Alaska Adventure~

Here are a few pictures from our Alaskan Cruise! Nothing too fancy, I only had that dumb disposable camera... but they are better than nothing!

In our dining room, very fancy, indeed. Since this trip was for my mom and dad's 40th anniversary, we were spoiled! Happy Anniversary balloons on our door, flowers in our room, and this tasty little cake! After the waiters brought it and realized there was no husband on this anniversary trip, I still had them sing their "Happy Anniversary" song to us! The one waiter was from the Philippines and the other from the Ukraine. They were great.

A part of our super-cool room. There was a sitting area, wet bar, 2 T.V.s and a huge bathroom with jetted tub! Plus, a large vanity to sit and do hair and make up. The balcony was huge, large enough for two lounge chairs and then a table with 4 chairs!

Our first day at sea and the first of two formal dinners. My, this disposable camera takes such GREAT pictures, eh?!

Ketchikan, our first port of call. The sign says... "Alaska's first city" and "Salmon Capital of the world". Below are pictures from our visit here:

We got to feed Reindeer!!! Highlight of my trip! :)

Man in the process of carving a Totem Pole. Very interesting! It will take him about 6 months to finish.

The Rain Forest we had a tour through. So beautiful. Lots of evidence of bear, but we didn't actually see any bear. If you look closely, you can see the line for the zip line. Lots of people zipped over the rain forest!

Glacier. It has a name, but I can't remember it. We went down this one area, it was supposed to be a place called Tracy Arm, but there was too much ice, so we went down a different route to see this amazing glacier. We saw lots of icebergs along the way and I even witnessed a hunk of glacier falling into the water! It made a huge "BOOM" sound.

Chilly Juneau.

Juneau, Alaska. There is a tiny waterfall flowing from the mountain. Beautiful city.

Mendenhall Glacier. Juneau.

Skagway, Alaska. Our third port of call. Lots of cool history here. Created during the gold rush, men lived here as they prepared to go to the Yukon to look for gold. Canada was around 20 miles from here.

Skagway. Pop. 800 people.

Me and Mom at an overlook in Skagway.

Victoria, British Columbia, our last stop.

Pure Beauty!

Then we came home! :)

Amazing trip, thanks mom!

Lawson Family Update~

~Just a quick note, I turned in my cool disposable camera today and will be getting a CD made along with the photos, so later I will be able to post a few pictures of beautiful Alaska!~

Since I was far, far away in Alaska for the girls' dance recital, Chloe took over on hair and

make up duty. She did a fabulous job. She was very pleased on Lindsay's fancy do.

Chloe did a good job on Lindsay's hair-do!

Fancy hair.

Cutie-Pie!

Three little Lawsons ready to go out and boogie!

Lindsay, in the middle. Look at that perfect form! Notice how nicely she points her toe!

Natalie... on the right!

Haley and her dance team... where is Haley? I think she is in the front somewhere!

Lindsay graduates from preschool!

she had 2 super fun years with "Smart Stuff Preschool"

and will miss her teacher dearly.

Kindergarten will begin in mid-August.

Lindsay wearing the same preschool graduation dress that I made for Natalie 4 years ago.

(It's good having all girls!)

It's onto Kindergarten!!! Woo Hoo!!

Lindsay, top, middle. Trying to keep that graduation cap on her head!

Linds and her beloved teacher, Miss Tonya.

I Have Returned!

None of these links work!!! Oh well........................................

Well, my mom and I had a great time on our cruise!!! The Star Princess was a beautiful ship! It was smooth sailing for most of our journey, we did have one day of rockin' and a rollin' and I wasn't feeling too hot, but other than that, we had a fun time on this amazing ship! I only brought along a disposable camera due to the fact that our digital is filled with 700 pictures, and I didn't feel like dealing with that. So all that I can show you for now are some links of 3 of our 4 excursions.
Ketchikan, Alaska. Here we walked a few miles through a bear infested rain forest! Awesome!! We never saw any bears here, but saw lots of bear poop and evidence of bear all over. So Cool!

Juneau, Alaska. We spent a lot of time at this amazing glacier: Mendenhall Glacier. We did a few other things here, too. This city is gorgeous! If we had to pick up and move our family for some crazy reason to Alaska, Juneau would be it.

Skagway, Alaska. Within minutes of us arriving here we met up with some LDS missionaries! We chatted with them for a while, one was from Utah (surprise, surprise!) and the other was from Florida. Then my mom and I shopped our little hearts out in the great shops all over Skagway, then headed on our tour. What cool little town with a huge history!

Butchart Gardens, Victoria, B.C Gorgeous! We spent a few hours walking through this amazing garden, then had a cool tour of this beautiful city on our chartered bus. It was fun hanging out in Canada for the day!

I'll try to post my vacation pictures another time... that is if I ever bother to get the disposable camera developed!

My family survived without me.... they missed me a bunch, though! They loved all the fun treasures I brought home for them. I was sad to miss my girls' dance recital (thanks, Chloe for doing such a great job on hair and makeup!) and to be there for Nat when she came home in tears on the last day of school 'cause she loves her teacher so much and didn't want the school year to end. Gene did a great job keeping the house in one piece, and Chloe helped so much with all the babysitting!
I have girls' camp in 2 weeks, then after that, I'm never leaving my family again!!

Bon Voyage!

Is that how you spell it? Bon Voyage?!!

