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!!!

Our Big Move

Okay, so I should have started blogging all of this stuff a while ago but here is a quick summary:

    *I called the moving company in March and set up the moving dates and then we had the final walk thru in the beginning of May.

• We shipped Vinnie’s truck May 21st  (it takes about 3 weeks to get to Utah)

We flew the 3 little kiddos to New Mexico on Sunday May 23, Austin stayed in Alaska with one of his best friends.  The kids did great on the flight, they all 3 slept the whole way.  They settled in just great at Grandma & Grandpa’s house.  THe next day it seemed like Gabe could sense something was going on, he just kept walking around the house saying “Where’s the Nonny?” (Mommy)  Poor little guy.  Abby and Sebastian were doing just fine.  On Tuesday afternoon, around 2:30 it was time for Vinnie and me to head back to Alaska leaving the little ones behind.  That was tough!  I am with my babies everyday, all day!  We had a quiet flight back to Anchorage, it seemed really weird and empty handed with just the 2 of us.  We arrived in Alaska shortly after midnight.  We had to get straight home and finishing cleaning and preparing for the movers to come the next morning.  We ended up staying up all night long, met the movers around 8:00 am.  They packed up the entire garage and we kept working on stuff in the house.  Once they left around 3:30, we ran a couple of quick errands and then fell fast asleep.  The next couple of days were like a whirlwind of commotion.  The movers finished loading all of our household goods in the trailer around 4:00 on Friday.  Now with the house empty it was time to scrub walls, sinks, toilets, etc.  We spent the weekend doing this and met the landlord on Monday at 4:00 and turned in our house keys.  We checked into a hotel, had some dinner, and sat down and relaxed for the 1st time all weekend.

Well that brings it up to our road trip which I did write about along the way so I didn't forget anything.  It was nice to have my laptop, now I can just transfer it to blogger.

Bed vs. Floor??

I don't know what the deal is but Sebastian seems to prefer the floor to his bed.  Every night we tuck him into his bed and then later on check on him thru the video monitor and every time his bed is empty.  I go upstairs and put him back in his bed and he usually stays there.  He does this during his nap time too.  So silly, he does this every day and every night.

Gabe loves to write..

Gabe absolutely loves to spell, read, & write. He likes to get out the markers for our dry erase board and spell words, erase them, and spell more. He also loves to play with his magna doodle for the same thing. He will bring it to us and tell us a word and then say "spell it". This kid is a sponge, you can show him one word and he knows exactly what it is and knows how to spell it. He even sounds words out, it is amazing! Well the other day I left him unattended with markers, (yeah, what was I thinking?) This is what I came back to:

Luckily it was Crayola Washable markers this time.  He was so proud of himself, he just kept saying "from, from, from".  That is the dry erase board eraser that he is holding in his hand.  He was trying to erase it off of the carpet and didn't understand why it wasn't coming off.  He looked at me and said "uh oh".

I went to the laundry room and grabbed the Spray & Wash with Resolve Power (love that stuff, works great on carpet) and a wet washcloth and I was able to scrub it right out.  Thank goodness!  I told him "color on paper, not on the carpet" and then I gave him a stack of printer paper. 

He had a great time with that:

He is amazing to watch, he can write a word the correct way and then he will write it in mirror image, you can see that with "this".  As you can see, he also know his vowels.  He cracks me up.  Okay, then he found a big piece of sidewalk chalk the other day and has had great fun with that too.  He went all around the backyard writing words all over the fence and the backyard.

( I put together a collage of the different sections of the fence)

He wrote "jump" on the trampoline, "table" on the patio table, "house" on our sliding glass door, "slide" on the slide, "swing" on the swing.  Later in the night I went to put the boys to bed and found that he wrote all over their bedroom walls with chalk.  In Sebastian's room he wrote "bees", "oh pig", & foot.  In his room he has big squares painted on his wall; red, yellow, & blue.  Well, he wrote "red", "yellow", & "blue" in the appropriate squares.

