This morning, a group that sings children's music was putting on a concert on the grass by the library. We had a good size group of friends and their kids show up...13 kids in all I think. Here are some pics of all the fun we had dancing around in the grass.
Oh...well this first one is me showing some of the other kids how to do the ski jump from the Wii. A few seconds earlier, my girls were doing the same thing but of course Lisa gets a picture of only me doing it...looking like an idiot in the process.
While we don't do everything we'd like to, we still manage to get out and have some fun. Just at the end of the day today, we sat down with the girls and talked about all the things we did today and it was a lot. This morning, we went to a place called Bouncing Bears. It's a giant warehouse with those huge inflatable slides. There were quite a few kids there but it was a ton of fun for all of us. Lisa and I were in there with the girls jumping around and going down the slides.
On the way home, we stopped by a RV sales place and looked at travel trailers. I've been thinking about this all summer...about how much fun it would be to have some sort of RV or trailer. After lots of internet research, we stopped by for the first time and actually walked through a couple. I could really see us getting one of those next year. The girls loved running around inside and were pretty upset when we left to go home.
After lunch and a nap that was a little shorter than expected, we went back out to run some errands. We went to REI first, then to Michaels, the Pet Store so the girls could run around and see all the animals, and then finally to Sportsman's Warehouse for some more flies. At Sportsmans, they had one of those tiny carts for kids. The girls LOVED pushing it around!! OH...then we had to go to the grocery story. The girls always love that because they get to sit in the big cart that looks like a race car and has two steering wheels in it. That's always a blasty blast.
Finally home for dinner, naked time, and a bath before going to bed. It's been a hectic but fun day.
Now as Lisa is doing some crafts for our neighbor girls, I thought I would download a couple videos and find some old photos that we haven't shared yet.
First video is Head Shoulders Knees and Toes.
Now for the Hokie Pokie
A quick story before we get to the pictures. This morning, Lisa and I were making breakfast and getting the girls ready for the day when Katy decided she wasn't ready to have her diaper changed yet. We didn't want a fight so we let her have her moment. I jokingly asked if she would let Alyssa change her diaper and she said "yes". So she lays down and next thing I know, Alyssa is sitting in front of her trying to take off Katy's pants and diaper! So I quickly grab the camera while Lisa sits down to assist and we get a great video of Alyssa helping. I would share the video with everyone but there was a little too much baby nudity to just put out there for anyone and everyone to see. I've sent a link for family. If you don't get to see it, just know that it's pretty hilarious.
Another one from this evening that Lisa just posted on Facebook...we were in their room getting ready for bed. Right before we turn off the lights we sign the alphabet and we count with the girls. After we counted, Lisa asks Alyssa if she wants to count backwards. She says "yes", thinks for a moment, then turns around and faces away from us and proceeds to count! It was fantastic!
So here are some older photos that I dug up. One of my favorites. cuteness Before a 10+ mile bike ride with the girls, we had a picnic at the trail head in the back of the car. After...the girls had some fun in the drivers seat. Back to work and play tomorrow. We have a couple things planned this week already and I'm going to try and bike to work all 5 days. We'll see what happens.
I know that doesn't sound good but it was AWESOME!
Here was my day today. I woke up at 5:15am to be at work by 6. I worked until 2pm. Came home in time to help put the girls down for their nap. Nate and I had discussed fishing locally today (last chance for a while) but decided at the last minute to go down to the Kenai River to fish the seconds run of the reds.
SO, I left at 3:00 and drove 2 hours and 15 minutes down to the Kenai River and met up with Nate to do some fishing. We fished hard until about 10:30! It is now 1:30am and I just got home. I am currently having dinner and will be waking up to go back to work in about 3 and a half hours. THAT'S why they call it the "Suicide Run".
