June 25th: Skagway

Anyone who has played the Oregon Trail may also be familiar with the game called the Yukon Trail. Or at least those that grew up in my household are. Ever since playing that game when I was little I've had the desire to go to Skagway and pan for gold. The excursion that we decided on was called "Sled Dogs, Gold Panning, and 40 Below Zero Experience." I knew that Chloe would absolutely love the sled dogs, and I would get my chance to pan for gold in Skagway. This excursion was my second favorite, despite some bumps. We started of the tour having to wait for a video, unfortunately Chloe was really not wanting to sit through a video and proceeded to scream and cry through most of it (Much to the distress of one older lady who kept giving me the dirtiest looks. I mean come on you are going to a tourist destination that is going to have young kids. Young kids aren't happy and don't like to sit still sometimes.) Anyways....after the video we moved to another area to listen to a man named Matt Hayashida talk about his experience racing sled dogs in the Iditarod. Chloe was asking for a nap at this point and so while Brian listened I went into a corner as far away from people as possible and tried to keep her happy.

The little black things hanging are actually little booties that each of the sled dogs wear so they don't get ice between there toes, because their feet are so hot running so long and hard. Each bootie is worn for about 60 miles.

Finally after nearly twenty minutes of presentations we were able to move back to where the sled dogs were being held. We lined up along a fence and waited for the sled dogs to be released. Chloe was so happy to see the dogs running past her. Some were so friendly jumping up on the fence to lick people on their faces. Chloe's mood definitely improved at this point. After everyone had got a chance to pet the dogs Matt harnessed up the dogs for a demonstration. One dog in particular he pointed out for us to watch. This dog was the one jumping up and licking people, the most friendly of them all. Within seconds of being attached to the harness his whole demeanor changed. He started howling and crouching down and jumping so hard, ready to pull the sled. It was pretty intense.

I'm ready to GO!!!

After the demonstration of the sled dogs racing the dogs were put away and out came the spotlight of the show. The PUPPIES!!! These sled dog puppies were so cute. I'm not really a dog person, but these guys were adorable. We weren't allowed to let them down on the ground, so Chloe wasn't able to hold them by herself, but I think she liked our solution even more. We would hold onto her while grabbing the puppies into our other arm. This put the puppies right at prime licking level.

Chloe getting some licks.

So many licks!

Cute puppy!

Next was the 40 Below Zero Experience. I was not sure what Chloe would think since she's never experienced anything besides a California winter. We went into a room filled with winter coats and we were happy to see they had one the perfect size for Chloe. Once everyone was dressed warmly we headed into the freezer. They had a throne made of ice that we thought was pretty neat. We joked with Chloe that Elsa had visited and this made her smile. Once we left the freezing room Chloe did not want to take the winter coat off. She was so cold even though it was above 70 degrees outside.

On the ice throne.

She was so cold. It sadly didn't seem too different from Rexburg to me....

The last part of our excursion was the gold panning. Again we had to listen to yet another presentation while a man dressed up as a miner explained the how to for gold panning. Since we were outside Chloe was happy to just run around and the miner didn't seem to mind her running around. After the presentation we were presented with our pan and went over to the water to start panning for gold. It was interesting to do, and crazy to see how quickly the gold would seem to appear in our pans. Chloe didn't actually do any panning, but had fun playing in the water. With our 3 pans we collected 3.5 grains of gold, which they said was worth about $27.34.

It was a fun experience in Skagway. After getting back from our tour we decided to take the shuttle into the main town and look at the shops. Since it was past Chloe's naptime she ended up falling asleep in the stroller, which made for a nice leisurely stroll back to the ship. We were able to look at some of the trains used for the White Pass on our way back to the ship too.

Chloe slept right through the stroller bouncing over those wooden planks.

Trains!

June 24th: Tracy Arm Fjord and Juneau

Tracy Arm Fjord

The night before I should have really looked at the itinerary to see the hours that we would be passing through the Fjord. Luckily for us (sort of) Chloe woke up quite early on this day (6:30 am), and so we were actually able to see some of the Fjord. It was really spectacular and takes your breath away at the beauty that is on this Earth. This morning was probably the coldest that we encountered while on our cruise. So we bundled Chloe up, along with ourselves, and went out onto the deck. Throughout the water you can see many chunks of ice and the mountains tower above you, and you can see a glacier in the distance. It was eerily quiet because everyone was in awe. We were able to see our first sea creature in the water this morning as well. There was a sea otter. It was very cute and curious so swam up next to the boat.

