One AWESOME Dad-e-uh!

Dear Dan, 

Happy Father's Day to one of the best Daddys ever.  Each day, I am in awe of the wonderful father you've become!  You are so patient and loving with our sweet boys.  I love seeing you holding them in your arms. If one of the them gets hurt you always come running to make sure they are okay.  You are so creative and always come up with fun things to do with them.  You definitely put a fun spin on everything you do with them.  I love coming home after being gone just to see what you three have been up to!  Even though your work schedule can be crazy at times, you always manage to pop in the house for a few minutes to get in a little play time with the boys throughout the day.  You know just how to make our boys smile and feel ever so loved and that is something worth celebrating today.  Happy Father's Day!  

Here's a little walk down memory lane of all my favorite Daddy moments!!

 

Here's a little something from Dane....

WE LOVE YOU DAD-E-UH and wish you a wonderful Father's Day! 

Seymour Cabin

And our summer just keeps getting better!  Look at these happy faces!



We have friends that own a cabin on Seymour Canal and they graciously let us use it last week.  This has been on our "to do" for years, so we were super excited we were finally able to make it happen.  Ward Air flew us out on the most glorious sunny afternoon and the boys were thrilled with the plane ride.  Jaeger absolutely LOVED being on the plane and has been talking about it ever since we got home. :) For those of you that aren't from Southeast Alaska, I thought I'd include a picture of our wonderful pilot docking the plane on the beach. 

 This was our view!!! Seriously AMAZING!

We were able to stay two nights and filled our time with lots of beach combing, rock throwing, S'more eating, bird gazing, fire building, creature finding, jail building (Dane spent quite a bit of time building a rock jail for the bugs!), storytelling, snozing, and just getting in some good old fashioned quality family time!  We were literally in the middle of nowhere with not a single human in sight and it was such a treat.  Just to spend time sitting on the beach with not a care in the world was pure joy.
These pictures really say it all........

Sadly, the plane came to pick us up and we had to leave paradise.  Here's Jaeger Ray Ray (his new nickname - it's so cute when he calls himself that!!!) lugging an empty gas can all the way to the plane. Thankfully, we got dropped off during high tide when our load was heavier. 

We had such a wonderful time and Daddy and I are already plotting how we can get away for another visit this summer! ;)

Welcome Summer!

Our first two days of summer have been SPECTACULAR!!!  Saturday was a fun filled family day.  We started the day by going to the Home Depot Kids Workshop.  The boys really love going each month.  And Jaeger is finally getting to the point where he can participate!  Then we went to Family Fishing Day at Twin Lakes.  DiPAC releases 10,000 salmon into the lake just for this event. Unfortunately, the boys didn't even catch one of those 10,000 but they had fun nonetheless.  (Although, Daddy did catch 2! And the boys thought that was pretty cool!)  Our day finally ended with an afternoon birthday party with the most amazing bounce house.  The boys were in heaven and bounced for nearly the entire two hours they were at the party.  Needless to say, both boys were EXHAUSTED and Jaeger Ray even fell asleep in Daddy's chair when we got home.  So cute.......

Dane and Jaeger Ray at Family Fishing Day

The Big Night!

Tonight was the BIG NIGHT - the one Dane's been waiting months for!!!!  He FINALLY gets to sleep over at his best friend's house!  (Kellen's slept over twice now, so he's been dying for the chance to sleep at his house.) They've been begging and plotting for months now and it's finally happened.  I was pretty excited for him as he's wanted this for so long.  I baked his favorite cookies (Nutella chocolate chip) to bring for dessert and I even bought him a new pair of firefighter PJs for this very important occasion. 

 

Well after several phone calls and lots of promises to "please call him lots of times when we're up and when we're sleeping"  I got the call from Natasha at about 9 pm that he was ready to come home and could Kellen sleep over with him!  So here are my sweet boys passed out in the guest room and even though his first sleep over wasn't all night I'm pretty sure he still had a great time.  And shhhh....don't tell anyone, but I was pretty happy that I got to tuck in my sweet boy and give him a big good night smooch.  :) 

Let's Roll!

 

Loving on Grandma!

I wasn't kidding around when I said that Jaeger Ray absolutely LOVED Grandma. He'd wake up every morning and the first person he'd ask for was Grandma Heidi. So cute. In fact, he'd go running up the stairs to find both Grandma and Grandpa. These are probably my favorite pictures from the whole trip - so precious!

California - Part 1

We had an amazing spring break and it's hard to believe I'm just now getting around to blogging about it (I guess that's what amazing weather in Juneau will do - there's no time to be inside on the computer when it's absolutely gorgeous out! And it's been gorgeous for WEEKS!!!)

My mom and Mike rented this AMAZING house in Dana Point!  It had a million dollar view and was big enough to accommodate the entire family.  There were 3 living rooms, one amazing upstairs deck that overlooked the Pacific Ocean and a wonderful downstairs play area for the boys.  It was an ideal location and house.  :)  I took a video of the house so I'll post that soon.  Here are a few pictures (actually, let's be honest there are A LOT) from the first half of our trip.

Happy travelers!  

Our trip didn't start out that great with an hour and half delay in Juneau due to mechanical issues, but we managed to make the most of it.  We quickly found friends in the gate and through a wonderful stroke of luck we were seated next to 2 other families traveling with small children and they all managed to entertain each other to Seattle. But the most amazing part of our two flights was this......

Yep, that's Jaeger Ray snoozing in first class.  Thanks to Daddy's MVP status we all flew first class from Seattle to Orange County.  Oh my gosh - we were treated like Kings and Queens and we loved every second of it!

Even though we had such a great flight, we were so excited to get off the plane and be greeted by these 2 smiling faces!!!  Yea for Grandma and Grandpa.

Besides seeing family, Dane was super excited to see real lifeguards.  We've been watching this cool show on The Weather Channel called Lifeguard and Dane has now added lifeguard to his long list of potential careers.  So Grandma and Grandpa took us to San Clemente Pier and we got to meet not one but two REAL LIFE lifeguards.  Pretty exciting for our little man.  Dane also got to sit in a lifeguard chair and "watch" just like a real lifeguard. 

Dane and Jaeger also got to sit on this very cool lifeguard ATV.  It's just like the ones they use on the show!  

We spent many many hours playing firefighter.  Dane absolutely loved having Uncle John and Aunt Caitlin there to play firefighter.  Here are Uncle John and Firefighter Dane in action.

And Firefighter Bingle Bonnet getting in on the action!

Jaeger Ray LOVED hanging with Grandma...

Our trip wouldn't be complete without Jaeger causing some kind of mischief.  Yep, that's sand from the outside sandbox INSIDE the house!  That's what happens when you don't pay attention closely enough.:) 

The rest of these photos were taken at Montage - a special place near and dear to all of our hearts. 

Stay tuned for more pictures of our fabulous trip!