All Aboard the Alaska Railroad

My entire family and I took a day trip on the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage, through Whittier, down to the Portage Glacier, and back. I'd never been on the train here before, and it was a beautiful trip!

Here are the boats in Whittier:
My mom and me in front of the train:My dad and brother in Whittier:

Unlike my dad, I've never caught a gigantic halibut. Lucky for me, this wooden halibut was hanging around...

It's hard to describe how beautiful everything was -- you can't even portray it through pictures. One of the coolest sights all day was this waterfall:

Me waving - I'm a dork.

Alaska Botanical Garden

On July 11th, I left Denver (after only being home for a day!) and headed to Alaska to see my family. My grandparents from Colorado had flown up earlier in the day, and I was excited to have the whole family together for a week!

Today we all went to the Botanical Gardens. I loved all the wildflowers and herbs... who knew there were so many different types of mint?!

My grandparents and me:

Beware... lots of boring flower pictures ahead. I had a hard time narrowing it down, because I thought they were all pretty...

Giant cabbage:

South Carolina and Chicago (...sort of)

On Monday, July 7, I flew from San Antonio to Greenville, South Carolina. I'd never been to South Carolina (or anywhere on the East Coast aside from Boston & NYC!) so I was really excited. Since it was a work trip rather than a "fun trip", I didn't take many pictures. The truth is that I spent most of my time inside the Ernst & Young office and the Hyatt. However, I managed to get a picture of my rental car's license plate and a picture on my drive from the airport to Greenville.

Two days later, I was on my way back to Denver. I flew through Chicago, and took both of these on my phone. So pretty!

4th of July -- Texas Style!

I spent the last 4 days in Devine, TX with my best friends from college. We all had such a great time and there were so many funny moments.

Jen R. picked me up from the San Antonio airport on Thursday evening, and we immediately headed to Chuy's for dinner. We were joined by the Austin-ites -- Kirstine & Joey, Melissa & Matt, and Jen V. & Gui. We were also joined by our Dallas friends, Carolyn & Andy.

The rest of the weekend was a whirlwind of.....

(1) GAME PLAYING - Here's all of us in the middle of playing "Smart Ass" - a board game Kirstine got for her birthday. This is a picture of one of the questions asked during the game. This is an inside joke, but my parents and close friends will think this is hilarious!!! (2) BBQ EATING - On the 4th of July, Jen's dad barbequed a brisket and sausage. So good! We also did our fair share of beer drinking... and some of us enjoyed Jack and Coke out of a strawberry shaped glass (Andy!).(3) BABY HOLDING -- Well... not so much ME holding the baby. I'm still a bit scared of that little guy. But everyone else got their fair share of holding Jameson (Jen & James's baby). He's 4 and a half months old now, and such a cutie! I love all his clothes and particularly liked his Longhorns tshirt and festive 4th of July outfit.
Jameson and his Mommy: Happy boy!

(4) JEEP DRIVING -- James took me out in his jeep to run some errands. So cool! No doors! Way fun.

(5) HAVING ADVENTURES WITH DOGS -- Kat is James and Jen's dog... she looks exactly like the dog I had growing up, Katie. Melissa and Kat share a special bond, as you can see.

Kat wasn't the only dog we spent time with over the weekend. While taking a walk, Melissa, Jen V., Carolyn, and I were going past a graveyard when a dog ran over to us. We all freaked out, not knowing whether he was nice or not... the poor dog turned out to be really nice, but REALLY stubborn -- he followed us all the way home! We went inside Jen's house and the poor dog just sat in her driveway for awhile. I felt so bad leaving him out there... hopefully he found his way home. Here's our graveyard friend:

(6) OTHER RANDOM ANTICS --

Here's a bunch of us looking at Jen's pictures on her computer:

This frog was on Jen's glass door. Cool picture!

Here's the marshmallow man we blew up in the microwave (it was HILARIOUS at the time)

This picture was quite possibly the funniest of the weekend. (But maybe you had to be there...) Matt and James had the same fancy camera and were trying out all kinds of techniques all weekend. Somehow they were able to blur lights in the background. Matt took this one of James under a bunch of Christmas lights. James thinks it looks like he's wielding the lights into a "rainbow of fury". I can almost hear him screaming "RAINBOW OF FURY!!!" when I look at this picture. Man, that made me laugh!

I'll miss Texas and everyone there, but I'll be back next year!