Ice skating!

a game of hockey

The weather has been very cold lately and Frog Pong (we are not sure if this is its actual name or a name we gave it a long time ago) froze over. So we packed up our snow gear, ice skates and hot chocolate and spent the day ice skating with some friends.

Father-Daughter Fishing Trip

early morning on Roosevelt Lagoon


the beauitful scenery as we hiked


Joanna with a fish


the birthday girl, fishing




Dad

night in the harbor

To celebrate Carrie's 13th birthday, Dad took Carrie and I and a friend of ours and her dad on his large boat, the Champion, to the Naha River for a two-day hiking, boating and fishing trip. We left on Sunday afternoon and got to the Naha at about 9:00 that night. After dinner on the boat we went for a late-night hike. When we got back we all went to bed and got up at 5:30 the next morning. It didn't get light until 7:30, so we did a lot of hiking and boating in the dark that morning. We hiked about 7 miles altogether that day over rough trail and packing all of our gear. It was exsausting, but a lot of fun! We fished at some of the good fishing spots along the trail. When we got to Jordan Lake, we stopped for a rest at the cabin before continuing on to the "Glory Hole". We caught about 10 fish there and had lunch. It was a beautiful day (but very cold... about freezing temperature). After spending a couple hours at the "Glory Hole" we hiked back to our skiff, took the boat across Rooselvelt Lagoon and then from there, we hiked back to the boat. Then it was a 4 hour boat ride back to town. During the boat ride back, us girls fixed dinner, played games and took pictures. We had a great time. Thanks, Dad!

Emma turns 8

Emma and her cake

John, balancing a book on his head for one of the party games

at the party...

opening presents on her "royal throne"

Emma decided that she wanted to have a tea party for her 8th birthday. Our grandparents were away, so we hosted the tea party at their house in town. Emma invited some friends and family members (yes, John and Paul did participate in the party) and we put up streamers and set the table with tea cups. Emma had a good time and is such a joy to the family!

November Days

almost walking...

Are you from Outer Space?

watching TV at age 7 months

Emma has really been enjoying her piano lessons.

Dad recently bought a new 8-passenger van to replace our 7-passenger mini van. It is very big, and there is enough trunk space to put another 4-person row of seats in! We are all enjoying our new car that can finally fit us all!! :)

Canning Pickles

Mom ordered a large box of pickling cucumbers last week and we set to work canning them. We washed them, sliced them, put together a sauce and then Mom arranged them in some jars. We made both sweet and dill pickles. Mom has made sweet pickles before, but this is our first try at dill ones. We haven't ate any yet (they are supposed to sit on the shelf for a couple months!) but we are looking forward to tasting our pickles!

Medieval Feast

Emma and her friends, Spencer and Andrea.

Paul had a lot of fun building model castles!

To set up for the feast, we made lots of banners and hung them on the walls of our house.

My family has been studying the Middle Ages, so we decided to host a Medieval feast with our good friends who moved to Ketchikan last summer. Our friends have a little baby, Meredith, the same age as Samuel, so we named them, Lord Samuel and Lady Meredith. They were so cute sitting in their thrones! (highchairs)

Baby Joy!

Baby Samuel is such a joy to the family! Sometimes he can be fussy, but is usually pretty happy. He is very fun to take pictures of and will often start smiling when I get out the camera. Life would be quite boring without him!

Wrangell

When we first got to Wrangell, a large crane pulled the boat out of the water and set it on dry land so the workers in Wrangell could work on the bottom of the boat.

We continued to live on the boat, even though the boat was on the land. This meant that we had to climb up a ladder about 30 feet to get to our boat!

Joanna and the baby. You can see part of the boat harbor in the background.

Carrie took this picture from the boat dock and I thought it looked too nice to leave out of this blog!

John is pushing the baby in a cart at the laundromat.

While we were in Wrangell, my family went on lots of walks. Mom fell in love with the town. Wrangell is a very small town and the people there were very friendly to us. We spent a lot of time at the library and even visited the swimming pool, some gift shops and a museum. On Sunday we went to a Baptist church and met lots of nice people. We all had a good trip, but were very glad to be on our way home after a week of living on the boat 30 feet in the air!

Beautiful Southeast Alaska...

These were some beauitful scenery photos taken from our boat on our way to Wrangell. Dad needed some work done on the bottom of one of his large 75-foot fishing tenders (the Roedda), so we all went with him and took a family trip. The first day of traveling was beautiful! It took us a day and a night to get to Wrangell from Ketchikan. On the boat ride we worked on our school and played games.

Soccer Season

"Go Emma!"

"Good job, Paul!"

Paul really enjoyed outdoor soccer this year. He said that his favorite position is foreward. Emma also played soccer. This was her first time, but she did very well and is such an active person! She had a really good team and made some new friends. Carrie and I did not play soccer this year, but we had fun watching Paul and Emma play.

Around and About...

a windy day

Carrie, playing her flute

older sis' and lil' brother

Blueberry Picking up Brown Mountain

Some of us, found some very interesting ways to pick berries!

Samuel looks a little bored here...

"Mom, don't drive off the cliff!"

The sun came out yesterday afternoon and we took advantage of the nice day and drove up Brown Mountain to go blueberry picking. The berries were ripe and beauitful! We ended up picking for about 2 and 1/2 hours and got a large pot full of berries. It started to rain later in the afternoon so we drove back home. When we got home, we stuck the berries in the freezer. Mom is going to use them to make jam and syrup.

Our trip to Mirror Lake

the cabin...

water skiing!!

the beauitful lake

My family recently got back from our annual summer trip to Mirror Lake. Everyone had a blast and made many good memories!! We stayed in a large cabin at the edge of the lake. While we were at Mirror Lake we water skiied, swam, fished, played games in the cabin, took skiff rides around the lake, hiked a ways up the inlet, and visited a water fall. Our stay lasted for about 3 days and we had some beauitful, warm weather. We are all anticipating our next trip!