Happy 2nd Anniversary to Us!

Yesterday Mike and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary! It's so hard to imagine that our wedding day was two years ago - and that it was so fun! We celebrated by going to our traditional date restaurant of Wildfire - bringing our favorite wine, B.R. Cohn Cabernet Sauvignon Silver Label and a replica of the top tier of our wedding cake. The funny part of that was, I meant the topper to be a surprise, except these was some miscommunication with the hostess and the wait staff, so the surprise was ruined when I had to tell the waitress about it after she brought us a "special" ice cream dessert. It actually turned out to be quite comical, because we watched the cake be carried around the restaurant because they weren't sure who it belonged to before we flagged it down. After dinner watched our wedding video - both the highlight video and most of the reception. The Furla video is such a great memory that we are SO GLAD we did.
We also exchanged some anniversary gifts, which we have tried to keep with the traditional theme. Apparently, by the time a couple celebrates their second anniversary, they are more cozy with one another, making cotton the appropriate anniversary gift. Cotton is a durable, versatile and highly flexible material. These are the qualities of the couple in a successful marriage. Moreover, cotton symbolizes great prosperity. Sadly, Mike and I struggled with the cotton theme... although the "modern" gift is China, which is much better (so I thought). I stuck with cotton and got Mike a basket full of cotton as you see below. My favorite being the "Husband of the Year" pillowcases, which was a real runaround! Mike went with the China theme, and bought me a cute little heart jewelry box that was "Made in China" along with a blue box from Tiffany's that had a beautiful heart necklace in it. All in all it was a great anniversary and Mike and I are looking forward to our 3rd year of marriage together!

Raspberry Anniversary Muffins

Wedding Cake Top - remade

Mike's China gift to me

My Cotton gift to Mike

Eric and Kathy Heads on a Stick Contest

I'm not sure how many people are loyal Eric and Kathy listeners, but they are having a contest called Eric and Kathy on a Stick. Basically, you print out these pictures, put them on a stick, and take them on vacation with you, and snap a fabulous picture with them in it. They pick the top three and then starting August 24th, people vote. The prize is an Apple Vacation - something we would LOVE (obviously)! So I submitted the entry below with the saying - we had to go to one of the coldest places to get close to our warm Apple Vacation! Believe me, it was quite the challenge carrying these guys around... especially on the Mendenhall Glacial Float trip where we were having freezing water splashing in our boat and they were getting wet due to the water and the rain (note Ziploc "protection"). They were troopers though! I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Princess Sapphire a.k.a. Whale Killer

So Mike found a news article about our ship. Check out the link here or here. We just got off this ship, and Mike and I saw these little boats floating around the ship this morning, but had no idea why! Poor whale!

Airport in Vancouver

We docked in Vancouver around 7:00 a.m. this morning after a night of beautiful scenery (see post below for pics). From the little we saw, the 2010 Olympic host city looks like a nice place, even though we've only seen in from a bus. So we are in Vancouver, waiting for our flight to take off. We've actually been waiting awhile since we were booted off the cruise ship at 7:50 a.m. and headed to the airport for our 2:02 p.m. flight! Vancouver has a nice airport with free Wi-Fi so I've been doing school work, Mike's been on Facebook, Dad's watching Cubs updates, Mom's sleeping and knitting and Jess helping Ben with his homework. We should be back in Chicago around 7:30 p.m. I'm sure Wrigley and Summer are super excited about seeing their favorite people!!!

Vancouver - boat view

Our Last Cruise Dinner/Evening

Birthday Girl

Happy 2nd Anniversary to Us!

The most disturbing birthday song ever...
(to the tune of Happy Birthday...)
I hope you get some tonight...
I hope you get some tonight...
I hope you get some great presents tonight... (wink wink)
I hope you get some tonight...

Ewww... that's my mom.

Group Shots with my awesome t-shirt design skills!

Group Lemonchello Shots - YUM.

Cruising

Here are some pics from our fun cruising day!

Kayaking in Ketchikan

Yesterday we were Kayaking in Ketchikan. It was pretty rainy but we really enjoyed this physical workout along with the beautiful scenery, including Eagle Island where we saw a family of four Eagles! We also saw a lot of salmon jumping out of the water, almost landing on Mike and My boat! Our tour guide said that this was because the salmon were ready to "spawn" or mate. