Dear Kids,
Today marks a week that we’ve been in Fairbanks. Ima and I really starting to fall in love with it here. I”m not sure you feel the same way…yet, but hopefully you will. It’s so beautiful and peaceful here. I could really see myself buying some land and building a little house on the far corner of a 10 acre plot. Granted, I respect the fact that it’s been 7 days that we’ve been here and in the middle of the summer.
Ok, so about the day. Today started out pretty much the same as the rest, I was up before the sun…OK not really as the sun never actually sets, but I was up around 430, and working at 5. I took a break around 7 to get you breakfast, make your lunches and take you to camp. It’s gotten much easier to drop you off and walk out now that SBK has settled into the routine.
After work, Ima and went to…yep, you guessed it, Walmart, this time to buy laundry detergent, envelopes, and reading glasses, and some other stuff. From there we headed over to Vip Dry Cleaners & Laundromat to do some laundry. Once our clothes were in the machines, we walked a few shops down to Tokyo Express for lunch. The restaurant was crazy. It was connected to a tobacco shop (Suzy’s Smokes and Gifts). You had to go through the shop to get to the bathrooms. For a sushi place in Fairbanks in a strip mall on the side of the road, it was pretty good sushi. We were the only people in the restaurant when we got there, but more people came in as we were finishing up.
Once the laundry was done, we started to head back to the house, but we stopped at LuLu’s Bread and Bagels first as we were told they had great bread, and we saw they sold challah on Fridays. Alas, by the time we got there they were sold out of challah (shocking that we wouldn’t get there in time, I know). It turned out that the store was closing that day for 3 weeks for renovations. As such, everything was on sale for ½ price, so we bought 2 sodas (Spindrift), a piece of banana bread, a piece of chocolate cake, and a baguette.
The woman whose house we’re staying at got us a gift card for a tea shop because she knew that I preferred tea over coffee. As luck would have it, Sipping Streams Tea Company was 2 doors down from LuLu’s Bread and Bagels, so we walked over to check it out. The young woman who helped us out was very kind and wanted to help, but she was very new and really didn’t know what she was doing at all. But, sine we were on vacation and had a gift card, we remained patient. While I was struggling to stay calm as I tried to buy some chai and some kind of fruity tea, Ima struck up a conversation with another customer. it turned out that woman was from West Virginia and lived in Richmond for a while, but she had been in Fairbanks for 19 years. Small world.
After picking the three of you up from camp, we headed over to Forget-Me-Not Books, a used book store that offers a free book to children on Fridays. SBE for some random reason, selected a book about spiders. I will NOT be reading that one to him at bedtime.
From the bookstore, we went to the Georgeson Botanical Garden and walked through the Babula Children’s Garden and on to the Levison’s Loop, a maze made of hedges. SBE and I made it safely through the maze I’m happy to report. Once Ima, SBR, and SBK joined us, we took some family pics as it was such a lovely view from the top of the hill where we were.
Finally, we headed back to the house for dinner…tortellini. After dinner, I was excited to try the new tea that I purchased from the aforementioned ill-trained employee. I was really excited to try the chai as it smelled particularly good and strong. Sadly, I think the young woman gave me something else entirely as what was supposed to be spicy chai wasn’t spicy at all and it had a strong orange flavor. Oh, well. At least it was free.
Love,
Aba
