~Bunk Room Addition~

I am so thankful to be able to be making a new Alaska Cabin building page!!! We've spent a lot of wonderful time at our cabin, but with our growing family we needed some improved sleeping arrangements!  The loft is just not feasible in the winter because we BAKE. It has to be over one hundred degrees up there, so we all have been crashing on the floor!

We are so blessed to have some of the sweetest life long friends in Anchorage! Our kids adore each other!

Let's see how many carts of building materials we need and how to load them all with three squirmy and excited kids!

The endless midnight sun is our friend other than super late bedtimes and sleeping in WAY too early.  Late arrival at the cabin didn't stop the early work day. Time to cut some trees to make room for the bunkroom!

There is something so sweet about teaching these kids the value of work and accomplishing tasks with your own hands. They all know their daddy and I built the cabin, but they don't understand the work involved. They were happy to help peel these logs that were in their prime for peeling. The bark was loose and pulled off just like a banana peel. It's the best time to peel logs in my opinion.

Funny I was the one who dug the holes for our original concrete piers! It's amazing to do work here again! We've had a few additions in mind, but decided the bunkroom will be the first. We don't need a ton of room, but the added sleep space will certainly be helpful!

This kid! He is five and LOVES to read. We bought 13 used Boxcar Children books before we left and he sailed threw them on on our trip. He plays hard, but then he picks up a book and will sit and sometimes read the whole thing in one sitting. I am so thankful he has found a love of books.

They are a crazy crew and they loved every moment of cabin time. I thought they might get a little bored since we weren't "playing" but they created their own play!

Luke loved helped Daddy screw in the joist hangers for the floor.

We have our floor footprint! That was the easy part. Now to figure out how to attach this into our not very square and level roofed cabin!

June in interior Alaska and we were hit with two 88 degree days! We were baking and sweaty from hauling materials into the cabin.  We found this patch of FREEZING water to cool and clean ourselves off with. It was the coldest water I've ever tried to wade into and swim. I finally gave up and just ran in as fast as I could, went under and ran out. The kids were much more resilient however.

Putting in the work day after day. We even had the kids carrying a 2x6 when they did trips with us. I think they now understand more the work that went into this cabin build in the first place.

The mosquitoes were wretched too!

The end of a long day of work...the end of lots of long days of work looked like this. We had burger and chicken burgers repeat repeat....and then played some games on a few nights.

This is how we do our laundry! It is SO dirty! The kids are constantly in the dirt all day and we are pretty dirty ourselves.  We used this old Wonder Wash years ago when we lived here for a summer. It is super helpful with all these little people clothes I have to keep up with now.

Painting on sheets of wood was a hit. Too bad the paint was water based and their works of art were washed away in a storm.

Just how dirty can she get?

This picture was taken at midnight. Our days were so long but I love the midnight sun!

One of the best unintentional selfies I've seen! I was looking through our pictures and cracked up when I saw this picture taken through the level of Aaron obviously working hard! :)

Making great progress before the weather dumped on us!

The forecast called for rain! It was not a joke. It rained constantly and hard for 24 hours. We were really bummed! We had nicely laid all our insulation in the floor before sheeting it, and when we saw water dripping thought we had to open up the floor to pull our insulation out and let dry for 3 days.  It was a set back and the day was miserable for Aaron. I stayed inside with the kids mostly and he worked tirelessly! Got the roof joist up, roof sheeted, and tar paper on the roof.

When Heidi slept, we all went in the rain! We were catching water for laundry! The kids didn't see the same gloom in the weather that we saw! They were thrilled to be living life at the cabin!

We make this small space work. We eat at our coffee table and sleep on the floor. I can't wait to have this bunk room finished!

And then the rain went away and the sun came back with normal Alaska temperatures! I adore this picture on the left. Aaron was telling Luke about all our hunting adventures over on yonder mountain! Someday I hope he can go on some similar adventures too!