I Hope You Like Nature, Cause I Got A Lot Of Pictures of Her!: Juneau, Alaska, Day 4

By the end of the day, Jack was so over Juneau.

Day 4 of the cruise was very naturey and there was a lot more hiking involved then I like. Well, any hiking is more then I like, but there were actually multiple miles of hiking while pushing my butterball turkey of a toddler around. My legs were so sore for the next week!

Once we arrived in Juneua, we take a bus into town and my mom bought tickets for us to go see the glaciers. We wait 20 minutes for the bus to arrive. Then the bus arrives, and instead of letting us on, they let a bunch of other people on first. Then we are told we have to wait for the next bus, despite us being first in the line. So my mom got really pissed off, oh yes, not just mad or angry, full on pissed, and got us a refund for our tickets and bought new tickets as she refused for us to have to wait another 30 minutes for the next bus. So, we wait 20 minutes for the other bus, are first in line to get on, and the same damn thing happens! My mom starts to freak out on the bus driver's assistant because we are being treated horribly, when all of a sudden, an Asian man behind us gets even madder then my mother (can you imagine?) and starts tearing the guy a new one! The busdriver comes out and says he has room for 6 more people, so my mama, Jack and I hop on. The Asian dude though (I refer to him as this because he litterally came all the way from Asia to see Alaska with 11 family members and they were being treated crappy. If he was from New York, I would refer to him as the New Yorker. So don't get all PC on me, please) then just gets on the bus with his 11 family members and start telling people to squeeze in because they are riding that bus! It was a lot of drama, but it was very entertaining drama.

Finally the bus driver just doesn't care so we are off to the glaciers at a roaring speed of 90 miles per hour! I didn't know busses could go that fast! We get there about 15 minutes later, which makes me think it would have been quicker and easier to have just taken a taxi. Anyway, we arrive and the glaciers are gorgeous. I put up a lot (and I mean a lot!) of pictures from this port, so I'll give you little guides under each picture of what is going on.

After the glaciers, we take the bus back to town and go shopping. My mom says we should take a different bus back to the ship. I say, "Mother, I can see the ship from here. We can just walk!". So, we do. What I didn't realize is we have to go up a hill, a very steep and long, curvy hill, to get to the ship. And it was a MILE long! Can you believe it? I thought I was going to die. Luckily we made it, and I went straight to the buffet and then bed, as did my short stack and mother.

Jack standing in front of the "Beware of Bears" sign.

Jack really mad at the glaciers, and my mom just smiling away!

Seriously, I hate elevators.

Caught in the act! Jack likes to unvelcro his shoes, come over to one of us, and say, "Uh oh!" and point down to them as if he wasn't the one who just unvelcroed them.

Jack got really mad a Mother Nature at this point.

Me smiling away with my angry boy.

They had this cardboard man everywhere! So I just had to get a picture of Jack with him.

Salmon the size of dogs. Seriously.

The 2009 Sarah Palin Tour! Day 1, 2, & 3 - Ketchikan, Alaska

Alaska. Home of my favorite gal and BFF, Sarah Palin. What a state! The moment I first saw it, I knew there was something special about that place. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself though; let me start at the begining:

Friday, August 14th: My mom shows up to my house. We finish packing up our suitcases: Hers, mine, Babycakes. We make a fresh pot of coffee (half decaf beans, half regular beans, as I'm not "supposed" to have caffeine with my medication, but really, that is impossible.). We decide on which toys to bring, which dresses I look best in, and we are set. We get Jack and Blue Bunny in the car. Everything set? Great! We are off!

The drive to Seattle isn't really that long but it was beautiful. Mostly mountains and trees. It took us just over 6 hours to get there since we stopped at Subway for lunch. In my opinion, they do not offer enough cheese on the vegetarian sandwich and I'm writing a letter to them about it. Anyway, the trip up was pretty fun. My mom and I played an ABC game the ENTIRE time. I think she was going a little nuts from me continueing to beg her to play it more and more, but she humored me. You know the game: You pick a subject - Cities in the US. Then I say, "A is for Atlanta." She says "B is for Boston". I say, "C is for Chicago" and so forth. We did cities, animals, celebrities, politians, alcohol, everything! And we would play two rounds for each theme, that way both of us had to figure out 26 words for each subject. Which one did we have the easiest time with? Desserts. No joke. Those two rounds flew by in seconds.

We show up to Seattle and get our hotel room. We stayed at the lovely Mariott. It really was a nice room. My mom and Jack headed off to bed early. By the time I was ready to go to bed, Jack had taken up 90% of the king sized mattress we were going to share with my mama, so I got to sleep on the little love seat we had in the room. Not cool. That night, Jack woke up with an awful fever. Not just his head, but his entire body. He was actually painful to touch he was so hot. We did what we could to cool him off, and by morning he was totally fine. So, we enjoyed our free continental breakfast, which was amazing by the way,and we were off to the cruise on the beautiful ship, The Norwegein Star.

We show up and there are people at the parking garage who were so helpful. They unloaded us, got our bags, parked the car, everything. We grabbed Babycakes and walked over to the ship. The whole checking in thing is such a pain in the bottom though. Do you have your passport? Where's your tickets? Are you carrying any illegal drugs or bombs? Yada yada yada! Finally we get on board! Jack is pretty blown away by the whole thing. He doesn't know quite what to make of the ship, so we take him on a walk of the entire ship (more like my mom did, I stayed on the deck and took a nap) and then we went to the buffet. After enjoying all-you-can-eat sushi, fries, juice, and a bunch of cake, we get to go to our rooms and settle in. Jack isn't looking so well, so he and I decide to stay in our room and nap while my mom goes up top to enjoy the ship and do the whole farewell to America thing.

