Visitors!

August 6, Doug's mom, dad, and brother Greg came for a visit.  Our house was a disaster, so Doug went to pick them up at the airport while I frantically cleaned my house.  Later in the day, I took Brenden to register for kindergarten.  He is so excited and I am pretty excited too.  Full day kindergarten - woo hoo!  He will actually be in a K/1st class.  He is academically way ahead of most preschoolers.  If it weren't for his deafness causing a bit of a social delay, I think we might have had him tested to skip Kindergarten.  He can read just about anything you put in front of him and has such a great desire to know everything.  He is always full of questions.

August 7 we went to Seward for the Kenai Fjord Tour.  It is a 6 hour tour (although you can take a 9 hour tour, 6 was plenty) through, you guessed it, the Kenai Fjords.  A fjord is a water filled inlet carved by ice.  It was a GREAT day full of fun.

Nolan was ready to head out!

Greg and Nolan spotted fish before we even left the harbor - Swedish Fish.

The boys really liked seeing the boats in the harbor.

Safety First!  Greg is very cautious... (rolling eyes)

This is the blue water I mentioned before.  It is so blue from the silt run-off from the glaciers.  What you can't see in the picture is all of the seals on the rocks.

Harbor seals basking in the sun.  We saw LOTS of them swimming, fighting and hanging out.

The gigantic glacier.  We were able to see and hear it calf (when it shifts and breaks).

Glaciers are blue because of their thickness.  The ice absorbs most light and reflects the short wave length blue light.

Ethan, Greg, Grant, Brenden, Trudy, Nolan

They fished out a piece of the glacier from the ocean.  Here is Brenden checking it out.

Brenden and Greg have been the best of friends since Brenden was born.

Ethan was rather bored, so he spent his time crawling across the bow of the boat.  We were the first people on the boat, so we claimed the observation deck.

He wore out Grandma AND Grandpa.

Sea lions.

A school of porpoises came and "played" with the boat.  They swim along side and back and forth under the bow.  It was incredible and probably my favorite part of the trip.

We also saw some whales, but were rather unsuccessful at getting a good picture.  There were lots of birds, but I am not an avid bird watcher, so I didn't care about too much other than the puffins.

Could it get any more beautiful?

As I said, we were the first on the boat and claimed the observation deck.  For the next 20 minutes we were fighting off people trying to claim our seats as their own.  We were fed lunch, but the boys did not eat all of their carrots.  We saved them for later.  One older gentleman had been trying to invade our prime territory and Grant was doing a good job of spreading himself across the seats.  The man came and settled himself across the entire front of the observation deck and spread out all sorts of paperwork.  Then he really started making himself at home.  He ate the boys' carrots and then stole our seats, spreading himself and all of his stuff across our prime location.  Rude!

Our favorite quote of the day was from a lady watching some fishermen remove their catch from their boat.  She asked, "What kind of fish iz zat?"  The men told her it was halibut.  Her reply: "Zis iz ze first time I have seen ze halle-butt."  We repeated it for most of the week.