Denali

Denali National Park is so incredible. Truly one of the gems of Alaska, and the world really. Where else can you find bears, wolves, caribou, dall sheep, and moose all together on the same beutiful playground overshadowed by a 20,320 ft mountain? I was worth the 8 hours spent on a bus with our kids to see all the amazing things we did. These are some of the photos from our trip with Terry, Lisa, Grandpa Ted and Grandma Jolene and Lori.

Grandma Million

This summer has been especially hard with the passing of my dear grandmother, Marilyn. She was always such a light to be around. She made those around her feel loved and spoiled her grandkids rotten, which made us love her all the more. She would always send me care packages in the mail, on birthdays, special occasions, all major and minor holidays and would call just to talk about the latest family gossip. She has always been a big presence in my life. She was at most of my birthdays, my baptism, my graduations, my wedding, she helped me with my baby twins when I was too sleep deprived to think and when I look back she was always there. She was a huge follower of the blog and would always call me to say that she had "saw that on the blog" and inquire about my life.

I had the opportunity of helping to care for and being with her for her in her last few days battling with cancer. It was a tender and memorable experience and she is greatly missed.

The Wig party

So after my grandmother passed away we started to count how many wigs she had collected. Turns out she had enough for everyone in our not-s0-small family to have one and take a few pictures. Now I know some of you may be thinking...how disrepectful....but you would have had to known my grandma and her sense of fun and humor, she would have laughed her head off during this photo shoot. I know this because I had taken this photo with my girls years before and she had laughed and laughed...


.....so to see the entire family smiling with her wigs and then thowing them in the air like graduation caps ( this looks like it is raining rodents), I'm pretty sure she couldn't help but chuckle from heaven.

Summer 2011

Pictures from our Alaskan adventures this summer.

Jed and I went dipnetting for our ten year anniversary. What else would two alaskans do for their aniversary besides jump in the ocean with big nets and haul in large amounts of salmon against the tide? It is hard to believe it has been 10 years but it has been great and I'm glad I have my handsome adventurer by my side.

No summer would be complete without hiking a few trails too. The girls loved playing with their cousin Liam and we went to arctic valley and thunderbird falls amongst other places.

We also enjoyed watching my sister Danielle finish the Crow Pass Crossing. A crazy mountain marathon that requires crossing a glacial fed river. My sister did awesome and passed up a lot of the men in the race. Truly amazing and it was fun to cheer for her at the finish line.

Utah July 2011

After leaving Spokane way back in the beginning of July, We went to Utah for a family reunion. We enjoyed playing with cousins, going to the zoo, going to a 4th of July parade and fireworks, and soaking up some warm southern Utah weather before going to the frozen northland.

August-September 2011 Sheep Hunt

So I'll interupt Melissa's regularly scheduled blog posts of flowers and pretty girls in dresses to bring you these highlights from my recent 2 week wilderness oddessy. She promises to be back later with lots of catch up posts/pictures.........till then enjoy

Moving Day

What a crazy week! I forgot how much I loathe the whole moving process. Jed has been working nonstop all month and that has left me with almost all of the work organizing and packing for our move. Then on the day of the move the utilites company makes this lovely hole in the bottom of our driveway. Actually they made 3 holes but I didn't get a picture of the other craters. We are glad we went with a moving company instead of a uhaul.

We are going to miss Spokane. We have had some great times and made great friends here. Hopefully we will get a few visitors when we get settled.

Let's hope we love Fairbanks because we have decided we never want to move again.