Cruising Alaska: Day 4 Skagway, Alaska

Over night we sailed to Skagway. Talk about a pretty little town. All the mountains everywhere is gorgeous!

We decided to stay on the ship until lunch and then get off and do our things.

We took a train ride up into the White Pass for most of the day. That was beautiful. Pictures are in the next post.

After the train ride, we walked around the little town. It is a cute older looking town. It even has the wooden boardwalk like sidewalks.

On the way back to the boat, we found a sign that said Skagway on it...like the only one that we could find. But the funny part was that it was for a RV camping area. The whole mountain side next to where the ship dock, they had all these painting of the ships that have docked there through the years. We couldn't find the Rhapsody of the Seas, but we know that it was on there somewhere.

However, we did find one called Jason. So of course we had to take a picture.

When we got back to our room, we found a monkey hanging there. Too cute!

After dinner, and before the show we were going to, I decided that I wanted to go up onto deck to watch us sail out. There was a different ship there with us and they sailed out first. I thought that it was really pretty sailing out there.
After watching us sail out, we went to the show. I was excited for it because it was all country. But I think that they ruined some songs for me. I think that some songs just need to be left alone.

After the show, we decided to go back up on deck to watch the sunset. We were the only ones up there because it was freezing, but it was so pretty! The colors were gorgeous...this picture doesn't do it justice. After the sunset, we decided to call it a night because it had been a long day.

White Pass Train Ride

While in Skagway, we took a train ride up to White Pass Summit. It was a beautiful train ride. The views were amazing! Here we are in the train.
These are the older trains that they used to make this trip.

They had a guy walk through to collect out tickets.

Here you can see the town on Skagway in the distance next to the ocean. Ride behind the tree you could see our ship.

This is the old bridge they went over. I am happy that they had a new one. The new one was scary enough for me.

We passed into Canada at the top of the summit.

It was absolutely breathtaking up there. There is this frozen lake by the railway. The colors in the lake were amazing!

On the way back down we saw two bears. This one was right next to us as we passed. Here we are reaching the end of our trip. It was a beautiful trip. Alaska is a gorgeous state!

Cruising Alaska: Day 3 Juneau, Alaska

Day three into our cruise, we finally made it to Alaska! Just after breakfast, we went up onto the deck and just watched up sail into Juneau.
Here is Juneau. This is a pretty cool city because the only ways into it is by sea or air. It is an interesting concept for a city, especially the state capitol.

Once ported, we walked into Juneau.

In Juneau, we decided to just walk around the city and look at the different shops in town. On the side of some of the roads, you had really steep stairs to get to houses because the hill was so steep that they couldn't just do a side walk. I can't imagine what that would be like in the winter. It was a beautiful city. All the mountainous lands around it makes it very beautiful.

After getting back on the ship, we went to dinner. Jason had lamb. Again I tried it and thought that it was disgusting.

So, I had chicken. That was yummy!

Our waiter also brought us out some shrimp, so I tried that too. I can say that I didn't like that shrimp either, but I was at least being adventurous with my eating!

After dinner we went to the show that was put on by the dancer and singers on the boat. It was all about Piano Men such as Billy joel, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and Barry Manilow.

After the show we went to a "game show" of battle of the sexes. That was pretty entertaining. The girls team won.

As we were leaving the game show, we had to walk through a bar to get to out room. In the bar, there was this guy named Derek there leading Karaoke. We decided to just stay there for a little while and watch. This turned out to be my favorite part of the actual cruise. It was so funny to watch. He called his Karaoke time "Adult Day Care". It was so funny. He had this amazing ability to get anyone to sing. While we first came in, there where some people that was walking through the middle to get out of the bar, and he stopped them. He said will you stay for a...(then everyone in there yelled "five minute party". So they stopped and talked to Derek and then somehow, they were doing Karaoke. He never asked them ore anything, but they did it. After people sang, he would ask in there was one word to describe their performance it would be? And everyone would through there hands up and yell SUPERSTAR. It was so entertaining. The prize for singing was these cheap color changing rings from DelSol. When ever he would give one away, he would rant off about them in a really fast voice and then he would say that they are valued at...everbody would say "far less than one thousand dollars". Towards the end of the evening, some people left, so we decided to move in closer. He noticed us do this and got so excited that he called us up. He never asked us to sing, but somehow we sang Karaoke to "Summer Lovin'" from Grease and earned our very own Del Sol color changing rings!

