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| Down the beach at Captain Cook |
Niki’s dad recently came to Alaska and stayed with us for 5 days! So we packed in as much fun, visiting, and site-seeing as we possibly could… and even managed to get a couple naps in there too! Our first day was spent enjoying coffee and cinnamon rolls together in the morning, some visiting on the patio, and then a drive out to Nikiski ending at Captain Cook Park. We showed him all the meaningful places to us along our drive, and it was fun for Ty and I to reminisce about our childhood in Nikiski.
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| Grampa Louie with Nya |
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| Grampa Louie with Elliana |
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| Looks like some serious guy-talk here… |
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| I (Niki) am not the photographer of the family, but this is one of my best shots! |
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| The easy one to photograph… |
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| This one takes a little more work… cute as a button, but slightly uncooperative sometimes 🙂 |
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| How can you resist a little snuggle time on a big huge boulder, I mean really?… |
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| While Niki was making dinner Louie took Nya for a walk out onto the big hill in front of our house. |
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| That evening we had a wonderful family dinner filled with lots of visiting and laughing. |
The next day we set out on our first adventure ~ a glacier cruise out of Whittier. It turned out to be a bigger adventure than we’d planned because we missed the tunnel opening by 10 minutes and that meant we missed our boat… oopsie. The cruise staff kindly made us a reservation for the next day, but now we had a decision to make. Do we turn back home and make the drive again the next morning, or do we head into Anchorage and do something fun there? We decided to do the latter of two even though we were totally unprepared for staying the night any where. In our spontaneous decision to pursue fun we headed to the zoo!
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| Niki enjoying the petting zoo as much as the girls! |
After our fun at the zoo we toured around Anchorage for a bit and made our way to Orso’s for dinner. Then it was back to the hotel for some swimming! The next day we made sure to leave early and make it to the tunnel on time and we ended up having some time to kill in Whittier before our boat left.
Enjoying one of the many glaciers we got to see on this cruise. Surprisingly there wasn’t much calving, but they were still very beautiful to see. We saw a lot of seals, otters, and birds… no whales though 🙁
Ok, this picture cracks me up because I want to caption it something like “6 hours is way too long on a boat with two kids…” But the girls really did a great job and Dad enjoyed every bit of it (I think, or at least he pretended well!)
The following days were filled with so much fun that we forgot to take pictures…grrr… seriously. We stayed home one day and my dad made some amazing clam dip and his fantastic homemade spaghetti sauce, and later told me that some of the meat he used was cow tale. Hmmm… can’t say that’s a regular item on my grocery list, but it sure made some good spaghetti sauce! Sunday morning Ty and I had to be at the church early for band practice and so grampa got the girls ready and brought them to church all by himself and was even early – amazing! I am still mad at myself for not getting a picture of all of us at church together… grrr. It was a blast having dad there and getting to introduce him to friends and family. That afternoon it was naps for everyone and then back to church for a potluck dinner. Then all of us went to Carl’s Junior for ice cream ~ can you tell we like to eat in our family?! Dad and I stayed up late visiting and enjoying the last bit of time together before he had to leave the next morning. The next morning we drug the girls out of bed early and all went to the airport together and had breakfast at PJ’s and then watched grampa Louie’s plane take off. The 5 days flew by (as we knew they would) but it was perfect… well except that we ran out of time and didn’t get to take him on a Rhino Ride. But aside from that (and forgetting to take more pictures) I can’t imagine it being better!
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I just spent a REALLY long time reading up on you guys and decided we are going to be GREAT friends! =) Love all the pictures, love the writing, love your thoughts, love the verses, love the whole family and all the fun you have together! Can't wait to get to know you guys better!
You're too funny Martha. We're excited to be down there and get to know you guys as well. We feel very blessed with the connections we made while we were down there.