Primary!

How I love little children!  Audrey and I had the opportunity to serve in the Primary in our branch up here in Skagway.  All total there were 12 kids and they are so adorable!  I got pictures of most of them and boy howdy they’re wonderful!  Crazy and wild as I’ll get out, but glorious all the same.

 The beautiful Aspen.  She’s one of the most adorable children ever!

 Cute little Marshall Chloe and Calvin Remmy, Sam, and Aspen The amazing Elders.  Elder Young and Elder Murphy.  How I adore them!

This was a group of friends from town that came out one night to have a bonfire and play.  Shalyn and Cody Lewis, Erin, Mallory and Nicole, and of course, Marshall.

We also had the opportunity to house/dog sit for some people from church.  They were gone for the weekend and we got to be in our own bedrooms, with carpet, clean showers, and pretty much every other luxury.  This were their dogs though.  Miles is the ginormous great dane, and Maisey is the other rotwiler, and don’t be fooled.  She still was huge too!  Fortunately for us, they were extremely well behaved, and Miles pretty much slept the entire time. :)  I’m not complaining!

Completely incredible!

The Porcupine Hunt

We have this amazing friend named Brayden that is probably one of the best people I know and he left this week to go home.  But before he left, he treated us to one amazing time!  We drove up the pass into Canada on a porcupine hunt.  That is also on my list of animals to see in Alaska and thus far I have only seen one that was smashed on the side of the road, so that didn’t quite cut it for me.  So, we went on our hunt and we weren’t seeing anything, except for the pretty nature of course, so we were heading back to Skagway and all the sudden Audrey thinks she’s seen one!  So, we turn around and jump out of the car in search of him!  As we’re looking all of the sudden this big pokey bush looking thing pops out of the end of the guard rail!!!!  There was a bucket of water in there that he had been drinking and when he heard us he was ready to get moving again.  It was kind of insane how big he was!  He just kept looking at us like we were nuts and in his way, so we kept our distance, and I won’t lie, I was a little nervous about being too close to him!  But Brayden assured me that all would be well, and it was.  At one point he was drooling so we decided that since he was black and drooling we would call him P-Drizzle.  I thought it was very fitting :)

 

Brayden even got us some of his quills to remember him by.  Don’t worry, he just threw his hoodie on him and some of the quills came out.  Nothing too sketchy!  It was absolutely glorious though, the entire occasion.  I felt like a little kid at Christmas I was so excited to finally see one!  They’re quite large too.  Thank you Brayden!

Zip-Lining!!

If you haven’t ever been zip-lining, I would highly recommend it!  It was my first time the other day and it was so much fun I was just blown away.  But, the actual event itself was a blast but I would say that the guides were what made it so awesome!  They were all absolutely crazy and so much fun!  I think there were about 7-8 different zips that you do and they were just awesome.  It wasn’t anything extreme but just the simple and fun with some beautiful views!

 

After our grand adventure, we wandered through town and went to Pullen Pond.  There is a king salmon hatchery there and this is just a few of them that we saw.  I know it maybe doesn’t look that impressive, but this puppies were at least three feet long!  They were massive!!!

Mom and Dad: Day 5 & 6

These were our final days together and so much fun!  Sunday we obviously went to church and it was great to have them come.  There are only about 80 people in our branch so it’s real small and everyone knows one another.  It’s wonderful!  But, also on those days we went to Dog Camp and they have some 4X4 things that they let us take out.  We mostly took some video of these because it was too rainy to bring the camera, but we had an absolute blast. 

Mom was in heaven because she could go at her own pace and just see and enjoy everything.  Dad was too for that matter.  We couldn’t get him to go any faster but it was still wonderfully fun!

Right before they left Dad wanted to document everything so he took a bunch of random pictures, so I’ll include some of those for your viewing pleasure.

  The poop truck. All of the horse camp staff

So this isn’t as bad as it looks but it’s just showing how much iron we have in our water out here.  It stains everything this lovely shade of brown.  Glorious eh?

This is from our softball team.  We were the Koneheads and although our team wasn’t really great, we still thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Sometimes people on our tours saw we don’t look alike at all, so when they do say that, we always make this face and then they look at us all shocked and say we could be twins.  Kind of hilarious!

We were seriously just so glad that Mom and Dad were able to come and join us up here.  We had so much fun with them and they gave us a much needed boost during a sort of mid-season slump as most people call it.  It was heavenly to have them.  That’s why families are so stinking important and I don’t think most people realize what a blessing having a close family really is.  I’m surely grateful for my family, each and every one of them!

Mom and Dad: Day 4

This day just so happened to be my birthday :)  I am now officially 22 years old and it was such a fun day.  We got up insanely early to try and get on a tour to Haines and canoe to a glacier, but alas, they were full so we didn’t make it.  It was also raining pretty hard and it didn’t let up at all through the day, but we still enjoyed ourselves.  We hiked up to Reid Falls, went back to camp and took a much needed nap then hung out for a bit until we had a party that night with some people from town for my birthday.  

And a cute little friend on the ride home :)

After some cake and ice cream we had a great game!  A wood splitting competition!  Everyone had to get one round stump and split it in 4 pieces, and whoever did it the fastest won.  Everyone participated and loved it.  It was quite hilarious!  And even though we didn’t think of this before, it also made it so we won’t have to chop wood for our house for at least a month.  How convenient!  Here is some documentation of the grand event!

   

Just a little note, Holly in the green jacket rocked everyone’s socks off!  Including all the guys.  She is quite the champion wood splitter!

Oh, and just to show you how cool these guys are, it was pouring rain the entire time and they still came and smiled a whole lot.  What troopers!