You can see the glacier past the "V" of the mountains.

So much ice!

Love the blue coloring in this iceberg.

Juneau

Going on our excursion for Juneau we knew would be interesting with Chloe. We were supposed to leave for it right in the middle of her nap time, and so after passing through the Fjord we knew we would need to try to get Chloe down for a nap early so she wouldn't be grumpy. I would say our excursion in Juneau was probably my favorite. We went first to Mendenhall Glacier, followed by a Rainforest Garden, and lastly we received our tickets for the Mt. Roberts Tramway. The reason why this tour was so awesome was because even though we listened to the tour guide on the bus to these destinations, once we arrived we were able to go out an explore on our own. This is amazing when you have a toddler that likes to look at everything and be outside in general (picking up leaves, collecting rocks, and of course climbing). 

For our first stop at Mendenhall Glacier we first stopped in the visitors center. While it provides a lot of useful and interesting facts about glaciers we knew right away we couldn't spend a lot of time in there because there was not enough stuff to interest Chloe. So we decided to find a trail to go out towards the glacier. We decided to take the Nugget Falls trail, two miles round trip. This took us up right up to a waterfall that is very close to the glacier. It was amazing! I really fell in love with Alaska at this place. I would love to live in Juneau and just be able to explore all the trails around Mendenhall Glacier every weekend.

Mendenhall Glacier

Nugget Falls

Collecting Rocks

So happy!

After the glacier we went to Juneau Rainforest Garden. This garden was privately owned by two ethnobotanists/naturalists who have collected and planted this garden amid the Alaskan rainforest to display seasonal wildflowers, mushrooms, and forest canopy that can be found native in Southeast Alaska. The funny thing was it started raining lightly exactly as we started our walk down the path into the rainforest. Chloe's favorite part I think was finding the numbers to help us identify what each of the plants were. As we finished we were rewarded with a yummy cookie that Chloe actually ate (Getting her to eat lately has been quite a trial of our patience lately).

Chloe enjoying being outside and the rain!

In front of an awesome whale totem pole.

These little houses on stilts were used by natives and pioneers to store salmon and other preserved foods for the cold winters. They would still be able to reach their food when the ground was piled high with snow.

Baby bear and papa bear

The last stop in our tour was the Mt. Roberts Tramway. This was a tramway that would take us all the way from sea level at the docks all the way to the top of Mt. Roberts. Brian was a little nervous because you are suspended in a box just by a cable. I was more excited because I had never ridden on anything like this before. It was so crazy how fast we traveled up the mountain. It wasn't super fast, but it went a lot quicker than I was expecting, less than five minutes I would say. I'm not one that is afraid of heights but it did make my stomach drop a little to look down. The view from the top was amazing. We could see all of our ship and it looked tiny from where we were. We didn't spend as much time as we would have liked at that top because it was past dinnertime and we needed to get Chloe some food, but it was definitely worth the trip up. There is also apparently a trail hikers can take up too if you don't want to pay the money to take the tramway. We had a great day in Juneau, it would be nice to go back again someday and explore more trails.

Our cruise ship from way up high.

Part of our view from the top of Mt. Roberts tramway exit.

Here is a picture of the tramway about halfway down the mountain. The incline was pretty steep,

Bald Eagles

June 21st to 23rd: At Sea and Ketchikan, Alaska

I'll skip writing about June 21st because that was just traveling from our house to Seattle.

June 22nd: At Sea 
It's interesting when we went on the cruise to Hawaii we were at sea for about 4 days before we arrived at any destination. With this cruise we only had two days fully at sea. Last time I also didn't not experience getting dizzy spells like I did on this ship. I'm thinking it may be due to new medications that I am taking....yay. I was grateful that our first day of the cruise was only at sea because I was not feeling up to doing much of anything. Brian was wonderful enough to watch Chloe and go out and explore the ship so I could rest. Not much happened this day except for the start of eating way too much food, but that's expected on a cruise, right?

June 23rd: Ketchikan, Alaska
Our first stop in Alaska. When we woke up that morning and opened the window I didn't realize quite how breathtaking the view would be. We were lucky enough to be on the side of the ship that faced the land. Ketchikan is such a cute little town. We signed up to take an excursion to Saxman Native Village and Totem Bight State Park. We left promptly at 10:30am and with a short ten minute drive through town we arrived at the village, gasping and oohing each time we caught a glimpse of an eagle flying in the sky or a totem pole. Our tour started with a video talking about the importance of totem poles and how they tell the history of the people. Our guide taught us a few phrases in the native tongue (I don't remember them unfortunately). Chloe did pretty good sitting through the video and listening. After the video presentation, we took a short walk through the woods to the clan house. We entered the clan house and were invited to watch them do their welcoming dance and others. At the end volunteers were invited to come up and take some of the garments the performers were wearing and do the last dance with them. Chloe was so excited to dance and Brian went up with her. There was actually a little girl who was Chloe's age who came up to her and offered Chloe her robe. Chloe wouldn't take it, but it was adorable. This little girl also did an amazing job following along with the others for the dance.

After that was complete we left the clan house and went to where all the totem poles were. Our tour guide told us the stories behind each of the totem poles and their meanings. Unfortunately Chloe was getting a little grumpy because she wanted to run and explore, not stand around a listen to stories. We took turns watching her so we could hear the stories.

Lastly we visited a master carvers workshop. We were able to watch him work on carving a totem pole. While he worked and Saxman village native told us a little more about the work that goes into carving totem poles, how long it takes to become a master carver, what tools were traditionally used, how paints were traditional made, and many more things. It was all so interesting to learn about.

When we came back from the tour we ate lunch quickly and put Chloe down for a nap with an intention of exploring the town right of the port where the ship was docked. Unfortunately we didn't realize the ship would be leaving port right as Chloe woke up from her nap, so we missed out on exploring Ketchikan a little more. It was still great fun.

Part of our view from the room we were staying in.

The cute little girl Chloe's age dancing in the center.

Chloe and Brian ready to join in the dancing.

The clan house.

Me trying to tell Chloe about the meaning of the totem pole.

Also because we had the whole afternoon on the ship after Ketchikan we went swimming. Chloe loves the water and would have swam longer if we didn't need to get cleaned up for dinner. The pool was awesome at this point because the water was heated. Later on in the cruise for some reason the pool stopped being heated, so we were glad that we decided to go swimming this one day.

Chloe didn't really want to stop swimming to take a picture.

Happy girl!

Trying to stay warm while dad grabbed her an ice cream cone.

Cheese!

Alaska Cruise: June 21st - 28th

A couple of weeks ago, June 21st-28th, our family was able to embark on quite the adventure. Brian's Grandma Riches coordinated and paid for a cruise for the entire Riches family to go on. (A few years ago, before Chloe was born, she also did this for the Hawaii cruise) We set sail on the Ruby Princess on Father's Day (what a great gift for Brian, right?) We were all so excited to see the whole family and see wonderful Alaska. In total we had 27 family members go, only two people were missing. It was such great fun to see family members around the cruise ship and hear about what adventures they had gone on during the day. Over the next few posts I will write about what our small family (Brian, Teresa, and Chloe) did on our excursions in Alaska. And of course what would be a vacation without pictures.....I apologize in advance if it's a bit of a picture overload. I went through over a thousand pictures and narrowed it down to 100 favorites, and I'll try not to post all of them in the blog. We are grateful for the generosity that made it possible for us to do this, and will cherish the memories for the rest of our lives. Here are a few random pictures to start us off. Enjoy!

We enjoyed playing miniature golf on board the ship a couple times. Chloe had fun swinging putters.

View from the back of the boat.

Grandpa Riches in his room, ours was right next to theirs. The one with the light on...

Chloe's favorite activity on the ship. Riding the "motorcycles."

Our pretty little girl. :)

Our Two Year Old

Chloe is most definitely a two year old. She is at a time where she is wanting to assert her independence at all times. I wouldn't say that she's a terrible two, but we do frequently see fits of rage when we don't understand what she wants, or we say no to what she wants. Despite the craziness we love her with all our hearts and would do anything for her.

