Reminiscing…Alaska in 2001

Looking through some old pictures tonight and decided to share them with you. Back in September 2001, D and I took a week to backpack in Alaska. I was 14 weeks pregnant with our first. How crazy we must have been! We hiked through Denali National Park and Chugach State Park. We saw one bear - thankfully way off in the distance with binoculars, and lots of moose! We even had to dart into the brush at one point to allow and momma and baby to pass by. Wow, those moose are huge! Our last day we thought we'd take a shortcut across a saddleback rather than around the base of a mountain. What an adventure through dense brush, mud, streams, and devil's club in complete darkness! We headed to a hotel once we got out of that mess and had enough mud caked to us to practically double our weight. Wish we had a picture of that!

Chugach State Park

Our tent in Chugach

Us in Denali

D crossing a river in Denali - I don't think we've come across any body of water that he didn't get in!

A moose antler D found. I told you they were big!

Denali - Mt. McKinley

  

Me in Denali

Beach Family Portraits

Last week we finally had family portraits taken at the beach. I have so many wonderful ones but couldn't put them all on the blog. So here are a few.

Whale watching

Today H and I went on a whale watching trip with her homeschool group. We had a lot of fun, making leis and H even did some hula dancing. We finally did see one whale just before the boat pulled back into the harbor. He surfaced only a couple of times, but I got a few pictures. He wasn't as close as the pictures seem, thanks to zoom and cropping.

Catching up

So I've been playing with my pictures from the last year, finally getting some time to sort through them all. Just before the boys were born we took some pictures of the kids (with my old point and shot before I got m SLR). I realize they are a year old now, but better late than never right?! Here are just a couple of my tummy (about 3 wks before and yes it got even bigger!), my favorite of SG meeting SB (and vice versa). SB looks so very tiny in this picture. I can't believe how big both boys are now!

Here are C's 4 year pictures. Wearing his favorite colors - dirt brown and John Deere green!

And Miss H, just a couple of weeks before turning 7, who has embraced the Hawaiian tradition of hula. She was loving her outfit that day!

And beautiful, happy girl SG at 2 and a half. I love this silly picture of her!

Next I'll include some of the little boys!