Kick off the End of Summer!

Every year for the past few years, the beginning of summer is kicked off with camping at the cabin on Memorial Day Weekend, and the end of summer comes to a close with being at the cabin over Labor Day Weekend. This year was a bit challenging at the cabin with Brayden being mobile (but not quite walking) at the beginning of summer, and toddling all over (but clumsy) towards the end of the summer. We had to hold him A LOT....and with my belly growing at an exponential pace the last month or two, it makes it hard sometimes! But, Brady LOVES it out there, and so does Koda! We're now up to 5 different swings for the kids....a baby swing for Brayden, a tire swing, regular swing, the ring swing, and the hammock (if you call that a "swing"), so there's plenty to do for the kids. Not to mention the 4-wheelers, which is always the highlite of the weekend.

The past 2 years we've grown potatoes at the cabin. Labor Day weekend is when we "harvest" them, and the kids think it's like hunting for Easter Eggs or treasure!

My mom bought this hat at the fair earlier in the day, and Brayden had a blast playing "dragon baby" with Koda and the twins!

Alaska State Fair 2010

This year we all managed to head out to the fair twice! Because we're heading to Florida (Disneyworld, Seaworld, Busch Gardens, etc) at the end of the month, we warned Koda that there would literally only be 2 or 3 rides for him. BUT....the 2nd time we went was buddy day, and we broke and bought a pack of tickets, and Koda, Curran, and Tristan spent well over an hour or two on rides! This year the petting zoo was awesome because Koda wasn't afraid of all the animals, and Brady was big enough to enjoy it too!

This was Brady's preferred method of being held for a good 5 minutes! He thought it was hilarious!

Dakota turns 6 years old!!!

Today is Koda's 6th birthday!!! I can't believe how fast time flies, how big he is, and how much older it seems I am when HE has a birthday (as opposed to when I have a birthday)!! Regardless, his party was yesterday. The big thing last year apparently was to invite the whole class (which we didn't do last year), so I promised him that he could do it this year. Thankfully, his school all has very small class sizes (the max is 18), and there's 14 kids total in his class. Add that to his 4 cousins here in Anchorage, and it's over 20 kids (including Brayden!). Needless to say, there was absolutely NO way that we would be fitting (or wanting) all those people in our place, so we had it at the Alaska Club (a fitness center, for those of you who aren't in AK), and had a pool party. He wanted a Batman theme, so I made a cake with a fondant Batman logo on it (my first homemade fondant creation):

Blowing out his candles

Having a bit of fun in the rockwall room before cake and ice cream!

Time for presents! It was funny...I didn't mention legos to any of the parents, but somehow over half of the gifts turned out to be lego sets, which is great since he REALLY has been into building things with legos. I'm talking playing legos at least a good 30-45 minutes every single day!

Brayden's not much of a water baby, but he does enjoy it as long as he can cling on to someone!

Some Auntie Lizzie lovin!

Dad and Brady.....he's in LOVE with the slide. Once he's down and the water is out of his face, he usually looks at George and does the sign for "more". We're trying to teach him "again" instead, but we know what he means!

Koda on his way down!

Tristan literally HATES the water! It doesn't help that he has virtually no meat on his little bones, and the water is fairly chilly sometimes, but even when it's warmer, he's not too much of a fan. Regardless, Heather forced him to ride down the slide with her, going so far as to pry his little hands from his death grip on the bar at the top of the slide! Too funny!

Koda's birthday party was a great success, and everyone had a blast! We were all wiped out afterwards, and Brady ended up taking a 4 hour nap! Dakota made out like a bandit, with lots of Legos, books, and a couple Wii games and accessories. From most of the family, though, he mainly got $$$ to use for our Disneyworld trip! He's been saving the past few months, and with his birthday money, he now has a little over $100 of his own money to spend on vacation. We leave in 10 days, and we all can't wait!!!

Campbell Creek

Only about 2 miles away from our place is Campbell Creek Park, which is such a great place when it's hot enough outside to enjoy (which isn't very often!). Koda was gone for a little over 2 months this summer in Kodiak, so he missed most of the Anchorage summer (which wasn't much anyways!). However, once he got home a couple weeks before school started, we waited for a really nice sunny day, and went for some fun! The part of the creek where the park is situated is really shallow, so even though the water is FREEZING, the kids can wade fairly well and have a blast!