Alaska Railroad

While we live in Alaska, the kids have never been on a train ride. First the railroad is not the cheapest thing and second, it's faster to drive so we visit places but just drive to them! So when Alaska Railroad announced it was allowing kids to ride free during the month of June, I grabbed Nana and we loaded the kids up for the 4 hour train ride to Seward Alaska. We had to be at the train depot in Anchorage by 5:45, so our day started at 4:30 so we could make the drive in. Needless to say the adults, were tired but the kids--nope they were excited!! The train left Anchorage and headed South along the Seward Highway. Beautiful scenery, animals, and the sun shine made for a great day.

Katie chatted with everyone and had the conductor wrapped around her finger! The boys have even decided that riding a train is better than flying and I think I agree, especially if you could get the train to go faster! The employees are much nicer, the seats are larger and you have leg room, and you can move about the train and experience the doom car, caboose, dining car, etc. And Sammy says the bathroom are first class :) There was not enough time for the kids to be bored and we didn't take any toys!

In Seward, we walked from the train depot, along the ocean, until we got to the Alaska Sealife center. It was great to revisit a place that they boys haven't been to since they were Katie's age. Then we hit a few playgrounds and walked back to the train depot. Great ocean side walk with sunshine! We left Seward heading for Anchorage and got home around 11:30 pm to 3 sleeping kids in the car!

Here's Nana and Katie, in the one time we could get Nana to head up to the upstairs for the dome car!Our dining experience on the train, Sammy thought this was the highlight of his trip. Anything that involves food!
The sea otters at the Sealife center. I have shots of the boys when they were little being enthralled by these guys too!

Train pic from Seward.
Hot chocolate in the dining car!
Riding along the




Breakfast on the train....

Food

My 2 boys have always eaten well and a lot. If we're having hot dogs on the grill, 1 pack is never enough for the 3 of them. They eat and are still skinny. Sammy is the biggest eater of all, he loves food. At 8 years old, he'll make 2 large sandwiches for lunch and have a full plate of other food too. This picture was taken from a recent trip to Red Robin. Sammy loves Red Robin because they bring you extra fries. He eats his meal, 1/2 of Katie's and usually 1 extra tray of fries. This time the waitress brought 2 extra trays of fries and he was beaming from ear to ear. He was so excited that they brought so much extra food to the table. Of course he ate it all too... :)

Pennsylvania Vacation

We spent a week back in PA earlier this month, catching up on the extended family. It's always a mad rush seeing everyone. The kids love to go back east as it's a lot of play time, no chores or homework :) Here are some shots from the visit.

Here's Sammy in the "mean" tree as they call it. He's loved this tree since he was little and used to talk to it all the time. Yep that's Sammy, he prefers talking to trees than people!
We took a small hike in Kings Gap with my brother and his dog (who drove up from Texas). Katie wanted her picture taken by this tree for some reason.
Three goofy faces up at the top of King Gap, overlooking the Cumberland Valley.Katie hanging out with the tree man.
Photo shoot with Uncle Wes and Earl...
Alex in the tree, note the Steelers Hat, he was in Steeler's country and played football constantly back there!

Test

I've been having some computer glitches lately, the new version of Internet Explorer is not publishing my web posts. So I've switched over to firefox to get posts back on the blog. I'm going to work on recreating the posts and posting them. If they appear twice just ignore it as maybe that means IE finally figured itself out!

Summertime Work

We've been out of school for a little over a week and have slipped into our summertime routine. Everyone does "homework" for about 2 hours in the morning, then it's playtime or chore time until after lunch. We have some reading time and then head outside for more play time. Have to love summer! I've added onto the boys' chore lists by having them take turns making lunch. They think they are big stuff making the meals for everyone. I think it's great as I no longer have to do it :)

We're still knee-deep in yard work. We've gone through 5 dump truck loads of dirt and 1 load of gravel. We need about 4 more loads before we are done.. We're adding about a 1/2 acre of grass and building a nice landscape block wall the whole way around. It's great having older kids as they pitch in and help do the work. Sometimes I add a little bribery. Today we were moving the load of gravel...
They could earn $1 for each wheel barrow load moved. Sammy claimed that quickly and racked up $9 before he had to take a break... The little dump truck load was worth a penny, but for some reason Alex really wanted to move it that way. He probably worked harder with lots of loads back and forth but he earned $4.54. That's 454 trips with that little truck!

Katie's dump truck was worth a dime a load, but she didn't care she just wanted to play in the dirt!

I'll try to post more now that there is downtime in life again! Heading to the East coast next week, hoping the humidity, heat and tornados are gone by then!