This week at out house.

Here are a few happenings from around here this week -

Nick, Drew and his little fish friend, and Grant after their little fishing trip. That's a grayling Drew is holding. He was pretty excited about it. I wish I knew where that thing is right now.....

Heidi with her saxophone. Mrs. Cheri (Brownwood) Weed is starting a band for the kids this year at school. So after much consideration, Heidi chose an alto sax to play, and we rented one from a local music store. She is pretty excited about it. Katie has decided she would like to learn the clarinet and my Mom is letting us have her's. Katie won't be able to play in the band this semester or maybe even this year but she can practice and learn now and then maybe she can play next semester or next year.

And finally, we lit a very huge brush pile Friday. The kids and Andrew played frisbee while it was burning. Everything was all fun and games until the frisbee went in the fire. :) This picture was taken from off of our deck. The kids had so much fun.

McCarthy - Kennecott, Alaska

Well, we had a wonderful weekend. Andrew took Thursday, Friday and Saturday off... he always has Sunday off, and we went camping. Last year after we left Valdez, we stopped overnight at Chitina and camped out. Since then we decided we must do it again, so Thursday night we went to Chitina and found a campsite, set up our tents, ate cold fried chicken and potato salad, played ball with the kids, watched two huge eagles fly around, made smores and went to bed. (Let me tell you... the hard ground is not your friend at 41 yrs old)

Friday morning we headed back further towards McCarthy, Alaska. We took our time since we couldn't check into our cabin until 3pm. We stopped a few times to let the boys fish. They caught some grayling in Long Lake. The road could only be traveled at 35mph - at the fastest - most of the time we were going 25mph. Then with all the fishing we didn't get to McCarthy til about 5pm.
This is a picture of Andrew and the twins coming back from the lake (in the background) in which we fished. Notice the large rifle being carried over Andrew's shoulder.... that is for protection from large animals that roar, in case you didn't know.

This is a freaky, one lane bridge we had to cross. The gorge below had to be at least 200 feet deep, and I am not a good "guesser" when it comes to depth. Andrew may say it was alot deeper. The next picture is the bottom of the gorge but you are having to look through the rails of the bridge so it is kind of hard to see.

Drew being silly with one of the fish he caught.

Kennecott has to be one of the most interesting places here on earth. Behind us is the tallest wooden structure in North America. They say it is fourteen stories tall, but I was sure I counted more than that. Nonetheless, it is a massive structure built in 1911 (if I remember correctly) and it mined copper. As you can see, it is built into the side of the mountain. This little town, is so quaint and interesting we actually looked to see if there were any houses for sale... not to live here year round but to have to rent out during tourist season and to use every once in a while for ourselves.

God gave us a beautiful day. We hiked to Root Glacier, you can see the moraine in the background. The moraine is the mounds of gravel left by the glacier as it recedes. It was about a 5 mile hike and although it wasn't hard hike, I am still recovering. (heehee) I am not used to all of that walking, but it sure was good for me. The kids were such troopers, the twins had a hard time not complaining but the others did awesome. We saw several places where bear had left its deposits, which made me a little nervous, but we didn't see any bear. Katie and I both had to go to the bathroom (there was an outhouse way out there) and we saw bear droppings on that trail so we both picked up large rocks and made lots of noise and let all the bears know that we had rocks and we were armed and dangerous. :)

For those of you who asked to see a picture of me, here it is. I love the colors of the fireweed as it starts to turn in the fall so I had one of the girls take this picture of me next to some fireweed. This was early in the hike, I was still smiling. HA!!

Andrew and I on the trail with the mine in the background.

So this is at the top of the mine, obviously we had to walk up hill part of the way in order to get this high. The mine is very delapidated up here but we understand they are trying to salvage it and restore it.

OK, that is probably enough for now. I have lots more pictures but I only have time to post a few. Already I've spent more time than I wanted on the computer. Lots to do before I sleep!! Hope you enjoy seeing what we did this weekend.

Happy Birthday, Tyler and Taylor!!

My little, bitty boys aren't little, bitty any more. They turned 5 today. Today was "buddy day" at the fair so one person "pays" and the buddy rides free. They had alot of fun riding the rides. Tyler has a blue lip because he hurt it somehow... I don't remember what happened.

Here they are riding the carousel.

Here are Grant and Taylor riding the "Sizzler". Taylor didn't look too happy but he said he had alot of fun, after he got off.

And my personal favorite..... This is the Dr. that delivered the twins exactly 5 years ago today. At the time the picture was taken the twins had been born 5 years and 5 minutes before then. I was so excited to see him. But I apologized all over myself for taking his family time. However, when I "bothered" him he was already being bothered by another lady saying he had delivered all of her three kids... so that helped... I wasn't the first one to do it today. Anyway, he was very nice and said he didn't mind at all. Next thing I knew, Taylor was rubbing the Dr's stomach asking him when we were getting a funnel cake. Why do kids do that??? UGH!!! So embarrassing!!!

New Pictures

I have wanted to post some new pictures for a while so I decided to do it today. So down at the bottom of the page are several pictures, all from last year. The top few are on Andrew's Charley River hunting/rafting trip with his friend Gale Bourne. The bottom few pictures are in Valdez. We didn't get to go to Valdez this year so looking at last year's pictures will have to do. :) Maybe I can change out these pictures more often from now on.