My Alaska Trip is LIVE! New opportunities make me so excited :)
Sometimes doing your same job differently makes you fully enjoy it again. Here's what I did (and I have life updates!)
We’re more than half way through October and it’s turning into a great month. Hurricane clean up is done for us, school progress reports are in, and life is moving into our calm season. A big win has been getting to be home together long enough to finally have consistent CHORES. Who would’ve thought that the resistance against doing chores would genuinely be worth the struggle? More on that in a minute.
The other thing I’m really excited about is that I’ve gotten to soft-launch our new Alaska travel site. Having lived in Alaska and spent so much time there, it’s a place that I’m passionate about and love sharing. This week MyAlaskaTrip.com went live with all kinds of information about activities, travel planning, cultural awareness and photography tips. Between us and our Alaska friends, it’s going to become an awesome resource (and business) with time.
When it comes to the fam, this week we had several vet appointments for the cats (pet adoption brings all sorts of mysteries) and Halloween Fest at school. It felt like a normal week again, which is welcome after having a week of hurricane confusion. While much of Florida is still in disaster mode, we’re really thankful to be able to return to life as we know it.
And now for all the FUN STUFF!!!
Everything’s Coming Up ALASKA!
2 QUESTIONS: what is the BEST place in Alaska to visit OR what is either confusing or daunting or mysterious about visiting Alaska for YOU?
Alaska is literally what occupies my mind most of the day. I've been building our new website, MyAlaskaTrip.com, and even when I'm not working I'm thinking about all of the fun and beautiful places we've gotten to go and experiences I've had in AK over the years. My brain won't stop.
Please leave me your questions or your top picks for Alaska so I can continue to build out the new site. I don't trust Google to tell me what people need to know, so I would much rather hear from actual humans. Thank you in advance, friends!
My Alaska Favorites
Since I’ve been working on this so much and have so much written up, I want to share a few of my favorites from our new site. Alaska is really beautiful and wild and fun, and I’ve had tons of adventures there.
I’ve been working mostly on individual activity and tour articles. When you’re building a blog/website, you want to have a few key articles or webpages that act as a hub to access very specific things, so I’ve been writing about singular things to do in Alaska that then become part of larger webpages. For example I’ve got a bunch of articles about different glaciers you can visit and then they’ll all be a part of a large page about visiting glaciers, how to and which ones are the most accessible. Starting a website from scratch is SO MUCH EASIER than continuing to build from a well established one because you can do it correctly from the start.
With that, here are my favorite Alaska activities that are live on MyAlaskaTrip.com thus far:
I think one of the most valuable articles I’ve written so far is my guide to the Alaska regions. If you haven’t been to AK, it looks like a dauting state with so much ground to cover, and that’s completely accurate. I wrote this piece to break it into more digestible pieces so you can more easily understand what you’ll find where and how to get between the different regions (you can’t drive to some parts of AK).
I love working on this project and am excited for all of our upcoming Alaska adventures in 2025!
Parenting Updates: goodbye 9 + 12, hello 10 + 13
Fall is birthday season in our house, with both kids having dates just three weeks apart. It’s interesting watching kids get older and turn into their own people, but then it’s also interesting stepping back and looking at yourself (myself) as a parent. I’ve come to the realization that while we’ve done a pretty good job with things like minimizing technology reliance and raising our kids to be good, diverse eaters, we totally missed the boat of home responsibilities.
Sure, the kids have helped with dishes and folding their own laundry for a while, but when you look at the overall picture of what it’s like to be a functional human there are lots of other moving pieces: daily chores that are gross, monotonous tasks that shouldn’t be put off, managing money in a responsible and active way. With the kids being teen and pre-teen, it’s time we really do focus on some bigger life skills.
This week we added the responsibilities of cleaning the cat box, vacuuming and sweeping, putting out bins on garbage day, and watering the garden. While all of these things really seem simple and not a burden, trying to get pre-teens onboard with chores that are less fun than reading comics… yeah, that’s a struggle. We’ve had success with working on cat box responsibilities as they now understand that staying on top of it prevents it from becoming a gross task. And we’ve also learned that sweeping and vacuuming DRASTICALLY reduces allergies (cat allergies). These are small wins that feel big.
The next thing we’re going to try to work on is money management. The boys both have their own accounts and debit cards, but they don’t realize that these aren’t just bottomless pools of cash for them to dip into. Chris just got them a book to help them understand money in the long term, so hopefully we’ll start working on that with success soon.
Upcoming Travel: Maine!
I’m pretty excited to head back to Maine this week. Unfortunately it’s just me heading up there, but it’s going to be fun just the same. I get to visit my bestie, Kelly, and get to hug my friend, Colleen, as we pass each other in the Portland airport. Kelly and I are going to be driving around Maine capturing fall colors, looking for all things pumpkin-patch and cider, and putting together a plan to finish our Maine website.
We’ll be visiting Ogunquit, Bath and a few other fun towns, and hopefully working on recipes for potato donuts and some tasty Maine maple things. We’ll see how that goes…
Update on Politics
Politics this week are really taking care of themselves and I feel more confident than ever that anyone who was on the fence about voting for Kamala Harris has landed on the right side of history now. T45 is just showing everyday how much he could care less about actual human beings and that he mentally cannot be president again. Watch the Fox News clips and interviews. They are really fantastic examples of a sinking ship fighting for its life, and I am HERE FOR IT.
Keep having the awkward conversations and keep the dialog going. It’s still is important to make sure that the truth is known about how good the economy is doing, how important it is to take care of of fellow humans (immigrants and US citizens alike), and that healthcare is about more than an individual person’s religious beliefs. And it’s important the we get our friends and family to the polls or voting early!
That’s all for now. I hope everyone has a great week and that you all take a look at our Alaska project. Safe travels and stay healthy!
I like your approach to life. I don’t have a bucket list but I do have thoughts about where to wander. I would like to board the ferry in Bellingham and ride to the far end of the line, stay a few days and wander back. Your thoughts on where lingering would be entertaining would be appreciated.