Our Life in Alaska and Beyond

After hiking Barbara Falls we made a quick stop at the greenhouse in Eagle River to get some flowers to plant in our yard. The girls had fun picking out some of their favorites, and now that we've planted them they look so pretty in our flower beds. Hopefully they'll keep growing and get bigger and do well this summer!

The view from this greenhouse is so pretty!

Get ready for a ton of Cali posts! We spent a week in Southern California and we enjoyed every minute! It was so nice to get away and enjoy so much beautiful sunshine (sadly we already losing so much daylight here in Alaska) and so much family time! We stayed at the condo with my parents and Chrissy, and Scott's parents even came for a few days too. It was a blast! Ruby had fall break, so she didn't miss too much school, (She's still loving first grade!) and we got to enjoy Halloween there as well. :)

We left our home around 9 pm Thursday, 10/25, and arrived in San Diego at about 10 am the next day. It was a long night of travel, but luckily the girls were good and pretty much slept the whole time we were in the air. Grandma and Grandpa B. picked us up at the airport, then we went back to the condo and had a delicious breakfast made by Grandma. Later on that day we wasted no time in getting our vacation started and we drove up to Balboa Island to meet my parents' friends that live there. It was so fun! (Pics from Balboa in next post.) Before driving to Balboa Island we first made a quick stop at Roger's Gardens, a very nice greenhouse and garden shop, with cute, fancy little boutique shops, too. It was fun to look around, and with all that pretty California light, I pretty much took pics wherever we went. Enjoy!

It was so warm the whole week we were in Cali. We loved it!

After hiking around Eagle River Nature Center we stopped at the greenhouse on our way home to get some flowers for our yard. We planted them over the weekend and they look so beautiful! I hope they'll continue to grow and bloom throughout the summer!

Noelle insisted on wearing this without a shirt underneath, haha. This silly Peppa Pig dress has been one of her favorites for a few years, lol.

*They didn't pick these flowers; they found them on the ground, haha.

It's finally starting to get warm! Yay for summer! After hiking we decided to pick up some flowers at a greenhouse in Eagle River. They are beautiful! We're planning on planting them tomorrow, so let's hope we can keep them looking pretty all summer long!

Both girls loved this soft lamb's ear.

I had to work on Saturday, but afterwards we all went to Point Mackenzie to a family in our ward's farm. It's called Harvest Point Farms and they sell their veggies at the farmer's market in Wasilla during the summer. It was so cool to check out and also see some of their animals. I think Noelle's favorite part was seeing the chickens and turkeys. Her little voice saying, "Baaaaawk, bawk, bawk, bawk!" was cracking us up. Scott has a video on his phone that captured it. :) They also live right on a lake! If we had been there earlier in the day I think we would have gone swimming. :) They're such a nice family and when we left they gave us some chicken eggs and a turkey egg. Yum!

So pretty!

Friday the 13th was a great day! Not unlucky at all, lol. We started out the day by hiking to Barbara Falls, a beautiful waterfall in Eagle River. It's so gorgeous, and a relatively short hike, too. The only tricky part is parking, as the unmarked trail head is pretty much in the middle of a neighborhood with private property signs everywhere. But our cars didn't get towed or anything so we're all good! After hiking, we went to a greenhouse in Eagle River to get some pretty flowers for our front yard. We've never really planted anything since moving here so it was really fun to do this! Let's hope we can keep them alive! And Mike and Kay were very nice to help us plant everything and get our yard looking great. :) (I need to take a picture of all our flowers planted!)

The greenhouse itself was amazing! It overlooked the gorgeous Chugach National Forest and had many beautiful plants. So fun! That evening Mike and Kay watched the girls and Scott and I had a date night! We met Andy and Ali in Anchorage (they were there just for a couple days for a political convention) for dinner. It was so fun to see them! (I forgot to take pics on our date night though. Oh well!) Yay for Friday the 13th!