Thanks all and what is going on here.

First of all I wanted to thank everyone for you comments on my last post. It was a hard time for the family. She was young....too young in my opinion but that is not something that is up to us to decide is it? She was only 34 and newly married really just getting started in her life you know? It's just sad. She was only diagnosed in March so it went really quick. They think she had the breast cancer for a couple of years actually and didn't realize it. It had already spread to her liver and her bones when it was found. All I can say is please girls check yourself and have regular exams to check for this please......cancer is just a horrible way to go.....

The whole trip hasn't been horrible though really. Here is a pic from the plane window when we were coming down here.

Those are other islands in Alaska.

The kinda of nice thing about how things happened when they did is that Kelly and I got to spend about a week and a half with just Madison and each other. I know she really enjoyed it and it was nice to be able to just pay attention to her alone at times as well.

We did manage to fit some things in in between going to the hospital everyday and then helping plan and and going to the memorial. One thing we did was go to a new museum they opened since we have been gone that has a lot of old airplanes and automobiles. Kelly really gets into that stuff so we go to go there and he loved it and got to try his camera out a bit.

Madison was actually pretty interested in things as well and really liked looking at things and asking ALOT of questions...:)
We also got to go to some of the old places we used to go on drives to including this rest area we always enjoyed for it's view.

You know the view is always best with a cute 7 year old in it!

We also took her to the trout farm near the dam. She has always liked feeding the fish.


One of the things about Kellys sister is she was very into artsy type things and often handmade all of her gifts something we enjoyed receiving from her and I still have many if not all of the gifts she has made me over the years. When we were planning things for her funeral and memorial the family was on a pretty tight budget. Her husband wasn't working much and didn't make much and her father would have to take out a loan. When looking into a casket they decided to get a fairly plain one and decorate it for her like so many of her gifts to us. She would have thought is was a great idea and one of the things we did was to have her siblings and the kids put there handprints on it before having it taken to the funeral home for her to be put in. I thought it was a bit odd at first but it really came out nice and the girls loved to doing it. I think it was a help for them because they asked a lot of questions later about it.

We did manage to get to go to the fireworks. It was actually really nice since the day before was when she died. It was nice to be able to take our minds off of it for awhile.

Madison of course got her face painted like she did last year....

And we met up with Kellys other sister Gloria

His brother Josh's girls Aidan

and Kayla and the girls got to eat some fair treats

and then we all got to enjoy the fireworks!

Sorry I know the picture isn't very good but it was hard to get them right.

Then last week Madison and I walked with my friend Hannah is the Jr Rose Festival parade and the MOPS (moms with preschoolers) group. Madison thought that was pretty cool since she has seen lots of parades but never actually been in one!

Here she is walking with my friends 3 year old Emily.
Then after that we went to Hannahs mothers house and visited and got to see her little guy Simon. He is almost 2 and has gotten so big since I left!

Anyway I hope to post a little more regularly we have a couple of big things we are going to do before we go back the Alaska in a week and half so I will make sure to post quicker on those so that I don't have to do another huge one like this.