You know you live in Alaska when....

You go fishing only to see this bear!

Do you see the black bear in the trees? Well, we didn't....until we were about 5 feet away from it! It was an incredibly amazing, and bit frightening experience!

We had just walked up on the boardwalk of the river after fishing all day. We had walked about 6 or so steps when Darron suddenly jumped back yelling "BEAR!" We all looked to the side and saw this beauty watching us from the trees. We see bear at the river all the time, but generally IN the river...not on the Boardwalk. With guns in tow, we were able to safely walk past her with no problems.

I guess we had been fairly warned by this sign! :)


This is the Kenai River, about 2 hours south of Anchorage. This is our favorite fishing hole. When the salmon are "running" we generally catch them here, along with everyone else as you can see. Believe it or not, this was not a crowded day. When the fish are really hot, it's literally almost shoulder to shoulder fishing. Some might say it's not fun to be that packed in, but as long as there is a fighting salmon at the end of my pole, I have a blast!

And here are our trusty men filleting all the fish we caught! The limit on red salmon is three a day. Darron can catch a fish in a mud puddle, so he always limits out. I had actually caught about 5 this trip, but only 1 was legal....the rest were either "snagged" in the tail or head, or got off right as I was about to have it to the shore. Oh well.

We try and make it to the Kenai River a couple of times each summer to enjoy the BEAUTIFUL river and mountains, along with good friends and fun fishing. This was our trip last Monday....Darron played hookey from work and we went for the day with Craig and Becca. We had a GREAT day, saw 4 bear total, and came home with 3 salmon each for the freezer.

I'm about to put my on the smoker now....

I truly love living in Alaska and all the adventures it has to offer....I just wish my family lived here with me!

Washington DC Trip

I always forget this uploads pictures backwards, so my trip is a little out of order. Oh well.

I left late Thursday night, July 9th for Washington DC/Virginia and was gone until July 19th....almost 10 days! Earlier this year my teaching partner, Valerie, and I were accepted to the We The People Institute at James Madison University in Virginia. We applied with over 100 other people and we were one of 45 to be chosen. Our trip was all expenses paid....airfair, food, lodging, etc. We were so excited! We were in lectures/groups all day, everyday and we had some homework to do each night. We were learning about the Constitution and its history and how to teach about it in our classrooms. Although I am not a history nut, this conference was AWESOME!

We were each put into group of 5 or 6 for the week with a mentor. THis is my group: me, Joan, Karen, Angela, and Julie. Bernard was our mentor. He was definately the BEST! We had to prepare all week for a Simulated Congressional Hearing in which we had to, as a team, give a six minute prepared speech answering specific questions about the Constitution. Then a panel of judges would have four minutes to ask us follow-up questions. This is my team at our Congressional Hearing. It was fun to show off all we had been learning.
We stayed at James Madison University (Father of the Constitution). We lived in the dorms and ate in their cafeteria. The food was actually outstanding! We each had our own room and we had one bathroom mate. My bathroom mate was a girl named Kelly from Ohio. We spent a lot of time together and got along great.

One of my closest friends from ACU, Amy, lives about 45 minutes from JMU. She and her little boy Charlie drove down to take me to dinner one night. It was SO GOOD getting to catch up in person. Thanks to our blogs, I felt like we hadn't missed a beat with each other. That night was definately a highlight of the trip for me. Her little three year old boy took this picture of us....impressive! :)

This was Gifford Hall, the dorm we stayed in. Beatiful on the outside, decent on the inside!

Valerie and I flew into DC about two days before our conference started so we could tour all of the major monuments. We didn't have time for any of the museums, but we were going all day and night to capture the monuments. This is this Vietnam Memorial....very somber and humbling.

We made it to the Arlington National Cemetary and we were able to see a Changing of the Guards...awesome experience. It's incredible to try and take this all in. It makes me very proud to be an American and so thankful for the thousands that have given their lives for our country and our freedom.

The Washington Monument. We actually got to ride the elevator to the top of this and lookout! I guess they only give out so many tickets for the day at like 8 in the morning. We made it to this monument at 8 at night and were asking about it. A younger teenager was working the line and we played the "we're teachers from Alaska" card, and he let us slip in the line with no tickets!! It was so cool! And by the way, the neon green sticker on my shirt was for the trolley we were riding, not a new fashion statement! :)

I flew all night and landed about noon on Friday. By 3 pm we were off and going...first stop, our Alaska State Senators office. One of our senators, Mark Begich, was at his office between meetings. This sign is at his office door. His staff told him we were in from Alaska and we were teachers and he told them to send us in. He visited with us briefly and took some pictures with us. :)

Excuse the windblown, stuck to the side of my head, hair. This is in front of the Capitol building (obviously). We did go inside, but we didn't want to take the long tour....too much to do. Here's a cool fact: the Senator's have their own office building to the right and the Representatives are in their own office building to the left. Each building is connected to the Capitol by an underground tunnel that has it's own trolley for the Congressman. And yes, I got to ride the trolley with our Senator's staff member. How cool is that!

While in DC, Valerie and I stayed in a hotel that was about two blocks from a metro station. We took the metro (like a subway) every where we went. By the end of our two days, we were metro PRO'S! It was actually very clean and a pretty cheap, cool way to travel. We had fun and we were proud of ourselves for figuring it all out so quickly.

I had a terrific time on my trip and I missed my family greatly! My heart actually ached for my children by the fourth day, but I tried to fully enjoy my trip. Darron was fabulous with the kids and encouraged me to enjoy myself and to not worry about them. I do think he missed me though because when I got home he had reorganized/cleaned the laundry room, the house was spotless, he had bought a new comforter set for our bed and he had written about 20 little notes and left them all over the house for me. So sweet! I told him if he wasn't careful, I'd go out of town more often! :)