Good thing chalk rinses right off!!

Abby is 6 Months old already!

I can't believe how fast the time is going! She is now already 6 months old. It has been a busy month for her, she has said "Mama", she has rolled over, she started on baby cereal and baby food.

She didn't quite know what to think of her cereal the first day.

Yesterday she had her 6 month well baby check up.  She weighed 15 lbs 5 oz which puts her in the 50th percentile for weight.  She measured 26.25 inches which puts her in the 75th percentile for height.  She does seem to be tall and skinny.  It is different from any of the boys because she actually wears the size of clothes that her age is.  She is 6 months old and wears 6 month clothing.  The boys were wearing 12 month clothing when they were 6 months old.  So, the skinny thing is a bit different for us.  She is doing great, the doctor said that she is right where she needs to be developmentally.

She sure is a cutie, she loves to be talked to and loves to play peek-a-boo!  She sleeps in her own bed and wakes up once a night to eat.  Her sleeping habbits are getting a bit better, she actually only stays up til about 10:00 pm now instead of midnight.  Thank goodness!

Busy busy busy.....

Well I thought it was time I do a new post.  Things have been going pretty crazy around here.  We are getting ready for our big move and I am just now realizing how much there is to really do.  I have been going thru closets, toys, clothes, baby stuff, etc.  The snow has finally melted in our backyard and the kids have been having a lot of fun playing outside.  The only problem with that is the fact that Sebastian wants EVERYONE to go outside and play with him, if I am not out there then he is whining.  Oh boy, I am sure our neighbors like LOVE that!
Here are just a few pictures of the little guys outside..

They love to jump on the trampoline and play on the swings.  They have found a new interest....MUD PUDDLES!  Yikes! 

I only have a few picutres because Gabe broke my lens on my camera.  He LOVES cameras and loves to take pictures.  Well I left my camera in his reach and he came walking up to me with my Nikon hanging from his neck saying "take a picture, take a picture".  Argghhh, how could I have left it in his reach?  Austin says "Mom, look how cute Gabe is, he was walking around downstairs like this pretending to take pictures."  Well I panicked and quickly took it away from him and put it away.  The next day Gabe was eating a blue sucker and his face was all blue and he looked a bit silly so I wanted to take a picture, I took out my camera, turned it on, tried to zoom in and the lens was so stiff to turn and it wouldn't focus at all!  Great, my camera is broken!  I took out another lens and tried it on the camera and it worked just fine but this lens has a higher zoom and I can't really use it for regular close range pictures.  I had to stand super far away from the kids to take these pictures.  I took my broken lens into a repair shop and the guy was able to straighten it out but it was still pretty stiff, oh well.  So I thought anyway, I just now pulled out my camera to take a picture and it won't focus!  UGH!  I guess I will be getting a new lens :(

While going thru a bunch of stuff I ran across Vinnie's old camera and showed it to Gabe.  He is in heaven!  He loves this thing.

Austin is doing great!  He is excited about the move one day and the next he is really sad about it and doesn't want to move.  He said that he wishes he could take all of his friends to Utah with us or move our entire family here.  Poor guy, I know how hard this is on him, 11 years old is a tough age to move away from your friends especially since he has a girlfriend, and feel like you are starting all over again.  Thank goodness for technology, he can keep in touch with all of his friends thru email and of course texting.  I swear that kid texts more in one week than I have in my whole life.  I think just last week alone he had over 1600 text messages.  Good thing we have unlimited texting on our plan. 

I think he will be fine once we get all moved in and situated.  He is pretty excited about his new space downstairs.  He can't wait to pick out new bedding and get his bedroom and his gameroom all decorated.

Abby is doing just great!  She is so cute and so smart!  She is quite the partier though, she stays up til all crazy hours.  It sure makes it hard on us to sit and relax at the end of the night when she doesn't want to go to sleep. 

Well I guess I had better get back to cleaning and organizing and preparing for our move...*sigh*