All The Marks of a GREAT Summer

It's only the beginning of July and we've already experienced days upon days of beautiful and unusually warm weather for us Alaskans! So this blog post will be short on words because, well... a picture is worth a 1000 words, as the saying goes...

Elli eating on our front patio

Sadie & Nya in their own little raft at Grandma & Grandpa's house

Ty water skiing (the mark of a TRULY great summer!)

Playing at the park

Nya playing in the sprinklers

Jumping on the kiddie trampoline (how cute is this thing!)

Nya watering the flowers

Father's Day Picnic at Captain Cook

Fourth of July Parade (AKA ~ Fire trucks, horses, motorcycles, & CANDY!)

Rain or shine we like our Rhino!

We got completely soaked with rain and hail on this ride... and laughed our heads off the whole time!... except for Elli, she slept through it.

Two of my favorite clothing items for summer ... tank tops & baby bonnets!

Lions & Tigers & Bears Oh My!!

...ok, so not really any lions, and maybe just one tiger, but still ~ the Alaska Zoo was a blast for the Shenanigans. Of allllll the things Ty could do for his 30th birthday he chose to skip out on free tickets to a motivational speaking seminar and join his girls at the zoo. And boy were we glad to have our favorite photographer along with us to capture all the fun! It was an absolutely gorgeous day and we managed to stretch our zoo visit to about 5 and a half hours ... this could be considered somewhat humorous for anyone who's been to the Alaska zoo. But we are indeed an animal-loving, photo-taking family!

There, we just saved you $12 :) no need to visit the zoo ...

"What? We missed one?"












"My go find more an-mals," said Nya all day long. "I'm just along for the ride," thought Elli.
























How hard can it be to get 2 parents and 2 cute girls to all look at the camera at the same time? Apparently quite difficult! :) Oh, but it makes for some fun memories anyways :)

Train Adventure

Niki and I managed to sneak off for a little post turnaround getaway.
We spent the night in Anchorage last night and are on the train headed
to Seward now. More to follow...

Romantic Getaway For Two

We left the girls and went to Homer this past Monday and Tuesday for a little getaway ... and the girls were still watching cartoons when we got back! Ha ~ kidding, kidding ... please don't report us. Anyways, thanks to a generous gift from our youth pastor & church, we got to stay at Land's End and have a wonderful dinner (King Crab for Niki & Prime Rib for Ty) and breakfast.
As anyone who's visited Homer in the winter knows, there's really nothing to
do there this time of year ... so it made it easy to relax and enjoy the beach, scenery, & hotel amenities (aka outdoor hot tub).Crossward puzzles are a favorite relaxing activity for us. This was activity #1 on Niki's agenda (would not be #1 in Ty's mind, but patience is a virtue) and she quickly did as many of the easy ones as possible before Ty joined in! We kicked butt on this one, knocked it out in less than 30 min. Then we were off to the beach for a walk to try and find a geo-cache, & we did.

Niki pointing to our favorite mountain top ~ we like the pointy, jagged ones.









We decided to do a photo session under the docks even though it was quite cold.

Niki saying to herself "smile like it's not cold, smile like it's not cold" ... :)

A three-hour lunch at Sourdough Express (another crossword & some vacation planning) & a visit to Greg & Karen Newell's were the highlights of Tuesday. A fun trip indeed! Thanks Ryan, Grandma, & Grandpa for giving us the opportunity to do this.

Super Nya!

Most superheroes have fancy costumes, but some are so cute they don't need one at all... Today Niki and I were blessed with the presence of our favorite super hero in our house and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a few photo's. This is really my first foray into black and white photo's with my new camera and I have to say it's really fun. It's interesting how a lack of color can actually bring more depth to a photograph.