Family as Friends

With just a few hours until Rachel, Cain and 'the baby' arrive, I should be finishing up some cleaning and laundry but decided to write another blog like I said I would instead of procrastinating again. Wait a minute, if I have chores to be done, guess that means I'm still procrastinating doesn't it? Oh well, I'm gonna blog anyway!

I'm sure that growing up, my family was not any different than your family... My sisters and I were always good friends, and always got along well, and never fought or anything.... could someone help my mom, I think she just choked!!

Okay, so we weren't always such good friends, in fact there were probably times when my parents wondered if we'd ever become friends... but I am here to say it has happened. . . . and we had such an enjoyable time together while they were here. We talked, laughed and even cried some, but created such good memories! We did lots of fun stuff, like climbing Flat Top (okay, okay... it was more like crawling it for me and Terri ..I'm not sure what came first, the crawling or the laughing but once we started it was hard to break the cycle...oh well, at least we had fun and provided some entertainment for other hikers!) We also went glacier hunting, and completed the mission of photographing Mt. Redoubt and Mt. McKinley....up close. We ticked most of the "things to see in Alaska" off our list, but mostly we just had fun being together.....

Our boys at Flat Top

Exit Glacier

A couple shots from Seward, AK....

We even got in a bit of "community service" as our guys helped a really drunk guy with a 4-wheeler help two other guys out of a very tight situation.... for some reason they passed the huge sign that said "4 wheel drive vehicles only" and decided to drive their little car down to the beach.... and then the tide started coming in....oops... We managed to shift it a bit, but not sure if it was enough to keep them out of the water or not... at least we tried.... I would have liked to have heard the explanation they gave to the insurance company for the damage to the car....

Just a few miles beyond this was the real reason for our visit, a huge, steaming volcano! Mt. Redoubt at it's finest....

After a trip to Independence Mine, We stopped on the Little Suisitna River - a great spot to pan for gold...

At this point, my sister Diane and her husband Doug headed back to Florida and the rest of us headed for Denali National Park. We took this picture at one of the many stops along the way... if you look carefully you can see the snow capped mountain just behind the clouds.... an amazing sight to see!

Kings of the hill.... Garret & Evan from the top...

Kalvin and Rian from below......

And what family camp out would be complete without stupid jokes.from uncle Rick ... and playing in the fire..
We had a wonderful time.... sisters crammed in the car and no fighting ... well, amongst the sisters anyway! In the end we decided there was only a few things missing..... Debi for starters.... and then there is the issue of about 10 more 'children' and the grandparents too.... Now that would have really been a trip to remember!!!! Maybe next time!