Catch up Time...

Wow how time flies. Here it is already January and my last post was way back the first part of Oct. So here is the first of a couple of catch up post. We were busy all fall doing all of our favorite traditions. There is just nothing better than family traditions. In Oct. we did our annual pumpkin carving. All the little ghost and goblins showed up. My sister Kathy fixed us a great meal and then the carving began. We had some really creative pumkins this year.

Moving on now...yes keep up, we are moving rather quickly...to Thanksgiving. Our family's master cook Kathy, my sister cooked dinner for us again. Here are my Mom, Dad and nephew Tate waiting for dinner. I should have posted a picture of her serving table, it looked beautiful and all was delicious. It's great having wonderful family and food to share the holiday's.

Now on to December and our Christmas celebrations. We start out early in the month building our Gingerbread houses at our Gingerbread party with all the gang. Everyone gets so creative. These two boys stopped long enough to let me take their picture before they went back to finishing their houses. I think they might have even eaten a piece of candy or two while decorating their houses.

One of our favorite traditions for the year is our annual Polar Express party. We have the best time with a game of Christmas Bingo, a craft, a cooking project and always end the evening by watching the Polar Express Movie. Fortunately by then end they were all asleep for the night. By morning they were all ready for our traditional waffles with whipped cream and sprinkles on top. Lucky for me I am the Grandma and don't always have to give them the most healthy breakfast. I am so glad the kids still look forward to this tradition. Here are Reagen and Connor with their reindeer antlers they got to make for one of the crafts.

And last but not least was our Christmas Eve gathering. This year since it was on Sat. all came for breakfast. We had a great breakfast and then opened all the gifts. Fun for everyone.

Best of all was being able to Skype our missionary Matthew in Wales. We got to talk to him for about an hour and a half. He looked and sounded so good. We are all anxious for him to return home in May. After our talk with him he got to call both of his Grandmothers which thrilled them both and then Aunt Kathy. Unfortunately Aunt Kathy had to much going on at their house and didn't hear the phone ring so he had to just leave a message there. Sorry guys!

So we are caught up a little now. Life gets so busy but I am going to try to get better at posting more often so that I don't have to do so much catching up. Not making any promises tho.

Cabin Fun!

A couple of weeks back I headed to the cabin with this cute little bunch of kids...Thane, Faith, Hunter and Connor (not pictured). Hunter and Connor brought his parents too.

I found them all investigating something and had to go check things out for myself.

They had found some fuzzy caterpillers. They had a blast watching them and letting them crawl up there arms. I kind of felt sorry for the poor things because these kids hauled them around like they were pets.

But one of the funniest things I did all weekend was watch this guy and his jeep. I know I have had this jeep featured on my blog before, it is definately a favorite of the grand kids, but the poor old thing has seen better days. After charging the battery and installing it the kids all jumped in and pressed the gas pedal. It surged forward about 6 inches and stalled to never start again. It has been run hard for about 6 years. This little guy, Connor, didn't care that there wasn't much life to it. He loved having it all to himself most of the weekend. If it wasn't moving the others really didn't want to mess with it but this guy put his friend in it and pretended to drive around the countryside all weekend...and I might say he talked to whole way. His poor friend couldn't get a word in.

He made sure his friend was with him the whole way. They totally enjoyed each others company. I'm not sure what all they discussed but I am sure it was important. When Connor's parents left for a bit I made his dad put the jeep inside the fence around the yard so that I could keep better track of him and he was totally insulted. He didn't like being trapped in. I don't know if he realized that when he was in the driveway he really wasn't going anywhere anyway. As soon as they returned he had his dad put him back on the open road again. He kept himself entertain (well his friend too) and was just so much fun to watch. We might even have to get a new battery for the jeep and bring it back to life.

Weekend Fun!

