Sunday night post

I decided a long time ago that I would try and post every Sunday night. I actually check how many hits the blog gets and I've noticed that there is a spike on Mondays. So to reward my faithful readers, I always make a little extra effort sometime on Sunday to give you something exciting to look at Monday morning when you get back to work. In addition, I think I'm going to change the picture at the top of the blog on my Sunday posts. I have SO many pictures that would look great cropped down to the banner size.

So the picture above is a rare photo of both noctilucent clouds and the aurora borealis. I took it in August of 2005 here in Anchorage looking north near Point Woronzof at about 1am.

The last couple of days I've been going through a lot of old pictures while we move all of our digital pics over to the new laptop. Yes, we got a new laptop. Our old one was almost 5 years old...that is ANCIENT in laptop years.

Anyway, so I've been going through a lot of old pictures and came across some great ones that we took on a bike ride back in September. I think I mentioned that we've taken over 500 pictures so far with our new camera. With that many pictures, it's easy to overlook a set of 10 or 15 like these even though they're great shots.

So it's been a very early winter this year so back in September, we were still amazed at how fast the snow line was coming down the mountains. It's always a nice contrast when you have the green and yellow leaves against the white snow topped mountains and blue sky.

We took the girls on the Bird to Gird trail. That's short for Bird Point to the town of Girdwood. It's a nice paved trail that's about 12 miles long. Not sure how far we made it but I'd guess about 3 miles or so. We'll tackle the whole trail next summer. This is us getting the girls in the trailer at Bird Point.
The famous Alaska Railroad down to Seward follows the same route...you can see the tracks below. The first hill took us nice and high so we had a great view of Turnagain Arm.

Some more nice fall colors. The one to the top is looking right at Turnagain Arm...the one below is looking left up the side of the mountain.
The girls REALLY enjoyed the view.

I found some more pictures of the girls sharing their little bench toy.



Hope this helps cure your case of the "Mundays".

Welcome newcomers!

In the last week or so, I think we've added some new readers. I think some of my new Canadian friends may be checking the blog and also old friends that I've connected with for the first time in a long time through Facebook. Yeah, I joined Facebook as a way to keep up with the people from Boulder but it allowed me to find so many more of our old friends. Welcome aboard everyone!

First I have to show off some outfits I got the girls while I was in Boulder. I went to Target and found these. Unfortunately I underestimated their size so they won't fit much longer. Still I think they look pretty good.

The girls LOVE to step outside on the balcony and look at the snow....or as they say "moh". So we dress them up and they walk out and look around for a while.

Alyssa getting ready to go outside and look for a ....... any guesses?
That's kinda the sign for moose.

Just the other day, Lisa and I took a walk down to the lake (about 3 miles round trip). I told you it's been a cold October. The lake is frozen over pretty solid. We saw plenty of tracks out in the middle of the lake so people felt secure enough to walk out there. I'll wait till a little later in the winter before I venture out on the ice.

On our walk, which follows the creek, there was an area that had frozen earlier in the season when the water was higher and then as the water receded it left these 6 inch thick slabs of ice that broke as they came to rest on the larger rocks. I don't know if I'm describing it so you can picture it....all that you need to know is the ice was melting slowly in the sun and making some really neat ice-cycles. I literally got down on my belly on one of these slabs and took a couple pictures.

I like this one a lot. Click on it to get the full size.

notice any changes???

First of all, Lisa is doing well. We appreciate the support you've showed for her and her family. It is very much needed.

Tonight I finally sat down and made some changes/upgrades to the blog that I've been thinking about doing for a while. Some of the things you may not have noticed on the side are a quick link to some of our earlier youtube videos. Also new is our blog list which shows some of the blogs we follow and when they were last updated (I like this one a lot). The archive at the bottom is better organized as well. Nice updates, eh?

Well I can't just post without including some pictures. Here are some pictures Lisa took of some moose down the street. This is obviously back in late September or early October while the leaves were changing and before the snow arrived.

I don't want to confuse you but this isn't a moose. This is Kaitlyn showing us the sign for moose. Hard to tell the difference, I know.

a difficult evening...

I'm not sure how much I want to share in this forum, but Lisa got a difficult phone call this evening. Her aunt died today in a car accident. Please keep Lisa and her family in your prayers.

Because I try to give all of you faithful readers something to look forward to on Monday morning, I'll go ahead and post some recent photos of the girls.

So here are the coats that a native Alaskan that Lisa worked with made for the girls. They are quite warm and the girls LOVE to wear them despite the first picture of Katy showing a little protest.
After we got them on, they just wanted to lay there on their backs.
Finally we made it outside. I was able to take this one quick photo before disaster.
The girls each fell that day. First Katy fell and hit her forehead on the pavement. As I was going to get Alyssa, she fell too and split her lip. Here's Katy showing off her bruises. And Alyssa's cut lip. ....so sad.
...moving on to happier days.

Some fun time wrestling with Dah Dah!
I am okay with showing this picture which highlights my bald spot BECAUSE it is so sweet. Look at all that lovin' I'm getting from Alyssa. Here we see the making of a teenager. Alyssa LOVES to grab the phone from Lisa when she's done and talk talk talk.
If Alyssa's talking on the phone, what is Katy doing? Cooking? Drumming????


This is Katy waking up from a nap...naps that seem to be disappearing every day. Just thought this was funny how she woke up with her feet outside the crib. All of these pictures were before I left for Colorado (so some time in early October). We had an abnormally cold October...I think it ended up being the 8th coldest on record. Here is some proof that our tree in the front yard wasn't quite ready for the weight of the wet snow.
...and the same flower that I took with the inch and a half of snow on it. This is the next morning after the snow had melted. It's not a great photo unless you zoom in and see how awesome that water droplet is on the leaf.
How can I forget? The girls being cute during lunch! Alyssa is showing us "....I don't know"
...and Katy is just plain "gansta". I don't know what I'm more afraid of...the balloons on her bib or the organic whole milk.
One last photo I took a couple weeks ago. This was a rain/snow/sleet storm late one night in Anchorage. We actually heard the frozen droplets hitting the roof so I went outside with the camera and took this photo of the white stuff coming down in the light.