Did you notice?

Did you see the little ticker on the side over there???
Kenzie comes home Thursday and I'm counting down the hours! I can't wait to get her back here. She has been gone far too long for me.....

Anyway today we had a little home school field trip with several of the other families to the SEAFAC (SouthEast Alaska Aqustics Facility)to learn about what they do there. Basically they run the American Pacific fleet submarines through sound detectors to make sure they are actually stealth, or silent, like they are supposed to be. I couldn't take many pics on the base but don't worry I have other pics from today. Of course.

Since it is here in South East Alaska it is on another Island, well because everything is always on another island then the one we are on of course... The people from the base came with one of their boats to do the tour and it was an awesome ride in my opinion. The views here from pretty much wherever you are are always amazing. I truely do love this area we live in...

I took a few pics and decided to share them all with you today with a little slide show. Aren't you happy?? :)

WE had a good day and I really enjoyed the tour and learning about what they do there. Some of the views from the station where pretty amazing as well but the place we were standing was a "no camera zone" so I couldn't get those pictures for you.

Other then that we came home and worked on the house and had a quiet rest of the day. Have I mentioned I'm really excited to have Kenzie coming home tomorrow??

I promise to post in the evening letting you all know how she is. Until then.....

Izzaks had a busy 2 weeks

Actually we have all been busy the last couple of weeks. Summer is going by so fast. I can't believe it's almost August already!

I sent our extra boy, Connor, back home to his family in Portland. He was here for 2 1/2 weeks and I'm sure he had a lot of fun. It was his second trip of course and everyone here remembered him from the last time he was here so they all excepted him back into the group like he had never been gone. The boys took him to the marina to go swimming a couple of times and lots of other things as well.

Kenzie FINALLY comes home on Thursday the 31st. I am sooo excited. I miss her soo much right now. I keep telling her not to expect to be far away from me for awhile. Her momma needs much Kenzie loving time. She will fly home with my friend Johanna and her best friend Clarissa who are also in Portland right now. She might have come on a different day but she was scarred to fly home by herself so we got her on the same flight.

Okay on to a little of why Izzak has been busy. He has gone to 2 different camps in the last 2 weeks. The first one was for 3 days for a kayak/canoe trip with the boyscouts.

Here he is with his own camera. Doesn't he look lovely dirty! You should have seen him when he got home. This is almost clean compared to that. They knocked their canoe over once while he had his cell phone in his pocket and took 3 days to see if it would dry out and lucky for him it did and is working fine now.


This is one of the lakes they were canoeing on during the trip. Beautiful, isn't it? I never tire of seeing pictures of this place we live now.....honestly.


Here is their campsite. They were definetly doing the "real" camping thing. No facilities anywhere for them, just the woods for privacy and the lake for cleaning....uhm and it's a glacier fed lake so just a bit chilly....


A couple of days after he got back from the boyscout camp he had another youth camp with our church.

He loves going to this campground. He helped close it up for the season last fall and open it for the season this last spring. He's been there several times since we moved to Ketchikan and it takes a boat ride to get to.

When he came back this time he couldn't stop talking about the bears they had at this camp trip. They've had bears here before when he's been there but not as many as they did this last week. He took tons of pictures of the bears. Here is one of the pics he took. You can see the green inner tube thing right by it. Does that tell you how close they were to the bears? Honestly they are really safe though. They have bears there all the time, the island the bear is on is called Bear Island but they have never had a bear attack or anything and they have used this camp for years.


He had a lot of fun. A couple of his friends went also and of course girls, which makes all camps great in Izzaks eyes.

I was told by one of the parents that we need to have the "birds and bees" talk with him because he is so interested in girls. I told them that we did that a long time ago and that Izzak has been "interested" in girls since he was born, basically.... Honestly I'm not worried about him at this point. He flirts but it's all fun. He is actually a very responsible kid for 13.

So anyway it has been busy and I'm still sucking on the posting more frequently thing. I promise I am working on it......

Sometimes my town makes me laugh...

I don't ever get into politics on my blog but I had to share this with you.

This is on the back of a septic truck...
Sometimes I love living in a small town in Alaska that doesn't worry about being politically correct....

Kenzie in Portland

I think I've said it already that Kenzie is in Portland staying with my parents right now for a summer visit.

Here are a couple of pics from a trip to the zoo one day when my friend kept her over night and took her and her kids Simon and Emily to the zoo. Kenzie really had fun on this day and Emily loves Kenzie.

Here is the day before with the girl sharing a sunday on a warm day.

Here they are pointing at something. I'm not exactly sure what though.


And playing on the playground at the zoo. Kenzie is really good with little kids.

I'm having a hard time with her being away right now. She left with my parents on June 20 so it has been 4 weeks since she left. I don't know if it is party because I was already gone from her for those 4 weeks when I was gone or what but I really do miss her. I can honestly say after she gets back on the 31st I think it will be awhile before I let her out of my sight! She is my little princess after all.

