It's kind of funny how the change of the year leads us all to look back on what we did and make new plans for the coming year.  I mean, we could look back and review what we've been doing at anytime.  But somehow we've become trained to treat this holiday like the start of a new chapter in our lives.  This year was busier in some ways and less in others, let's take a look at what happened in 2014...

For Labor Day weekend, Ryan and I had plans to go to a wedding in Ohio for some of our friends.  We debated whether to drive or fly but the flights were kind of expensive and we certainly hadn’t budgeted for this weekend trip.  So we decided to drive up to Ohio for Labor Day weekend – and I’m so glad we did!  We would have missed out on some pretty fun things if we had flown in and just stayed near the hotel.

Sorry about the break in posting but we were gone for about a week on an awesome ski trip!  Our friends Nate & Kayla and Rob & Kristen convinced us to plan a ski trip out in Colorado.  The trip was partly for Kayla's birthday and partly just to get in at least a couple more friends' trips before everyone has kids or gets too busy.

Saturday morning 8/10, I got up and went for a 3mile run with my mom and Joe and it was a really nice outing.  I had been lying in bed awake and finally decided to check my phone to see what time it was and my mom had JUST texted to see if I wanted to go for a run.  We went for a nice jog around a little pond and through a bird refuge.  I was very surprised at the bird refuge to find out that they have Sandhill Cranes just like we do in Florida!  They are a smaller subspecies there than what we have but they look almost identical otherwise.

I bet you thought I was done posting about Alaska since my last post talked about the end of the cruise, didn’t you?  Well I fooled you!  The cruise may have been over but the vacation was not, yay!  Wednesday 8/7 we disembarked the cruise ship and got on a bus to go to the McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge for a view of Mount McKinley.

Wow I can't believe I broke my streak of so many days without missing a blog post.  Anyways, I know I also missed Scrap Basket Sunday yesterday so I'll have to do some extra sewing on that project to make up for it.  Before we get too far into August, I want to wrap up my vacation pics and summary :)

Sunday 8/4 was another long day at port – we got to Skagway at 8am and had to be back on board around 8pm again.  We hadn’t made any plans so we were talking about what we wanted to do at our last port on the cruise.  We talked about going Salmon fishing but apparently it’s not as good in Skagway as it is in some of the other areas of Alaska.  We talked about doing a Jeep tour and a few other things but then we saw a tour where you go to Davidson Glacier and hike and kayak to the actual glacier.  Mom decided to splurge and take us to do that.  We had a couple hours to kill before the tour started and there wasn’t much in the town except for the obligatory jewelry and tourist shops so we found ourselves a trail.  The trail led up to a pretty lake called Dewey Lake.  We would have liked to go all the way around the lake but we didn’t have quite enough time so we just hiked to the lake, checked it out and headed back.

Friday 8/2 we arrived at Ketchikan around 7am but it was a short day in port – we had to be back on the boat by 2pm.  I had done a little research on Trip Advisor before we went and the Great Alaskan Lumberjack show got great reviews so we decided to do that and go to the Totem Bight State Park.  We didn’t get any amazing pics at the lumberjack show but it was pretty entertaining.  They had two teams and they would race each other to cut through logs using chainsaws, hand saws, etc.  They also did log-rolling where two guys get on a log and try to roll the log to make their opponent lose their balance and fall.  One of the guys ended up falling pretty hard…doing the splits…and he split his pants…LOL.  Talk about a rough day at work!

Yesterday my mom turned 50 (the big 5-0!) and rather than have a party, she wanted to take a family vacation.  For anyone who doesn’t personally know me or her: she’s a big traveler.  Ever since I was younger, her jobs have involved global or regional sales so she travels all over the world.  Consequentially, it’s hard to plan vacations to places that mom hasn’t been.  Even after years of travel, there was one place that really stood out to her that she hadn’t been: Alaska!