Alaskan Cruise

We started our Alaskan Cruise 9-day vacation with 2 days in Seattle. Chris spent time in Seattle when he was younger because he lived a few hours away in Spokane, but I had never been. We really liked the mixed landscape of water and mountains, and how green everything was. A theme of our vacation began to develop, perfect weather! There was no rain to be had in Seattle, which I hear is a rarity, and we were happy to enjoy the sunshine!

We spent Saturday at the Flight Museum at Boeing Field. 

And explored the city in the world's smallest (economy-size) rental car.

We walked through the first Air Force One airplane that flew a few important figures in history, see below for the abbreviated list.

We boarded our Holland America cruise ship, the MS Oosterdam on Sunday afternoon. We have both cruised before, but never on Holland America, so we were excited to see what it was all about. The conclusion we came to is that it is mainly about old people, keeping to themselves and enjoying the cruise. Fortunately, we tend to have more in common with old-people lifestyles vs. 20-somethings, so this worked out well. We gave up the party-until-3am lifestyle years ago, and have adopted the keep-to-ourselves and enjoy-time-together approach to vacations, so we fit right in.

Our home away from home for 7 days.

We enjoyed lots of delicious food - namely, cupcakes at afternoon tea time.

We cruised Tracy Arm Fjord and enjoyed spectacular scenery. Because we were on a smaller cruise ship, we were able to cruise very far into the fjord and all the way up to the glacier. The larger ships are not able to navigate these inner passages of Alaska.

Day 3 was the only day we experienced rain, on the entire trip! The rain was because we were parked next to a glacier. I enjoyed the scenery indoors and Chris explored outside.

The South Sawyer glacier. At the point the glacier meets the water, it is 30 feet tall above water, and 150 feet below water. This was incredible to see up close, we've never seen anything like it in our entire Missouri or Colorado lives. You can see little black dots on the icebergs in the water, and these little dots are actually Harbor Seals we could see through our binoculars!

A beautiful morning view of Juneau from our balcony.

In Juneau, we went whale watching and saw a whale breach (jump out of the water), it was incredible! I've never seen an animal so large, they are really incredible creatures.

We also hiked to this spot, across a lake from another glacier. It was a warm 70 degrees and sunny all day in Juneau (and most of our trip) but cooler in the shade. On this hike, we trekked through a rainforest, which was developed from the melting of this glacier. At one time the entire area you see in the photo was covered by the glacier (including the rainforest we hiked through) but over hundreds of years it has melted, vegetation grew and the lake formed. This lifecycle process continues every day.

The following day we docked in Sitka, and this is a view from the cruise ship of the nearby volcano that is no longer active. One of the most beautiful things about Alaska was the water and mountains together. We're used to seeing mountains in Colorado, but don't usually have bodies of water at the foot of the mountains. The scenery was beautiful, and so difficult to capture in a photo.

In Sitka, we went sea kayaking. We were transported by boat to this little cove, that had several little boat houses. From there, we boarded 2-person kayaks and explored the salt-water lake (which is connected to the ocean through passageways).

This is Chris being "attacked" by the starfish on this lifejacket.

The next day we docked in Ketchikan, famous for their Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show, which we of course had to see! It had a bit of a Branson-show feel, but we enjoyed the humor and entertainment! This is my lumberjack with the other lumberjacks.

Overall, the wildlife and landscapes were absolutely breathtaking, and we would certainly recommend the trip to anyone (and we would love to go back again at some point!) We were so happy to get away for a much needed extended vacation, and glad to enjoy a 2nd honeymoon after a wonderful 3 1/2 years of marriage! 

A VERY Busy July and August

July and August proved to be our busiest two months of the entire year, mainly due to Sarah's work events. She was responsible for two very large events within a 2 week period of time, the annual Alumni Retreat and the annual professional Conference. Both events were very successful and she is looking forward to downtime this fall before planning begins again the first of the new year.

We also welcomed friends to Denver, Brittany Hopp stopped on her way through to her sister's wedding in Wyoming and Jon and Kim Moller visited from Florida (photos below). It is always so great to see our out-of-state friends and to catch up.

We supported Michelle at her FIRST EVER triathlon! She did really well and we are so proud of her. (photo of Michelle and her friend Kelsey below)

We celebrated Chris' birthday weekend mid-August with a trip to a flight simulator (photo below). As you can tell from the photo, he was VERY excited to fly a few airplanes, and the highlight was a carrier landing. Until we can plan for real flight lessons, a flight simulator will have to suffice, and by the look on his face, I believe it did!