I talk to her most days on skype which helps a little but she is really ready to be home herself so she is getting home sick herself which makes me sad. I know that she has plans for the next day and will be fine but I still feel sad, cause I want her home with me now.

Fun Monday

I know I've been away from Fun Monday for awhile. I used to be one of the regulars! Anyway I love birthdays so I thought this would be fun one to get back into them. Anyway here is the challenge this week from Dungarees Ablaze here is her challenge:

As of late I have been consumed with preparation for my Father’s aka “The Old One” Birthday, he will be turning 90 on August 8th and we are doing a family reunion, expecting about 100 people in all. So for your assignment lets hear about your favorite “Birthday”, it needn’t be your actual birthday just a "birthday" celebration. You can use one you planned, one you attended, one you crashed, just a fun time for this FUN MONDAY’S assignment, and of course you can use one of your very on Birthdays.

I'm cheating a little on this one though. I know I usually stick to the plan here but it's okay to slip a bit once in awhile....
Anyway my favorite birthday? For me it has been the first birthdays for all of my kids!

First Izzaks..... 12 years ago...

Then Joshua 10 years ago...


Kenzie the little princess....8 years ago


And the littlest Madison 6 years ago..



Can you tell from the pictures what one of my favorite parts is? We have always had a tradition in our house with the kids. They get their own 8 inch round cake for their first birthday. That way they can dig in all they want and make a big mess and we still have a nice cake for everyone else to enjoy. My kids have all taken a different approach to this matter from Maddie being probably the messiest followed my Izzak then Joshua. Kenzie, the only reason she is messy is because her Daddy decided he needed to help her out and make her messy!

Kids at the beach

So I took the kids to Totem Bight again, I like walking around there also. I figured it was a nice day and the kids could walk around and play a bit.

Here they are on the trail. Everything around here is in it's major growing season at the moment. It's almost impossible to keep yards and such under control as far as bushes and such.


We went into the clan house the kids pretended to do the native dances. Not much like them at all but they were having fun.

Here they are checking out a totem pole that they had to bring down to fix so it wouldn't fall and possibly cause an accident.


One of the things I'm loving right now is all the wildlife around. I've really gotten into bird watching. Something I was never really into before but have come to really enjoy. We have a bird guide book now since we did a bird watchers thing for the kids in May so now we try to figure out what we are seeing by checking the book. I'm really enjoying the zoom on my camera with this as well since I can get really close, good shots of the birds like this one.


Then we decided to walk down to the beach and the kids were looking in the tide pools to see what little creatures live there. Connor is visiting us from Oregon right now and hasn't really done that before so he was really into it and the other kids had fun telling him what things were.


Click on the photo below to see better inside the tide pool!


Of course he is a natural boy so his favorite thing was the crabs and he was enjoying trying to catch them. Although he was little afraid of them pinching him with their little claws so this was the first one he actually got that he was able to caux onto a rock and pick up that way.

Joshuas favorite thing to do whenever we get near water is to skip rocks. He has actually gotten pretty good and with his strong throwing arm he has managed to get up to 6 skips out of a rock many times!
Sorry about not getting this up yesterday like I promised but I seem to have come down with something again and am not feeling well the last two days. I've almost lost my voice this time from a lovely cough....

Late 4th of July edition

Sorry about the late post. I have an extra kid in town right now. Connor who was here in March is here again for a couple of weeks and the 3 boys are keeping me busy! Can't have them getting bored!

Anyway we had a great Fourth this year for our first in Ketchikan. We started the day off with a parade in town. It as fun. They started the parade with one of the many helicopters flying a huge flag down the maid road.


And of course all the typical parade walkers. It was smaller then the ones we had in Portland but fun since we knew a lot of people walking and the kids loved it since all the walkers were throwing candy for kids. It was like Halloween all over again without having to walk.


After the parade we went home for a little while and made dinner. The weather wasn't too windy so they were doing the fireworks this year. We were told that they hadn't been able to do them in 6 years since the 4th kept being to windy to do them safely. Since it doesn't get close to dark enough for fireworks till about 11 here we left about 9 o'clock to walk around town for awhile and while we were there we watched a lady doing a hoola hoop with fire on it. She asked Izzak to light it for her. He thought that was pretty cool.


It was cool to see her do it though. Madison was convinced she was going to burn her clothes though. Obviously she has done it a lot though so knew what she was doing. She offered to let the kids try but they were afraid of the fire....


We walked around for awhile longer until it was dark and they started the fireworks. They do it out on the ocean in the narrows. It was really cool to see them over the water. I wish I could have gotten some better shots to show you what it was like to see them but this was the best I could get.

Like I said we have been busy playing with the kids so I have lots of photos to share and I plan to do a post tomorrow to show you.