CHILKAT RIVER

I am so blessed to have a home and family in the Chilkat Valley. I could spend my whole day up the Chilkat river. Being out on the river is a way I can recharge from any stress or overload of too many people or noise. I am in my element when I am in a boat with my dad, whether its out in the ocean or on the river. My dad has been teaching me to read the river and the other day I had a lesson after we set our net. We went way up the river and I caught a couple cutthroat and saw an enormous amount of sockeye swimming in translucent green/blue water, it was beautiful.....

OUR LITTLE PUPPY

Our puppy will be here on thursday!!! I am so excited and in shock that there will be a new addition to our family. She is my birthday present, and I think she's mine to name...I think. We all have our name choices thinking ours are better than the others, but I think we need to see her first. Tim likes the name charlie (he likes boy names for girls) luna likes lily and keely somehow came up with the name calla. hmmm I like my choices best, Rosie and Twila. We will see. Our girl is the darkest one with her ears sticking up. It was so hard to choose from a picture let alone a picture of five super cute puppies.

THE JUNGLE BOOK

• Keely has been in theater camp this past month and they performed their play the "JUngle Book" this past weekend. This play was super fun because zane was also in it and the kids had a great time performing together. Keely had the part of Bagira. It was put together really well and my family and I loved it! I didn't get many pictures of keely that didn't blur and after the show I couldn't catch up with her fast enough to get full costume pictures. She did great and was fearless on stage.

Softball

Tim has been telling me for the past few years that Keely should be signed up for softball. Finally this year I remembered in time and signed her up! I had no idea that softball was popular in Juneau, boy was I wrong! Keely was one of a few beginners in the league and the rest had been playing since they were like 3! Keely stuck with it even though at her first game she was hit in the face with a baseball bat and her second game the pitcher hit her knee (hard!) with the ball. Keely said it shouldn't be called "soft"ball. Tim and I loved it when Keely went up to bat and she would tap the base with her bat, it was super cute. In the dug out they cheerfully sang songs and chewed on sunflower seeds. Lots of spitting in the dug out. Keely gave it her best and I loved watching her play. Tim and I had fun watching the other parents get overly "heated" 

It takes a lot to be 12 and be a beginner when your peers are super good... again Keely makes me a very proud mama. I only wish that my dad lived here, he would of had fun watching keely play. 

summer

After school ended, i felt like we hit the ground running.  The day after school ended keely and I went on our summer "girl scout" trip. Keely started in this troop when she was in the 1st grade. We were never a traditional troop and made it more of a mom co-op troop and traded off running it and finding more creative and adventurous things for the kiddos to do. When we hit the wall of the girls being too old for girls scouts we changed it into a mother/daughter group. We all agreed that the girls were so busy with other things that if they going to be involved in this we wanted to have something that we did together with our girls that was inspiring and creative and take risks that would foster our own relationships with our pre-teen daughters. So we decided on less is more and would get together 3 times a year. We do a community service, like this year we made over 300 hundred fleece hats and donated them to a few different charities. We do a backpacking camping trip in the fall or winter. We travel to a different southeast community every summer. So far we have gone to Klukwan (a Tlingit village outside of Haines), Sitka, and this year we went to Petersberg and Wrangell. 

We had an amazing time. We took the ferry with our bikes. (traveling by ferry and bike is the best!) After exploring Petersberg the next day we rode our bike 25 miles to a boat landing and got picked up by a water taxi and took off for Wrangell. We stayed at a hostel and the next day went up the Stikine River. (I honestly didn't think this was going to be exciting since I spend so much time on the Chilkat)It was amazing! we played on sand dunes, waded through the water and hiked a trail to get to a natural hot spring where the forest service has built some hot tubs! and where the Malaspina glacier meets the river is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. There were hundreds of ice bergs floating in the river and the smell/mist in the air was so refreshing, it was the loveliest experience. 

I was so proud of Keely on our 25 mile bike ride , we rode the last 8 miles together and pushed ourselves to go faster. We rode in wind and pouring rain and we did it together. I am very lucky to have a daughter like Keely, she is amazing.