Part 2

Beautiful, right?

This was our view from the room where we slept. Now imagine this wrapping all the way around, so close I felt like I could walk to the bottom of those snow capped mountains. The air was fresh and clear. The days were endless with one blurring into another without the help of night to distinguish one from another. I felt it a crime to go to sleep at 10 pm when it still looked like midday. This meant that most nights I didn't fall asleep until after one or two in the morning when there was finally a dusk covering the valley where our friends lived.

In the two weeks of our vacation there will be two moments that will really define Alaska for me. The first was my ATV trek through the wilderness. When the husbands decided to take a drive through the forest I was going to go shotgun with Josh until I was convinced I needed to go big and drive of my own four wheeler. I've never been on one before and was very nervous, but I took my time and had control of it pretty fast. So off we went through the woods and on keeping to a dirt path that went up and over hills. Going down some steep ones really made my heart jump into my throat a few times. Once we came to an open marsh I finally took the time to look around. I could see the sun shinning on the water in the distance and there wasn't another living soul around except for the four of us and the two children. When we came to a beach we stopped for a moment and the view took my breath away. The mountains made and arc around us and then where they didn't touch land they looked to be floating on the water in the distance. I could really see how life was like before people settled on this last frontier. There was nothing around to mar the beauty of the rolling mountains and quite waters except for a lone train that I  imagined was the first explore this new land.

My second favorite moment of our vacation was on one of our last nights there. There was a get together to celebrate a some one's promotion. Late that night after everyone had left my husband and I sat around a fire with our closest friends. The fire was hot, the mosquitoes were biting, and the day was ending, but we just sat and talked. Talked about our past when we first met and what we hoped for our futures. We talked past the sunset and into the sunrise finally deciding to call it quites when we figured our children would be up in just a few short hours.

I really enjoyed our time in Alaska. So just a few pictures to end with.

Anchorage



Balto



3 months

Happy 3 month birthday to you, Kade.

I've really neglected something these last few months while enjoying my new little one. This blog being one of those things. I have quite a list of posts that I started and never got around to finishing when I got distracted by one of my boys needing mommy's attention.

Life has been pretty great in the Bigger household these last few months. My in-laws came up for the Mother's Day weekend so hubby and I got a date night. We went to a movie. The two of us hadn't been out about town since Thanksgiving when we saw the new Harry Potter movie. That day we had planned to see Thor at four, but decided to first stop off at the grocery store to get my favorite treat. Chocolate covered gummy bears.

chocolate+gummies=YUM!

So we pushed the movie off until later and went to dinner. Two girlie cocktails later I was feeling sweet. Josh had me laughing at everything. That's my favorite thing about our relationship. We can laugh. We will get old, passions might fade, our children will grow up, but Josh and I will always laugh. We will laugh at inside jokes, at the antics our children get into, and even past arguments with a fondness that will hold us together like glue for our years ahead. I hope he knows how much I love him.

We actually just got back from our first family vacation. Josh and I have been married almost six years and we finally take some time to go somewhere besides to visit family. (Don't be butt hurt. You know we love visiting you.) It was the weekend before Memorial day and out of the blue Josh asks if I want to take a hop up to Alaska. And that's what we did. Packed a few backpacks and flew up to see the last frontier. Boy was it beautiful. It didn't hurt that our very best friends live up there. We met when our husbands went through basic and tech school together. Then we got stationed together at McChord AFB. It was sad to see them leave and wonder if we'd ever see them again.

Getting off the plane at 5 in the morning took my breath away with the view of mountains circling all around. I was then on the lookout for moose.

To be continued...