Nate's 28th Birthday (part 2)

Nate spent a LOT of his big day filleting his 20 salmon that he caught dipnetting. (just so you know- this is one of the smaller ones :) ) but look at all that yummy salmon!!


Singing happy birthday before he blows out the candles


Luke clapping for Daddy! (I'm sorry, but yes, that is his dinner still sitting there on his tray)


The kids were SO EXCITED for daddy's birthday- I think they had more fun than he did :)
They used almost all the sprinkles we had on the cake.

Nate's 28th Birthday

Daddy reading Charity's card


Daddy reading Kelly's card- I LOVE this picture, Kelly's so proud of her card :)


Opening Kelly's present- cute too


Opening his flight simulator game- see Dad- I told ya!


Luke's enjoying the frosting before we even get a chance to frost the cake

Nate's Dipnetting trip

here's a shot of everyone dipnetting- zoom in and you can see all the fish heads and guts- pretty gross!



I guess this guy was the barbarian/execution style dipnetter. He goes out there in shorts, t-shirt and flip flops, goes in all the way to his neck, catches a salmon, then comes running back to shore, takes the fish over to his cutting block and just chops his head off! No clonking him on the head first or anything- just OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! Nate thought he was pretty crazy I guess :) Looks cold!
And, can you see the guy that made his net using a CRUTCH!! And the snowshovel net too!! Crazies!



another view of the beach- coolers EVERYWHERE! Seagulls picking off all the remains-- I can't believe how insane this looks! Only in Alaska would this fly!



This one you can see the other side of the river in the back there



pretty cool!


Nate got to go dipnetting over Monday and Tuesday. He and our friend went down there and camped out on the beach where the Kenai River meets the ocean. They hit a couple of the tides and he was able to bring home 20 salmon! According to Nate it was a LOT of work. He took some pictures for all of us, since we didn't get to go :) But it looks pretty gruesome- fish heads and guts all over the beach (glad the kids weren't there, what a nightmare!), standing out in the ocean up to your neck with a heavy net! Pretty cool "Alaskan experience" though. This is probably the only time we will ever do this since you have to be a resident. But pretty exciting. Now we have lots of salmon. If anyone wants some- you'll have to let us know quick, cuz it's not going to last forever :) Especially with Mom and Dad M coming up- I'm sure we'll be having salmon every night!! mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Kenai Lake

This is a quick shot (it's through the window of a moving vehicle) of Kenai Lake. It's a really beautiful spot.

Another Park :)

There is this tiny little playground at the end/beginning of the coastal trail. It's a pretty sorry excuse for a park, but we can't seem to get enough of the playgrounds out here. Guess we're getting our fill before it starts to freeze and they get buried in snow. There weren't any monkey bars or rings for Charity, so she resorted to the tree. Kelly is "getting drong from da bar" above the slide. Brad's going down the slide, and Luke is, of course, climbing up to the slide. They all have their little routines :) (It's all fun and games till someone gets sick of the park pictures huh :))

Coastal Trail (part 2)

Here's brad and Charity in action

And yes, my son is wearing a pink helmet while riding a pink bike.

Love this picture! (we did have a guy offer to take a picture of the whole family, but apparently he didn't know how to push the button all the way down)

the whale slide

this is the cool little port that we can see from the park at the end of the coastal trail- zoom in, it's kinda cool.

The Coastal Trail

Charity the bike queen

the rest of the crew

the port on Chester Creek

This is looking at Earthquake park. You probably have to zoom in to see the airport, but you can see the planes there. That's the spot that we always drive to- to watch the planes take off.

This is looking at a big barge that was taking off- you will have to zoom in on this one too- kind of a crappy picture. But it was really neat to see the boats.

We took the girls' bikes and the stroller down to the coastal trail, starting at 5th avenue downtown, and went down to Chester Creek. It was a pretty nice walk. The trail goes right along the coast (obviously), so we got to see ships and barges taking off from the port. And you can look across the water and see Earthquake Park and the airport with the planes taking off. It was low tide again (or maybe this spot is just like this) but the water was way out there. The kids had a good time. Once we got to Chester Creek Kelly started getting tired, and let Bradley ride her bike. He took off like a riding fool, and we had trouble keeping up with him. Especially down the little hills. It was funny to see him take off and do so well, I guess he just needed more room to ride- he's never done that well on the driveway. He still needs to learn the brakes though. That's why the hills were so scary. Luke was the official greeter- waving to everyone that went by, it was so cute! He's gonna make a great missionary someday :). Charity did really great riding her bike the whole way there and the whole way back- pretty fun. Just a nice little Saturday afternoon activity.

A Busy Day for Luke

Luke likes to dump the cereal out of the box in his spare time :) little stinker!

for their punishment I made them eat it all! just kidding.

The macaroni and cheese took a little longer to cook than he wanted.

it's really ahrd to get one with them all smiling and looking at the camera- 3 out of 4's not so bad I guess :) (Luke's making a call on the cell phone- busy little man)

this temple is really hard to get a decent picture of- but Nate got this one- I really like it.

Kelly "melling the flowerh"


Yesterday we decided to take a little drive down to the temple (it's about 20 minutes away) after church. We haven't been down there with the kids in a while, so it was really fun to get them out to look at the flowers, smell them of course too! But there was a couple there from Utah actually, who we had take our picture for us. The temple is SO beautiful. The kids were so cute when we pulled up to it- they were just in awe, and happy to see it.

Clamming (part 4)

This is the only picture I got of us actually digging for clams- it was SO MUDDY and wet and gross that it was hard to want to take the camera out.

This was taken through our dirty windshield, but I thought the view was incredible enough to share.

again- through the windshield, and doesn't do the GREENness justice

Everyone slept almost the whole way home- Charity fell asleep not too long after this. But luckily the boys woke up near the end, and were loud enough to keep me awake!

These mountains are SO BEAUTIFUL in person!

So we woke up at 7:00am to go to Clam Gulch and dig for clams. The tide has to be just so, and apparently it wasn't as low as it was supposed to be today, so it was really slim pickin's, but we had an AWESOME time!! This was our first time clamming, and it was really neat. MUDDY, but a really great experience. The kids even had some fun. I think Nate found about 6 or 7 clams- pretty good! I found a couple but I kept breaking them when I was pulling them out and Kelly, the cute little clammer, found a crab!!! This was a way fun activity- too bad it's rarely a good time to go.
Once we were done clamming it was time to get going so that the girls could make it to their friend's birthday party. So the kids and I set off and left Nate behind to go dipnetting! Hope he shows up with a LOT of Salmon!! I think his limit is 30. The ride home was awesome- rainy, but beautiful. Alaska is so beautiful- I just can't say that enough!!
We've really been wanting to do all the things we didn't do last year since this is probably our last summer here. Hopefully we can DO IT ALL :)
What a memorable weekend!

Camping (part 3)

These are my "pictures of us camping" :) These are from this morning when we woke up.



Charity was a later riser

Playing on the Beach (part 2)

Charity's in her element :)

Our good friends that we went with

Bradley and I-ick

Here's Bradley, Luke, and Big-T throwing rocks into the water- as always!! Even when the water is only a few centimeters deep- they still find this fascinating---BOYS!!

Everyone's just having fun in the sand- pay no attention to charity's evil eyes- my red-eye wouldn't do anything with it. I'm not sure why the pictures look so dark- it really wasn't dark then at all.