And, we purchased a used, and pretty old, Schwinn bike (photo below) that I can cruise around the neighborhood on! Chris already has a bike and has recently become pretty involved with cycling and training with friends, so I figured I needed a nice Sunday cruiser to get me to the farmer's market and church. I'm glad to finally be the owner of a bike!

Visiting with the Mollers x2 and Ashley and Hunter. We celebrated the 4 boys birthdays, which were all in the same weekend.

July Wedding: Hobbs Visit and Grand Lake

We spent a weekend in July in Grand Lake with Megan and John Hobbs celebrating a sorority sister's wedding. The weather was wonderful and the views amazing. This was the first time we had been to Grand Lake and we fell in love with the beautiful combination of mountains, sunshine and water. We have said many times that we miss the summertime "lake-life" of Missouri, and Grand Lake was just the perfect fix. I know we say this a lot, but we need to plan a long weekend to go back and to enjoy a bit more time in this area. It was fun to celebrate the wedding with sorority sisters, after all, "Zeta lasts a lifetime!" and to spend time with our dear Kansas City friends Megan and John. 

Beaver Creek

Last weekend we visited our friends Stephanie and Michael in Beaver Creek, visiting Colorado from Tulsa, Oklahoma. We initially became friends in a round-about kind of way, partially through two mutual friends Erin and Maggie, and partially through Chris and Michael (who were both working for BKD at the time) meeting at a work training two years ago. Stephanie and Michael are both from Springfield, so we had the friends in common and we officially met over breakfast, with Maggie in Denver. We really enjoy this couple, and we were so excited to be able to hangout in the beautiful Rocky Mountains together!

Stephanie snuck a photo of Chris and I admiring the beauty from the porch of the condo.

Ice skating in July? Only in Colorado. We didn't skate but enjoyed watching the live entertainment at the Beaver Creek Village skating rink.

We also explored the Vail Farmer's Market, which they say is one of the largest in the state. We believe it, it was great! We're big fans of great farmer's markets, and this one really made up for missing the one near our house while we were away in the mountains.

Harps Visit Colorado 2.0

Our college friends, Matt and Andrea Harp came out to visit us again this year, for Colorado 2.0 - the 4th of July trip is becoming a tradition. They asked for the "Colorado Experience" so that is what we gave them! The trip started with a hike to hanging lake, a beautiful hike just out side of Glenwood Springs Colorado.

Note: Trail is difficult. Yes, it was. But, the end was totally worth it!

Views of the canyon from the top.

The lake was crystal clear, absolutely beautiful.

We stayed the night in Glenwood Springs at the historic Hotel Colorado. I don't think you can get much more Colorado-authentic than that! We also introduced them to the Glenwood hot springs and enjoyed some time relaxing that evening.

The next day we drove to Fort Collins and toured the New Belgium Brewery - We've had reservations for this tour for 3 months because its difficult to get a reservation. We were very excited to finally get to see the factory and were very impressed by the tour. All around, very successful trip and a great Colorado weekend.

Matt and I both won a beer on the brewery tour - I won the trivia question, which was "How many bottles are produced per minute?" and the answer is "700." Matt won a beer because he was the only home-brewer on our tour!

Bekah and Beth in Denver

We kicked off a month of friends visiting Colorado with a visit from Bekah and her friend Beth. Bekah and I led Young Life in college together and was a bridesmaid in our wedding, and she's now living in Texas and working as an illustrator for Fossil. Her friend Beth, from Nashville, met her in Denver for the weekend and we all had a great time seeing Denver and hiking! The spent the other half of their visit with another friend, and topped off their trip by hiking a 14,000' mountain. What a trip!

Friday night we had dinner reservations at this great new restaurant in Denver called "Linger." Chris made dinner reservations 3 months ago because reservations are tough to come by on weekend nights! When he made the reservations he looked up which nights the Rockies baseball stadium fireworks would be, knowing the restaurant has an incredible view overlooking downtown Denver (and the stadium). The restaurant also overlooks Little Man Ice Cream - which we all know is one of our Denver favorites - so in the photo below you can see the top of the Little Man milk can, with the fireworks in the distance. It was a magical view, and a delicious dinner with great friends. 

We hiked at Mount Falcon on Saturday, and made a puppy friend along the way!

We also went to Red Rocks Amphitheater to check it out - it really is such a neat place to take people visiting Denver because it is unlike anything most people have ever seen. The natural rock formations and bright red color of the rocks is incredible. I was sad to see them leave, but so glad to get to spend time together catching up.