It's a Good Thing...

...when your dad is a doctor.  Stitches on your chin are a lot easier to handle.

Guess the kid? That's Luke getting his first stitches (and hopefully last).  Anyone who has been to our house has probably heard me tell Luke, "Luke, stay off the kitchen counters.  I'll get you a glass."  Yeah, that still is a good piece of advice.  After another sneak attack on the kitchen, Luke tried to get a glass, slipped, and he split his chin on the new granite countertops.  He had two pretty good teeth marks on his tongue where he bit down extremely hard, which will heal, but the chin needed stitches.  Upon seeing it, I told Madison (very calmly, I might add), "Madison, go get Daddy."  Luke joins the "Stitches in the Chin Club" with his Uncle Clay who received his as a toddler while jumping in the bathtub.  Hopefully, Luke won't be climbing on the kitchen counters anymore...hopefully.

I'm also very grateful Edward was home this past weekend for this. He spent the first half of the week in Texas for work, so if there is a blessing, it was that he was home to help with Luke.

Cousins

Last Thursday, some of our cousins stopped for a visit.  Mackenzie, Kaitlann, and Knox, who live in Georgia, were on their way home from Maine.  We all had a nice visit.

 Since it was well over 100 degrees with insane humidity, a dip in the pool was a must.  Alex is very proud that he is not using his floaties after all of his swimming lessons.

 Kaitlann with the water gun

 Six kids and two dads in the pool

 Knox enjoyed floating around



 Once everyone was tired from the pool, we came inside, and dress-up took over.

 Madison, Mackenzie, and Kaitlann-These three always have a great time together.  Mackenzie is eight; Madison is seven, and Kaitlann is six.

 Kaitlann

 Mackenzie

Madison 

 Mexican Feast-Taco ring, enchilidas, spinach dip, and chips with salsa.

Knox only wanted the spinach dip, and he ate plenty of it!  I'm so glad he enjoyed it.

It was great to see all of you.  Thanks for stopping for a visit.

Around the House

These pictures are for Edward, who is away for a few days.  The kids have been missing him, but have had good times playing together.

We are huge fans of Trio blocks here.  They LOVE to build a lot of different creations. 

Madison and Alex had a tea party to celebrate Rebecca's birthday (American Girl doll).  She has a lot of birthdays  :)

Swim Lessons

The kids just finished their first round of two-week swimming lessons.  They are doing another two weeks of lessons starting this Monday.  All three have enjoyed it very much, and their skills are really improving.

Luke has been in the Level 1/2 class.  With that, he's learning his strokes, starting with freestyle.  He really is a good athlete, as we've noted with him in sports, and swimming seems to be no different.  He has quickly taken to freestyle and is getting very good at it.  Luke really likes the backstroke, and he's enjoying learning it.

 Alex's lesson is right before Luke's and Madison's.  He's in the preschool group, the youngest and only boy.  He is also the most daring of the group.  When most won't even think of jumping in, Alex is there jumping and coming up laughing.  He's really working on survival skills and staying afloat.

Madison has her lesson at the same time as Luke, but she's in the Level 3/4 class.  Her class meets in the deep end of the pool, while Luke's class meets in the shallow end.  She has really worked on improving her technique in diving, freestyle, and backstroke, along with learning the breast stroke this year.  Because we had such great swimming lessons in Arizona that started at three-years-old and focused a lot on diving, she's way ahead of her class in diving.  She's the youngest, by two years, of the kids in her class, but that hasn't stopped her at all.  What is really funny is that she's the only kid in the class who would dive off the diving board, as pictured here.  None of the other kids would do it even after Madison did!  I think her teacher was unsure at first if she would and then thrilled she did.  Madison's dives have gotten much cleaner over the last two weeks, and the dive she did above turned out to be a great one.  I wish I could have gotten a picture, but I was too busy trying to watch it. She still dislikes the freesytle because of having to keep her head in the water, but she's gotten much better at it.

A New Ride

We have known for quite awhile we needed to trade in my minivan.  It was five years old (we got it just after we had Luke), had 100,000  miles on it, and it was just time.  Add three years of hard time in the desert with the heat and the sand, the car was ready.  It was a great minivan, and we would have been happy with another Kia.  However, there weren't any 2012's left anywhere but Louisiana and Texas that had a dvd player and leather seats, so we decided to get a Honda Odyssey.  We haven't been disappointed yet; in fact, it's been an awesome car so far.  This was the day we got it, but since then, it's been back tot he dealership for the roof rack and crossbars (part of the deal) since Honda doesn't install them as a basic part of the car.  So, now we are all set for long-distance traveling.  I think my favorite new feature is how the bottom center console glove box is actually a cooler, so after a hot morning at swim lessons, I have a cool bottle of water to drink!

