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!

12. Enjoying an Alaskan Amber on the porch in gorgeous weather. Emmett has a crazy fascination with bottles. He loves them.

Thanks, C and A, for putting up with our circus all week! We had an awesome time!!

Alaska Trip Part One

Whew! Sorry for the lack of posts this past week... we decided to be adventurous again and took a trip with the kiddos up to Alaska! We had heard a while back that we could pretty easily take a "hop" (jump on a military transport plane that was carrying cargo up to AK) for free from Travis AFB near Sacramento, CA, so we decided to take advantage of that great opportunity.

So last Friday afternoon, we loaded up the car and drove down to Travis AFB. The boys were pretty good for the 4 hour drive (naps and Thomas on DVD helped a lot)...

Towards the end, though, both Emmett and I were getting a little grungry (grumpy/hungry). We always say that Emmett has my personality, and Phil made sure to point out that fact again... saying, "Um, do you notice who are the only two people in the car that are upset right now??" :) Anyway, we ate at an In-N-Out burger, made a stop at a Target, and found a hotel right outside the base for the night. The boys had lots of fun in the hotel room just running around, jumping on the pull-out bed, making their pinwheels spin in front of the air conditioning vent, and showing "muscles".

Emmett woke up fussing in the middle of the night and since we were all in the same room I wasn't sure what to do with him. I ended up bringing him into bed with Phil and me (something we never do) and, unbelievably, he laid his head down and fell right to sleep for the rest of the night. Crisis averted! Jackson slept right through the whole thing, too.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early and drove over to the base for the 6:40 A.M. "roll call" (the time that passengers have to show up to put their names in the hat to get on the plane). They check people onto the plane in order of priority - people on emergency leave get highest priority, people who have been on leave the longest have higher priority than those who just started leave, retirees have lower priority, etc. Most of the check-in process was just like the airlines, except for the fact that baggage was free and you could have a lot more (and heavier) bags per person. Unfortunately, we showed up at 6:40 and the plane didn't end up taking off until around 10:00. Yuck. The boys were about done by the time we got on the plane, and they both fell asleep right after takeoff. This was the plane we took, a C-5:

It was built in the 1960s, but was actually pretty comfortable inside. The seats leaned way back and there was lots of leg room. The seats actually faced backwards, so we leaned forward during takeoff, which was extra weird because there were no windows. The passenger area was at the top of the plane back near the tail. This wasn't such a big deal, but we did have to climb a really tall, steep staircase to get up to our seats. And we had to climb it carrying the kids! I tried not to look down, but I did get a little sweaty and nervous. It was pretty high up.

Down below in the cargo area there were a bunch of Hummer-type trucks and other cargo that the plane was taking overseas. The plane stopped in AK for a few hours and then continued on to Japan and Korea.

Look at the box lunch that we got for $4.50! Quite a deal compared to what the airlines give you for almost $7.

Jackson slept for about two hours on the plane (it was really loud and I think the droning helped keep him asleep), but Emmett only slept for about 45 minutes.

He was a complete nightmare pill for the rest of the trip, but somehow Phil and I managed to keep him from screaming the entire time. He was soooo squirmy and not happy with anything we tried to give him. He was even able to get up and walk around most of the time, but even that didn't make him happy. Stinker!

We arrived on Saturday afternoon and started trying to get a flight home again the following Friday. What a total mess that was! For security reasons, the schedule of flights isn't posted online and is only given out over the phone for the next two days. We soon found out the hard way that the best thing to do is call the office every few hours to check to see if flights have changed.

The first time we tried to leave was Friday morning, and after loading all of our luggage and kids into the car and driving to the base at 7:00 A.M., we arrived to find out the the flight that morning was rescheduled for 7:40 the next morning. Okay, kind of a pain, but not that big of a deal. So before bed that Friday night, Phil called the office to check to make sure that the 7:40 flight was still leaving the next morning as scheduled. Lucky he called, because they told us that the flight had been pushed back to 3:45 A.M.!!! There was also another flight leaving at 1:40 P.M. and we debated whether or not to get up and try the 3:45 A.M. flight or just wait until later, but decided to try the early morning flight anyway.