Anyway,
I am taking off tomorrow for my big trip! My mom and I are going on a 7- day Alaskan cruise! We'll fly into Seattle on Sunday and take a shuttle to the ship. How did this all happen?? Well, my parents are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary this year and to celebrate they planned a cruise. All was well until a few weeks ago when my dad's heart doctor told him he was in no condition to be going on a cruise. My mom was very upset and my dad felt bad that he was messing up her dream vacation, so instead of postponing the trip, my dad had my mom ask me to go with her! Wonderful Gene said YES! (This is after I took off to CA for 4 days during Mother's Day and then 2 weeks after the cruise I'll be at girls camp for a week!) So, I am leaving tomorrow. I'm flying to Sacramento at 3:30 pm, then I'm making sure we get Roundtable Pizza for dinner, then we'll be off to Seattle Sunday morning then on the ship!

Here's the cool part: My mom had booked a very nice room for her and my dad. A nice room with a balcony. Well, two weeks ago the cruise called my mom to tell her that they had bumped us to a Mini Suite! COOL! Then, 3 days ago the cruise called again and said that there was a group of people who needed our suite so that they could all have rooms by each other, so they had to bump us again! This time to the PENTHOUSE! That means, my mom and I will be enjoying the nicest room on the cruise! Over 800 sf with a huge balcony, for FREE! This is a $9,000 Room! Just for me and my mommy!

I'll see ya'll when I get back!
:)

"Coming Clean"

Shannon did a fun post on her blog about 'Coming Clean'..... she tagged a few of us to do the same.

I guess one thing about me is that I am a crazy sentimental person. All 4 girls have baby books that are full, photo albums for each of them that are full and I have several boxes that house my girls' treasures. We have VHS tapes all over the place of my girls.. and the thing is, we always watch the tapes! We are always looking through the albums, or baby books! It's not that I don't enjoy the here and now, it's just that anything and everything that has to do with my girls, I want to hold onto! When Lindsay began preschool 2 years ago, knowing that she was my last preschooler, I got a new box just for her preschool items. These past 2 years I have kept probably 90% of the things she has brought home and my heart was very full at her preschool graduation ceremony last week. No more preschool in this home... That's NOT ok with me.
I have rubbed off on my girls... they love viewing those tapes and are always getting their albums or baby books out to look through. They love sifting through our treasure boxes to look at their old school work and artwork.
I just wanna hold onto my girls forever.... is that so wrong?! :)

Update~

Two great movies I have recently seen:

P.S I love You: Such a great romantic comedy. Gene doesn't like those kinds of movies, so Chloe and had a nice evening watching it together.... Loved this movie, made me cry a million times!

Stranger than Fiction: Amazing movie! Gene wasn't super excited to see this one due to the poor reviews, but once it got started, we were both commenting on how great it was. Go see it if you haven't already, it's an incredible movie!


Last night I came home from YW's to find that my family had rescued a small bird. Some of our family had come over earlier that night and found it in the street, so they brought it to us and Gene put it in our old rabbit cage. I am kind of known around here as the "Fledgling Saver" since I have helped people save fledglings (you know, baby bird, just getting it's feathers!) from their window wells or whatever. I am usually very successful at reuniting the baby bird with it's mommy. So last night I took the cage out onto the front lawn hoping the little guy would tweet-tweet-tweet so it's mommy could find him, but he didn't. He just hopped around the cage, trying to get out. So finally I picked him up and put him into some bushes in our island. A few moments later he hopped out right back to me! Awwwwwwww... so I put him back again, then he hopped out and traveled to some other bushes by the side of our house. Later that night we went and checked on him and he was fine, still there.
Well..... unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending. Even after getting our 2 cats and putting them in the house for the night and getting our neighbor to put her 2 cats away for the night, the poor little thing died during the night. I was out this morning at 6:30 to go running and of course the first thing I did was to check on him, and he was dead. I would have cried, but my friend Laura was with me, and I didn't want to look like a bigger fool than I already am!

The sad thing is how much Natalie was concerned about this little bird. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the bird was in a Wal Mart bag on the bottom of our outside trash can, so she went and looked for him and when she came back she told me he wasn't there. So I went along with her idea that he must have found his mommy and flew away. All morning I kept the cats indoors 'cause Nat wouldn't let them out just in case the bird was still out there... but as soon as the girls left for school, I let the cats out.
Lindsay asked about the bird, too. She said, "Do you think the bird flew away?" I said yes. She said, "Do you think he flew away very, very far away?" I said yes. She said, "Like, to the forest?" I said yes.

I am quite certain there is a special forest in heaven for all the little birds.

My Shining Stars:

Tonight Chloe and Haley had their piano recital. They both were awesome. Gene and I are so very proud of our very talented girls!

The piano sisters.

Chloe did a great job tonight. I wish you all could hear her play!! WOW!

Haley playing her two pieces. I did record a bit of her performance on our camera, but I can't get it to download here... I wish you all could hear how amazing she is on the piano.

Haley, Nat and Lindsay had a dance competition this past Saturday. They all danced beautifully! They love performing!

Haley is the last one on the left! She is a mighty dancer.

Nat: bottom right. Lookin' so cute!

Little Lindsay...(standing/front) the only one who seems to know what she is doing... OR she is the only one who DOESN'T know what she is doing! :)



With their trophies!



Awesome girls.