Alaska 2014 - Eklutna Lake

July 2

Chad had the day off July 2nd and joined us for a Kayaking adventure on Eklutna Lake.  It's a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains.  We rented 3 Kayaks for $35 a piece and headed out on the water in pairs or threesomes.

I stayed behind the first time and watched the kiddos who didn't want to go or couldn't fit in the first round.  Cooper liked to try out all the seats of the Kayaks on the shore.

Later, I swapped Grandma to go out with William.  After that I took Anna for a little while.  We all had a wonderful time.

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.

Rainforest Cafe, May 3, 2011

 

We ate dinner on the 3rd at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. We spent our wait time until we could be seated buying souvenirs. I took Anna and Becca and they each chose a polly pocket set. Anna's was Mulan and Becca got Minnie Mouse. I didn't even know there was a Polly-style Minnie Mouse! Very cute!

The kids were really cute at dinner. They had a great time being together through the vacation. I'm glad they were able to get to know each other better!

 

Anna and Preston like to be together.

 

Anna and Abby are both excellent face-makers.

Disney's Animal Kingdom, May 3, 2011

Our last day at the Disney parks was spent at Disney's Animal Kingdom. There were a lot of neat things to see - lots of animals especially.

 

Our first ride was the Triceratop spin. The kids like it because it wasn't scary at all. And the first time around the love bugs weren't too dense. We rode again later and they were swarming the ride. I guess they really like green dinosaurs.

After the first spin on the Triceratops, the kids checked into the Boneyard play area. They climbed things, did slides, and dug dinosaur bones in a shaded digging pit rigged with plenty of fans. They were quite comfortable. The adults who felt inclined when for a spin, or 5, on Expedition Everest. I learned there that I do actually enjoy roller coasters as long as I'm on them with other people who enjoy them instead of terrified children.

 

After watching the Nemo show, we ate our lunch together as a family in one of the eating areas. There was a mom and her babies ducks wandering under the tables and other larger birds walking around. They have no fear of Disney patrons.

 

After taking a stroll through the Jungle Walk, we headed en masse to the Kali River Rapids. We had fastpasses and broke into a few groups to go through. I sat with Anna in our raft and the two of us got completely soaked. William went twice because it didn't soak him.


We saw the afternoon parade. There were tons of cool floats. And when Becca saw Mickey or Minnie she said, "Look, it's my friend!" She was very excited.

The highlight of the day was the Lion King show. The kids LOVED it. It was very neat with the acrobats and dancers.

Epcot, May 2, 2011

 

We arrived at Epcot just in time to head to Italy for lunch with the family. We ate at a nice restaurant and lunch was pretty good. Becca especially loved having her Grandma close by.

 

After lunch, we hit the Test Track. Kip joined Jenny, Tyler and their older boys to do the car-ride. I took Preston, our kids, and Max and Abby so Angie, Chad, Grandma and Tasha could do Soarin'. We went to the fairy park and enjoyed the play structure.

 

Next, we handed off the kids young kids to Chad and Angie and Kip and I took William, Preston, Anna, and Abby on Soarin'. We followed by meeting back with Chad and co to do their 3rd round of Nemo in a row. Wahoo!

 

 

We cooled off in the afternoon with a nice boat ride in Mexico and then ate dinner there.

 

Before the fireworks, Kip took William on a secret Kim Possible mission while I took the kids around to color their bears in the different countries. William thought the Kim Possible mission was the best thing all day. The girls were thrilled to get to color with markers. It was all good. And the fireworks were pretty amazing. I decided Epcot was my favorite park. It doesn't have the thrill rides and kid rides of Magic Kingdom, but the things to see are really neat and the little acitivities like Kip Possible and country treasure hunts are really fun. We hardly touched the options available to us. I'd like to have done another day there.

Magic Kingdom, 2011

 

I spent the night before our Magic Kingdom visit planning what things I wanted to do with the kids. When we arrived, we headed straight for Fantasyland and started the fun. Kip took William and cousin Preston to do their first rides and I took the girls on Small World. They both enjoyed it, in spite of Becca's nervousness in the line.

 

After Tea Cups and the Carousel (a major hit), we watched Mickey's Philharmagic. Yet again, it was too scary for Becca. Why do they have to make everything scary? If they kept these shows simple and didn't throw in all the drama and bad-guys my kids would like them a lot more.

 

We finished Fantasyland with a final round of Tea Cups. I did the super-spinny cup with William, Anna, and Preston (whom we adopted for the day), while Kip did the slower, gentler cup with Becca. We met the cousins and did a kid trade-off for Space Mountain and I realized that I actually do kind of like rollercoasters.

 

After lunch in Tomorrowland and a ride on the magic carpets, we headed to the Buzz Lightyear ride with the rest of the family. While Kip and I rode Splash Mountain on our fastpasses later that day, Uncle Tyler talked William into riding Thunder Mountain Railroad for a dollar. He almost enjoyed it--he said it got scary in the middle when it was dark.

 

The girls loved all the princessy things to see and were especially cute at this little sitting spot outside the castle.


We ended up leaving at 8:30, just before the night's parade. The kids were tired and I was satisfied that I had done all the things I really wanted to do.

Thanksgiving in Utah

We started our drive to Utah on the 19th of November. We drove all evening and stopped in eastern Oregon at midnight. We found a hotel and settled in for the night. The next morning we slept in then headed off on the second leg of our drive. We got to Kaysville that evening, just in time to soak in the parent's spa before heading to bed. We spent a quiet Sunday there and on Monday headed to the Children's Musuem at the Gateway to spend some time with Kip's mom. We all had a great time.



On Tuesday the rest of the family arrived in Utah - Aunt Robin and her kids, and Aunt Wendy and Uncle Willem and their reformed stray dog. Plus, we had a 'blizzard.' At least, that's what the news predicted it to be. In the end only 3 inches of snow fell and it wasn't that terrible.



We did another trip to the Children's Museum on Wednesday. Uncle Craig met us there with his two older kids.



Thanksgiving day went well, with a lot of good food in spite of my random dietary restrictions. The GF pie crust was wonderful, if you wanted something as a cement substitute. The insides of the pies were still good without it.

Legoland

On June 26th we headed to Legoland. William is an absolute Lego fanatic and couldn't spend enough time at Legoland. It's actually my favorite theme park, too. It's more about the creativity-factor than the thrill-factor, and that's more my style. I'm not fond of being scared and I'm afraid of heights, so little cute lego-themed rides and attractions are just right for me. Our group included Grandma Dianne, Cory and Ang Killpack and their kids - Jovin, Mayer, Pearce, and Tjay - and, of course, our family.

 

Kip followed the smart-amusement-park-goer rule to head straight to the back of the park and work to the front, so we started with the driving courses.

 

William still had a long wait for the older-kid course, but the young drivers got to go right away.

 

Becca rode the helicopter ride while waiting for William to finish his drive.


We rented strollers so that 6 of the 7 kids could ride through the park. Of course, that meant that 4 of the 5 adults in our party had to push. But it was tons better than carrying or dragging tired kids around for mile after mile.


At the end of the day, the kids hung out in Duplo Land and Becca and Pearce managed to get pretty wet.

San Diego - Seaworld

 

After school got out for the summer, we hopped on a plane and headed to San Diego to visit Kip's brother and his family who were temporarily living there. We spent our first day there at Seaworld. For some reason we didn't think about sunblock until we arrived at the park. I had a sample pack with me and covered parts of myself and the kids. We all ended up with areas of sunburn, except Kip who had passed up on the sunblock and was fried. We went to a Shamu show and walked around to see some of the animals. The kids really enjoyed it, once I bought William some sunglasses.