Grandpas and Grandmas Galore

We've been blessed to spend lots of time with lots of different grandpas and grandmas (and there's still more to see). After church this morning, we had lunch at Grandpa and Grandma Phelps' house with Grandpa Great and Grandma Great. (These are my mom's parents in case you were wondering.) This is our lunch group minus the photographer, Shawn.
Here's Isaac with Grandpa Great. We always get great pictures of Grandpa with our babies.

Grandpa Great and Grandma Great with their two great grandkids. And everyone in this picture really is great!

After lunch we took a drive up to Lost Lake. The campground is still closed because there's too much snow. But the cabin area is open and we've reserved one night in a cabin for later this week when Eric and Shannon's family gets here.
This is Carly on the pedestrian bridge on the side of the lake.

Looking for fish over the side of the bridge. Check out grumpy pants on my back! Someone didn't want to get up quite yet.

The four of us at Lost Lake.

On the drive back we stopped so Isaac could eat. Everyone else got out of the car and watched a thunderstorm off in the distance. Here's Carly and Grandma Phelps during the viewing.

The peak of Mt Hood getting slightly clouded from the nearby storms.

Watering Flowers

Carly and Grandma watering the flowers in the backyard yesterday.

JNU to SEA to PDX

Hello, all!

The kids and I made it safe and sound to Portland, Oregon last night. I had a couple of great fliers too, so that made it even better. Carly had a great time playing in the play area at the Seattle airport and Isaac enjoyed the freedom of the open floor.

We are here for a few days until Shawn meets up with us. Then we'll all be in Hood River for a few more days. After Shawn returns to Juneau, I'll stay behind with the kids for a few weeks for plenty of cousin and grandparent time. Besides who wouldn't want to travel with two kids by themselves. Two adults for two kids just takes all the fun out of it!

Here's Carly playing like a monkey and loving every minute of it!

Isaac enjoying the freedom of the playroom floor an a rice cracker.
Today at lunch Carly was a great eater, but Grandpa decided to help her finish her jello since she was getting full. He swung it around in proper airplane fashion. Carly gave a silly face which made everyone laugh. This only encouraged her, so I had plenty of time to get the camera and snap some pics while she entertained her audience.


Isaac eating his lunch. (I realized the only pictures of him on this post are of him eating, but he's done plenty more than that. That's just the best time to take his picture--he's cotent and not demanding me to hold him.)

Something Fishy

This past weekend I (Shawn) had the opportunity to go fishing with some guys from work. We headed out early Saturday morning.

My Sergeant's father has a house in Tenakee Springs, AK. It is a small village about a 2 1/2 hour boat ride away. The town has a line of houses on the beach, a 4 wheeler path behind them and a line of houses on the uphill side. It is very remote and you can only get there by float plane or boat. Not many live there. There are a lot deer and very high concentration of brown bears.

After we got off work at 4 AM, three of us loaded some things up and shipped off for Tenakee for a little R&R and hopefully some fish.

This is Tenakee Inlet. It is a large deep inlet with water depths reaching 800 ft.

Here is a good view of the town. Primarily a retirement community, it's population is around 100, although far fewer than that live there year round.
Roughing it here for a few days.
Another view of town.
While trying our luck at fishing, I felt a tap tap tap of a fish 200 ft. below. I set the hook, and started reeling in. All the sudden the fish gave a big tug and I thought I was going to get pulled in.
I braced myself after the initial shocking tug and the fight was on!

After stripping my line a few times and running back towards the bottom, I finally got him to the top.
The beast measured 63 inches. That is a 127.5 pound Halibut. We caught a few others, but this was definitely the biggest. He even bent my hook! It was a great trip. We had a good time. Hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Another Dunking and a Field Exploration

This morning, we had a reason to rejoice with the angels in heaven. Brittany, one of the teens at church, decided to be baptized after morning services. I'm not sure when she decided to do this, but she and her family were ready this morning. I wish I had known and I would have brought my camera, but I bummed some pictures off of Bruce, our preacher.
This is Brittany and her dad, Don, who was getting choked up just before baptizing his oldest child. There were several sympathetic criers looking on as well, including myself.
This is Jenny, Brittany, me, and Kinsey. The three of us were congratulating Brittany on her amazing and wonderful decision. I realized later that my pink sweater must be some kind of "lucky sweater", because I was wearing it two weeks ago at Kinsey's baptism.

On Saturday....

