First this and first that...

So this is where we started at 6:30am on Tuesday morning.  Yes, this is my bed also so I didn't have to go far to get her up.  Today was Elizabeth's first day of Kindergarten.  I'm not sure I ever thought this day would get here.  I'm not so sad about it as much as hoping that everything is perfect for her and that she actually eats the lunch I pack for her. 

I will explain quickly, in our county we have a staggered kindergarten start, in a class of 18, 6 kids come either Monday/Tuesday or Wednesday.  Everyone goes Thursday and Friday.

So Elizabeth went today and has off Wednesday...it feels like a false start.

I think this is the required first day of school photo every child needs.

A close up of the new kindergartner!

We live really close to the school and have no bus pick up.  The first week is crazy with parents and first week stuff so we walked it.  Not a bad walk, it takes about 20 minutes with the little one falling behind.

We are not actually supposed to go in the classroom but we missed the teacher pick up by 2 minutes so we had to go to the classroom.  This is where things got a little shakey.  She started to get very nervous and had a death grip on my finger.  I peeled myself away and at the end of the day her teacher said it lasted about 2 minutes and she was great for the day.  I hope she is just excited Thursday and doesn't even think about having a fit like today.  I hope.

Ok, so we had another big event take place.  Lizzy has begged for her ears to be pierced for a year.  I finally said ok and off we went to the mall for ear piercing.  I talked to Elizabeth for a month about it hurting and being a little scary.  This did not put her off one bit. 

The lovely girl doing the piercing was so funny.  She said to Elizabeth, "If I do one ear you must promise me you will let me do the other ear"  This tells me she has had this happen before so I was really having concerns!

This was after the first ear was done, I think it was an oh @#$# moment for her.  But she knew there was no going back now and sucked it up.

Yes, she it totally crying at Lewis while the second ear is pierced.  Heartbreaking if you ask me.

I could not wait to swoop in and pick her up afterwards, she was so brave.  This lasted all of 30 seconds and then she was ready for some dinner.  There wasn't even lots of tears, juts some wimpering.  I was so caught up, I left my new iphone there at the kiosk.  Luckily Lew ran back and just snatched it off the counter, crisis avoided big time.

Elizabeth showing off her pretty new earrings.  I have promised that Santa will bring a second pair.  She is just loving having her ears pierced.  I'm glad I waited until she was old enough to make a real exciting experience for her.

What happened the rest of our summer...

Much has happened since we got back from our little trip but I've been very bad about updating other stuff so I will quickly cover our oh so exciting Fourth of July!  We had only been home for two days and were still all kinds of loopy on sleep so it was pretty calm.

We took Anna Kate outside for some fireworks and poppers.  I love that she wears her princess jammies with her wellie boots Aunt Mollie got for her in Alaska, gotta love them boots.

Very hard to see but that kid threw hundreds of poppers out on the driveway, lucky for me I got to drive over them the next morning, I almost jumped out the sunroof.

On to the good stuff! Anna kate getting to light some sparklers

Haha, best picture ever!  She was not so much a fan of the sparklers

Then she got a bit more comfortable and lew got her to make a big C! 

I know you are wondering, where is lizzy? Why no fireworks for her?  Sleeping Beauty was sawing logs in the living room, haha.  Don't worry we saved her plenty for the next night.

I've got much more to post including ear piercing, bike riding and teeth falling out...

Wrapping up Alaska

Who knew I would still be blogging about Alaska 2 months after we got back?  Well I could have predicted it because my life gets seriously busy especially at night when I'm supposed to be preparing for the next day and I really do look like a chicken with my head cut off.  So anyways back to wrapping up the last two days of our trip!

I think I would be leaving out one of the highlights if I did not mention the crab fest we had at Terry and Mollie's house.  If I said it was incredible that would not quite cover it.  Imagine fresh Alaskan crab that your amazing brother in law bought right from the processing plant.  I will never be able to eat crab again after this feast, it just doesn't get fresher than this.

More feasting!

The last day we were in Valdez we took a little hike up to an old stampers mill.  It was a little building along the banks of the river where they would pull up rocks and crush them looking for gold.

Part of our pretty hike

another really pretty view.  I'm thinking of blowing this one up for our wall.

The stampers mill falling all apart and everything, yet still gets quite a lot of activity, we found all kinds of clothing hanging around up there. 

On our last night Terry took us all on fun rides on the side by side through town and down around the less paved areas of Valdez.  Lizzy hung on for all she could while Uncle Terry tried to scare her!

Anna Kate had to go on a rated G ride (White Grandma safety)  oh boy did she have a lot of fun!

The next day we all got up pretty early and took a nice long 6 hour drive to Anchorage.  The really sad part is that I can't find any of the pictures from being there.  We did check out another microbrew, the Snowgoose, we crashed at almost 11pm only to get up at 4am to get on a plane and fly aaaallllll day home.

What a lovely lovely trip.

The Day of boating

We started our first day in Valdez with a nine hour boat ride, well that just about consumed our whole day in Valdez.  I would say it is a must do if you find yourself along the coast in Alaska.  This is the marina where we caught our ride.

Liz and Grandma getting all situated.  We had the youngest kids by far on the boat and there was a lot of musical chairs going on but for being on the boat for 9 hours they did pretty well.  Elizabeth broke a record and spilled her drink 7 times.  We were oh so proud.

We actually got to see the Northwestern, which if you watch Deadliest Catch at all you will know is one of the boats on the show.  I used to watch the show when it first came out and I had very little else going on. 

During our boat ride we saw all kinds of beautiful nature, my favorite of course are all the amazing waterfalls that nestle up in the sides of the mountains.  Now imagine this place at 40 below F.  We saw pictures of people "rock climbing" on one of the larger waterfalls during the winter but they were climbing the frozen water that was stuck in time falling down.

Grandma and Lizzy out getting some fresh air.  It was a bit chilly...

Some of the animals we saw...seal giving us a photo op

It was a little scary but we had to cross through the ice.  The captain that had been all along giving us a lovely narration of history and fun facts came over the speaker and says, I need to concentrate so I'm not talking for the next few minutes.  When the boat hit a large chunk of ice everyone is thinking "iceberg, straight ahead"!  But for all the ice you see, they say that's only 10 % of the chunk, the rest is under water. 

Another little piece of nature, pretty little otter playing in the water.

The pinnacle of our boat trip, a glacier up close.  It was AMAZING.  The picture does not do it justice.  The neatest part was watching the large chunks of ice fall off the glacier and make a huge KA-BOOM into the water, it was as if the loudest thunder you have ever heard echoing.

Lizzy enjoying the glacier (for a minute)

A lovely bald eagle.  Ok I took this picture after we got back from the boat trip but I thought I'd slip it in with all the other nature

Anna Kate figuring out the binoculars.  Not so bad for 2 and half years old, haha.  Not sure what she is looking at or if she is able to actually focus on anything.

One of the coolest pieces of ice, most likely had just flipped over and this is what was hanging out underneath.

After we made it back to land, collected the other half of our group (they went fishing) and had dinner, we were discussing our plans for hiking the next day.  This is when the light will mess with you, we decided to just knock the hike out right then instead of waiting.  So 10pm we start out for this hike, just myself, Lew, Ralph, Kenny, Terry and Mollie went cause it was a little scary at points, not G rated.  We climbed straight up rocks, some rocks faces actually had ropes to help you up and we yelled out to try to scare away any bears (we saw none).  All this and the foliage was so high and thick we mostly could not see the path below our feet but up and up we went until we go to this point.

The boys

The girls

Probably the most amazing day of the trip and the hike was my favorite moment of the trip.