Leaving Alaska in July-1

Well, our family’s grown a tad since I’ve written a post 😄. Now theres six of us! Atlee (8), Melozi (6), Yukla (3), and Eska (5mo). It makes me teary eyed thinking about all that has happened since I stopped blogging, so much good, happy, hard, and pretty much every emotion in between, but I won’t get into that at the moment.

When Eska, our newest addition to the family, arrived we knew we wanted her to meet her Great Grandparents (my Mom’s parents”) that live in Wisconsin. They had made the trip up to Alaska for every new addition to our family (it still impresses me that they traveled to Alaska multiple times in their 80’s). This time it was our turn to head their way for the introduction. When I found out my cousin, who was living in Japan, was returning to Wisconsin with his wife and newborn in July I figured that would be an ideal time to make the trip. Ideal in the sense that we could see their family and introduce Eska to my Grandparents in one trip, not ideal in the sense that we would be leaving Alaska in the summer and going to the hot mid-west. When I mentioned this idea to Woodsen, he heard the words “Wisconsin” and “end of July” and he immediately replied “great we can fly to the Oshkosh fly-in”.

In the last 8 years we’ve left Alaska as a family twice.

When I realized this it shocked me a bit knowing how Woodsen and I hd the travel bug in our younger years and got a bit antsy unless we had a booked trip somewhere out of the country. One of those two trips out of Alaska was just last year when we left Alaska in July to go to Oshkosh for the well known Oshkosh fly in, then drove to Missouri for a family reunion. I love airplanes and it was quite the experience to go to Oshkosh, but the combination of heat, people, and my three melting children had me convinced I had been there done that and I had no desire to do it again.

When Woodsen mentioned going to Oshkosh AGAIN, I reminded him we had already crossed Oshkosh of the list of things to do. He agreed, then added “but we haven’t flown to Oshkosh”. 😳 What? That’s a thing? Well I know thats a thing, I saw the thousands of planes people flew there, but maybe the questions I meant to ask was “thats really something we want to do?” I remember walking around in the heat and seeing all the tents pitched under the wings of airplanes and thinking “that looks miserable”! Never say never I tell ya, the things I swear I will never do are the things that I end up doing.

So here we are, its July 10th, which is also Melozi’s 6th Birthday and we are starting our trip South in our airplane down the coast of Alaska to Washington, then across the U.S to Wisconsin… with four kids.

Pray for me! 🫠

As I was saying my Goodbyes to friends, a friend encouraged me with a qoute “ The difference between an ordeal and an adventure is your attitude”. I’m keeping that thought close by on this trip to hopefully help me maintain a good attitude 😄

I haven’t even asked how many total hours of flying it will take to get to Wisconsin and back (ignorance is bliss.. sometimes), but I knew I wanted to break up the flight time as much as possible. With that in my mind and weather on Woodsen’s mind, we decided to head out on the 10th, with the plan to get to Wisconsin on the 19th our 20th.

We left Wasilla, Alaska in the afternoon and headed south for Yakutat and the Little Italio cabin. We’ve enjoyed visiting the cabin most summers since Woodsen and I got married.

With a July Birthday, we’ve made a tradition of having “adventure birthday’s” for Melozi. If I’m honest it boils down to the fact that I’m not a big fan of hosting kid birthday parties, and we’re often out and about during the summer anyways. So like it or not, Melozi gets adventure birthdays.

At her request she decorated her cake in the morning, then we packed party supplies, a cake, piñata, and her favorite meal at the moment —mac n cheese and hot dogs.

We fed them cake and dinner (in that order 😄), let them swing a stick at a ridiculously small, but also airplane packing friendly piñata, then sent them to bed.

Happy Birthday Melozi!