Positive, happy memories of this past summer

We woke up this morning to a nice and beautiful blanket of snow. I am beyond sad when it comes to the snow. I do love snow, it is beautiful and it reminds me of Christmas time, but I am just not ready for it yet. It is only the middle of September for crying out loud! Either way, I found myself reminising of this summer. I had such an amazing summer! I haven't been able to share much because of my camera (or lack there of), so I thought I would go down memory lane for a bit. Maybe give you something to wish for next summer!
I am apologizing now for the order of the pics. I have been uploading for over an hour and I am just ready for bed.

Some pics of white water rafting. I went alone on a weekend getaway to Denali with a group of girls. It was SO much fun. This is a raft "high five" and we are "drifting" in glacial meltoff. I think the water temp was just above freezing. Yes, it WAS cold.

My kid-os love playing at the park. We have the best park on base across the street from my house, it is perfect.

Girls camp. Oh these are some of my Mia Maids. I miss them. I am now the Primary Chorister, which I do love too, but this pic just makes me miss my girls.

Mmmmm, popsicles.

More Denali rafting pics. These are all the girls that went and stayed over night.

My first REAL run. It is the midnight sunrun which is a 10k. My time was 58:09!

Clayton dipnetting for some salmon! Go, baby GO!

The first of MANY!!!!!!

Park time in Valdez, AK when we went camping with the Gerwig family.

What 1 year old can do this by themselves? She climbed all the way up there over and over and over again. She is fearless. She scares the living tar out of me too! Apparently I must have been pretty bad as a child to deserve this kind of stuff.

bubbles, definately a summer time treat.

Our family at a minor league hockey game. I sang the National Anthem for it.

Valdez pictures. Most were taken on our glacier and wildlife cruise we went on,

Clayton deep sea fishing for Halibut.

Valdez's Bridal Veil waterfall.

We spent at least 2 days a week at the "fake beach" this summer. My kids got VERY tan for being Alaskans.

Clayton and I went canoeing with the ward.

I had baby birds living in my dead plant. It hung right in front of my front door, but I couldn't move it because of the nest. I was SO thrilled to watch my babies grow. The went from hatched to flying in about 3 weeks. It was much faster than I would have expected.

googles. only in the summertime.

mmmm, corn on the cob. it's the best in the summer

train rides.

beach bum

ice cream

more park time

chitina river. a.k.a. the best salmon fishing spot!all the hard work payed off! this is the best food ever.

RASPBERRIES!

riding bikes on 2 or 4 wheels

Denali National Park

Clayton and his dads moose hunting spot. Hmmm, I forgot a picture of the moose. That is another good thing about the summers! And of coarse, 4 wheeler rides.

Clayton's MOOSE!

I have had such a hard time getting this post up on here, so I am going to try to keep it short and sweet. Clayton's dad came up for a week, just to go moose hunting. They decided to stay "on base" which is still about 40 or so miles out. They had some awesome luck (oops, I mean skills!) and Clayton shot his moose on the first day of hunting season. I am SO proud of him. This is the first animal HE has actually shot, and what is better than getting a moose for your first? Not to mention, I am super happy that my freezer has been re-filled :).

I know, I know. Gross! I did it last year too, so now it's all about tradition!

Clayton and his dad did ALL of the meat procesing themselves. It took them 3 days total, but I would guess that it saved us around 800 to 1,000 dollars. Well worth the 3 days. This is Clarence cleaning off all of the meat before they cut it up.

Hannah thinks that most animals are her very own personal pet, but this moose in particular she was quite fond of! She was all sorts of excited to get to pet him....and sit on him.

We took her off for about 30 seconds (a HUGE FIT!) and decided to just let her sit on him. Why not? She would have stayed all day if I would have let her. I think she ended up with a good 20 minutes before I made her get off.

Clayton grinding up the meat into burger. Mmm mmmm, good.

This is day 1, I promise they didn't look this happy on day 3. They were pretty tired by the end of it all. Still, after it is all said and done, Clarence went home with a full suitcase and totally happy and Clayton and I are thrilled. I really am SO proud of him and I am so grateful that he and his dad could do all of the processing themselves too. We are so blessed!

Happy Birthday to ME!

So my Birthday was onthe 29th and the girls wanted to clelbrate with something CRAZY F-U-N! Not just your everyday fun, but Kari FUN! (That is totally different by the way!) So the girls arranged for all of us to get some shopping done first at Old Navy (yep, I love me some Old Navy sales!), then we went to dinner at Chili's (probably one of my most favorite places to eat, lame and boring I know, but I just LOVE their food. It is all sooo good!), and then after dinner they surprized me with a KARAOKE NIGHT! (I love to get up in front of people to sing. It is such a rush and yet still so much fun!) Let me tell you, no other night could have been more "me" than that night. I had so much F-U-N! Thanks to all of my awesome friends :) In this picture, Cindy, Jenny, Cheri and Karla are singing me Happy Birthday. Maaret is behind the camera taking the picture.

Karla, Me, Jenny, Cindy, and Maaret around the table at the Karaoke bar writing down what songs we wanted to sing.

(below) Me, Karla and Cheri at Chili's

Maaret, Cindy and Jenny at Chili's

I'm singing "Lucky" by Britney Spears. Karla and I thought it would be funny if I sang it and she acted like the chic in the video. It was pretty funny for the first half of the song, but then poor Karla had to just sit there and act like she was crying the whole rest of the time.

Karla, oh Karla. She is something else. She struts on the stage like she owns it!

