For some reason, all over Fairbanks (and North Pole) there are small huts, about 6x10 or so that offer two drive up windows, and sell mostly beverages, and bagels and the like.  It is especially nice in the -45 degree winter days to not have to get out of your car.  Jessica has been introducing me to various foods that I haven't ever had, as it seems, growing up I had my filled of Irish cooking (lots of boiled and roasted things with very little spice) and some Italian cooking, but many items that my parents (sorry Mom) didn't like, were never around.  As I am a creature of habit, I have usually avoided the things that I avoided as a child.  This morning's new adventure, Cream Cheese.  Seriously, I had never had cream cheese before.  Yes, I know, I am a pretty weird guy, but evening being this odd I still ended up with an amazing wife and a perfect daughter.  End result: I like cream cheese.

This morning we wanted to take a look at carts to hitch behind the bike and tow Olivia, as the weather is perfect already, and the post is covered in dozens of nice paved bike paths.  We went to the Fairbanks shopping district (Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Sportsmans Warehouse, Barnes and Noble, Petco, some shoe store, and Sports Authority).  Jessica had seen a cart at Sports Authority when she bought Olivia's new stroller.  It turns out that the carts, and various other attachments for children to ride with their parents aren't reccomended until the child is at least 12 months old.... even though we know Olivia is very advanced for her age, we didn't want to risk it.  So we found her some other fun distractions, and then we went home.  

After some chores around the house, we decided to take a walk around our neighborhood, with Olivia, the dogs, and several trash bags.  We started by cleaning our yard and driveway (not that there was much to clean up) and then went across from our house where there is a large field (sometimes a swamp, especially following five feet of snow melt).  We worked our way behind the house, to the playground.  Army communities are very nice in that each neighborhood has several playgrounds and parks.  Our little neighborhood of three rows of houses has two large fields, three playgrounds, and a long trail through the woods.  Our back porch opens up into one of the play grounds... so it is this one that we decided to clean up.  There was a tremendous amount of refuse. I would like to say that it was all buried under the snow and no one cleaned it up because they couldn't see it... but that is just hogwash.  People don't seem to teach their children how to clean up after themselves, and why should they if the parents don't clean up either?  We decided to show Olivia what responsible families do.  We cleaned up two full bags of garbage... candy wrappers, papers, mail, barbie doll parts... the most interesting was a large pile of moose droppings (very distinctive) that had a fork next to them.  I don't know if the moose was using cutlery to have its lunch or what.    After the park/playground, we worked our way down the bike path to the woods, cleaning up a good bit before our bags were full.  Then Jessica entertained Olivia and the dogs for a bit, while I went into the woods to check my Birch taps.  As there are very few maples trees here, the native population learned to get sap from birch trees, the sap of course boils down to make syrup.  Similar to maple syrup but very distinct in taste.   The sap had just started to run, so I'll check it in a day or so and see if my two gallon buckets are full.  It takes 100 gallons of birch sap to boil down to 1 gallon of syrup.... so we may try to make a few ounces of syrup this year.

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