Alaska Part 2

More Alaska!  On Tuesday we enjoyed a beautiful walk.  I liked this sign.

We played with rocks by this creek that had special meaning for Zeke.  Ben and Karen's family had come to take pictures by it last fall and Zeke stepped on what he thought was a rock, but was actually ice and fell though to the water.  Their family pictures were postponed.  

We took some pictures and, luckily, no one fell in the water.

We then walked around Potter's Marsh which was gorgeous!  We saw a great horned owl (lousy picture), but it was impressive!  We're assuming it was injured or something because it shouldn't be out in the daytime.

We got to see little salmon in a creek by this boardwalk.  So cool!  

On Wednesday we went to the Alaska Zoo.  

It was charming and small, full of Alaskan animals like this musk ox!

 

Many of our evenings were spent helping Curtis and Kristi with wedding stuff.  Here is an incredible picture we took as we were leaving their house.  At 11 pm!  Land of the midnight sun.  Or nearly midnight rainbows.

And THIS is a view from Curtis and Kristi's bedroom window on a clear day!  Look at those mountains!

Thursday we were blessed with a beautiful, sunny day!  We borrowed bikes from a family in Ben and Karen's ward and we all went for a ride along the coastal trail.  It was gorgeous! 

We stopped for a picnic lunch by the airport.  The girls loved picking the clovers.

The planes came so close!  Every time one would take off Alice would run to one of us to cover her ears.

After lunch we went down to a beach of rocks.  It was really fun to look at all the rocks.

We saw a buried car!  That's the front tire, bumper, and engine block.  The rear tires were there too.  How crazy is that?

Friday was preparing for the wedding and Saturday was the wedding itself.  Curtis managed to have time that morning to show Mike a house he is remodeling and getting ready to flip.  It is further out of town and up in the mountains.  They had a visitor while they were there.  A black bear was under the deck by the house (this is a bird's eye view).  The kids were all jealous that Mike got to see a bear. 

The wedding was lovely.  We're praying that the temple will be in Matthew and Savannah's future, but the ceremony was beautiful.  Short and touching.  Here is Matthew and Savannah Skyping with his sister Emily who is on her mission.  Her mission president (President Guffey!) let her Skype in for the wedding.  When Matthew found out she was "there" he got choked up.  It was really sweet.  

Okay, there is no picture.  I didn't take a single one of the bride and groom.  I fought with my computer to get some from Kristi, but no luck.  Beautiful cousins.

After the ceremony we took down the decorations in the ceremony hall.  Curtis built this beautiful arch.  Here's us putting it to good use.

It works great as a backdrop for cute girls too.  Bridget is doing a princess bride dance or something.

No other pictures, but we had a great time at the reception.  We had a dinner catered by the Olive Garden and it was quite good.  I had to cut the kids off at two breadsticks because heaven knows they would have eaten 6 each.  And there was dancing!  Karen and I owned that dance floor, much to the embarrassment of our teenage daughters.  Eventually they joined in and had fun too.  It was such a blast! 

All good things must come to an end.  We left the next day after church.

It was a fantastic visit!  Alaska was beautiful and it was wonderful being with family.  Lydia keeps saying she wants to move to Alaska, but really she just wants to move close to her cousins.  It was a great family vacation!