Alaska Week Two

As my mom pointed out, week one pictures made Alaska look all nice and sunny. Week two pictures are mostly indoors or cloudy, so you can get a more accurate picture of the summer they are stuck with (but we greatly appreciated) this year. Grandma Linda took Trev to the Build-A-Bear store at the mall while my dad and John were out golfing. The goal was to get a teddy bear for the teddy bear picnic later in the week. But Trevor was instantly drawn in by the magnetic powers of elephants.

Grandma Linda suggested that he could get an elephant, but that the elephant would need a (bear) friend too. So Trevor dutifully went and found elephant another elephant to be friends with. He got over the elephant shortly and ended up with a bear and got a kick out of giving the lady hearts and watching the stuffing machine. The most exciting part was that bear got a little manly blue stroller too (Grandma drew the line at bear getting a car however). He walked bear around the mall for the next hour or so and was completely exhausted by the time we hit the car.



















Turns out that my parents' new place is within walking distance to five or more coffee shops(they both did not know or care about this). So John and I got to go out in the mornings for our fancy vacation coffee and we took Trev along some of the time. He was very excited to have his very own coffee (milk in a small coffee cup) and seems to be on the road to paying way too much for beverages in his future.















We made a trip to the zoo where Trevor got to say "hi" to all of the animals without them running away (the usual response when he tries this with birds and cats at home). He found the wolf exhibit fascinating, as he was sure that the three little pigs must live in the little cache. And the bears were also very interesting because one of them pooed. At the end out of all the stuffed animals at the gift shop, he was drawn to a blue snake... there are no snakes at the zoo and I'm not sure where blue snakes live, but I'm sure it's nowhere near AK. But never the less, the snake is pretty cool.



We went to he Teddy Bear Picnic with his new bear and stroller. It was a really good turn out for an almost rainy day. Trev seemed to enjoy the play-doh booth the most and was very suspicious about the life sized bears walking around. However, he was compelled to follow it during the teddy bear parade.




























Our trip ended with a longer than necessary flight back because the airport is dumb and the people that work there are dumb. But I digress. We had to take a later flight that stopped in San Francisco instead of going directly to LAX. I think I was the main person put out though--Trevor and John both seemed content with spending the extra hour waits looking at airplanes and talking about how they fly. Trevor was also very impressed by riding a bus to get to our car parking. He's still very interested in flying in airplanes and the first week back he kept asking if we were going on one again--and when we say no, not today his answer is always "Maybe later".

Back from Alaska

And we have tons of pictures to show for it... so I might make a couple of posts. First big news (that has nothing to do with our trip) is that our little baby girl has blossomed into a little baby boy. So I am preparing myself to be severely outnumbered by John and his army of mini-Johns.

Here's a video of Trevor "helping" with the whole packing process. He was pretty excited about the suitcases and eager to stuff things in too.



Early in the visit Trev, mom and I went downtown for a concert in the park... Trev liked the music, and was also pretty impressed by all the wildlife on the sidewalk.















Introducing Moose to Bear















Playing with Grandma Linda at the concert

We went to some friends of my dad's for the 4th of July--they have a place near Big Lake which is near an area that sells fireworks.















John and Trev in the paddle boat--loved it--suckered grandpa into going out with him after he wore John out.















The boys lighting off fireworks--there ended up being some bonus fireworks set off when they lit the firepit because Trev would grab unlit ones and throw them on in too...















Trevor holding his first sparkler















Trevor hiding behind George--after lighting a loud whistling one he decided maybe they were not okay after all.

And to conclude week one of Alaska, Trevor throwing pop-its...