Monsoons!!!

The last few days monsoon season has been finally kicking in. Woohoo! I'm sure the firefighters around here are very happy about that. Maybe they'll get a break after this crazy busy fire season.

Today we got a real good storm blowing through. Rachel stood at the back door watching the rain for a good long while, and we had to close the screen door so she and Annie wouldn't go out while it was still lightning so close. But we still could feel the lovely cool air and hear the rain. Annie was a BIG fan. She kept crawling to the back door, touching the screen and rubbing the water around a bit, then turning around with a huge smile on her face, running to me (if you can run when you're crawling), then she'd pull up, sit down, turn around and go back to the screen door and do it all again. It was so funny. Especially the part where she got to the tile after she'd been playing with the water. She'd slip every time and do a belly flop. Luckily no face plants. :)

Rachel was fascinated with the rain, too, but it was hard for her to decide between watching the rain and lightning and cutting with her scissors (her newest favorite pastime). She went back and forth and back and forth.

It totally reminded me of me and my brothers growing up. We lived for monsoons-especially Justin, my older brother-and when we started to hear thunder we'd run around and open all the curtains and watch the rain and lightning. Good memories! I'm happy to see my girls are big monsoon fans, too. :)

And a good storm wouldn't be complete without jumping in puddles and playing in the rain a bit. After the lightning had quieted down a bit and it was just sprinkling a little I let Rachel go out and play in it for a little while. Of course Annie arched her back and squirmed to get down and play with the water, too. So I had Rachel hold Annie up so I could get a few pictures of them.

Annie, however, is very squirmy and hard for a 3-year-old to hold up, so she fell in the wet grass a few times. She did not like the feel of the wet grass. Her happiness only lasted so long.

At least Rachel was happy. :)

The Silly Yak's Wife

I started a new blog recently as a convenient way to keep track of my recipes, and to share them with anyone who wants new recipes. It's called The Silly Yak's Wife... get it? The Celiac's Wife. Haha. So clever.
Anyway, if anyone's looking for gluten-free recipes, have a look. Like if you're sitting there thinking, "I would love to invite the Campbells over for dinner, but what could I cook that Jacob could eat?" Have no fear, just copy a recipe. ;) Although most recipes are just as easy in a gluten-ous kitchen as in a gluten-free kitchen, so I guess if you want some recipes, gluten-free or not, check it out. :)

Growing up too fast

I thought Rachel was a pretty fast baby as far as mobility goes (taking her first steps at 9 months, walking by 11 months), but Annie has completely rewritten the book. And she's making me crazy! She rolled over back to tummy at almost exactly 4 months (not really early at all), then rolled tummy to back a week after that, and within another week she was rolling across the room to get whatever she wanted. And if she had miscalculated and the thing was a couple of feet above her head she would scoot forward on her tummy and get to it anyway. At 4 1/2 months. I had an inkling that trouble might be coming at that point. She progressed to army crawling, and this month has been real crawling off and on. Until we went to Alaska. I guess there's something in the water there. We came back with a full out crawler, and within 10 minutes of walking in the door upon our return from Alaska we had this:

Aaaaaahhhhh! Our baby can pull herself up to stand. This was one of my least favorite parts of the whole mobility progression with Rachel, mainly because we have tile everywhere except the bedrooms and the hall to the bedrooms. Hello goose eggs. Luckily so far we've been lucky and haven't had any big falls. Annie is actually pretty good at figuring out how to sit back down when she wants to. But every day she is figuring out something new that she can use to help her stand up. Today it was her crib. I envision her waking up 12 times tonight just to pull herself up to standing so as to cry with that much more gusto at me. I hope I'm wrong.

Rachel (and Mommy and Daddy, or anyone who happens to be sitting on the ground anywhere nearby) happens to be one of Annie's favorite objects to use to help her stand up.

Just after I took that picture Rachel moved away because she was tired of being Annie's pawn, and Annie just stood there balancing for a good 2 seconds. Like 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi seconds. Today she did that several different times, just on her own, letting go because she has no fear, only once today she actually lasted about 5 seconds! She turns 8 months tomorrow. Ridiculous baby! Stop growing up! Or at least slow down! She must have been too impatient to wait in the line in heaven that gave out healthy fear of pain, or any sense of caution.