Chloe has really enjoyed our times going to Disneyland since January. We have tried to go at least once a week since we got our passes and have only missed a handful of weeks. We are kind of sad that after this week we will be blocked of for the summer. Her favorite ride is the Ariel ride and the Finding Nemo Submarine ride. Chloe also loves to visit with the princesses. In fact I think visiting the princesses has inspired her desire to wear a dress every single day. We are grateful for the large bag of hand me down dresses we received from a ward member or else I would be needing to do laundry a couple times a week so Chloe can wear dresses every day. It's cute. She is a little princess.

The funny thing about the dresses is that it doesn't stop her from being extremely active. She loves to be outside whenever I let her. We live right next to our complexes park and so we often go out to play on that equipment. She is becoming such a good climber, it kind of makes me nervous that she's so much like Brian in that sense. Here is a video of Chloe climbing at our favorite local park. It was the first time she was doing it mostly on her own.




Chloe is talking more and more in complete sentences and is a cute little story teller. Our bedtime routine time has doubled because she keeps asking for us to tell her more stories. She likes to take her little pink toy phone and pretend that she is talking to grandma on the phone. She loves to sing her favorite lines from her favorite songs in movies too. And anytime she hears any music she will stop what she is doing to dance.

Chloe has entered a stage where she is a very picky eater. It's literally a game every meal to try and guess what foods she will actually eat. She's mostly just drinking liquids for the past couple weeks and so I had the clever idea to make her smoothies, that way I can get her to eat plenty of veggies and fruits. This crazy kid even says no to ice cream and pizza and hates leftovers. Feeding her on the cruise to Alaska in June will certainly be interesting....

Anyways here are a couple cute pictures of Chloe that we've taken recently and haven't shared on Facebook yet.

The line was short for Autopia and so we took Chloe on for the first time. She was so excited to drive!

At the mall, in a fire truck, in one of her princess dresses.

Graduation, Jobs, and Car Accidents

Life has been pretty busy since the last time that I wrote, and unfortunately that means that I can't possibly share everything that has been happening. So I'll just share the things that are most important...or actually more like the things that are standing out more in my mind right now. Brian has been working very hard over the past month to complete his master's thesis. Things were absolutely crazy with his deadline to complete this in addition to all his final papers and projects. I am happy to say that Brian was able to complete his master's thesis prior to the deadline and as of May 15, 2015 Brian has his Master's Degree!!! I am so proud of him and the dedication he has put into his work. It has been hard at times, but I love that I was and will continue to be able to support him through these years in graduate school.

Because he now has his master's degree on his way to the PhD he can now teach at most universities. He is lucky enough to have cohorts who work at Cal State Fullerton in their psych department and so when they told him about job openings he jumped at the opportunity to apply. Brian was contacted for an interview and spent many days stressing and prepping for it. I told him he would do remarkable because he tends to always leave a good impression. Brian's hard work and diligence has led to a job offer teaching at Cal State Fullerton this Fall. He will be teaching two sections of Research Methods. We are both beyond excited for this opportunity. It is such a blessing that he was able to find a job so quickly, especially in comparison to most of the job hunting we've experienced since coming to California.

On May 18th, while Chloe was taking her nap and Brian had already texted me to say he was coming home from setting up an intervention at a local high school, I was surprised see that I was getting a phone call from Brian. I rejected the call because I didn't want to wake up Chloe and texted him back to ask what was up.....If I had known what his text would be in response I would have answered the phone right away. His text read: "Someone hit me...pretty bad. I'm OK but I'll be awhile" My heart stopped, even though he said he was OK it's a terrifying thing to hear that someone you love has been in a car accident. I immediately called him back and he told me the car was in pretty bad shape. I asked Brian to write what happened, but he's still pretty upset about the situation especially because of how things are now going with the car... but I'll get into that later. Brian was coming home and as he had stopped as an intersection he looked behind him in the rearview mirror and saw a car speeding towards him. There was nothing he could do except wait for impact. The car slammed into the Maxima's rear end with such force that the Brian's car was pushed into the car in front of it, and that car then rear ended yet another car. Because of this lady's reckless driving 4 cars were involved in an accident, and our car unfortunately took the brunt of it and was the middle of the sandwich.

