Alaska part two!

Here are some pictures from the second half of our trip! The first group of pictures are from our excursion in Skagway, Alaska. The whole family rode in buses through Skagway and into the Yukon territory with a few stops along the way. Our bus driver was hilarious! She was a native Alaskan full of fun stories and adventures she had experienced. The scenery was gorgeous - some of the greatest views I have seen in my life. And according to our bus driver/guide, it is really rare to have sunny days like this. But we heard that so much on this trip that it was hard to believe that sunny days were rare - we only had one day that was overcast!

On our way to the Alaska/Canada border

The Alaska/Canada border! (Well, they don't technically share a border since the pass gets so snowy in the winter. We drove through a few miles of no-man's land before we actually passed into Canada.

Lake Tutshi - the water was SO still and there was a perfect mirror image in the reflection. It was amazing to see - and no picture can do it justice.

Emerald Lake. It is a beautiful emerald green and because of the combination of minerals in the water there aren't any plants or animals living in the lake.

We went to Carcross (or Caribou Crossing) in the Yukon Territory of Canada and we went to a place where they train sled dogs for the Iditarod race. These dogs were incredible! They would get so excited when a sled was about to go out and then calm right down as soon as the sled left. We also got to pet some of the younger puppies. Very fun!

There were a lot of cool buildings in the tiny town of Skagway. This building's entire facade was made from sticks.

Back on the ship! Just a few things we got to see/do on our dear old ship Star Princess:

Ice Sculptures! They carved these from a solid block in about fifteen minutes. It was cool to watch.

Instead of going to the Tracy Arm Fjord (there was too much ship traffic) our captain took us past this glacier - the Daws Glacier. It was a miracle that we were there when we were. The glacier had some huge caving (pieces falling off into the water) as well as shooters (huge pieces of ice breaking off from the bottom and floating to the surface). The naturalist on board said he had never seen anything like it. Chandler and I missed the main event but it woke us up from our nap. We looked out the window and saw all of the chunks of ice in the water. It was a sight to see!

More of the Daws Glacier

We saw these guys perform a couple of times. They did amazing stunts that required a lot of strength!

Formal Night! It was fun to dress up and have a fancy dinner (even though the fancy dinner part was an every-day occurrence). :)

In front of the staircase in the Piazza

Family meeting - we got to listen to the wise words of Grammy and Grandad and learn from their experiences.

Just exploring the ship!

At the Lumberjack show

The next pictures are from our time in Ketchikan, Alaska! Chandler and I went to the Lumberjack Show.Then we explored the city!

We took a walk down the boardwalk in Ketchikan. It is such a unique place.

It wouldn't be Alaska without lots of bald eagles! It was amazing to see one up close. They are big birds!

A cute old lady saw me taking a picture of Chandler and offered to take one of both of us.

Our last port was in Victoria, Canada - a beautiful island. If we didn't have to walk so much I would have loved to see more of it. And again, the weather was perfect!

My first time leaving the USA! (Well, I guess we could count going into the Yukon my first time). :)

Walking through Victoria, we saw a bunch of sweet classic cars. I took a picture of this one for my dad. :)

Lots of pretty buildings in Victoria

Cool government building

We walked through some neighborhoods on our way back to the ship and saw lots of interesting homes.

What an experience to remember! We are so grateful we got to go.

Alaska! Part One

 About 4 weeks ago Chandler and I were blessed to be able to go on a week-long Alaskan cruise with Chandler's family - my first cruise experience. Chandler's grandparents on his mom's side put the whole thing together, and in total there were 67 of us in our group! It was truly a memorable experience - and I am so grateful we got to go (I was almost too pregnant to be able to go since the cruise line doesn't allow pregnant women after a certain point). It was a great trip with lots of amazing moments.

There are a few things I want to write about, but pictures can capture much more than I can explain. So, here goes for the longest post yet (if you can believe it), but thankfully for you this post is long simply because of the amount of pictures - not because of my usual long-winded-ness.

A few things I want to mention before the picture frenzy:

I was surprised at the amount of daylight in Alaska. It messed us up the first few days because we left our curtains open so we could catch all the views from our stateroom. After our first night on the ship we woke up to a beautifully sunny day - but it was only 4am! It also didn't get dark until around 10:30 pm. Not much night time to say the least.

The views in Alaska/Canada are to die for. I have never seen so much majestic beauty in nature before. And we were blessed with incredible weather the entire trip so that we could really enjoy each place we visited.

The food was amazing - and it was so much fun to be able to rotate tables almost every night and visit with different members of the family. It is a miracle that there were so many of us there. It was fun to be served at each meal (every pregnant woman's dream). :) Every one of our servers had accents from all over the world.

The culture on a cruise is interesting. The best way to describe it is it is a party all the time! There was so much wonderful service everywhere you turned (can you say cookies and milk? That's right - we were just playing a game and a gentleman came by to offer us cookies and milk! Or 24 hour cafe? Yep - all the pistachio pudding Chandler could want at any time of day), and there were so many fine things on board (expensive jewelry shops, wine tastings (we didn't taste), an art gallery, constant live music, etc.). We were always checking our "Princess Patter" for the next entertainment or we were simply walking around exploring. I didn't use my phone for a whole week - it was glorious. But even though it was really relaxing, we were also walking around a ton and doing a lot so my feet and ankles swelled up. Every moment was completely worth it though.

One of the greatest things was to really feel our little boy kick on this trip! I don't know whether it was all the food or what but our little guy loved cruising! So do we :) He kicked a lot, and Chandler finally got to feel it too. It was really fun to share this experience with so much family - and it makes us really excited to do things with our kids in the future.

Pictures Part One:

We flew on Delta early in the morning July 13, 2013.

Our view from the plane as we flew into Seattle, WA

Driving through Seattle to our port

My first real look at our ship - the Star Princess!

Our stateroom - in a great location on the ship, and right by Chandler's immediate family.

Eating lunch before we departed from Seattle

Safety training!

Family meeting in the Skywalkers Lounge at the back of the ship - this is where we had all of our family meetings.

Tom Franek! He was our favorite entertainer on board - he played piano, sang, and danced around/on the piano. He was so talented and funny!

We ordered breakfast in bed one morning :)

Our first excursion - in Juneau, AK - the whole family went whale watching. We saw a bunch of humpback whales! This was the first whale we saw immediately after we stopped the boat.

Whale watching!

It's hard to see, but there are three whale-tails sticking up in the distance. Very cool.

Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, AK. One of the many wonderful beauties in nature that we got to see.

Juneau, AK

Chandler and I took a late-night stroll around the ship to explore on one of our first nights on board. It was so peaceful and the air was so still and calm. It was so relaxing and beautiful. I loved our ship!

Yummy food! It was always presented so well - and it all looked so good we only remembered to take a few food pictures.

Our Stateroom - it was so nice to have a place to relax every once in a while.

The Piazza - this was the center of the ship and we were so close to all of it. There were a bunch of shops and always live entertainment on this part of the ship.

A better view of Juneau

Mendenhall Glacier

One of the ship decks

The walkway up to the Skywalkers Lounge

Our first day on board with Seattle in the background.

 Stay tuned for more pictures from our adventures in Skagway (and Yukon territory/Caribou Crossing) and Ketchikan, Alaska, formal night, and Victoria, Canada!