Soooo, we woke up at 3:00 A.M. and Phil tried about 8 times to call the terminal to make sure the flight was still leaving as scheduled before we woke up the kiddos. Of course, no one answered the phone, so we loaded up the car again, woke up the kids, put them in the car in their pj's, and drove to the base, only to find that the flight left early!!!! AAGGHHH! Luckily, the boys were complete angels this whole time and went right back to sleep as soon as we got home.

Phil found out when he went into the terminal that morning that the 1:40 P.M. flight was... you guessed it... rescheduled to 4:25 P.M. So throughout the whole rest of the day, Phil called about every hour to check on the time. And every time - "Yep, the flight is still leaving as scheduled!" Finally, at 3:45, he called again right before we left and again heard that the flight was on time. We got to the base at 4:10 P.M. (15 minutes before roll call), and Phil ran inside to check us in. He ran out a few minutes later and said, "They called roll early! They're going to see if they can get two extra seats for us. Help me unload!" I was just shocked. We had called ALL DAY to check on the time, and they decided to call roll 15 minutes early with no warning! There were only 9 seats for passengers on this plane (a KC-10) and a family of 5 and two retirees had taken up 7 seats. We needed 4, so they were checking with the crew of the plane to see if we could get 2 extra seats.

So we drug all of our stuff inside and hung out with the kids running around crazy for an hour only to hear that, no, they couldn't make room for two more. We were livid!!! I know we probably shouldn't have been mad since we were getting 4 free seats on a plane whose mission is not to carry passengers, but still!! We were so frustrated! In our opinion, since we showed up on time (early!) for the original roll call, they should have honored us and bumped the retirees off of the plane. But, no, we just had to load all of our stuff back up in the car and prepare to wait until Monday for the next flight to Travis. Ugh! We decided to visit Humpy's, one of our favorite AK restaurants, to make ourselves feel better. Beer-battered halibut chunks and microbrews did the trick. We felt much better after eating and made plans for Sunday. Here we are at Humpy's...

Hello, Wide-Eyed Psycho! After looking at that last picture I realized that I must have still had some leftover crazy-eyed frustration, so I had Phil take another.

So Sunday morning I woke up at 6:30 with Jackson, and Phil slept in until about 8:00. We had the whole day planned... Phil would go to the store and get coffee when he woke up, then he was going to mow the lawn for Chad. I started a load of laundry and vacuumed and was planning to make cupcakes later and take a shower and wash my hair. Then in the afternoon we were meeting up with our old squadron commander and his family. A great day!

Thing didn't go exactly like that. Phil had taken Jackson with him to the store and I had just finished vacuuming and feeding Emmett breakfast. It was 9:20 A.M. Phil called just then and told me that he just called the terminal and the flight that was supposed to leave at 2:25 P.M. on Monday now has roll call at 9:55 A.M. TODAY! AAGGHHH! Phil raced home and we threw, and I mean literally threw, all of our stuff into suitcases and bags and shoved it into the car. I had a load of wet clothes in the dryer, no makeup on at all, I was still in my early-morning sweatpants, neither Phil nor I had showered or brushed our teeth (we were waiting to drink our coffee when Phil returned from the store, but he never had time to get coffee!!), and Emmett was still in his pj's. We figured that we'd have at least an hour to get changed and cleaned up after we checked in before the plane left. Not so!! As soon as we get there and lug all of our stuff into the terminal, the workers rush us through security because the C-5 crew wants to leave as soon as possible. What a mess!! Luckily, we made it onto the plane and had a decent flight (aside from feeling a little gross). The boys actually both took good naps this time! Phil and I even got naps! The crew was really pleasant, too, which was nice. This plane was completely empty of cargo, so Phil figured that since they had finished their mission and dropped off all of their cargo they were anxious to get back home to Travis AFB.

Phew!! Sorry - I know that was a long post. I don't mind if you checked out halfway through. :) I'll be posting about our favorite parts of our trip tomorrow. We had a totally wonderful time and were so thankful that we made the trip, even with all of the hopping drama. We also learned several lessons from this trip - when taking a hop, call at least every hour of the day to check on the schedule, have everything totally ready to go at all times (including brushing your teeth), try to focus on the fact that you're getting a free trip, and remember that flying with kids is like labor... while you're in the thick of it you think you'll never, ever do this again, but as soon as it's over you're ready to go again! Well, maybe not as soon as it's over, but we do quickly forget the pain!

Here's a little sneak peek at one of our favorite parts of the trip...