Alaska Fishing Trip

Last week I went on an amazing vacation! I spent a week in Larsen Bay on Kodiak Island in Alaska where we spent all day fishing and enjoying the scenery. We had a couple of guides taking us out on boats or to rivers to fish who would bait the hooks, clean the fish and throw the fish back we weren't keeping. We had meals prepared for us and fun little houses to sleep in each night. There were a total of 10 guys from the mixture of my mom and Boyd's families and we had a great time together. Getting there was a little interesting as I had scheduled to fly at night and sleep on the plane and the airport. Well, thanks to a little friend called Ambien and Alaska changing their gate on me I almost missed my flight from Anchorage over to Kodiak. In my half-awake state I heard them making the last call to board my flight and took off running.

Once we arrived in Kodiak we took a 40 minute ride in a small 6 seat airplane to the other side of the island. The scenery was beautiful with a lot of overcast skies, intermittent rain, cold weather (well, cold for someone from Las Vegas anyway) and there were A TON of bugs! Anytime you were on shore they were relentless. Thank you to Cabela's for recommending I get a bug net for my face.

During the vacation we saw a lot of wildlife. Bears, bald eagles, whales, seals & sea otters. We caught even a greater variety. While we were trying only to fish for Halibut and silver salmon we were just so darn talented we also caught sea rays, Irish Lord's (a.k.a. "mother-in-law"), an octupus, cod, dog sharks, pink salmon (which were not looking so good as they had spawned), Dolly Vardens, and Boyd even caught a star-fish. We also pulled crab pots which is much easier than they make it out to be on the greatest catch. Although we pretty much just watched our guide pull up the pots. We did clean out our own crabs though which was a lot of fun. The Alaskan crabs were HUGE, too bad we couldn't keep them, but the snow crabs and dungeness crabs were very good eating!

While I did pull in a couple of 50-60 pound halibut the biggest halibut of the trip were 120 and 150 pounders. Halibut are good fighters and bottom dwellers so it takes quite a bit of energy to get them in the boat. The 150 pound halibut put up such a fight that we decided rather than trying to bring it in the smaller boat that we happened to be in at the time and letting it flop all around and hit us to use the 20 gauge shotgun we had on board. The shotgun was VERY effective.

It was a great vacation with even better company and one that I hope to repeat!

Off the back of the boat the first morning.  We had 2 boats and guides.

My first "keeper" Halibut.  
My brother Jason with his huge Halibut. 

The scenery was amazing!
We saw so much glassy water!  We were all wishing we could have this kind of water when water-skiing.
Alaskan King Crab.
Irish Lord A.K.A. "Mother-in-Law"  Nick-named because it has spines and not the prettiest fish.

Silver Salmon
This halibut was the biggest of the week.  You can see the little tiny ones on the ground to the right of us.  Silvers in front of us and even a "yellow-eye" fish.
The river we fished in.  I really enjoyed river fishing even though we were about a week early and there weren't a lot of Silver Salmon in them yet.  
Me and my two brothers.  Dave on my right and Jason on my left.  This was the first trip we did something like this since we were young and used to go hunting together. 

This and That

Between vacations Jared is home this week. I have a "honey do list" a mile long so he is keeping busy. He was home all day Tuesday except a few hours when he had to read out the monday night films, (he worked all night), so I took the opportunity to go get a pedicure with my friend Rachel who is due a few days before me, and got my hair done! Last night was Rachel's baby's shower so we wanted our one saving grace (our toenails) to look nice! It was a fun day! I came home to find our new kitchen table put together....thanks Jared and Jake!!! p.s. I'm starting to hate this floating baby I put on the blog....its like every time I open up our website its taunting me....ha, ha, you still have 41 days to go!! It may find its way off the blog very soon.

I like how Rachel placed herself right behind the fountain thanks a lot!!

new scrapbook pages

I've done some new scrapbook pages this week while jared was in Alaska fishing, if you want to check them out visit my creative outlet blog. Jared has some stories to tell, I let him post about his trip when he gets home!

Something to smile about!!

I have a love - hate relationship with this particular book. As you can see, its been well used and is showing its wear. It is the book we use to learn how to read at our house. I have taught Carter, Hanna, and now Jake through this program. While I like the phonics based program, I think a more appropriate name would be "How to teach your Child to Read in 100 not so Easy Lessons"!! Jake and I have been working on this since February 7th. (exactly the same amount of time I've been pregnant ironically) Some of the ending lessons get really hard and take up to 45 minutes to complete. So its a huge commitment on my part as well as my children when we choose to start. Once we start, there is no going back. This book has come on many vacations with us and been read in the car, at the table, and just about everywhere!

This is a picture of our last lesson and story that we finished today!!
WAY TO GO JAKE!! I'm so proud of you and me for sticking with it. We are going out on a special date tonight. He has chosen COSTCO pizza and Baskin Robbins ice-cream for dinner. We are also stopping by Game Stop for a new video game, but he doesn't know that part yet. Were totally celebrating because we deserve it!!!

HELP, Child Insomniac

Please help! I'll take any suggestions. About 6 weeks ago, Hanna started having horrible sleep problems. She is suddenly scared of the dark (hello she's seven and never had this problem before), and can't get to sleep. She has tried to climb in our bed, which is totally a no-no, and wakes us up constantly. What can I do for her? We've tried the light on in her closet, night lights, primary songs, ocean wave sounds, she slept in the little boys room for awhile...seriously I don't know what else we can do. We say a little prayer with her nightly to help, but that doesn't always work either. She says she's afraid of lightening and wind. (We get that like twice a year in Las Vegas, so not really sure where she got that one). Okay so I've tried to be understanding and patient, but the patience is wearing off and my "Monster Mommy" claws are starting to surface when she comes out of her room for the 5th or 6th time at night crying to me saying "I can't go to sleep". If you have any suggestions, please let me know. My already thin patience is waning.

Me at 32 weeks

My friend Marlina asked me to post a picture of myself pregnant. Sure kick me while I'm down. She's says everything I've posted recently doesn't really show me.....its like I've been trying to cover myself up or something! Yeah well, I admit it, I hate pregnancy pictures of myself and about 90% of the ones taken of me when I'm not pregnant so be happy you get to see this. I may only leave it up for a few days. I've had all my baby's at 38 weeks, and Hanna earlier, so I hope that I can honestly say only 6 weeks to go. As for all the cute 2o something year olds in my ward who look great pregnant and shortly after I'd just like to add....at least I never have to do this again. How's that for a overworked, underpaid, cynical pregnant lady?! Oh yeah I cut bangs a few weeks ago....what do you think??

School days are here.....

I love back to school! Shopping for backpacks, shoes, getting school supplies, starting fresh, the excitement the nerves all of it! This year was a big year since Jake started kindergarten and I have just Joshy at home for a short time. Jake did great. He was really ready to go. He hopped out of the suburban and found our ward friends who were parking right next to us. He exclaimed really loud "Hey guys, I finally get to go to the big school"! Joshy and I wasted no time getting some errands done. Straight to Target, Home Goods, the post office, and then to lunch for a mommy's "Happiest Day of the Year" luncheon at Cafe Rio put on by some fun gals in the ward. Daddy got to be there this year and headed to work a little late
The tree that gets decorated for all the seasons
Carter the "big 4th grader"
Hanna the 2nd grader
Jakey the kindergartener with his cute LDS teacher Ms. Garner