So this is how my weekend went. Friday before I finished work I got a text from this cutie asking if she could spend the night plleeeeeaassee! I had a friends wedding reception to go to Friday night and a baby shower on Saturday morning but how could I refuse such a plea. So I thought "oh well I will now have a partner to go with", so I told her to come on over when I got off work. We went to the reception and then went home and started watching a movie and ate some popcorn. She said she wasn't sleeping on the sofa but before I knew it she was sound asleep right on the sofa so there she stayed. After the baby shower on Sat. morning we called these 2 other cuties and had them come over so that we could go to the park and enjoy the beautiful weather we were having. We grabbed some pizza and rootbeer for our dinner and the kids had a great time playing on the playground.

Here is our cute little Faithy...

this handsome fella Thane...

and the always beautiful Reagen.

The park was a great idea ...not only was the weather absolutely wonderful but the kids played and played and when we went home they decided they needed to spend the night with Grandma so they took a bath and fell fast asleep. Can't ask for anything better than that.

Grandparents Day

On Friday I got to take a few hours off work and go spend some time with this cute guy. Hunter's school class was having "Grandparents Day". What alot of fun we had. You will have to excuse the blurry pictures, this grandma wasn't thinking and forgot my camera and had to take these pictures with my phone...you can probably tell I don't have a smart phone. We started out with the kids all sitting at their tables and the teacher, Mrs. Ortega showed us the routine they went through each morning taking roll, doing the pledge and sitting in circle time greeting each other. We then got to start activities at 4 different stations. This shows Hunter at the beading station. I made him a beaded bracelet and he made me one. We also got one started for his Nana (his other grandma that couldn't be there) but that we didn't finish, Hunter was able to later in class.
We also had a playdough station with some fun cookie cutter shapes. Here is he and I working on some fun cookies...not edible tho. An interesting note...you might notice that our pictures don't show any of the other kids. At the beginning the teacher explained to us we would be allowed to take pictures of our own grandchild but because of privacy rules we were not allow to have the other students in our pictures. How times have changed.

Here is Hunter working on a puzzle at the puzzle center. He put together a firetruck puzzle.

The fourth activity was to color the Grandparents a card with each student signing their own name. We decided that Hunter could do this and send it to Nana too so that she wouldn't feel left out.

We ended everything with the students singing a song to the Grandparents and we all joined in on doing the "Hokey Pokey" and having a treat of cookies and crackers. The Hokey Pokey was mine and Hunters favorite. It was then time for the Grandma's and Grandpa's to go home and the kiddies were off to the playground...some with teary eyes including mine which made it hard to leave. Thanks Hunter for inviting me. I had a great time!

More Alaska

Tomorrow is my last day here in Alaska...actually half day. I leave to travel home in the afternoon and I am so sad. I could stay easily another week. I brought a few stitching projects with me (of which none got done) and a book that only got partially read but I have never had one dull moment. This black bear below is what we watched all day yesterday but I never had my camera with me when he was around to get a good shot of him. This was taken while we ate dinner through the dining room window. I had to zoom it to get a close enough shot and by the time I did all this he turned around and was heading away from me. We spotted him early in the morning, he had found some trash to get into. Even after the trash was gone he kept coming back. I guess he was hoping for more. I never saw him again after dinner but I heard he was spotted even the next morning. I am a little disappointed that I never got to see any moose...oh well, I guess I will just have to come back again.

Today we took a day cruise in Glacier Bay National Park. It is a little late in the season for the cruise and pretty chilly but we did see some whale, lots of birds, some Mountain Goats and these sea lions. There were quite a few of them and they were just hanging out being lazy. We also saw alot of sea otters. They are all over in the ocean flipped over on the backs relaxing. All you see is their head and feet sticking out.

The glaciers were beautiful and amazing. We stopped in one area where they were breaking off into the water. As we sat there several times you would hear a loud thunder and then al huge chunk would come tumbling down into the water. We went through miles of water with chunks of ice floating in it. The park ranger that was with us explained that each day now more will fall off before they would build up again in the winter, but there are many miles of these glaciers that we couldn't see so they would never disappear completely. Well at least not in our life time anyway. He did show us a time lapse diagram of how over many years they are gradually disappearing.

