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.

Work Party, Aug 3, 2010

Kip's work reserved Rood Bridge Park in Hillsboro--complete with bounce-houses, balloon artists and food. We arrived later than we wanted to but had a great time and got to see some old friends. the kids enjoyed playing and eating.

 

Becca loves her Dad.

 

Anna loves her Mom.

 

 

Springtime Family Pics

 

We took advantage of the sunshine after stake conference today to take some pictures of the kids outside. The girls were wearing their blue dresses from Aunt Wendy in Pakistan and they looked very cute. They tried to be cooperative for the pics, and a few of them turned out really nice.

 

We had to bribe Anna to wear this dress. She had a hard time with it because there is not any pink on it at all. With the promise of candy, she was won over. Come to think of it, I haven't carried through with that promise yet. We kept putting it off because she needed to eat healthy food first.

 

I was really glad she broke down and wore the blue dress. The girls looked super cute and they always get a lot of compliments when they wear matching outfits at church. Even if Becca's shoes are on the wrong feet and her hair is uncontrollable.

 

William took this picture. He does a good job with his pictures but he never thinks to warn people that he's about to take a picture of them. He just shoots when he wants, so we're not all ready.

Bahamas Cruise

We decided right at the end of our stay that we wanted to take a cruise to the Bahamas. There is a cruise ship that leaves from Ft Lauderdale every day and does a five hour trip out to Grand Bahama Island. There, you can do a quick tour and return on the ship for another 5 hours, or you can stay at a hotel for any number of nights and go back another day. We opted to spend one night and left on Thursday July 9th returning the 10th.



The boat ride out to the Bahamas was pleasant. We left the house at 5:30 am to make it to the boat around 6. We enjoyed a buffet breakfast (included in the ticket price) after the ship left dock and then William, Anna and I napped in the cabin we had reserved. It was a tight fit, but we snuggled up just fine. Kip and Becca ended up napping on a deck under the lifeboats. We got to the Bahamas in the early afternoon and headed to the hotel. It was a beautiful hotel and we had two rooms connected, unfortunately not facing the ocean. The hotel pool was gorgeous with an aquaduct-like construction going over that spouted waterfalls in several place. The ocean water at the beach outside the hotel was amazingly blue and clear. I wished we could have had more time so we could have gone out to the coral reefs in a glass-bottom boat.




We took the boat back the next day - Friday. After going through the security and getting in line to have our tickets and passports checked, we realized that Becca's "loving blanket" was not in any of our luggage. This was a disaster. She adores that blanket and can't sleep without it. I asked one of the security workers if we had time to go back to the hotel for it. He said no and suggested we use the phone in the main office to call the hotel for it. Kip went up to the main office and started the calling. In the end, it was decided that we would have the hotel staff give it to a taxi driver and have him drive it to the dock where we would be waiting to pay him for his delivery. It cost us $25 to have this done and he arrived just as the lady in charge of loading was about to tell us we were out of time and had to get on the ship. (All five of us in a taxi from the dock to the hotel had cost $25, so that blanket was an expensive passenger.) It was worth it. Becca took a nap as soon as we got onboard and found our cabin.


On this trip, Becca napped first with Kip while the kids and I lounged and toured the ship. Then we all had our buffet dinner (really good pasta and bread) and I took William and Anna to the cabin for bed. Eventually Kip and Becca joined us back in there and we learned that 4 out of 5 of us could fit in the little beds.

Reunion in Utah - the trip down

We drove to Utah last week. We headed from Beaverton, Oregon all the way to St George, a total of 1,080 miles according to Google Maps. It was a lot of time in the car.


On the way down we stopped at the Parker parent's house. The kids got some time with the dog and didn't do too bad with her.


Between Kaysville and St George, we stopped the the Dinosaur museum. It had a lot of neat things. The kids wished we could have spent longer.

Grandma and Tasha's Visit - Zoo Lights

We waited until Friday night, the 28th of December, to visit the Zoo Lights because it wasn't supposed to rain as much then. It was very cold, but it didn't rain during the first part of our tour. We appreciated that.

We all enjoyed a ride on the zoo train.

And the lights really were very pretty.

Grandma was helpful and pushed Anna in our friend's stroller when their little boy didn't want to be in it.

And here's the family on the way out next to the "Bremen Town Musicians". Anna may be crying in this picture...

We really enjoyed having Grandma and Aunt Tasha with us. We hope they can come again!

Grandma and Tasha's Visit - the Children's Museum

The second day of their visit (December 27th), we took Tasha and Grandma to the Chrildren's Museum. Anna wasn't very thrilled with her penguin costume.

Kip, on the other hand, really got into the raccoon puppets.

Using our height and number advantage, we managed to build a complete foam block archway - which promptly fell down. But we heard from some other museum attendees that no one else had been able to do it at all, so we felt better.

And Grandma and William had fun building earthquake-proof block structures together.

Grandma and Tasha's Visit - at home

We were all excited to have Grandma and Aunt Tasha visit after Christmas. Anna was thrilled to get yet another pink dress AND a pink dress-up princess dress!

William was thrilled to show Grandma how much he loves playing the Game Cube games she sent him.

Everyone enjoyed playing Hullabaloo together.

And Kristin may someday forgive Grandma for taking her picture while super prego. Luckily, it only shows her from the front!