Alaska, Portland & Salt Lake

The Eli Tour Continues!

Hello all you bloggers and blogetts! Today we are in Juneau, Alaska! We've been here for about 10 days and we're having a great time! The weather has been very cool and rainy but we were fortunate to have a few days of AMAZING weather at the begining of our trip and it looks like we'll end our trip the same way!
So I just can never figure out the "correct" way to post my pictures, so they are in reverse order, starting with the most recent pics... (warning, long post!)


Family Pictures

We had a suprise party for Boyd's mom's 60th birthday and it was TONS of fun! Afterwards we had family pictures taken. Eli was of course a big hamm and loved smiling for the camera. I can't wait to take our own family pictures in a few months!

The Men! What a handsome bunch!!

The Ladies! Those men are pretty dang lucky!! :)

Eli's new trick is to wave "Hi" and "Bye" here he is showing off his new skills!

Happy Fam!

Grandma, Grandpa and the kiddos! Look at all those cousins Eli has!

The whole bunch. We had a lot of fun that day! We were SO lucky that it stopped raining just long enough for us to take our pictures!

My favorite people in the world! I love my boys!!

Hangin' Out at Grandma's...

Eli LOVES to plunk on the piano, check out his feet, he is on his very tippy toes to reach it.

Eli's First Haircut

Eli's hair was getting pretty long around his ears and in the back so Grandma gave him a little trim. I was a little nervous cause he's pretty wiggly, but it went good! He looks very cute...

Oh what a ham! Check out those teeth!

The Shrine of St. Therese

We went to this really cool place called The Shrine of St. Therese and stayed the night in this beautiful cabin. It was awesome. This is the view from the giagantic windows in the front room.

The living room. Allie says "Why is this house made out of wood?!?" and we replied, "Well, what should it be made out of?" Allie says, "I dunno, plastic?" :) Oh Allie, you keep us laughing!

Boyd's secret talent is fishing. I didn't know how much he knew about it! In the morning we went down to the point and tried to catch something. It was crazy, fish were jumping all around us! It's a wonder we didn't catch one. We also saw some whales, that was really neat!

The tide comes in so fast if you're not careful, you could be stranded out on a rock. I yelled to Boyd to come inward and he did this little "trick" and nearly fell in. I actually did sorta fall in, getting my entire leg wet trying to save a fishing bouie--those babies are like gold! (so I'm told)

Okay so this picture is not a mistake. Look in the center of the picture and you'll see a dark figure. That is a BEAR! We were awoken in the morning by Hannah saying there was a bear outside! It had climbed up in the tree with it's cub and hung out there for a while. It was quite entertaining--who needs a television? Boyd decided to go out on the porch and I was NOT happy about that because the bear started to climb down the tree, and was SO close to us!! WOW!

Party!!

Poor Eli had such an eventful day! He was a trooper and just caught tiny little naps. On the way home from the party he totally crashed and was snoring in his carseat. Poor guy.

The cakes!

Brooks taught Laci and I how to do fondant cakes and it was SO fun! It was kind of like playing with playdough but even better. The best part was that the cakes were AMAAAAZINGly yummy!!!

The colors for the party were pink and gold. Brooks did such an awesome job!! Sharon was sooooo suprised and we had just a wonderful time!

We went over to Brooks & Aaron's house to hang out and the kids were so thrilled that Eli was at their house. They all wanted him to go in their rooms and Landon even asked when Eli would be big enough to play Lego's with him. Very soon!

Everybody wants to feed Eli, funny thing is, Eli wants to feed himself! We thought this was a good comprimise. Eli is almost as big as Allie! Haha.

Eli with his Grandma AND great-Grandma! What a lucky boy!

Mendenhall Glacier

Brooks and I have been biking and then running, it's so fun! So one day we biked to the Mendenhall Glacier, which is just crazy because people come from all over the world to see it, and we biked to it! Then we parked our bikes and ran up a trail near the glacier. In this shot, you can see a large stream of water coming out of the rock. Brooks said she'd never seen that before. It was beautiful!

We stopped our run briefy to take in the view and snap a quick pic!

Dye- Pack

We went to this place called the Dye-Pack where they regulate the salmon population. It was fun. Look at that handsome couple with that big fish!

