No Fear (Outdoors)

When Clark is outdoors, he seems to have no fear.  He'll walk right into a lake with his boots and clothes on. He'll scale the side of a mountain without caring if he slides down. It makes me cringe and hope for the best. But I love that he's adventurous. It's so fun to watch him!

This was him asking to get in the water...

This is where I got that great shot of the fall colors. My friend Adrienne said we needed some people in the picture, so we came back to snap one. :)

Up, up...

...up he goes!

Time to come down

This is why we have no hand-me-downs for Isaac..

Love my boys. I'm framing this one!

Tree hugger

All in a days work. 

Stalking Sarah Palin

I have seen some creepy stalker map online that points out where Sarah Palin lives. And then I found another picture of what her house looks like. She lives on a lake so we went one night to try to find her house. I think we found it, but it was hard to see the house around a bend of trees. We would need a boat. But we're not THAT interested in stalking her. :)  The boys had fun running around and there was of course some beautiful scenery. 

I think that's the Palin's plane in the background...

Bad picture of us, but you can see more of the presumed Palin house in the background :)  By the way...don't judge my ugly coat from the year 2001. Snowboarding coats were in!

Hugs/suffocation

Love this one

Matanuska Glacier

One of the most popular attractions in the MatSu Valley (where we live) is the Matanuska Glacier. It gets great reviews on TripAdvisor so we thought we'd check it out. It's about 1.5 hours from our house and a very pretty drive. We didn't choose the best day or season to go, but it was still really fun. 

Halfway to the glacier we had to stop to collect rocks.

We love abandoned child pictures :)

We made it to the glacier parking lot and you have to hike in a little ways. It was super muddy and kind of rainy. 

Isaac will never look older than a 12 month old...

Glacier in the background

This is as close as we got. We were actually standing on ice but it was too slippery to keep going. We might do a glacier trek sometime without the kids - you wear "ice shoes" and climb all over the ice.

He kept saying "ice" the whole trip. 

The ice is more blue in person.

Clark learned a very important lesson.  Never step on a sheet of ice - even if it looks no deeper than a puddle. He stomped on one and fell into the water, waist deep. And then he had to hike all the way back to the car. He kept saying, "I'm having a hard day!" Good thing I had a hefty toddler strapped to my front because I probably would have jumped in after him.

We took off his pants and boots. Tons of water and rocks poured out of them.

Clearly, he was ready for this glacier trip to be over.

But it was worth it. Look how pretty it is!

Swimming in Alaska

I've had people ask me if Alaskans ever go swimming.  I haven't seen too many (or any) backyard pools, but swimming is fairly popular here. Whether you swim frequently or not, it's really important that kids learn to swim here because there are tons of lakes.

Here's some of our "swimming in Alaska" experiences.

We went to an indoor waterpark with some friends. They open up a small portion of it during the weekdays for Toddler Time. Clark especially loved the huge pirate ship - pirates are the current obsession in this house.

The camera kept fogging up from all the warm, nasty chlorine air. 

Worn out..

Sometimes Clark doesn't hide his distaste for having to share time with a brother...

Clark started swimming lessons this month at a cute little place called Swim Like A Fish.  They just have this one above-the-ground salt-water pool. It's been great so far.

Changing room

It's nice to go to places with just one kid. Clark loves our "dates".

Hahahahahaha!  He got water up his nose mid-lesson. Poor guy..

Parents can watch through the window or stand next to the pool. I try to leave for part of the lesson because he just keeps talking to me instead of "blowing bubbles" or listening to his teacher. 

Classic.