We're alive and settled in the new frontier!

I'm working my way backwards, and catching everyone up on Alaska!

For now...

 My baby is in dance class!

 It snowed a couple of weeks ago and the kids are excited! 1st snowman for Claire.

 Awesome sledding hill right across the street from my front door

 1st sledding casualty

Phantom, kitty cat and Spiderman. 20 degrees outside made for fast trick-or-treating

Happy Halloween! From the three little pumpkins, and the guinea pig too.

Nerf Gun tooth extraction:

Visit to see Blair

Blair was shipped off temporarily to fill in for another hospital where they are shorthanded. One Friday he told me he got news of it, and he'd be going the next week. Geez. We had family in town visiting at the time, and he ended up leaving before they did! And to think we were almost settled in up here. 

Now fast-forward after being gone for over a month we thought a visit sounded great.

We visited Blair out on the border of Illinois at Scott AFB, so together as a fam we saw nearby St. Louis, museums, Six Flags, Carthage, Nauvoo, and some friends from our Vegas days too.

St Louis arch

Claire going down a 5-story slide at the St. Louis City Museum. This place had so many slides, caves and climb stuff in one place! It is an old shoe factory warehouse that was converted into this cool museum.

climbing

Blair was trying to keep up with Claire. Can you see him?  He said that this killed his knees and was not so fun for a grown-up.

Awesome ball pit

This slide was almost straight up and down. We all wen on it a few times- this was Blair going down. Claire scared a few people because she would just jump right down it with no qualms.

more slides

dino slide

Cool architecture, and and aquarium built in there.

daddy-daughter time

We found Voltron at the Natural Science museum. Best part of this museum was that it's free year round for anyone.

Watching the dino roaring

mock tornado

Elementary my dear Watson

Yum, Logan's Roadhouse. I usually don't take pictures when we're eating out, but oh man I miss this place, so it was nice to see it again!

Blair's pad at Scott AFB. Pretty much a full-size house, and all to himself. I loved the colors of fall out there, and the kids loved the squirrels. Funny thing, he called me yesterday and told me that he heard a rustling in his outside garbage, so he went to investigate, and a squirrel flew right out at him and scared him half to death!

We went to Six Flags St. Louis, and were greeted by the most expensive parking I've seen yet!

Halloween decorations everywhere

The only character we saw at the park 

There were nasty dressed up scary people walking around. Xander loved it- in fact he wanted me to take a picture of this one because he said he wanted to be it for Halloween. Umm I don't think so. This puppet was sewn onto her costume and gave me the hebee jeebies.

Cute kiddos, excited to wait in lines to go on rides

Will was big enough to go on most everything! It was his first time going on an upside-down roller coaster and he loved it.

Claires favorite ride was the Joker, which is like the Tidal Wave boat. She loved it and went on it 6 times in a row!

Lucky for Claire we ran into an Elsa at Denny's after we left the park.

Carthage jail, church history

Joseph Smith

kiddos at the monument

There's the top window

bullet hole that killed the prophet

The window where he fell when he was martyred

Nauvoo temple

An original sunstone from the Nauvoo temple

Beautiful day with the family

The blacksmith making a horseshoe for the boys- mesmerizing to them!

The kiddos making a rope old-school style

Our friends the Wilfords from medical school! They live in Quincy IL. It was so great to be close enough to see them again!

All of the kiddos. We had dinner and a nice visit and they played and played.

Much of this trip was spent in USO military lounges, as we had some drama on the way out with a medical emergency on the flight after we'd been flying almost an hour. The person had to get to a hospital, so they made a u-turn and took them back to Anchorage where we started. That made for a super long flight, then a missed connection, then a sold out one, and we got in at night to our final destination, though we'd started at 6am.

On the way home it looked so cool to see the snowy white mountains poking through the tops of the clouds here in Alaska.

We got home and the sunrise was happening after they go to school now, after 9am.  Those long dark winters are creeping in on us little by little a few minutes more each day.  This was Xander on "mustache day" for red ribbon week.