PHeather's PHamily: Alaska Trip Part Two

People have been asking us what all we did in Alaska, but the truth is that we didn't go there to do a ton of stuff. We just totally love Alaska and enjoyed being up there and hanging with our friends. The weather was absolutely gorgeous for most of the time, too. It was even warmer and nicer there than it was at our home in Oregon! We stayed with our friends Chad and Aree, who we met when we were stationed up there together in 2002. Chad flies F-22s in the Alaska AF Reserves, so they're staying there for a while. Their kids are almost exactly the same ages as our boys, which was great. It was kind of different to be up there with C and A this time because the first time we were there together we were all DINKS and could shop and go out to eat and party whenever we wanted. So being up there with all of our kids was quite a different experience! Phil and I never realize how much we miss Alaska until we actually get up there. We would live there in a second if it was just a little closer to the lower 48. And if Phil had a job up there. :)

Here are some of the highlights of our trip:

1. Aree greeting us with two pitchers of margaritas after our horrendous flight with Emmett.

2. Hiking with the kiddos in the gorgeous Eagle River Nature Center. Aree and I hiked this together back in 2003 and ran into a bear on one of the trails. No bear encounters this day, thankfully! As you can imagine, we made enough noise to keep the bears away.

3. Getting a babysitter and going on a double date to one of our favorite restaurants. Phil and I both had yummy halibut dishes... his was stuffed with crab and macadamia nuts, and mine was crusted with parmesan and asiago cheeses. And then after dinner we had some delicious microbrews at Humpy's - one of our favorite casual dinner and nightlife spots. It was fun sitting in there reminiscing about all of the buffoonery that used to take place there "back in the day".

4. Walking to Eagle River to throw rocks in the water. We were about to take a fun little trail through the woods down to the river when we noticed a handwritten sign taped up to the trailhead post. It read:

"Grizzly Sighting Today! Aggressive... charged! If you walk this trail, bring rifle and/or mace!" The date listed was today's date. Um, yeah... we decided to just take the short, very open trail down to the river instead. And we didn't stay too long. The kiddos loved it, though. It was just hard to keep them from walking out too far. The water was very cloudy from glacial silt and we couldn't see where the bottom was.

5. Letting Phil practice for his retirement career of cutting kids' hair. He gave Aree's son Pace his first haircut. Not too shabby, huh?

7. Taking the kiddos to the Alaska Zoo and watching a wolf try to pounce on Emmett. Seriously, you should have seen the size of these wolves. They were huge! And the cool thing was that when Phil and I visited AK in 2005 these wolves were puppies whose mom died, I think. We watched them play and eat for a while back then. And now they're enormous!! Anyway, Emmett was toddling down the path and one of the wolves who was laying down saw E fall down and try to get back up. Then the wolf totally jumped up, ran over to the edge of the fence and pounced! It was a little freaky, even though I knew the wolf couldn't get out of the pen. Here you can see the wolf staring at E. He had his eye on E for a while.

8. Watching the kiddos play together. Aree and I decided that Evangeline and Jackson have to get married because we have several cute pictures of them together as babies/toddlers. Evangeline's speech is way more advanced than Jackson's - you can actually have a conversation with her! Jackson tried his best to chat with her and Evangeline was very patient with his jibberish. :) They played together really well.

9. Eating pizza at Moose's Tooth... our fave pizza place. We did a lot of eating.

11. Taking a trip down to Girdwood and Big Game Alaska to see more animals. And that baby moose... oh, I could have just died at how cute he was. He was three weeks old and was found right after being born in someone's yard outside of Anchorage. He had a twin sister who's staying with a wildlife biologist. Their mom died right after birth. You should have seen how fast he sucked down that 20-oz bottle. And he made the cutest little baby noises! Listen to him sucking on that lady's fingers in the video. So cute!