At the end of August, my parents came to visit
We started off the trip with a hike up to Powerline Pass to look for moose. They did not disappoint!
Can you see?
How about now?
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| It may seem like he was close, but I have a pretty good zoom lens...and a computer. |
Ripley darted around things...
And Olive took a mid-morning nap.
Later in the day, we went to the botanical gardens. Even though summer was winding down, there was still lots to see:
Little miss enjoyed practicing her walking skills. She was literally just starting to take steps as my parents visited (it's hard to remember this brief phase now, as she currently RUNS around the house daily).
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| Still not quite sure... |
Olive was really not into her stroller as she was learning to walk. Luckily, she has a papa to give her piggy back rides!
And an Opa (who is sometimes scary...) who is willing to hold her hand:
I took about 3.4 million pictures of her in the gardens. This one is one of my favorites:
I don't think there is a little girl on this planet that is more loved:
We had an interesting week because the President was in town! We thought it would be best to avoid all of the secret service and craziness so we pushed our Seward trip to later in the week (when he wouldn't be in Seward) and hit the fair on a weekday. For the fourth year in a row, we had absolutely gorgeous weather!
First stop was the reptile house. For some reason, someone had a meltdown inside (despite loving all the cool reptiles):
She did pet an alligator outside though! This child has no fear (or maybe I'm just a bad mother for letting my baby play with unsecured alligators. Either way).
We had fun checking out all of the quality items for sale:
But easily the best part of the fair for Olive was the petting zoo. I have never heard her laugh so hard as when we let her loose with the animals!
Of course we also checked out the giant veggies:
And played rat race (we did not win big):
Walked among the rides:
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| I dare you to find a cloud. |
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| This child has weird taste in food and ate almost her body weight in corned beef. |
Later on in the week, we finally headed for Seward. The weather was, again, perfect. Even better - WE SAW BELUGAS (a whole lot of them!)
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| These pictures are not zoomed in beyond what my lens could do...they were really close to the road! |
We trailed the pod all the way from Anchorage to Girdwood. It was so spectacular to see them swimming around. We encountered a number of tourists who seemed to think this was par for the course - NOT EVEN CLOSE. Such a great thing to be able to share with my parents.
And if we thought the weather was good the LAST time we went to Seward, we were in for a big treat this time:
Just perfect. No, this is not a postcard, I took this picture with my camera:
We thought about taking a sightseeing/whale watching/wildlife cruise, but we decided that it might be too much for Olive, so we had a nice lunch and hit the SeaLife Center. Always a good time!
We checked out the sea birds (my favorite!):
And Olive crawled all over the carpet (still not really into the whole walking thing yet):
And outside:
And while we were outside taking pictures, we saw something awesome!!
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| Can you see it? Right in front of the sailboat... |
Who needs a wildlife cruise??
By the time we went back in to check out the sea lions...
Olive was exhausted. You can tell because she's actually holding still here:
The rest of the trip was low key and great, too.
Olive had a great time making Oma and Opa read to her...a lot.
Oma and I took Olive to Toys R Us while Andy and Dad put up a baby gate and we threatened to bring this home (we didn't buy it...but isn't she ADORABLE?!):
We played tourist downtown (pretty much the only day it rained) and practiced our walking some more (Isn't Andy getting good at walking?)
And we even went to Costco and got a new snowsuit! Thanks Oma and Opa! We had a great visit and a great end to the Summer!
I'll try to be better about blogging. I've got a lot of pictures from the last month to share!
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