21 hours of sunlight!

We have now reached a point where we have sunlight from 3:20 am to 12 :15 am and we're still gaining rapidly, albeit the rate has slowed a touch. We are adding 5 1/2 minutes per day. When you consider dusk and dawn, we no longer have any darkness. At first it was a little strange and I found myself going to bed later and later, but now we have all adjusted and are used to going to bed and then waking in full sunlight.

The boys are loving it here. We have been exploring all the bike trails and enjoy looking for wildlife at Creamer's field. We especially like looking for wood frogs and viewing from the moose platform.

We have made some good friends, so that helps, too, but I still miss the closeness of my Boise friends.

Kari and I have been at our wits end with the expenses we have incurred with our home. We have had an inauspicious start when you consider the sewer problems and the leaky garage roof which will cost between 5 and 10k to fix. Yikes! Kari has even thought about looking for a part-time job in the evenings so we have a little extra spending money.

This weekend I will be flying to Reno to pick up Samantha and then fly her back for a 3 week visit in Fairbanks. We're all anxious to see her and show her around.

Last night Dominik had his first hockey practice in Alaska. It was not as organized as I had hoped it would be, but not bad. I helped out a little and tried not to step on any toes, but I have decided to get involved. The gal who was organizing it wants me to run the mites program in the fall and mentor other coaches so that should be good. That will allow Dominik and I to be on the ice together. Yanik has begun to express an interest in hockey, but I am not going to let him get involved until I know it's for real. It's too expensive to have a kid sitting on the ice doing nothing! Yeah, that's what he did the last two times he wanted to start.

More later.