These to pics are of Jenny and I singing the song "mouth". I was sure that I knew the song so I offered to sing it with her, I just had forgotten what the song was about. Remember the lyrics? "when I kiss your mouth I wanna taste it. Turn you upside down, don't wanna waste it." Then it goes on about turning him on and ......well, I couldn't stop laughing once I finally figured out what I was supposed to be singing.

Cheri and Karla going to town! These girls rocked it out!

Me, Jenny, Cindy and Maaret. I have no idea which song we are singing, but it looks like it was a good one :)

Jenny and Maaret

Cheri, Cindy and Maaret

I have some seriously awesome friends here! So awesome, that it is making me want to NOT go home for the Holidays at all when Clayton deploys. I love these girls...and I just can't get enough of them!

Weston's first day

Oh, my baby is SO big. Although he does look like he is going to be eaten alive by the enormous abckpack, he is still so big. He has been so excited to go to school this year. This kid just loves learning and loves friends so to him the idea of school is just AWESOME! I got a couple pictures of him heading out as we waled to school. This picture he is showing off his totally cool packpack. I had my friend Cindy help me embroider his name across the pocket and he loves it. He is so proud of his new backpack.

When we got to his classroom we found his "cubby" and took his shoes out and all of that first day stuff and then I bent over to hug him goodbye and my dang eyes started leaking! What the heck? I wasn't ready for that at all. I mean, I hear of it all the time....you know, the mom that's just sobbing because her baby is all grown up and ready to face the world without her. I am just not typically that mom. I am all about my kids getting out there and facing the world and learning with all new experiences....or so I thought. Apparently I have some sappiness in me too. When he grabbed me and hugged me sooo tight (not because he was scared, but because he was so excited) that was all it took. My eyes filled up almost instantly! Luckily there was no heavy shaking or sobbing invovled, just a tear or 2, but still! I should have known. I should have been more prepared.

I am so proud of Weston. He is such a good kid all around and has such an amazing personality. Everyone around him wants to be his friend, he is so smart, he is a good example and loves choosing the right, and he is (almost) always happy. My most favorite thing about him is his laugh. The way it sounds, how often he laughs, how easily he laughs...he is such a happy little (big) guy. He is going to LOVE this new world of his.

Conoeing IS fun!

Every year the Relief Society in our ward hosts a conoe trip in North Pole for the adults. Last year Clayton and I went and we flipped our canoe about half way through. Let me tell you, it was COLD! We were absolutely freezing and shivering, but still had such a blast! This year we knew what to look out for and avoided it like the plague. Instead my good friends Jenny and Cindy were the ones shivering. Here are a few pics of us taken by our coolest next door neighbors ever, Tee and Brian! I love these pictures.

Yes we are going sideways...Clayton thinks it is funny to do random things. I just go with the flow.

I especially love this picture. If you look behind us you can see other canoes coming down the slough(river). Plus I look so dang cute (if I can say so myself) and Clayton looks good here too :).

We did have tons of fun this year. We had a lot of fun last year, but apparently the experience is quite a bit better if you aren't uncontrollably shivering and stiff the second half. I can't wait for next years trip...maybe they'll do it in early July when it's still a bit warmer out?

I DID IT! 2 hours and 19 minutes!

I am pretending to be tough, really I am wishing I could lay on the ground! This was taken by my awesome support team and good friends Cheri and Karla right after the race! It was so nice for me to see a familiar face at the finish line. Thanks girls for your support!

This is me and Nora right after we finished. She is the perfect workout partner for me. She is motivated and serious and right at my level, it is so nice! I love it. A good work out partner is hard to come by, so she was great to have for this race.

Crossing the finish line.

The last .1 of a mile or in other words, THE HOME STRETCH!!! So close, but soooo far.

I am so, so, SO proud of myself! I did it! I actually did it! I am still amazed with myself and my dedication to running, but a half marathon? REALLY?? AND I did it!!!!
I have to admit that I really wasn't sure if I would be able to run the full 13 miles. I didn't know if I was quite there yet with all of my training, not to mention the wildfire smoke. There has been a huge wildfire pretty close to Fairbanks for a couple of weeks now and all of its smoke is blown this direction. There have been quite a few days in the past 10 days or so where it has been "unsafe" outside just to walk or play, so the thought of running for 2 hours in the smoke, yeah right. I honestly thought the run would be cancelled or postponed (I think I was secretly hoping for more training time) because as of last night the smoke was so thick most AK flights were cancelled so surely that is just too muck of a health risk. Well at about midnight last night I decided that with or without the smoke I was going to run....on a treadmill for 13 miles. Then I get woke up by my running partner at 7am to hear that almost all smoke is gone, and she's running outside! Of coarse I was SO scared all of the sudden, but I knew I was in.
Nora and I ran together the whole way pushing each other and talking ourselves through it....or maybe we were just talking a lot. Actually we were. There is a point in the run where you make a loop and then head back the way you just came. Well in this loop they added a little extra .3 mile for the "going to" direction. Either way, we were supposed to only do that extra loop once but we were so busy talking and being girls that we missed our turn and ran an extra .3 miles (about 3 minutes in time). Grrr. The only way we noticed was because we had worked hard to pass these 2 different group of people, and then all of the sudden they were in front of us again. Oh that was quite the downer, especially on mile #10 when you are ready to give up. We didn't. We didn't really ever have the urge to give up (meaning start walking), but we still felt pretty dumb for it.
Either way, I finished at 2:19:00 (extra 3 minutes are already subtracted!) which I think is fabulous! I crossed the finish line and felt pretty good overall. My body was tired, but not dead. My endurance could have lasted a while longer. My breathing wasn't heavy and out of control, just moderate. My muscles were tight, but not sore or burning. Apparently I was ready for today :)!!! I am not ready for tomorrow though. I know the aching is about to begin......