Off to school!

I just love Jaeger Ray's sweet voice!!!! 

First Day of School!

Dane and Jaeger started school today. Sniff sniff..... Okay, so I'm not going to totally lie.....I was a little teared up, but as soon as Daddy and I hit our favorite coffee house I was completely over it and looking forward to a quiet house.  Daddy and I could actually have an entire conversation!  Haven't had one of those in a very long time! ;)

All kidding aside, I can't believe that we officially have both kids in school now.   They both had a great day despite a few tears on behalf of Jaeger Ray when we dropped him off.  :(  Here are a few shots of our BIG BOYS.

Now that school has started for the boys I've been gently reminded that I will have more time to blog.   I'll be spending some quality time going through my zillion pictures of the remainder of our amazing summer trip, Dane's 5th birthday party, life back in Juneau and even an impromptu trip to the Taku Glacier Lodge this weekend. :)  So stay tuned for some great blog entries to catch up on the last few months. :)

Santa Fe

We survived our first camping trip in our Eurovan!  Granted we were pretty spoiled having Nannie and Guy & Auntie Amy and Unk Tim there with us.  They are experts in the camping department and they have all the nice to haves when you're camping!  But we learned a lot from them and now we have a few tricks up our sleeves to use once we hit the road on our own. 

We went to a beautiful campground in Hyde Memorial State Park just north of Santa Fe.  We had a blast relaxing, hiking, playing and just enjoying the natural surroundings.  

Here's Dane getting the Eurovan all ready for the camping trip. 

Hiking to the playground - a great feature of this campground for sure! 

Our site.  Our cute little Eurovan looks so tiny compared to the mansion that Amy and Tim have.  :) I'm not going to lie, it was pretty nice hanging out inside their RV while Tim made us breakfast.  Too bad they can't follow us to Alaska. ;)

The boys getting ready to fight a fire!  Sweet Zach has been such a GREAT sport with Dane.  He's played firefighter and police officer pretty much nonstop since we arrived.

 Going for a swing.

A morning walk. 

 

GOTCHA!  I'll take you down with my marshmallow cooking abilities!

Sadly, we're missing Uncle Tim and Auntie Amy in this family shot.  (They were hiking.) 

We had such a great time and we can't wait to do it again this weekend in Jemez. 

New Mexico Recap

Sadly, our time here in New Mexico is almost over.  (Thankfully, we have one last camping trip with the whole gang!) We've had a blast and everyone is going to be super sad to leave.  Here are a few - actually, who am I kidding - A LOT of pictures from our time here.

Can you guess what the boys did for the first time?

Waiting in line to get into the Isotopes Baseball game.
 

More goofing around courtesy of Unk Tim.

A sweet sibling picture of Auntie Amy and Daddy.

Cousins at the Botanical Gardens. 

 A few artsy fartsy pictures from the gardens.

Our little Music Man and Nannie.  (This kid seems to gravitate to any instrument so he was in Heaven with all the musicians surrounding him here.)

Eliana and Jaeger Ray playing around with the drums.

More fun with Eliana.

First Merry Go Round ride.

We got to go on a date!!!  We drove to this adorable little town called Madrid.  We shopped, rain through a rainstorm (felt right at home!) and had a wonderful dinner.  It was perfect.

 Of course, we couldn't miss the monthly Home Depot Kids Workshop! The boys made the coolest toy yet - a moving van.

 The boys absolute adore Zachary.

The gang at Gardunos Mexican Restaurant.

Our little firefighters!

We've done so many wonderful things here in New Mexico, but the highlight has DEFINITELY been all the fire station visits!  Dane and Jaeger are so lucky that their very own Unk Tim is a real life firefighter!  And Lieutenant Unk Tim has sure given us the royal treatment.  The boys have gotten to do everything!  They went on 2 amazing fire truck rides (that was a big highlight for Mommy and Daddy too!), sat in on an official firefighter meeting, helped wash the fire truck, checked out all the bunker gear and basically gawked, touched and held all of the amazing fire paraphernalia, BUT the best part hands down was squirting Unk Tim with the hose while washing the fire truck.  They thought that was hilarious and they're still thinking about it. :)
Here they are in action....

Here are some other pictures from our MANY visits!

Thanks Unk Tim!  We love you! 

It's been a whirlwind!

What a great trip this has been so far.  In fact,  it's been so awesome that I may request Dan take every summer off! ;)

Our trip started with a curve ball as Dan was unable to fly the entire way to Phoenix with us, but to my astonishment the boys did AMAZINGLY WELL on both flights.  They were true dreamboats.

Here are a few airplane pictures....

And, I'm not going to lie....it was pretty awesome when both boys did this on the leg that I was flying alone with them. :)

Here we are waiting for Daddy to arrive in Phoenix.  Even though the amount of luggage may say otherwise, we are coming back to Alaska.

We spent our first night in Arizona with Cousin Wendy and Mike.  We had a huge slap in the face from the extreme heat - 112º to be exact, but everything else was superb.  Wendy and Mike sure now how to show their guests a great time - wonderful dinner, great conversation and they even a managed to give us spectacular thunder and lightning show.  Here is a picture of Mike with Dane and Jaeger.  The boys absolutely loved Mike.  They spent the majority of the night running around the kitchen island playing "Merry Christmas on his biscuits."  We don't want to ruin the surprise of Merry Christmas on your biscuits just in case you are their next victim, so we won't tell you exactly how the game is played.  Let's just say that it involves two crazy kids and some biscuits.  :)  

And here's Wendy with the boys.

Before we left Phoenix we got to take a dip in Wendy and Mike's pool.  Dane was a HUGE fan.  We love how confident he's become with the water.

After Phoenix, we headed to Tucson to visit Dan's good college buddy Antonio.  Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures at all, but this one is of Antonio's beautiful daughter Gizana.  Not only did she love Dane and Jaeger, she loved Bailey too.

Here's Jaeger getting the Eurovan all spic and span for the long trip to New Mexico.  It was another stellar traveling day for the boys.  They seem to love being in the Eurovan and really don't mind the long car drives (yet, that is!)

Our New Mexico visit has been filled with sunshine, relaxation, laughter, and fun.  It's so nice being with family and it's times like these that we wished we lived closer.

Here are a few pictures from our first few days.

More to come in the next few days. :)