So how did we do? Freaking awesome! Nate landed 12 reds I think. I only landed one (again!) but fought another half dozen but couldn't land them. The big surprise of the day was the rainbows and dolly varden that we caught. I caught 2 dollies and Nate probably caught 5 or so. I also caught 2 rainbows including the biggest one of my life. Nate had the catch of the day with a MONSTER rainbow. I took a picture of it with his iphone...I can't wait to see it. I was trying to frame the picture and take it real quick and wasn't paying much attention to the fish until after I took the picture...I couldn't believe my eyes. It was HUGE!!!
Alright, dinner is over. Time to get a few hours of sleep and dream of reds, rainbows, and dollies...oh my!
So much fun this summer while the weather was nice. Now that I finally washed the cars yesterday, the rain returned and it feels more like a typical Anchorage summer now. I think we went something rediculous like 20 days without rain and then I wash the cars and it rains all night and most of the day today. Perfect. Well, up until today we were making the most of our nice weather. We've been doing something exciting every day...going to the zoo, going to the park(s), bike rides, fishing, swimming (well kinda), etc. Now it's time to start catching up on some of the pictures/videos.
I can't remember if I posted any pictures of these shirts yet. Lisa made a comment a while back on Facebook referring to the girls as "Thing 1 and Thing 2". Well guess what our neigbors found while they were on vacation? We had a stretch of warm temps where we were hitting 75 or higher for about a week. It may sound nice to you in the lower 48 but it was actually a little too hot for up here, only because we don't have an air conditioner. That makes a huge difference. Once we start getting up into the 70s, every window is opened and we start praying for a breeze. A couple of days it was a little unbearable. It was around 80 degrees in the girls room when we put them down for bed. They had a hard time going to sleep and woke up a couple times those nights. We ended up getting a nice fan for their room and putting some tin foil on the window to help keep the afternoon soon out in addition to their black out shades.
But here are some pictures of all the fun we had trying to stay cool during the day with the neigbor girls. Well I tried to download a video but it wasn't working. I'll try again tomorrow.
----------------- ...edited for typos and to add this... I forgot to mention in all this that Lisa was a ROCK STAR!! She did awesome! She hasn't been fishing since the summer of 06 and was a little anxious about getting out there and not catching anything. Clearly that was not the case and after I helped her with the first fish, she was ready to jump in and unhook it and release her fish. All in all, I think she caught 4 and I caught 7. Nate landed...well too many to count. -----------------
So I know I'm going to disappoint a few people with this post but I wanted to share some pics from our adventure today. We took off to go fishing about an hour and a half away from home. We only had a small window because our neighbors who were watching the girls had a date night planned so we had to be home by a certain time. I got my boss to cover the last 2 hours of my shift so we could get out there as early as possible. My buddy Nate met us out there and had already found a nice spot and had landed dozens of fish.
Here's a shot of the babysitters. This spot is very popular with families because it is good and easy fishing. We saw several kids landing fish around us. It's just a great atmosphere with lots of fish to be caught. You can also actually see the fish EVERYWHERE!! We didn't take our good camera this time so didn't manage to get a good shot of the fish in the water but you could look out and see dozens of fish at any given moment...a pretty cool thing to see.
So Lisa and I weren't landing the fish right off the bat. It took us a while to fine tune our technique but once we did, the fish were ours!! Lisa landed the first one and it was game on!...or I should say FISH ON!! I should mention that all three of us were using 5 weight fly rods which made the fight a little more exciting. As you can tell, they aren't the biggest fish but they sure are fun to fight and try to land with a light weight rod. Actually, it's a BLAST!!
So the pro fisherman, Nate, spots what appeared to me a silver salmon on the opposite bank mixed in with all of the smaller pink salmon. He started to target it and it didn't take long before he hooked and the fight was on. It went on for 15 to 20 minutes. It was AWESOME! Lisa and I stood back and watched the pro work what ended up being about a 20 pound king salmon on a 5 weight fly rod. Lisa even took a video of the last minute when he landed it and held it up. It was only then that we really got a good look at how big it was. Congrats Nate! I'm so glad we were there to witness that.
Thanks for letting me get that out of my system. I have SOOO many videos and pictures to share. As soon as I get off this stupid schedule I'll be able to post more often and catch you up on all of our adventures.
