new girl in the class

Nora has graduated from "tag-a-long" to being an official ballerina in the little ballet class our friend teaches out of her home.  She loves it, and Elsa is excited to have her fully participate.  They are both so serious during the lesson!

backyard studio

Elsa is becoming quite the artist.  She insists on only using blank paper and a plain pencil (a friend gave her a huge ream of printer paper for her birthday and it is almost gone!).  The other day she asked for a place to sit outside so she could draw the trees.  It took me a while to situate the chair just right for her liking (I suppose artists do tend to be perfectionists...), but we finally succeeded.  

THREE

Our little Nora is now three.  It got a little confusing because we celebrated early while my mother and grandmother were still here, so when her actual birthday came I had to do some convincing that she really, really was three now.

The highlight of her little party was her favorite gift.  I asked her earlier what she wanted for her birthday, and she said, after a brief pause to think, "my blankie and my pooh bear and my dollie and my pillow."  She was completely serious and had no other answer when I asked if there was anything ELSE she wanted.  So we bundled up her blankie, pooh bear, dollies and pillow from her bed into a large gift bag, and, as you can see, she was delighted!  Oh, my sweet little girl.

Don't worry, she received and was delighted with several other lovely (and new) gifts, including a little doll quilt that Elsa had sewn all by herself with Nana's instructions.

We went easy on the fancy "cake" - she was completely happy with frosted rice krispy treats.

Happy Birthday little one!

We escaped completely... for a week anyway

So what did Joel and I do while the girls were at the coast with my mother and grandmother?  We were on a cruise to Alaska and, as Princess Cruises advertises in their motto, we escaped completely.

It was wonderful.  The weather was perfect, the sights were amazing, the wildlife cooperated, the pools were warm, and I didn't have to cook or clean anything.

If you want to see the full album, there are about 200 photos in this web album, otherwise I'm posting my favorites of my favorites here in a few posts.

This is actually the view of the Olympic Mountains from Joel's uncle's house before we boarded the ship in Seattle:

The "plaza" in the ship was three stories tall.  They had a variety of performers and activities there, including a lovely string quartet.

It was also the location of the International Cafe, where we could get salads, sandwiches, and our favorite desserts anytime we wanted!

One of the reasons for the cruise was our 10th anniversary!  Unfortunately this is the only photo we have of the formal nights or any of the evening activities and entertainment.  We had such a great time that I didn't think to take pictures!

And what cruise would be complete without a pastry buffet extravaganza?

But we weren't there only to eat dessert, and I was terribly excited to see several humpback whales our first day at sea:

Ketchikan

It drizzled a bit at our first stop, but Ketchikan is a temperate rainforest, so we couldn't complain. 

The river was jam packed with salmon that had been waiting for the rain to raise the river enough for them to get upstream to spawn, and the roads and wooden walkways were packed with tourists from at least 4 different cruise ships.

We saw two bald eagles!  Joel saw the first one as it landed in a tree, and we watched it preen its tail feathers.

The other one was perched on a marina lamppost:

After Ketchikan the ship passed through a feeding ground for humpbacks, and we saw many individual whales and mother-baby pairs as the sun set.

Tracy Arm Fjord and Sawyer Glacier

The next day we got up at 5:30 AM because the ship was going to reach the entrance to Tracy Arm Fjord around 5:45 AM.  From then until 10 AM that morning the ship slowly made its way up the fjord to the Sawyer Glacier and back out again to the Inside Passage.  

The fjord was stunning in the morning sun.

The naturalist on board for the week narrated over the sound system anytime the ship passed though an area of interest, like the humpback whale feeding area and the fjord.  I liked her yellow hat.

I knew glaciers were big, but I had not realized just how big they really are.  It is so hard to tell in pictures.  They are really really really huge!  And just like people told me, the ancient, compressed ice is so BLUE!

I had a very hard time getting a sense of scale of the mountains and glaciers we were seeing.  Half-way out of Tracy Arm we passed another Princess ship that was identical to ours.  The ship is at least 17 stories above the water, and that helped me some.

This was our favorite pool - adults only, heated, and just down the steps from our favorite (and usually empty) hot tubs.

Juneau and Mendenhall Glacier

In Juneau we went on a canoeing excursion that took us as close as we could safely get (about 200 yds.) to the face of the Mendenhall Glacier.

To help with scale, the Mendenhall glacier is a mile and a half wide where it meets the water.

We did not see any big calving, but the splash on the right side of the ice cave was from a "small" chunk that conveniently fell off just before I pressed the shutter button.

The glacier had a significant calving event about a week before we were there, so there were several large icebergs in the river that we circled, and one of them calved while were there.  It sounded like thunder, and when we paddled to look at what broke off the interior blue was splendid.

Then of course the guides get the tourists wet under the waterfall spray...

On the way walking back to the ship we followed another bald eagle as it flew from perch to perch along the docks and finally swooped to catch a fish!

Joel CAWed at it, of course, which perked its curiosity at the unusual tourist.