Altho my trip here in Alaska is almost over and I am sad to leave, I have had the time of my life. It is a trip that I hopefully will get to make again. I have enjoyed every minute I was here thanks to Carla and all of her family here at the lodge. And even more thanks to my great boss that gave me this opportunity to come.

Fishing in Alaska

Last night it was decided that we...Mark, CeeDee, Jim, Carla, Matt, Lonnie and I, the whole crew, would go out fishing for Halibut on Jim's boat today. It ended up raining all night and I wondered if we would still go but this morning it was still on. The chef here at Glacier Bay Country Inn packed us each a sack lunch and we (I, most everyone else already had some) went to the Inn's stash of rain geer and water proof boots and each of us outfitted ourselves. Then off we went to Glacier Bay National Park where their boat was docked.

Here I am in the boat waiting for the others to arrive. It was still raining a little off and on but when everyone arrive we all headed out to sea. As we traveled along we saw whale and sea otters. The water was real choppy and rough today and we were being bounced around in the boat quite a bit.

We finally arrive to where Jim and Mark thought we would have the best results fishing.
They then started setting up fishing poles for us. I was assigned a fishing pole and told what to look for if a fish decided to take a bite. The water was still very rough and choppy. After not to long of a time I got a bit and I started reeling it in. About the same time CeeDee also got a bite on her line. Sorry this picture is sideways, I couldn't figure out how to turn it.

It seemed like I was reeling in forever and I was afraid I was going to lose their fishing pole. It was decided that this was a pretty big fish so they quickly got CeeDee's fish in first and then about that time a third pole had a fish on it's line. That one they got in quickly and ended up letting it go because it was to small. I finally decided that I was going to need some help, so one of the guys took over for me. It actually took 2 of them to pull my halibut in. In this picture I look like I am smiling, which I might have been, but believe me I was struggling too.

Here I am with both of the fish we caught. Mine is the BIG one. It measured about 61' and weighted in approximately 127 lbs. It was so heavy that I couldn't hold it up. After we brought in these two we decided to head back in since the water was getting so rough and we had several in our group not feeling very well. After we got back to the dock Mark filet my fish for me. He was a real expert at it, probably because he has done it for so many of their guest this summer. Now hopefully I will be able to get it home.

Thanks Jim and Mark...I had a great time.

Alaska

I am so lucky to be able to be in Alaska this week. My boss at work gave me a trip to his family's lodge, Glacier Bay Country Inn in Gastavas, Alaska. I have been so excited to go all summer. I have to say it is beautiful and all the Lindbloms here have been so gracious. It was a long day traveling to get here but it has been so worth it. Today I took a day and just hung out and rested. I met Lesli who had been a guest here all week and we spent the day with her telling everything I needed to do and try. Unfortunately today was her last day and she flew out to go back to her home in Tennessee tonight. This is a picture of the lodge. We have had a light mist all day so that might be why this picture is a little fuzzy, it was taken through the rain.

This is a little closer look at the lodge. The dining room of the lodge looks out onto a large meadow that I just know I am going to look out and see moose or maybe even a bear wandering through. Apparently there is a mother bear and 3 cubs that have been hanging around the area lately. I would love to see them...in the daylight.

There isn't a fire going right now but this is the patio area with the firepit in the middle to hang out at to keep warm and visit. I am sure there is alot of story telling going on here.

And this cute little cabin is where I am staying. Beside the guest bedrooms in the lodge there are 5 of these little cabins. I get to stay in one of these. I even have my very own front porch where I just might grab a few minutes doing a little bit of the hand stitching I brought along...yes I even brought stitching to Alaska. I loved listening to the light rain all night on the tin roof.

This is little glimpse of the inside of the cabin. Very cute and cozy. Warm comfy flannel sheets on all the beds. It's hard to imagine flannel sheets coming from the 113 degree weather we were having before. Very cute and cozy.

I can't wait to see what is in store for me for me tomorrow. More to come tomorrow.....