It was a long, busy, and pretty boring fall semester. At the end of August, my main man ruptured his ACL in a fishing accident (only in Alaska!) and has been functionally out of commission since then throughout the injury, surgery, and recovery periods. That really cut out our plans for fall weekend adventures, and weekdays were impossible to squeeze any extra minutes out of. With my new job at a new school farther from home, I have a substantial commute. Add on two busy little boys and a commitment to whole foods cooking, and each weekday feels done before it’s over.

But enough of being a bummer! 2015 is already looking up. John’s ACL recovery is progressing well through PT and trips to the gym with his exclusive and private personal trainer (moi). With the baby getting older (14 months and he finally walked a little on Friday!), we’re hoping for a little bit more opportunity to camp, fish, and adventure this year. I barely made a dent in my 2014 checklist, so I’m just going to roll it over. We’re also investigating options to improve our life/work ratios; the most viable choice being moving closer to work. Maybe I’ll even be a bike commuter soon! The gold standard option, of course, is making life = work, but we’re not quite there yet.

As a nice transition to the new year, we had a great reprieve from routine over winter break with a week long trip back to California. The little boys and I followed that up with a week of getting outside back in AK during a stretch of mild weather. Here are a few shots from those weeks: