Abby's Baptism

Abby was baptized in Deming, New Mexico at St. Ann's Catholic church on Saturday June 19, 2010.  Both Sebastian and Gabe were baptized at the same church a couple of years ago.  Vinnie's sister Patricia is is the Godmother to all 4 of our children.  Abby looked so pretty in her Baptism dress and she was so so so good.  She was so mellow that she fell asleep in Tisha's arms while waiting to be baptized.  Right before it was her turn we woke her up so she wouldn't be startled when she felt the water on her head.  Tisha held her and leaned her back, the Deacon poured the water over her head and Abby just layed back and seemed so relaxed.  What a good girl!  She also turned 7 months old this day.

What a little angel!

Grandma Marci gave Abby a rosary for her baptism, we had it blessed by the Deacon that baptized her.

Sebastian was in this photo but right before the picture was taken he ran off  :(

Vinnie's sister, Sandra made Abby's Baptismal cake.

Time to get HOME

June 8, 2010

We left Wendover around 2:30 and headed toward home, finally.  We had a busy night ahead of us because the carpet guy was coming over early in the morning to replace the carpet upstairs, which meant that we needed to empty the rooms.  Of course since we were getting new carpet it only made sense to paint the upstairs kids rooms before the new carpet was laid.  We decided that we wanted to paint the boys’ room to look exactly like Gabe’s room did in Alaska to help the transition go as smoothly as possible.  It turned out great, we were so happy with it!  Of course, Abby’s room needed to be painted pretty in pink.  How fun was that to paint a pink nursery.  I had so so so much fun!  She is going to LOVE it!  We were up until 3:00 am with this last minute project but it was worth it.  The carpet guy came in the morning (Wednesday) and replaced the carpet and then we had to move the stuff back into the rooms that we had emptied.  Another busy day again, now we are preparing for the movers to arrive the next morning (Thursday).

June 10, 2010

The movers showed up around 8:30 in the morning.  This was so exciting to see that all of our stuff had arrived from Alaska.  The movers started slowly moving stuff into the house as we sat at the table and watched.  Vinnie and I were both playing games on our iPhones.  The boxes began to pile up and Vinnie looked at me and said “I guess we could start unpacking some of these kitchen boxes”.  That sounded like a good idea to me.  Man, I am so happy that we started because WOW we have so much stuff!  We quickly decided that we needed to move as quickly as possible because there were so many boxes and so much packing paper.  Whatever boxes we emptied and put out in the yard along with the packing paper, the movers would take it away with them when they were all done.  We thought this was an excellent idea because then we wouldn’t have to worry about breaking it all down and loading it all up and taking it to a recycle center ourselves.  So, we hussled and hussled to get boxes unpacked.  My mom came over right after work to help us get going.  Mission accomplished, we were able to unpack so many boxes, our front yard was full of boxes and paper.  

Everything went so smoothly except for one small heart attack on my part...

It was time to unload Vinnie’s motorcycle from the truck.  The plan was to uncrate the motorcycle in the truck and then ride it down the ramp.  The ramp was to steep to do this so they backed up another moving truck to the back of this one, which was lower.  They put the ramp going from the big truck to the lower truck and then a ramp to the ground from that one.  This was so exciting to me to see Vinnie’s motorcycle to come off the truck because that was the very last thing.  So, there I am standing on the front porch with my mom, camera in my hand, eye in view finder, ready for some pictures.  I see the movers carrying this HUGE box that said “Harley Davidson” on the side of it.  They were  moving so slow and so carefully and started to cross the first ramp.  All of the sudden a HUGE gust of wind came along and all I could see thru the small view finder was this Harley box tipping over and falling to the ground.  I let out a very loud shriek and I think my heart stopped.  I quickly realized that the box was empty and they didn’t just drop a custom chopper to the ground.  My heart hurt so bad from jumping out of my chest, I had to sit down and pull myself together but not before I began crying.  Once I had collected myself, it was pretty funny and the movers were all laughing at me.  What was I thinking?  Did I really actually think that 2 guys were carrying a 700 pound motorcycle in their hands?  DUH!!!!

(The box blew toward the street and that was it for pictures, I ended missing them getting the actual motorcycle off the truck due to my heart pounding out of my chest)

Once that was done, the movers loaded up the truck with all of the boxes and paper and they were on their way.  We continued unpacking with help from my Mom, Marie, and my cousin Jill.  Marie and my Mom got Abby’s cute little room all put together and Jill put together the boys’ beds and helped with their room.  Austin got home about 8:00, he and my Mom got his area all put together and it looks great!  Austin is very excited!  We stayed busy with unpacking thru the next day, trying   get as much done as we could before we headed to New Mexico Saturday morning.

June 12, 2010

The plan was to be on the road by 7:00 am.  Well, of course we didn’t make it.  We weren’t too far behind though, we left at 7:45 and drove all day long, arriving in New Mexico at 11:00p.  We stopped a few times along the way for gas, food, and snacks, and one other stop in Albuqurque to get a charger for my laptop because I forgot mine in Utah.  How can I blog without my laptop?  The boys were already in bed by the time we got there and we just missed Abby by about 15 minutes.  I must say it was hard not to go and see the kids but I know they never would have gone back to bed.  Luckily Abby woke up a couple hours later and needed a bottle and wanted to be rocked back to sleep.  That was awesome to be able to hold her again!  She seemed so big, I couldn’t believe that she had really grown that much in 2 1/2 weeks, but wow!  The next morning we heard Gabe in the hallway so we quietly left the room to go find him.  He lit up so much and had the biggest smile ever!  He just kept looking at us in disbelief saying “Nonny, Daddy”.  He took my hand and led me to the computer, turned it on, opened Microsoft word, changed the text size, color, and font and typed “Mommy”.  It was priceless to see how happy this cute little boy was.  We decided to go wake Sebastian up, when he saw us he was all smiles and all hugs!  So so so cute!  Gabe went to bed every night with a small photo album that I had put together for him that had pictures of Vinnie and Me.  So precious!  What a great feeling to be back with our little kiddos!  The plan is to stay in New Mexico for a week or so while Vinnie tattoos and we hang out.  

Awww, there are the little ones....  :)

OUR ROAD TRIP

Tuesday June 1, 2010

We began our journey on Tuesday June 1st, 2010.  We drove out of Anchorage around noon and headed toward Canada, crossing the border around 7:30pm.  We drove thru to Whitehorse arriving around 2:00 am to stay the night there.  Along the way we saw a total 8 brown bear, several swans in the surrounding lakes, and what looked to be a group of wild horses.  We stopped along the side of the road to take pictures of the bears.  The first set of bears appeared to be a momma bear and her cub.  They were spread apart but when the cub got closer to us the momma bear came charging toward us.  I was looking thru my camera and had my lens zoomed in so when she came running she looked a lot closer than she actually was but it sure startled me.  Once we got to Whitehorse we quickly found our hotel.  We were so tired, it was 2:00am, we hadn’t eaten any “food” (just junk), and had been on the road for 12 1/2 hours.  The next morning we woke up, got ready, went down and ate some breakfast in the hotel restaurant, checked out and were ready to hit the road again.  We stopped at a gas station to fuel up first, it was funny standing in line listening to the Canadians talk...eh?

Wednesday June 2, 2010

We left Whitehorse around 11:00 am on Wednesday and headed toward Muncho Lake in British Columbia which was about 462 miles away, somewhere around 8 hours.  Along the way we saw a total of 6 black bears along different parts of the highway.  We stopped at Watson Lake (which was about 1/2 way to Muncho Lake) to fuel up, ate at the little diner they had.  As we were getting ready to pull out of town we noticed that there were some posts with a lot of different signs, we pulled over to check it out.  There were rows and rows and rows of street signs, license plates, homemade signs. etc.  There was a big sign that said “The Sign Post Forest”.  We walked around in amazement at the vast amount of signs, but we were wondering what this place was and where did all of these signs come from.  On the other side of the “Forest” we found a sign explaining this really cool place. 

The forest was started in 1942 by a homesick U.S. Soldier, Carl K. Lindley of Danville IL.  While working on the Alaska Highway, he erected a sign here pointing the way and stating the mileage to his hometown.  Others followed his lead and are still doing so to this day.  Carl K. Lindley and his wife visited the site in 1992, 50 years after his first post was erected.

After walking around even more we found the visitors center, right outside was the original sign post.  We went in to ask how people get there signs up and the lady told us the bring or make their own and hang them up themselves but she had a hammer and nails if needed.  We explained to her that we didn’t have anything to make a sign and she told us that we would be amazed at what people come up with.  She said some people start carving away and and their way back thru hang their sign.  Well since this was a one way trip for us we needed something now.  We had a few household items that we overlooked, of course after the movers had already packed everything and left so we put that stuff in the back of the Suburban.  One of those items happened to be a coat hanger thingy (a board with hooks on it) and we had a leatherman tool with us.  We took the hooks off, Vinnie carved our names in the board, I colored it in with a Sharpie marker and we even had to screws to hang it up on a post.  I think we spent about an hour doing this.  It was fun and now we can say that we are part of the “Sign Post Forest”, a historical monument.  I would definitely recommend to anyone that will be traveling thru to be prepared and have your sign ready to hang.  It doesn’t matter the size, we saw all sizes from small to HUGE.

After that was done we were now back on the road to Muncho Lake, still 3 hours away, we were told that we needed to be there by midnight because the front desk closes at that time.  There is a place called Liard Hot Springs which is on the way to Muncho Lake.  We were really hoping to stop there and check it out but we were pushing the time because it was already 8:00 pm.  Unfortunately we were unable to check out the hot springs, we arrived at our hotel around 11:00. We would have been cutting the time a bit too close.  Oh well, more to see.  I am glad that we spent the time doing the sing post forest instead.

Thursday June 3, 2010

We left Muncho Lake at 11:00 am Thursday morning and headed toward Dawson Creek, 436 miles away, so about another 8 hours.  We saw another black bear, a caribou, and 2 moose.  Finally, I was starting to wonder when we were going to see a moose.  I was hoping to see a huge bull moose or something but no, these were 2 little babies running across the road together.  The first 1/2 of our drive today was a downpour and very cloudy, made for a gloomy drive until we got out of it and the sun was shining down on us.  The scenery began to change about 65 miles out of Dawson Creek, it didn’t look like we were in the middle of a forest anymore, well as much as it did before anyway...we even had cell phone service!

We arrived in Dawson Creek around 8:00 pm, got checked into our hotel.  It was really nice to arrive to our hotel before midnight, we were actually able to go out to dinner.  We went to a place called “Mr. Mikes”, it was fabulous!  The food was delicious and the atmosphere was awesome, we had filet mignon, garlic red skin mashed potatoes.  YUMMY!  Our first real dinner in a week.  After dinner we went to a casino called “Chances”, it was small with about 140 slot machines.  We walked in with a $100 dollar bill to spend there, we left with $100.09 after a couple hours playing.  Not too bad, eh?(My Canadian recognition)  After that we made it back to our room and fell fast asleep.

Friday June 4, 2010

We left Dawson Creek around noon.  For some crazy reason we just can’t seem to get up and get out.  We wake up super early but just can’t seem to hit the road early.  It is 379 miles to Edmonton, which is about a 6 hour drive, one of our shortest stretches yet.  The drive was beautiful, the highway was nice and smooth and the “maximum” (speed limit) was 110 km (68 mph).  That was nice to pick up a little bit of speed.  Along the sides of the highway was farmland and prairies, pretty pretty!  We arrived in Edmonton, Alberta around 7:00 pm.  We checked into our hotel and then went and had dinner in a little italian cafe.  After dinner we went and hung out in the pool and the hot tub, fun and relaxing.

Saturday June 5, 2010

We woke up and went and had some breakfast and headed out to find the West Edmonton Mall.  Driving around Edmonton was crazy, of course like everywhere else the freeways are under construction and traffic is crazy.  It took us a while to find the mall but we finally found it and it was so worth the hassle.  What an absolutely amazing mall!  This place was HUGE!!  Not only was it the indoor waterpark and the indoor amusement park that seemed out of the ordinary for a mall but there were sea lions inside, a huge ship, bumper boats, remote control ships, even a tattoo shop.  I don’t think I have ever seen a tattoo shop in a mall.  We thought that we would run in real quick and check out the mall before we got on the road toward Montana.  We parked in this massive parking garage and the mall entrance that we went in was “Entrance 58”.  Are you kidding me?  How many entrances does this place have?  Well we were way off by thinking that we would just run in real quick.  We were in there for 2 hours and didn’t even see 1/2 of the mall, so who knows what else was in there that we missed out on, but we needed to get going.

We got on the road around 3:00 pm and headed to Montana.  We arrived around midnight, checked in, and went to bed.

Sunday June 6, 2010

Our plan was to wake up early and get on the road so we could drive thru, yes thru Utah and go hang out in Wendover.  Of course we didn’t get on the road early, we left around the same time that we seem to leave every morning.  The drive thru Montana was absolutely beautiful!  We drove thru Montana into Idaho.  We stopped in Ashton Idaho which is where my Great Grandparents lived while I was growing up and is now their final resting place with a beautiful view of the Grand Tetons.  We drove by their old house and visited their graveside.  It brought back so many wonderful memories.  We continued on and arrived in Wendover around midnight.  We checked into a room and thought that we were going to go down to the casino to play a little bit but we were so tired that we just went right to bed.  We woke up the next morning, got ready, and went straight downstairs for some breakfast and then some slot machines.  We played all day long, lost a little money but we had a great time!  We stayed another night and left Tuesday afternoon.

WE MADE IT!!  I'M HOME, YAY!!!