You could actually see the Honda symbol from the car imprinted into the bumper and the trunk would no longer close. :(

:(

Last Wednesday the insurance adjuster came and estimated about $4200 in damages and gave us a check and a name of a body shop we could take our car for repairs. He then told Brian that they could increase their coverage to about $5200 if needed. Unfortunately Brian let me know that if it did surpass that amount that would mean that the car would probably be totaled, that the insurance would not be fixing the car and would instead give us a check for what they feel our car is worth. Yesterday we called the repair shop to see how things are going, their estimate has now exceeded the maximum the insurance had allotted. Not the news that we were hoping for. While the insurance hasn't officially told us they will be totaling the car, we don't have much hope that they will pay for the amount the shop has quoted. We could take the money insurance gives us and repair the car, paying for the rest of the repairs out of pocket, however that would mean that the Maxima would have a salvage title. More than likely it looks like we will be trying to find a new car. Yay!....Not really.....

Brian and I really loved this car. It has a lot of memories in it and we put a lot of hard work into fixing any repairs ourselves so we could save money. It's frustrating that because of someone else's bad choices we are having deal with the worst of it. I'll try to do another post in a few days once we hear back from the insurance, maybe things will turn out more positively....and I'll focus on Chloe things, I love that crazy little girl of ours.

Brian & Teresa Happenings

As you may have noticed the last post was solely about Chloe. And that is how it should be. However there is so much happening in Brian and my life I figured it was only fair that I write a little update about us.

First off, since it's easier to write about other people, is Brian. Brian is currently in his last semester of coursework at Claremont Graduate University. What does that mean? He's super super busy. By the beginning of April he needs to have his master's thesis done. So he's working on that on top of everything else that is expected of him, his normal coursework, teaching online for BYU-Idaho, and playing with Chloe and I. After this semester is over he will have completed his master's while on his way to a Ph.D. This means that he will be able to start teaching at more local universities starting this Fall. (which he's needing to worry about applying to as well) In January we received great news that the grants for Brian's lab were approved, and now Brian will get paid for the work he does. Once the semester is over he will still be attending Claremont Graduate University to finish his Ph.D but will not have to attend classes on campus. He should be able to focus more on his dissertation, whatever teaching positions he may have, and continue working with the lab on campus.

I am feeling a lot more busy than I was a year ago. I am currently the first counselor in our Young Women's presidency and that has caused some great changes in my life, in addition to some added stresses. Every Wednesday we have mutual and I love getting to work together with the girls and getting to know each one of them better. The difficult part sometimes is that in order to give Brian some uninterrupted study time is that I bring Chloe with me. It is interesting to try to wrangle a hyper becoming increasingly tired two year old who doesn't like to sit still, or stay in the same room for longer than twenty minutes. Chloe does love the interactions with the girls though, especially the neighbor girl who has babysat her a few times. Currently we are trying to raise money for the girls to go to Girls Camp this summer. And so right now I am in the midst of planning a Fiesta Dinner and Silent Auction. It's going to be awesome, but there is a lot of work that goes into an event such as this. (much bigger than planning a toddler birthday party) It'll be May 2nd, just in time for Cinco de Mayo, so I'll try to remember to update everyone on the success or semi-success of it. Besides wrangling and teaching Chloe daily and Young Women stuff that's pretty much my life right now. I am still going to the doctors monthly to try to figure out this joint pain thing, but it's slow going. We've been thinking for years it's fibromyalgia, but from what we've read it takes awhile to actually be diagnosed, and the doctor has mentioned it as a possibility a few times. But it seems like she's still trying to rule out other things. She just ordered another round of bloodwork and x-rays. Yay! :/ So for now we keep trying different doses of different medicines, but it only ever really dulls it barely, not exactly the treatment I want for the rest of my life (since it seems to be here to stay). The physical therapy was kind of helpful in that it made me recommit to being physically active everyday because that seems to be the only thing that consistently keeps the pain at bay. An added bonus: it means I will continue to be in shape the rest of my life. So that's my life in a nutshell right now.

Anyways, because of  generous family we were able to buy Disneyland Passes in January. We are so excited for this. We have gone 6 or so times already. We can only go on weekdays, but since Brian has no classes on Tuesdays we have made those our Disney days. It's fun and Chloe is loving the Disney magic in her life. We've missed the past couple weeks because of stuff, but we look forward to going again this Tuesday.

Well...until next time enjoy life!