The rainy morning and early afternoon, broke up for a nice evening. So the kids and I took a walk after dinner. Most of you probably don't know that I'm in the midst of taking an online class in Alaska studies. It's required for my teaching certificate and my ongoing certificate transition saga. (It feels like my certificate has been in a constant state of transition since I got it eight years ago.) Anyway, as a part of my class, I've been learning about the different regions of Alaska and the common plants, animals, and landforms in those regions. Being that I live in SE Alaska, that's been my focus. As a part of my latest assignment, I had to take a field exploration with a focus on noticing something new, and then sending in a summary.

So since the weather cleared up nicely, we walked to the glacier. I was surprised at how many new things I actually noticed. Especially considering that we walk this path all the time. Anyway, here are a few pictures from our walk/exploration. I'm not sure why my camera put a weird bar on the side/bottom of a few of these pictures. I was using our small camera that Shawn and I both abhor.

Glacier and Nugget Falls from the photo point.
There were four eagles on the beach by the falls.
Thanks to some tourists from Eagle River, AK I was able to see them through some binocs.

Lupines in bloom...my favorite.

Church Camping Retreat

As promised, here are some pictures from our church camping retreat this last weekend. We really didn't take all that many pictures. Mostly because I was usually holding a baby, so it was a little hard to juggle a camera too. The retreat was at Eagle Beach Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But we weren't able to be there until Saturday afternoon and then we went back home early Sunday morning to get cleaned up for church. Shawn had to work night shift on Saturday, so I was in the tent with kids by myself. It wasn't too bad, they actually slept pretty well and we didn't have to make any trips to the outhouse in the middle of the night.
Here's the view from our camping area of Eagle Beach. There are a lot of bears in this area, but we didn't see any while we were there.

On Saturday afternoon, we took a short hike led by mountain man, Chris. I must say, I did learn a few new things thanks to him.

Isaac is almost asleep for the hike.

A little blurry (cause we were walking so fast!), but here is Janet C and me on the trail.

When we got back from the hike this is what the kids were doing. (Don't worry we didn't leave Carly with a gang of kids while we were on our hike. There were several adults who didn't go.) Anyway, they were having a little grapefruit juice party under this tarp because it had started raining lightly.

Carly found a new love--wagons! This is her with Justus and Lexi playing with the wagon at the campground. It was endless fun for them, but Justus did get a little tired of pulling after a while.

So Much to Post

And so little time.
I took a ton of pictures today--literally, I took 107! So, if you haven't guessed already, we had some nice weather today (and yesterday too actually). So here's a quick recap of our fun and jam packed day.
Shawn and Carly camped out in the backyard last night. We had the tent out from the church camping retreat over the weekend (I'll be posting those pictures eventually) and it was good weather. I kind of wimped out though because Isaac hadn't slept well the previous two nights and I wanted to increase my chances of a better night's sleep. So they had a little father-daughter camping trip. By the way, Isaac slept better, but not wonderfully. Some nights we're lucky and some nights we're not.

Then today we walked to Rotary Park--known in our house as the duck pond. It took about 40 minutes. I also took my pedometer and it was 1.33 miles (one way) and 4,999 steps. So I walked over 10,000 steps today! Yea! We also met Lela, Beth, and their kids at the park. The three toddlers/preschoolers had a great time. Here's Carly and Morgan swinging.

Carly, Justus, and Morgan feeding the ducks. This was the first time all season that the ducks were actually hungry for our bread. And we probably had the least amount of bread with us this time.

Isaac, me, Lela, and Matthias--what's wrong with my kid!?

Beth and Mattie

Isaac watching the ducks (with Lela's foot acting as a block just in case he decided to take a head dive)

The three babes--Mattie (14 mo.), Isaac (8 mo.), and Matthias (almost 1).
Isaac is also the heavyweight of the three. He's already 20 lbs (at 6 1/2 mo.--he's 8 mo. now) and the other two haven't gotten to 20 yet...lightweights!

On our walk back home, Carly wanted to pick some flowers on the edge of the sidewalk and before I knew it, she was wanting to pick and blow the seeds from a dandelion. So I grabbed the camera and started snapping. These are a few of my favorite ones.


After we got back home, I got out our wagon from the shop. I hadn't ever gotten it out yet, and I learned over the weekend that Carly is really into wagons right now. She thought it was great. I pulled both kids around for a little bit. Later Carly was bummed that I was busy with Isaac and couldn't pull her some more. So I suggested that she get her baby doll and pull her around. She thought that was a pretty good idea and played happily with that. After Isaac didn't need me, I had Carly pull her baby doll again for a little photo re-enactment.