Nome Creek




The scenery on the way to Nome Creek

Last week, Eddie, Samantha and I went to North Pole (Fairbanks area), Alaska to spend the week with our friends, Sarah and Kurt, and their 4 terrific kids: Emma, Gretta, Elana and Dieter.  We arrived early, early Saturday morning (like 1:30am early)...and it was still light outside!  Yup, we were in the "Land of the Midnight Sun."  We had such a good time, we're already saving our airline miles to do this again next year! :)

The first day, we just kind of relaxed, planned the week, did some grocery shopping and went out for Chinese dinner (mmmmmm, Pagoda, mmmmmm).  Then on Sunday, we went to church and then packed up the car and headed to Nome Creek.  It's about 2 hours outside of North Pole.  But then again, as I was talking to Sarah, seems like most everything we had planned that week was just about 2 hours outside of North Pole.  (Reminds me of, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" ... "a geographical phenomenon!  Two weeks from everywhere!"  Ok, if you haven't seen the movie, that won't make any sense.  But I digress, back to Nome Creek.)

Nome Creek

Driving anywhere in Alaska in the summertime is a beautiful drive!  The fireweed was in bloom, there are mountains and green everywhere--it's truly breathtaking!  When we arrived at Nome Creek, we made a fire pit so we could get the charcoal started for our foil dinners.  I love foil dinners, Samantha even had her own foil dinner! :)  After dinner, Kurt and Sarah built up the fire and we had s'mores!

In between all the yummy food, Ed and Kurt went gold panning and...we're millionaires!!!  Not really - I think they just found a little gold dust, that was it, but Eddie had fun!  Gold panning was on his wish list for this trip to Alaska. 

As for wildlife, the "Alaska state bird" was everywhere up there...the mosquito!  Not just little pesky mosquitoes like we have here in Washington, these are mosquitoes on steroids!  They're huge!  A bit more impressive was the beaver we saw.  He was busy building his dam - it was fun to watch him scouting out new pieces and bringing them back up out of the water, placing them and securing them to his home.



The beaver building his dam

Elana, Gretta, Emma and Dieter

Is this what Dr. Seuss meant by, "Hop on Pop?"
Kurt carrying Elana, Dieter and Gretta, with Emma to the right.

Tiptoe through the tulips...er, fireweed!

On the way home, we stopped in a field of fireweed for some pictures.  What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon/evening; with family and friends!!!

What a cute family, if I do say so myself! :)



Missi's Baby Shower

The happy 'mom-to-be'

Blue and yellow theme -
detailed all the way to the flowers
in a Winnie the Pooh vase!

My sister is having a baby!  She is due August 7th with a little boy.  So, beginning in May, I told her to be thinking of a date for her baby shower.  She wanted to push it off until after Seminary was over (she was a Seminary teacher this last year).  Fine, no problem, after Seminary works for me.  So, come June 16/17, she decides the best date for her baby shower would be June 30th.  Agh!!!  Ok, no problem, I can handle this!


About half of her invitation list were able to make it (which is plenty, considering her list was 45+ people long :)  We did a 'Winnie the Pooh' theme, lots of yellow and blue, since that's what color the baby's room is painted.

Diaper guessing game

Games?? For this many people?? We went very simple on the games. A friend helped out by providing a guessing game on the number of diapers, and I asked all of the attendees to bring a baby picture of themselves for a "guess who?" game.  

Baby picture guessing game

What's a party without food?

 Food - well, simple. I made a fruit tray, a veggie tray, some brownies (topped with blueberries and blue chocolate, no less), lemonade with lemon-lime soda and frozen blueberries, and my mom made a chicken salad for the rolls.

Yummy!!!

 

The candy "bar"

To add a bit more fun, I did a separate table with various candy - all blue and yellow, of course. We had blue/yellow M&M's (Missi's favorite), blue/yellow jelly beans, blue/yellow Lindt truffles, blue Hershey's kisses, blueberry yogurt pretzels, and blue/yellow salt water taffy with some cute little blue footprint or 'ABC' block lollipops sticking up from the candy. I even made these cute little cups for people to put their candy in...they're little 'onesies' - also blue and yellow! :)

Little candy cups! :)

The cake - oh I must tell you about the cake. A lady in my ward is a fashion model / cake decorator - quite the combination! She is so talented. I met with her, gave her swatches of the baby's room colors, told her about Winnie the Pooh being a theme, and she ran with it!! Can you say chocolate heaven?? It was a rich chocolate layer cake filled with chocolate ganache and topped with Winnie the Pooh fondant goodness. Around the side of the cake, the little honey bees were buzzing! 

It was truly the perfect touch for this baby shower! 

Ta da!!

Pooh bear with his 'hunny' pot!

 And of course, the piece de resistance, I made Missi a diaper cake. I had seen one at another baby shower the week before and absolutely loved how it was put together. So, I used that one as my model and played around with it a bit, adding the rubber ducky as the cake topper! :)

My first diaper cake!! 
Turned out pretty good, don't you think?