Oooh la la, Cameron and Boyd make quite the pair!

Eli was less than thrilled to be part of this photo, but Hailey enjoyed it!

My sweet boy!

Eli loves to exercise his vocal chords which he is doing in this picture. Some of you may notice that yes, Eli is wearing shoes! A first for this little Arizona boy!

This is one of those "OH MY GOSH HONEY WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!?!?" pictures. I was YELLING at Boyd to get Eli down from there, because just beyond that ledge is a gigantic salmon tank. It gives me chills to even look at the picture and see how close Eli is to the ledge. Ahhhh

Where is this place??!?

If you have seen the movie "The Proposal" you may have a very false idea that Alaska in the summer is sunshine and boating. That is just so untrue. Alaska in the summer is more like, well Arizona in the winter--no, it's more like Seattle in the spring. Cool, wet and rainy. You may get lucky and have a few days where the sun peaks out, but that is pretty much it. The day after we arrived however, it was the most gorgeous day I have ever seen in the 3 years we've come up here. It was amost hot! There was blue sky and lots of sunshine! We seized the opportunity and went to Auke Bay where we walked the "beach" (more like rocky shore) and took in the scenery. It was lovely! Hopefully we'll have one or two more days like that before we leave!

The last time the kids saw Eli,he was only 3 months old, so they were pretty excited to see how big he was!

WOW! Just an amazing day in Alaska

"The beach"

Portland

Best Friends. I was SO glad that we got to stop by Portland on our way up to Alaska. My best friend Diana lives there with her hubby and I hadn't been to visit her yet. She and I have been best friends since 4th grade. We've been through a lot, but we are so close. There are a few people in my life who I feel so connected to whether we talk every day or every few months, her and I always have a million things to talk about. I love spending time with Di, she is the most genuine person I know. We had SO much fun and I can't wait to go up there in the fall and stay even longer!!

This was at the train station before we left.

Awww. Auntie Diana.

We went to this really neat fancy restaurant with these incredible desserts! Not only did they taste amazing, they were like works of art!!

Yum-o! Check out this dessert, anyone want to take a guess at the caloric intake of this bad boy? Yeah me either... let's just say i'm sure it's not "low cal". The good news is, I could hardly take more than a few bites, it was SUPER rich. But oh so good!

Matt getting his first expereince feeding Eli. He was really good at it--very neat and clean, no oatmeal all over Eli's face!

At dinner with Matt and Di, Eli was suprised by the flash

Eli and Di checkin' out the Elmo camera

Salt Lake for the 4th

Samm's first "real" makeover. Being the nice big sister I am, I took my lil sis to the MAC counter for her bday and she got a makeover. It was really fun and she learned some good tricks! I reminded her (as did Mom and Auntie Pam) that she was VERY lucky! It was a lot of fun!!

Eli's word is "wooooaaahhh" and then he says it really fast "woahwoahwoahwoah" and shakes his whole body when he gets excited. I thought he was going to be really scared of the fireworks, but he LOVED them!

Tired boy! Giving loves to G before the fireworks show.

Mmmmmm that snow cone was good Grammie!

Eli's first snow cone.Grammie gave Eli his first snow cone bite. He liked it, but didn't go crazy over it, thank goodness! I think we'll wait awhile before the second snow cone.

Since I wouldn't let my Dad strap Eli's carseat to his motorcycle, he decided to take Samm instead. I'm so mean huh. (!?!?!?) This was on our way to Sugar House Park for the 4th fireworks.

Eli getting a little jam session with Uncle Justin. He LOVED listening to Justin play the guitar; he would dance and bob his head. He REALLY wanted to play it himself., and got to a little bit. Maybe he'll get lessons from Uncle Justin one day...

Some videos for your enjoyment...
Here is a video of Eli's first walking expereince! He found this little car of Allie's and wanted to push it by himself. It was so funny, he didn't really have the balance part down yet so he just went really fast until he ran into something and then yelled because he couldn't keep going. He is now getting more comfortable with the car and can even steer it a little!



Eli the Pianist

I think we have a child prodigy on our hands! Haha! I just thought this was the funniest thing ever. Eli took it very seriously though and really tried hard to play his best. :)

Where in the World Are the Leamings???