Alaska 2014 - Eagle River Nature Center

July 1

Kip thought this would be a good summer to visit Alaska.  If you're wanting to go, doing it when you have family living there makes it more affordable and gives you an inside connection when choosing touristy activities.  So we flew up June 30 and spent the Independence day week with Chad and Angie.

There's a nature park not far from Chad and Angie's.  We dragged the kids out there in the drizzling rain Tuesday afternoon.  It was an absolutely beautiful place.  The wildflowers in this state are amazing! I couldn't keep from taking picture after picture.

It was a great place for a walk.

Hollywood Studios, April 30th, 2011

 

On the 1st day of our 4-day pass, we all went to Hollywood Studios. We headed to the reputed best ride there first, Toy Story Mania. The wait was about 40 minutes and Becca for some reason was not at all happy about being in line. She must have had some bad memories from our visits to theme parks in previous years because she just didn't want to do the ride.

 

Abby and Anna weren't at all worried about it.

 

And even Max held up OK. But Becca hated the line and hated the ride. The rest of us thought it was pretty fun. We enjoyed shooting up the targets and spinning to the next area. Becca wanted nothing to do with any other rides after that. So we dragged her into the Little Mermaid show. She hated that too. Too dark and too much time spent on the Sea Witch. She wasn't very impressed with the whole theme park idea. All our kids voted to just head back to the hotel at that point and we finally gave in and did it.

Florida, April 29th, 2011

The Killpack family reunion for 2011 was a trip to Disney World in Orlando. We decided to try out the option of taking a red-eye and getting there with time to settle in before our first day of hitting the park. We put the kids to bed at 8pm then went in and woke them up at 11 to head to the airport for our 1am flight. The goal was for them to stay drowsy on the way and to fall back asleep in flight. It didn't happen. All three kids were too wired on the first flight to sleep much. And Kip and I couldn't get comfortable. The second flight, the kids may have slept a little. I was too tired to stay awake, so I'm not sure. In any case, by the time we reached Orlando, got in a line for a bus to the hotel, waited for our room to be ready and finally got inside, we were all exhausted.

 

We all took about 2 hours of a nap piled on top of the covers because it was just too much work to even pull them down.

 

When we woke up Chad, Angie, Abby, and Max had arrived from Ft Lauderdale and Grandma and Tasha had gotten there from Utah. We all got on another Disney bus and headed to Downtown Disney, ready for the fun to begin.

 

The kids begged me to let them ride the carousel. At $2 a piece, I didn't want to do it, but I folded. So they got one ride. But no more!

 

Cousin Time

We're really enjoying the opportunity to spend time with Uncle Chad, Aunt Angie and Cousin Abby. The kids enjoy playing with Abby and want her to come along on all the activities we do. Here, we're enjoying dinner at the Floridian after a boat tour of the New River through downtown Ft Lauderdale.


They're really working on getting Abby to make funny faces. Anna really has hers down.


Uncle Chad, Becca and Kip like to hang out in Chad's kitchen.

Disney

Grandma came to Florida to join us and we all went to DisneyWorld Saturday the 13th and again on Tuesday the 16th. Lines were a little worse than at Universal and SeaWorld, but not as bad as I expected. Of course, we only rode kid-friendly rides, so things may have been worse on rides popular with older people. The weather was hot, but we generally stayed in the shade. I was surprised that Disney didn't have many fans. Universal and SeaWorld had fans with water-misters that were incredibly refreshing. There weren't anything like that at Disney. If you were lucky, you waited in line for 30-60 minutes in the shade. If not, you were in the sun. No fans. I thought that was a little lame. If the other parks provided fans and sometimes even TV's, why did Disney just make you stand in the hot sun?


But enough complaining. It really was fun. We forced the kids to do the Peter Pan ride. They ended up kind of liking it. Then we rewarded them with the Small World ride. They loved that. Anna liked the Dumbo ride, but the line was the worst of our whole trip. At least an hour long with no fans and no shade for the last 15 minutes. I almost got Anna through the line to meet the princesses, but when I refused to hold her for the 15 minute wait, she decided she didn't want to see the princesses after all.


We went to Epcot on Tuesday. It was fun. We went to the funny show and Kip got to be part of it - putting hook&loop diapers on dollies. He did great. The kids liked the Nemo ride. They had to be forced to leave the aquarium at the end.

Universal with Abby

Uncle Chad, Aunt Angie, and cousin Abby joined us at Universal on Friday June 12th. Becca puked on the way to the park, so I took her home to chill for the day, but the others had a ton of fun riding the rides at Universal Islands of Adventure.

Reunion in Utah - Playground and Temple

On Sunday we went to church and relaxed at the condo. The kids had a blast at the play area outside our unit.




On Monday we went to the St. George Temple and had a picnic. The kids really liked the visitor's center. It was very peaceful there.




On Tuesday, we headed back up to Kaysville for dinner with the Parkers. On Wednesday, we packed back into the car and drove 13 hours back to Oregon. We were sad to leave all our family behind, but very happy to be back in our own house and get the kids back to school.

Reunion in Utah - Snow Canyon

On Saturday April 25th, our first full day of reunion, we headed to beautiful Snow Canyon. The red rocks and sand were stunning. The kids had a blast playing at the red sand dunes.




Kip took William with Grandma, Chad, Angie and Abby on a hike of the Butterfly trail. They had a great time walking and shooting immaginary aliens per William's request.