Despite the stress leading up to the baby shower, all in all it went very well!  So grateful for help from my mom and our friend, Jamie (a.k.a. the artist who took these beautiful pictures and provided the diaper game!!)

A baby blanket gift from Grandma Sandi!

Setting up the baby picture game!

Samantha - the real star of the evening!!!
Sorry Missi...babies always get top billing!  :)

Lesson learned: Never agree to throw a baby shower with less than two weeks' notice while also juggling your schedule as a mother, voice teacher, and during the last quarter of the fiscal year at your full time job!

Congratulations, Missi and Ryan!  :)

Just Pictures

Just sharing some random pictures of our adorable little girl!!

Samantha and Auntie Missi -
this was at Missi's house on Mother's Day 2011

Mother's Day - May 8, 2011

Anything I can put it my mouth...

I'm goin' places now!

All ready for bed - June 10, 2011 (9-month birthday!)

Yep, crawling EVERYWHERE and into EVERYTHING! :)

Hmmm, baby in a box?

 

First tooth??

Let's look at that again... 
It's just barely starting to surface!
June 13, 2011

Stroller Fun

Yet another reason to be happy for good weather...we get to take evening walks as a family!  Not that it happens every night, but we enjoy the opportunity to take Samantha out in the stroller and just wander around the neighborhood as much as we can!

Ok, I'm ready - let's roll!

Have I mentioned how much I love this little hat?!  Adorable!

Gardening

Weather wise, we have had a pretty crummy Spring thus far.  In fact, it wasn't until this last week that we got above 70 degrees for the first time since November!  Needless to say, this has severely hampered our ability to plant our vegetable garden this year!

Hallelujah - the sun came out in Seattle!  Fearing that we may not see the sun for yet several more weeks, Ed and I jumped on the opportunity to get outside and get some things planted in our back yard.  So far, we only have broccoli, cauliflower, onions, garlic, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers and tomatoes planted, along with the perennial strawberries, apples, blueberries and raspberries that are beginning to blossom!


Of course, so much of the fun this year was that Samantha came out to garden with us!  She watched excitedly from her walker while we planted our vegetables. 

Mmmm...apple juice makes me happy!

Love, love, love the little sun hat on her!

Hey, what's this green stuff??

Afterward, we put her down in the grass to play - she wasn't quite sure what to think of grass... 

Aw, can't we stay out and play a little longer?

We also visited all of the flowering plants in the front and side yards.  She was particularly fond of the lilacs - not so much the smell, but she loved grabbing a handful of the flowers and was pretty interested in seeing what they tasted like.  Needless to say, she was thwarted at every turn by mom reminding her that flowers are for pretties and for smelling, not for eating.  I know, right?  Mean mommy! :)

Now that we know the sun is going to kinda sorta stick around for a little longer, we can get back out to the garden this week and finish our planting!

Meadowdale Beach

Eddie's calling in church is to work with the 16 - 17 year old Young Men as the Priest Quorum Advisor.  Part of his calling is to attend/assist with weekly activities.  The activity this past week was combined with the Young Women and was scheduled to be a hike down to Meadowdale Beach.  My calling used to be to work with the Young Women at church so we thought, how fun would it be for me and Samantha to tag along? 

So, I picked Eddie up from work, we raced home and got ready for the hike.  Now, I had been on this particular hike one time before.  I didn't recall it being too difficult or long, so I suggested we take the stroller, diaper bag, etc.

Again, we bundled up the baby in her Huskies hoodie :) and were on our way.  About halfway down to the beach, we realized that bringing the stroller and full diaper bag was not such a good idea.  Why?  Well, there were some pretty steep parts and after we got down them, we looked back and realized, "hey, we have to push the stroller back up that hill on the way back..."

Trail down to Meadowdale Beach...yeah, we took the stroller on this! 
Don't worry, I carried the baby down this one while Eddie maneuvered the stroller down :)

Anyway, we pressed on and made our way to the beach.  Samantha wasn't quite sure what to make of things.  We set her down in the sand and she kind of touched it and then pulled  back her hand like, "what was that I just touched?!" 

At first, I had to guide her hand down to the sand because she wasn't so sure...

And in the end...she still wasn't so sure what to make of the sand!

We looked out over the water, it was pretty close to sunset so it was beautiful.  We went to the water line and Samantha just stared at the water as it lapped up against the shoreline.  She was fascinated with that!

The view from the beach - just beautiful!

We only stayed at the beach for 15 minutes or so because we knew that the hike back was all uphill and would take some time.  Since it was getting late, we started our trek taking turns between carrying the baby and pushing the stroller (because it was impractical to think we could push the baby in the stroller up the hills...).

Samantha with Daddy

Mom and Samantha

What a beautiful little girl!!! 
(I'm totally impartial, you know :) - yeah, right!

Surprisingly, we made pretty good time on the way back.  Now that's not to say that it was a simple task, but we did it!!  About halfway up on the hike back, I think Samantha started to get bored, as if to say, "are we there yet?  Can't you two move any faster?"  She's so wonderful!

Another beautiful sunset in the Pacific Northwest!
(just ignore the sun glare in the photo :)