Now, with Rachel I probably would have thought this was cool that she was doing all this stuff so soon, but this time around I know what's coming: months and months and months of torture at church wanting to run everywhere and not be willing to stay in one place for 2 minutes. She's already into the break-my-back phase of wanting to hold my fingers and walk around the house all day. And if I try to leave her on the ground to play so I can do something crazy like cook dinner, she crawls to me wherever I am, grabs my legs/capris and pulls herself up, then totters dangerously enough that I have to grab a hand/arm so I don't feel like she's going to topple head first onto the tile.

Rachel is my one lifesaver, at least on the days when she enjoys playing with Annie, as she can keep Annie occupied for a good 10 or 15 minutes sometimes before Annie remembers that she wants me to help her walk around.

Such happy sisters!

(Except more and more often Rachel gets into protective mode, trying to keep her turf/toys safe from the destructive baby. Ahhh, sweet sibling yelling matches. :)

Alaska - Saturday

Saturday was P-day, so we took advantage of Grandma and Grandpa being around all day and left the girls with them while we took advantage of being within half an hour of a temple. It had been a while since going to a session together, playing tag team with kid-watching, so it was nice to go sit through a session together.

After we got home and changed we headed over to see the new mission office that they were moving in to over the weekend, then headed up the road to Kincaid Park. It is a huge park that apparently has lots of cross country ski trails when covered with snow, and for the rest of the year bikers use them as mountain biking trails.

We walked just over half a mile one way before turning around to come back. Rachel, of course continued her dandelion tradition.

Coming back out Rachel was tired of walking, and Annie was tired of sitting in the stroller, so they worked out a deal they both were happy with.

Annie was having a ball riding on my shoulders for a little while.

After our lovely hike we returned to the apartment to celebrate Grandpa's birthday a few days early. I got the perfect before:

and after shots:

Hope you had a happy birthday!!

That evening we packed up all our junk we had spread all around the apartment, and bright and early the next morning we were on our way back to Tucson. It was such a nice vacation, and we had a ton of fun. It was a bit hard to return to 110 degree weather. But we will be back. It took me 10 years to get back up there since I worked up by Denali in 2001. But this time it won't take that long. We have plans to return for our 10th anniversary (in 5 years) without the kids. That way we can do the things we missed out on because the kids would have gotten bored: visiting Denali, and taking a cruise, and maybe a water rafting trip and/or sea kayaking with the whales.

Thanks for letting us come visit and take over your apartment for a week, Grandma and Grandpa Campbell!!! We loved seeing you and the beautiful place you get to serve in. Keep up the good work! :)

Alaska - Friday

With the blue skies on Friday morning we finally got to go on our long awaited bike ride. We rented bikes and a trailer from a place downtown, then rode a few blocks over to start on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.

This trail goes for more than 10 miles along the coast, and it's so pretty and green and has no street crossings to worry about. Though we did get to ride alongside a train for a short time.

About 3 or 4 miles down the trail we stopped at a lookout point and could see Mt. McKinley 160 miles away, a pretty special treat, as the mountain is covered with clouds more often than not. At that point we turned around and headed back up the trail to get back in time for our afternoon activity.

The bike ride was so nice I found myself wondering many times why I don't go biking more often. I told Jake I would be out biking at least weekly if we had a nice trail like that one. If we had the coast nearby. And if it wasn't 90+ degrees by the time I get dressed in the morning. Oh yeah, that might be a reason I don't go biking more often. Though I do think that once fall comes along we may get a bike trailer and try biking along the Rillito River trail--that could be really nice for probably 8 months out of the year, as long as we go at the right time of the day. Sure, we won't get quite the same experience biking near water (the word river here does not necessarily mean a place of water--mostly just that water occasionally shows up in the river bed when we get really good monsoons), but it should be pretty nice exercise anyway.

After returning our bike we set off for one of my favorite activities of the whole trip: the Dog Sled Rodeo. Before we headed up to Alaska I did a search at the library for kids materials on Alaska. One of the things I came up with was Snow Buddies, a real cheesy movie about these puppies that go to Alaska and end up making a dog sled team with an Alaskan Husky named Shasta. Rachel LOVED the movie. Then when we got to Anchorage Grandma and Grandpa Campbell had gotten her a stuffed husky dog for a present, which she immediately named Shasta, and it became her new best friend and favorite toy. So upon arriving at the Dog Sled Rodeo, the very first dog we saw was Hugo, the dog who played Shasta in the movie when he was a puppy:

Rachel was so happy to get to pet the REAL Shasta. And Annie was hilarious, getting SO excited to have a real live dog sniffing her and hanging out so close and not even caring when she pulled his fur. She was squealing in baby heaven.

