Easter Rock Hunt

On Fridays one of the hike leads at Hike It Baby puts on a fun, themed toddler hike. For this one we had gathered rocks at Eklutna Lake the week before which she took home and painted (non-toxic) different colors to hide around this week's trail. Andi and Kit (along with the other kids) were delighted to find pink, blue, orange, etc rocks just laying around! The also had a lot of fun making towers and volcanoes from the silt around the river. I'm glad we had this hike since I've been having a lot of trouble getting into Bunny Mode this year. We didn't even dye eggs!

On another note, I've created another blog We Heart Alaska to catalog our hikes. I try to keep this a place where I can share freely and feel like I'm writing to our family and friends. As we get more involved in the outdoors here I've been answering more questions and I have a ton of pictures I wanted to share but don't really want to expose the girls too much. The other blog has more pictures of the hikes and adventures we go on, without many personal details or even much faces. I just feel more comfortable keeping this blog a little more private, you know?

Easter

I thought these photos were lost forever! I was so happy to see them in an odd folder on the desktop. :)

It snowed (obviously) so the Easter Bunny had to get very creative, very quick after she realized she was going to leave prints. The snails' pace and fear of getting caught were all completely worth it when Arlie screamed, "EASTER BUNNY PRINTS!!!" a few seconds after running into the yard. All three girls had a lot of fun finding (and then re-finding) eggs.

Hike It Baby Bodenburg Butte

Bodenburg Butte had been on our list for a while and so Andrew agreed to come with us to a Hike it Baby event there. As soon as I saw his face when they announced the "welcome circle" though I knew he was never coming back to a second one. Haha!

It was a challenging hike with a LOT of stairs and a scramble at the end. Not making anything easier was thick ice on the steepest parts and the sharpest corners. Yikes. A few hikers without ice grippers had to turn back early. The girls did great and set the pace for the rest of the group. They really enjoyed playing with the other kids at the top, watching the parasailer, and pretending to lick the chewed-gum-covered log (we agreed to the fake licking, we forgot to warn against the real touching barfbarfbarf). Andrew and I enjoyed the 360 degree views at the top.

OK, Matanuska Glacier: Part 2

I just couldn't let it go with one post. Here's the rest of the photos:

In some places it felt like being on another planet!

Matanuska Glacier: Part 1?

There were so many pictures to choose from I may have to make a second post. Matanusaka Glacier is two hours away from Anchorage and it's AMAZING. It was 1 degree F with a breeze so it was pretty dang cold, we could have stayed longer if the skin on our faces had let us. My hair had pieces of ice in it by the time we got back to the car! We're already making plans to go back when it's warmer. 20 degrees at least. :)

The one picture of Kit looking up with her mouth open? She kept saying, "Daddy, watch!" and then she'd make that face. We're not sure what we were supposed to be seeing but it made us laugh. We have such funny girls.

Weekend Fun: Byron Glacier and Portage Lake

We haven't had a lot of snow this year and it's been pretty "warm" so we took a chance and headed down to Portage Valley to hike to Byron Glacier. Even knowing the weird winter we've had we were still shocked by how there was no snow on the ground and how small the glacier was. After we played around the glacier for a while we headed back to Portage Lake to have a picnic lunch.

The wind pushes pieces of ice from the lake onto the shore, piling them up into the jumble you see above. That's some pretty strong wind!

Hike It Baby Reflections Lake

A beautiful day for a hike around Reflections Lake. I'm trying to be a little pickier about which hikes I'm putting on the blog so it doesn't get too overwhelming. Today was such a gorgeous day it was hard to narrow down the photos!

Some far away shots of the girls, some close-ups. A lot of these hikes are when Arlie is in school which is kind of sad. We'll probably be out every day this summer though! :)