Junior year for Jenn and Leah

The girls are Juniors in High School! It's hard to believe they will be 17 in October. They drive to school frequently using Bob's car. It's not really "their car" but they are the only ones who use it. 

We have started the college search process which is daunting when we think about sending 2 daughters to college at the same time. Everyone asks if the girls will attend the same university. I have no idea but it's fun to speculate where they will go. Until then we will keep saving our pennies!

The picture is from a Roncalli football game. Fall has been fun!

More on Alaska

 Our Alaska trip was fabulous!  It's so hard to choose pictures for the blog because there are just too many good ones to pick from.   We took some awesome excursions while on the cruise ship and we documented all of those but what I don't have pictures of are the little things that happened along the way.  Bob won $500 (twice) in the ship casino.  The twins met some fun friends and became buddies with the lady who made milkshakes for them multiple times a day.  Maria read books for fun, not for college and finally relaxed. I got to have eggs benedict every day. (I really wish I had a picture of those eggs because they were perfect!)

Mendenhall Glacier - We suited up and took a helicopter to the glacier.  Landing on top of it, we could hike and explore.  We even filled our water bottles with real glacier water.  I hope none of us ever forget that day!

Denali National Park - Beautiful scenery.  Do we look cold?  It was rainy and chilly but we still got to see parts of the great Mt. McKinley.  Our guide for this trip was really knowledgeable and helped us spot lots of wildlife especially moose.

Princess Cruise Ship - Glacier viewing.  It was cold and rainy but we didn't mind at all.  The scenery and comforts of the ship made up for the dreary weather.

Denali National Park - Leah and Jenn went off the path.  They hugged a few trees, jumped on the spongy tundra floor  and took lots of pictures of wild flowers. I would definitely go back to the park again.  It was beautiful.

Some of our pictures don't even look real!  This one was taken on the train traveling from Mt McKinley to Whittier, Alaska, where we boarded the ship.

Leah, Maria and Jenn on a hike near the Mt. McKinley Lodge.  The sun was out!

Princess Cruise Ship - We saw lots of glacier calving.

Fishing in Skagway - We had a blast on this excursion.  We were supposed to catch salmon.  We were very unlucky and only caught these little fish.  Bob was VERY disappointed.  We could even see the salmon in water but none of us could get one to bite.  Bob looks very wet in this picture because we fished in pouring down rain.  This excursion started out with nice weather.  We took a ferry from the cruise ship to another town, drove along the coast and then boarded our fishing boat.  Just after we got started the rain came down and didn't stop until we finished fishing.  Although the weather stunk and we didn't catch any salmon we still had a wonderful time. 

Jenn caught a fish too!

The most exciting part of our fishing trip was the bear along the shore.  We were VERY close to him!  He had no problem catching salmon.  With one scoop he pulled out a fish and threw it on shore.

It was a fabulous vacation!