September

Hello Readers. Here's some Sept pics. We hit the state fair, it was a gorgeous day and we had a blast. Of course the highlight of the trip were the $4 plastic swords we bought...go figure. Lots of good hiking for blueberries up behind our house, and finally picking some vegetables out in the Mat-Su valley with Max. Enjoy the pics. Storm

Long layoff

Hello again. Sorry for the lack of updates, I sort of fell off the blog wagon for a while. Since our last update there's been a lot going on. First we did cubscout camp in late July. It was great weather and the kids had a blast, however there was a nasty bout of flu there as well. Whether it was swine flu or not hasn't really been determined, although one of the other chaperones was officially diagnosed with H1N1. So after camp the boys and I stayed home and worked our way through the sickness. It was a bummer and definitely ruined some fishing plans but what can you do. We are all recovered safe and sound so that's good. That took us into August when I was working quite a bit and now the boys are back in school and things are starting to settle into a routine of sorts. So nothing exciting but life goes on at a ridiculous pace. So here's some pictures of my fishing day in Seward, some berry picking behind our house and some street scenes and fast food pics from Guangzhou China. Hope you enjoy.

Quartz Creek

Hello Readers. This weekend we were invited to go camping at the Quartz Creek campground on the Kenai Peninsula. We have no RV type vehicle so it was tent camping for us. I have determined after this weekend that its only 'camping' if you stay in a tent, otherwise its RV'ing. Fortunately for us the weather was absolutely fantastic, in fact its actually too warm, we've been in the 70's for the last few days. Had the weather been like last summer the RV'ing option would've been a lot more comfortable, but this year it was no trouble in a tent. So we got our tents set up, had some great times with our friends. The kids went swimming in Kenai Lake, we went on a Geocaching hike and found the desired cache, which the kids love to do. It gives them a purpose for the hike and keeps them interested for a whole lot longer. The kids slept in their own tent and the big chicken dogs slept with us. Of course it doesn't really get dark so that made thngs a lot easier. To illustrate that fact I have some pics of fireworks taken from our house at Midnight on July 3rd....you can see why New Years is our big fireworks holiday around here. We are all home safe and sound, tired and sunburned etc.. And the only bear we saw all weekend ran in front of the car on the way home! Storm

more 'cool day' pics

Here are some of the pics from KM's camera. Storm

Cool Day!

So today we hooked up with one of my FedEx captains who also happens to be a extremely proficient float plane pilot. We all loaded into a really nice Beaver on floats(I mean really NICE...a huge contrast to the one we flew in up in Coldfoot) and took off from Lake Hood in Anchorage. Then we went about 90 miles Northwest to Big River Lake and landed there. The attraction is that a lot of salmon gather in one area of the lake and the bears then come down to feed on them. So we pulled up and anchored. We couldn't get as close as we would've liked because of several fishing boats, but the view was good and the weather was fantastic. We watched people catch fish and saw several bears come down for their share. They would jump in the water and swim around right next to the fishing boats. We got some good photos, hung out in the sun on the water, and had 2 really enjoyable flights. A very cool experience. We could've done a little fishing, but it was a fulltime job just making sure one of the kids didn't fall in the water. Here are a few pics from my camera, and I'll add KM's photos in another post. Enjoy. Storm

Just stuff

Hello. Here are some pics from hiking, the reindeer farm and Hatcher Pass. Yes, I am aware that one of the pictures is of an Elk (Eddie the Elk actually) not a reindeer. They happen to have some Elk at the farm as well. Nothing special just trying to get out and enjoy things. Storm

Back Home

Well the vacation was a success and we are happy to be back home. On our second to last night we ran the Midnight Sun 10k. It started at 10PM and while the weather looked bad, it was pretty comfortable for running. I put in one pic of KM before the start. On our last day in Fairbanks we met up with our neighbors who were also up there and visited the Solstice Festival in downtown FB. Then we took the 'Riverboat Discovery' tour. It is very popular and gets great reviews, and it is pretty cool if you don't mind being with about 500 other people. There were no less than 14 tour buses in the parking lot. It was interesting but not great for kids. The highlight of the day was later when the Lady that gave us Aly brought 6 Great Dane puppies by the hotel for us to play with. They were only 3.5 weeks old. The drive home was uneventful. We stopped in Denali for lunch and to see the visitor center. Now we are all just happy to do nothing for a day or so. Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoyed it. KM has 700 more pictures that we just downloaded, I'll try to put some of those up later.