The Clemson Alumni sticker and license plate have already been put on the minivan  :)

Sadly, I was told the Army is not giving out DOD car tags anymore. I've had those forever, and I'm actually going to miss them!

The Last of Alaska

We finished up our two-week vacation to Alaska by leaving Denali and driving back to Anchorage.  In Anchorage, we stayed overnight at the Embassy Suites, and the next morning, we finished up laundry and pool time before we checked out.  We still had the majority of the day before our red-eye flight, so we drove around Anchorage a bit.

First, before leaving Denali, I forgot I had this on my phone.  This picture was taken outside of the restaurant where Andrew works.

It's a chopped up school bus, they use as a motorhome of sorts, along with a tow behind area for their 4-wheelers.  Now, Jennifer pointed out it had a smokestack, so it's "high-tech."  That was a totally random sighting.

This is the restaurant where Andrew works.  The burgers we had there was absolutely huge and delicious.

 On the way from Denali to Anchorage, we stopped for lunch in Talkeenta.  We found our way to this delicious restaurant, West Rib Pub and Grill.

They advertise the biggest burger in the state at over five pounds.  No, we didn't try it.

The kids enjoyed some ice cream.

Views of McKinley from Talkeetna

Bush plane landing in Talkeetna

Now, to Anchorage...we couldn't see any of this the day we arrived due to fog.

We had to stop by the ULU shop when we returned to Anchorage.  We had stopped there on our first day.  Ulu's are a local knife that everyone swears by here.  We saw them all over the state, and this is where they are made (except for the "Made in China" ones I found at several locations).  This was a really cool shop, and I'm glad we stopped back in because this day, they had free ice cream! We all tried their local Alaskan flavors including Fireweed-Edward  and Alaskan Berry-Martha and Luke, Vanilla-Alex and Madison (Jennifer, both were really good-the berry had a lot of the local berries in it you showed us).

 Since we had a full free day before our flight, we checked out the Alaska Zoo, home to many Arctic type animals.

 Just recently, a moose had been born.

After all this, we made our way to the airport and rental car return.  We had a really fantastic trip.  Our flight was delayed about and hour and a half out of Anchorage (left after 1:00 AM local time), which caused us to miss our connections in Denver and Charlotte.  The kids were asleep before the plane even took off from Anchorage, and because it barely gets dark, I had a good view of the mountains and surrounding area as we gained altitude (Edward was already asleep too).  We were in Denver long enough to get our new flight (that took an hour), grab some breakfast, and reboard.  Luke slept that whole time too at the airport!  When we got on our next flight, I sat with him, handed him a sandwich, and he gave me the "Where did you get that?" look.  He had been out cold. 

We are very grateful for safe travels and a great trip.  It was so good to see Jennifer and Andrew again; we always enjoy visiting their homes.

Our Last Day at Denali

We spent our last day up at Denali hanging out with Jennifer and Andrew.  We had lunch with them at their house.  Now, we stayed just across the main road from them, but with weaving back into the woods and dirt roads, it took about 15 minutes to get from our cabin to theirs.  We rented a cabin here http://www.denaliwoods.com/Amenities.html and I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of it.  I guess we were always so tired after a full day's outing that I totally forgot to take some at the cabin.  Anyways, the cabin where we stayed worked out really well, and we enjoyed counting moose between our cabin and theirs.  So, our last day, we had lunch with Jennifer and Andrew.

Alex loved finding sticks at their cabin.

I had to get a picture of their car. Cars in Alaska have to be plugged in during the winter with the extreme temps.  Plugs like this hang out of cars all over the place.

Alex and Uncle Andrew sitting outside on their trailer

The kids declared one of the best parts of the whole trip was riding on their 4-wheeler.

 After lunch, we stopped back in at the park's Visitor's Center where our kids became junior rangers again!  This lady wasn't as excited nor as sweet as the last one.

We had a really great trip to Denali and learned SO much!  We repacked our bags, rested up, for we had a 250 mile back to Anchorage the next day.