Jack and I nap for a few hours. You are probably wondering how I nap so much. Well, it's a big thing for me that I did on the cruise, so, get used to it. After his nap, we head up to the buffet and get more food. Throughout the trip, I mostly ate pizza, french fries, sushi, soft-serve ice cream, bread pudding, and cobbler. Dear lord, if I ever see cobbler again I think I'll die. My body is now made up of 70% water, 29% cobbler, and 1% everything else. Following dinner we all decided to turn in early.

That night Jack woke up and was on fire again. We contemplated on taking him to the ship's doctor. I gave him half of an ibuprofen since I didn't bring any baby Tylenol with me. We covered him in cool towels and my mom stayed up with him throughout the worst of it. Morning came and Jack was ready for breakfast. Since it was a sea day (for all of you non-cruisers, that means a day we don't stop at a port and are just on water sailing), we ate and ate and ate. Jack barely touched his food though. All we could get in him was some OJ and a banana. I felt terrible, I mean, it was his 2nd birthday! His big day, and he felt awful. I took him to the room and he slept. The entire day! I watched 4 episodes of Bones, 4 episodes of Law & Order, and a few other shows I'd never seen before but were fantastic! I've never watched so much TV before in my life. And poor Jack Jack just slept. Thankfully he wasn't hot though. So, sad to say, his 2nd birthday was a bust.

Monday we arrived in Ketchikan, Alaska. The moment I saw it I felt like this is a place I should live. It is the most beautiful little town I've ever seen. Mountains, trees, everything. It reminded me a lot of Eureka, CA. It was raining that day, so we bundled ourselves up and headed into town. My mom had booked herself a trip to tour some naturey stuff but because it was going to be on a little boat, and I don't do little boats, Jack and I decided to tour the town. So after walking around with her for a little bit, she finally had to leave us and we went our separate ways. Jack and I walked around the city for hours. We went to all of the little shops. We got soaked in the rain, but it was surprisingly not that cold. In fact, I ended up having to take off my coat I got so warm. The rain felt great on Babycakes though, and he didn't care how soaked we got. We finally went back to the ship, changed, and met up with my mom at... Yup! You guessed it: The buffet! Now, granted the ship had tons of restaurants we could eat in but the buffet was just so much quicker and easier with Jack. There is no way we could have gotten him to sit through an entire dinner at a restaurant. At least in the dining hall there were other kids running around so I wasn't the only mom who had no control over her wild child.

That night, my mom noticed Jack was developing a rash on his face. Being the hypochondriac that I am, she says the worst thing possible, "Hmm, I wonder if he has the measles or chicken pox!" So I get into a panic mode thinking my child is going to die even though he is all up to date on his vaccinations. It was a rough night for me. But, Jack slept really well and didn't get hot again, so I was happy.

Here are pictures from days 1, 2, & 3. Stay tuned for tomorrow's blog: Juneau and the ice glaciers!

This was a cake they had!

Please Be Patient...

I have a ton of photos to sort through from our Alaska cruise so please be patient while I work on that blog. It took me forever just to get his birthday photos up! Until then, here is a fantastic photo of Jack riding our lawnmower. Don't worry, it wasn't on while Kevin was pushing him on it. Jack just likes to sit on it and enjoy the great outdoors.

In other news, sadly Jack's new black fish has passed away. Since it was past the 15 day return policy, she was washed away in the toilet and sent to fishy heaven. This one really bummed us out because she was a newer fish, and we aren't sure what killed her. We hope she is happy in Fish Heaven. Jack seems to be dealing with the loss well, basically because he's 2 and has no idea that he even had a black fish.

Before I go, I wanted to let you know that I have over 20 thank you cards to write and send out. I don't want any of you to think we are ungrateful for your generosity. It's just going to take me a little while to get through all of them. I appologize for the delay in getting them out. I am watching James today so it won't be until tomorrow or Thursday until they are sent out. I always try to have them out within 3 days of receiving the gift, but this year it just isn't happening. Thanks for being patient. We really are grateful!!!

Birthday Party for Jack!

The Thursday before our Alaskan trip, Kevin and I had a little party for Jack, just the tree of us. We took Babycakes to Red Robin. Great service, fantastic food, WAY overpriced. I couldn't believe how expensive everything was. However, it was pretty amazing food, and Jack had a great time, so it was well worth it. After dinner we came home and opened presents and ate cake. Oh my gosh! I love Baskin Robins cakes! I had a coupon of course, for the cake, and Jack got his free birthday scoop of ice cream from there. He didn't like the cookie dough ice cream choice I made for him, so Grandma Tutu came by and finished it off for him. What a thoughtful Grandma! She joined us for cake and presents. By the time Jack got through all of his gifts, he was quite overwhelmed and crying. The funny thing is, when we got home from Alaska, he had 5 more boxes in the mail for him full of presents. He also has several more boxes of presents in the mail to him that were sent late from family and friends. I cann't believe how many gifts he got. If you thought turning 1 was big for him, you are so wrong. Turning 2 was way radder!

Jack's hand going for the cake!