After the long night of karaoke, we went back to our room for the night we were greeted by a new friend. Our very own puppy...the only kind that I will allow into my room.

Cruising Alaska: Day 2 At Sea

Day two was spent at sea. Most of the day all you could see was water in all directions. It was a pretty scary concept to me, but it was pretty cool being in the middle of nowhere. We spent to day doing some fun activities.

First we went to breakfast. Talk about awesome! I had pancakes, an omelette, breads, orange juice, fruit and bacon. SO YUMMY! We were sat with some fun people at breakfast that we ran into often on the cruise.

After breakfast we went to a fruit and vegetable carving demonstration. It is amazing what someone can do with just fruit. Here are some of the carvings that he did in the hour we were there.

During the day we went to a lecture on shops to buy from in Alaska. Then we went to learn how to fold napkins into fun things. After folding napkins, I decided that I really needed to take a nap (because of the motion sickness medicine I was on). So, we just went and hung out in our room for a while. The rest of the afternoon, we spent up on deck looking out into the beautiful ocean and by this time, we could see some mountains in the far distance.

It was a formal evening in the dining room. So we went and got ready then went to dinner. Mine was really good. Jason had duck. Which he really liked, and I didn't care for at all.

I had pasta. And the desserts were AMAZING! I didn't get any pictures because I was too excited to eat them.

After the dinner we went to the show. It was a lady named Judy Kolba. She was a one woman show of singing and comedy. She was pretty good. After the show, we decided to go soak in the hot tub. That was really nice. Jason got into the indoor swimming pool also. But he didn't stay in long because it was salt water...gross!

When we got back into our room for the evening. Our stateroom attendant had already turned down our bed and left us with a cute little friend.

Cruising Alaska: Day 1 Seattle

We got to Seattle early for our cruise, so we were one of the very first people on the boat. We were thinking that we were going to have to wait until 1 to get on, but they let us on at 11. The boat was HUGE! I am amazed at how much they can fit on a boat. When we got on, we just explored the boat for a while. Here is Jason up on the Deck.
Here is the outdoor pool. I think that the whole time we probably saw 2 people in it.

For lunch, we went to the Windjammer Cafe. It is an all you can eat buffet. They had all types of weird foods, but I decided that I just wanted the hamburger and fries. Those were the BEST fries that I have ever eaten.

After everyone was on the boat, they had a maditory emergency evacuation drill. So, we all put our life jackets on and went to out Muster points. We were just hoping that was the only time that we would have to do that. The first day was pretty much spent learning the things to do on the boat. Sailing out was pretty fun. I think that it is always fun to see land from the ocean.

Every night we went to a show. The first show was a comedian named Tony Daro. He was pretty funny. Everything he said was excatly right, but so funny. After the show, we were pretty tired, so we decided to make it an early night, so we would be wide awake for the activities the next day.

More to follow...

We are home from our Alaskan cruise. We loved it! I will tell you all about it as soon as we are back to normal around here.

Clickin' Moms for FREE!!!

My sister, Natalie is offering 1 month of Clickin' Moms for free during her 1 year anniversary celebration!!!  It is an amazing deal and a great opportunity to try out the forums.  

Here is a link to her blog if you would like more infomation - http://cottoncandybynatalie.blogspot.com/

Milk and Water Concoction

I just started taking a class on Portrait Photography by Candice Stringham over at http://www.jessicasprague.com/. This is the second week of the class and I am loving it. I am learning so much already.

This week we are learning about lighting-specifically the use of window light indoors. I decided that I needed some practice. So I decided that while Emerson was busy with his concoction of milk and water (this is a pretty normal thing for the boy to do) that I would take some pictures of him and practice with the indoor window light.
This is a poor example of side lighting...but still a really cute picture.

To make side lighting better, you can add a reflector. Which will fill in a bunch of the shadows on the opposite side. So, here I practiced with the reflector. (Cute, huh?)

This is without the reflector:

These next two are with:

Here is Emerson without the reflector again.

And finally here he is with his new "funny" (a.k.a. super adoreable) face with the reflector.

I hope that you enjoyed looking at my practice photos. I had a really awesome model. I will be sure to keep you updated on his modeling career throughout this class.

If you are interested: all the pictures are straight out of the camera. NO editing. I think that they turned out pretty well considering.

Me and Mr. E

I just wanted to share a few pictures that I got with Emerson today at church. I love him to pieces!