Summer Solstice

Even with bad attitudes, a few tantrums, my sore muscles, and dragging feet, I persisted in getting my family to climb Flat Top - this beautiful peak viewable from our deck.  As you can see by these pictures, it was worth it!  Hence, our newly annual tradition for summer solstice has begun... 

Never say never

This is me doing a marathon I swore I would never do again!  What has this Alaskan air done to me?  

I could not have done it without these amazing women.  Hour upon hour of running and sweating together and we now know lots of deep dark secrets.  :)

Happy Moment!!  

And the best part was seeing my girls cheering me on.  David had to be out-of-town and my girls opted at getting up super early and hanging out all day with one of the dads just to be there at certain points along the way to give me 5.  Those 5's carried me to the finish!

I think my friend Cari summed it up best, "It's a beautiful pain!"  

Love this guy!

 

Happy Father's Day to one terrific dad!!!  You are loved!!!

View from a tent

Our first camping trip of the season...  and it wasn't in our backyard!  This is the picture I took from the tent.  Could it be any more beautiful?!?  This was a new kind of camping.  My friend Marianna and I had pretty much mastered the art of "car camping" but David had a whole new idea - "raft camping."  Everything we needed was packed up on our raft, we floated down the river for a few hours, found a beach, and camped.  No fees, no neighbors, and unfortunately no blow up air mattresses either.  But it was amazing.

Camping Part II

This is clamming.  Low tides created this mud haven and my kids thought they had died and gone to heaven.  David actually caught a few of those suckers (apparently it was harder than it looks as those veterans around us were catching more than a few...) and had a delicious dinner of fried clams tonight. 

Buddy

Everybody should have a buddy like this...

Color

While dandelions may be noxious weeds to some, we are thrilled to see color!  Our world has changed from white to green.  Skyla has been making necklaces, collars, rings, crowns, and bouquets out of these gems of color.  Good thing we have no short supply of them!

Pet Shop

I LOVE that my girls still play together like this.  It's becoming more rare with Sierra becoming a pre-teen, which made this even more special.  They worked so hard and made the cutest pet store ever!  Karsten was their best customer and when he ran out of money, they had him working for them.  Even Aspen got to play.  (She's in the "nursery" nursing her many "pups".) 

"I can't sleep!"

We've got some sleeping issues around here.  Namely, the sun is shining in the kids' room around 10:00pm when we're trying to get the kids to bed (as evidenced in the first picture.)  Skyla's moved her bed to the floor behind her bed where it's a little darker, but it's not helping.  I can't bear to put tin foil on the windows though or add ugly dark curtains...  We had darkness for so long so we're loving all the light!  It's just making bed time a little tricky... 

Twilight Run

Is there anything I won't like if it has the word Twilight in it?!  This is the Twilight 12K.  And no, aside from the name (and the fact we were running at 7pm) it had nothing to do with Twilight.  It was my first race in almost 2 years and it was awesome!  Can I just say how great it was to only have to run 7.6 miles?  In two weeks is my marathon so I love that it's time to taper!  AND there was free pizza after the race.  It doesn't get much better...

Maiden Voyage

 

Memorial Day brought blue skies and an empty Kenai River which created perfect conditions for our maiden voyage of the U.S.S. Dave raft (it has yet to be named...).  The Kenai river is one of the most famous rivers in Alaska and there are some mighty big fish that come out of its' waters.  However, no fishing allowed yet means we had the river to ourselves!  How ironic that we got a picture of when I was doing the steering since that didn't last very long.  Let me just say it is harder than it looks!  Our good friend Becky joined us and we had so much fun. We were so proud to have actually assisted in getting the raft out of the water.  Yeah, we're tough.  Thanks Capt. Dave for a fabulous day!

Dinner at Becky's

This is our friend Becky who "claims" that she doesn't cook.  She invited us over for dinner.  There were five varieties of quiche, all homemade.  And sundaes for dessert.  My kids were hoping it was a sleep-over.  Thank you Becky for a fabulous dinner!!! 


This was after our 3 mile hike.  Good times!