They had a mini dog sled that Rachel and Annie had to try out.

The show was really awesome! They explained all about sled dogs and how they train them and showed us some of the cool things they can do, and talked about the Iditarod and how they take care of the dogs and all sorts of interesting things. Apparently these dogs will run over 100 miles a day and wake up every morning ready and wanting to do it all over again. They eat over 10,000 calories a day when racing. Crazy!

The coolest thing was when they brought out 16 dogs to show us what a real sled racing team looks like, and hooked them up to the truck they use to transport the dogs. Check it out:

After the show we got to go pet and hang out with the dogs some more. These malamutes really aren't racing dogs--they're too bulky for speed--but the bigger they are, the more Annie likes them, and she was crazy about this big guy:

Standing up he's almost as tall as Rachel.

We got to hold some of the puppies and play with them, too. This one kept trying to get milk from Rachel's finger.

Annie liked the puppies, but not quite as much as the big dogs.

Notice the pink sticker we all got to wear. During the show they had a girls vs. boys competition, and the girls won, so everyone got a pink sticker that says "Alaska: where men are still men, and women win the iditarod."
It was a great day with a real nice bike ride in the morning and an awesome dog sled rodeo in the afternoon. To top it all off we got to go out to dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. One of my favorite days for sure.

Alaska - Thursday - Mt. Alyeska

Thursday we headed south again and went to Girdwood. Once there we headed to the Mt. Alyeska resort which is a ski resort in the winter.

We said hi to the bear, then headed out to get our tickets to the tram.

They have a tram that takes you to the top of the mountain, over 2000 feet elevation change. One goes up while the other goes down. It sure was a pretty view, though a bit freaky at times for the acrophobic part of me.

Up at the top it was COLD! There was still snow (though much to patchy to actually ski on), and the wind was strong enough to cut to the bone. Rachel and Jake stayed and played in the snow for a little while, but I was a wimp, and took Annie over to the observation deck/gift shop out of the wind.

There was a great view of the Turnagain Arm from up at the top:

Once we got back down to a reasonable temperature and elevation we went to one of the restaurants in the resort for lunch. This was our view for lunch:

So beautiful! (If you look closely you can see Annie reflected in the window.)

Here's my mountain man with the beginnings of an Alaskan beard (though once we got back to Tucson he claimed it was too hot to keep it--pshaw, like 110 is really that hot!):

And here's Annie and I:

Yes, we did give our baby a knife to play with (though it was just a butter knife). She was not a big fan of Alaskan restaurants, it seems, as every time we ate out she would give us about 5 minutes to get settled before she started throwing a big fit. Silverware usually bought us another 5 or 10 minutes.

After lunch we headed outside for a hike. Annie fell asleep pretty quickly (that's the main reason for her big fit during lunch), and Rachel decided to decorate her stroller with dandelions.

While Rachel was doing that we snapped a quick self portrait:

Then Rachel volunteered her services as our photographer. Check out her skillz:

Oops, missed Mom. We helped her zoom out a little, then got:

"Dad! You're too tall!!!"

Finally we did end up with a pretty decent picture:

We really enjoyed our little hike. We came to a stream that Rachel really enjoyed. We played "Pooh sticks" where you drop a stick (or in this case a dandelion) on the one side of the bridge, then run to the other side to see whose stick won going down stream.

Maybe it's just being surrounded by desert all the time, but everything was soooo GREEN to me. Very pretty.

The trail turned into boardwalks several times where the ground was perpetually wet from tons of mini streams from all the runoff.

Annie eventually woke up, and really enjoyed the stream when we crossed the bridge on the way back.

A nice guy who works at the resort offered to take a family picture when we were on our way back to the car.

And the view of the resort and the mountain from the parking lot:

It was a beautiful place. And it was so nice to be hiking in 60 degree weather in June.

After we left the resort we stopped on the way out of town at a really cool park. The girls had lots of fun.

 They had a huge playground set that was all interconnected with lots of slides, tunnels, bridges, etc. It was the coolest playground I can remember seeing ever. Too bad we didn't really get any pictures of the whole thing.