Bella, Gabe and Josiah

We got back last Monday, but Pat still had the week off work and the boys had to be out of school for the week, so we’ve just been home for the week. I tried to get as much work in as possible (as I don’t have piles of leave to burn) but tried to balance that with also having fun with the kids and letting Pat do some projects he needed to do. The pirate love is still strong and Pat insisted that I make him a spy glass. Working from home is hard... Josy finally mastered the art of walking and is very proud of himself! Um, I’ve never dealt with a regular sized child before. Gabe couldn’t reach a doornob until he was three. Someone is a little tired... It was a nice and quiet week. I definitely would not to cut all of our vacations short just to have a week at home, but it was nice to have a little downtime before heading back to regular life.

After lunch with Grammy and Grandpa, we headed to our last campsite. I have no pictures of it because it was a random rv park with piles of rvs and close neighbors and nothing about it was picturesque. Plus, it was raining a bit and the only reason that we stayed there was that it was reasonably close to where we needed to drop the rv off at in the morning. Search and Rescue was also trying to fish someone out of the lake and I can’t get any information about whether or not they found the person. So it was eventful, and also really not. Anyway, we packed up most of our stuff and then Pat and Gabe finished The Hobbit and we all went to bed. Then we got up early and dropped everything at Uncle Tim’s house, while Pat dropped off the RV and picked up a rental car. The rest of the day was pretty low key. The boys took 3 and 4 hour naps. Uncle Tim and I did some shopping. We had dinner with some friends. And Gabe and Uncle Tim did a lot of playing. That may have been Gabe’s favorite part of

Gabe: Mom, I had a super bad dream. There was a really bad pirate and he was a really bad guy and he pointed a sword at my parrot and killed him. Then I got a new parrot and I killed his parrot. Then my whole crew told me to walk the plank. And I told them “I’m not walking the plank. You walk the plank!” It was a bad day for everyone. There was a lot of fighting.  I hope I never have a dream like that again. Me too, my dear sweet boy.

When Pat was a kid, he would go to Victory Bible Camp. Since we were driving right past it and he hadn’t been there in many years, we thought it would be fun to see it. It was beautiful! We walked around for a long time while Pat was reminiscing about all the fun that he had there. Then we noticed they had RV hookups, so we ended up camping there for the night. It was easily our most picturesque camping spot of the whole trip. The next morning I went for a run and when I came back, all three boys were snuggled up together, watching the lake and reading The Hobbit. It was pretty much perfect. Eventually we had to leave, so we packed up and drove back to have lunch with Pat’s parents. I was able to get some cute pictures of Josy and Grandpa Jim, which was nice as they hadn’t seen him since he was discharged from the hospital. Then we went and got sushi and my little food thief decided to steal my last bite. It’s a good thing he’s cute...

It’s almost like Uncle Tim’s House wasn’t set up for a baby... That big white rock ended up on his toe a little while later... But hey, nothing got broken and only one toe got squished, so I’ll take that as a win!

We were all sad to leave Chena Hot Springs, but since we don’t have unlimited time, we had to keep moving. We decided to stop by a couple of lakes and do some fishing, but we didn’t get anything. We did manage to share one lake with a moose though... Eventually we got back in the rv and then stopped by a creek to roast some hot dogs for lunch. Then we started driving again and made it down to Donnelly Creek for the night. I tried to take family pictures, but pictures with these three can get interesting... The next morning I got the boys out of the rv while Pat worked on getting the rv ready to go. (Cleaning with the boys around is, well, not particularly helpful...) I was hoping Josy would sleep in the stroller, which he did not, and the stroller is not exactly an off road stroller, so we definitely had some trouble. But I really wanted to see what was around the corner, so I told Gabe that I was going to run ahead real quick and check, since the stroller wasn’t going to make it. (Don

We made it to Fairbanks! We didn’t really have a plan of what we needed to do in Fairbanks as all the things we knew that we wanted to do we’re slightly outside of town, so we ended up camping at Pioneer Park. It was really odd to be staying in a literal parking lot after spending a couple of days in a national park, but whatever. We were right next to a couple of playgrounds and that is the boys really needed. Gabe even made a few new friends, although he never found out their names... Pat was talking to the other dad when Gabe came running up to him and told him to take off his cap. He did and Gabe yells back to his new friends “See! I told you he didn’t have any hair!!” Yesterday morning we packed everything up and headed to the North Pole. We’d mentioned the possibility of going to the North Pole and Gabe got super excited that he might get to meet Santa Claus’ wife. Not Santa Claus. He wanted to meet Mrs Claus... He forgot all about her when we actually got out there though. The f