Alaskan Adventures Part 1

Craig's parents are serving a mission for our church in Anchorage Alaska and we had the opportunity to go visit them at the end of June.  I'm not going to lie, I definitely had some anxiety about this trip, mainly about how McKay was going to do, but for the most part he did pretty well and I am so glad we went.  We flew out Saturday June 24th.  We left late that afternoon because Craig had to work that morning.  We flew through Seattle and had an almost 3 hour layover before we finished our flight to Anchorage.  McKay luckily took a short nap on each flight and had fun crawling all over the Seattle airport.  Brooklyn liked riding the train through the airport and was excited when we found the play area.  We got into Anchorage around 9:00 pm which is 11:00 pm Boise time.  The kids were exhausted and very ready for bed.  We laid them down as soon as we got to the hotel.  Luckily Stan and Diane had checked in for us already and got the Pack-n-Play all set up and ready to go.  Brooklyn was out in about 5 seconds and slept through McKay screaming while we were trying to get him to go to sleep, but once he fell asleep he slept good that first night.  One thing that we had to get used to while we were there was how light it was.  The sun would "set" at about midnight and then "rise" around 4:00 am, but it never really went all the way down.  Luckily all of the hotels had pretty good blackout shades.

The next day we just hung out and recovered from the flights.  Stan drove Craig around Anchorage a little bit and Diane made us a yummy dinner of Halibut that they had caught a few weeks before. Brooklyn then got to have her first sleepover that night with Nana and Pops, she was so excited. Monday morning we then packed up all of our stuff and loaded up "The Beast" that Stan had rented. We were supposed to get a suburban but something about the brakes so we got this awesome van instead.  We then drove to Denali National Park, which was about 4 1/2 hours away, but of course with McKay it took a little bit longer than that.  By the end of the drive McKay was all tears and I might have had a few as well.  It is hard to entertain a 10 month old for that long, at least he did nap for about an hour of it.

When we got there we pulled up to our little cabin.  We had all thought that there was at least one bedroom where Craig and I could sleep with McKay so he wouldn't bug anyone else in case he had a bad night, but oh no, it was all just one room with a little loft.  So not only did everyone hear McKay cry, but we all got to hear Pops snore too.  Luckily his snoring wasn't as bad as it could have been.  Brooklyn was the lucky one that got to sleep up in the loft with him.  Once we unloaded are stuff we explored a little bit and then Craig and I headed off to our helicopter tour.  It was pretty amazing, we got to land on a glacier and walk around.  We even drank some water straight from the glacier. McKay and Brooklyn hung with Nana and Pops while we were gone.  After McKay screamed bloody murder for a few minutes after we left, he ended up doing ok.

That night was not such a fun night, since we were all in one room we all had to get ready for bed when it was time for the kids to go to sleep and then McKay was up quite a few times and by 5:00 am he was sleeping in our bed, because he would just scream if I tried to lay him back down.  At 6:30 everyone else had to wake up so that we could get ready for our Jeep Tour.  There were about 8 or 9 Jeeps that just followed our guide and we all had radios that we could talk back and forth with.  We saw a few moose and stopped at some really pretty look out points.  McKay took a little snooze in the Jeep, thank goodness.  Brooklyn hopped back and forth between our Jeep and Stan and Diane's and her favorite part was getting to use the big binoculars.  That afternoon we went to some gift shops and ate a late lunch and then that evening Stan and Diane went on a float plane tour that was supposed to land on a glacier, but couldn't because of the weather.  They got done pretty late and we had tried to keep the kids up so that they wouldn't wake up when they got back, but 9:00 pm hit and they were grumpy.  When Stan and Diane got back round 10:00 pm they snuck in and did a pretty good job of being stealth.  It was pretty hilarious watching them fumble around in the dark.  McKay had a pretty awful night again and slept in our bed most of the night.  The worst part was that it was only a full bed, not even a queen.  Needless to say Craig and I did not get much sleep, but everyone else was at least able to sleep a little bit. And the best part was that it was our anniversary and we got to sleep in the same bed as one of our kids and Craig's parents 5 feet away from us.  Definitely not an anniversary we will forget.  The next day he popped a tooth through and that helped explain the crappy sleeping.

The next morning, Wednesday, we then headed back to Anchorage.  McKay slept for a little while on the way back and we stopped at a park for lunch so they kids got to get some wiggles out.  Brooklyn was playing on the playground and slipped and didn't get her hands out in front of her so she ate some of the playground.  Her tooth was a little loose and there was a decent amount of blood, but don't you worry, Pops and Nana to the rescue with a DQ blizzard.  Ice cream makes everything better in my opinion.  That night we did some laundry and went to a yummy BBQ place for dinner and we all shared some yummy banana pudding for dessert, you can't get BBQ without banana pudding.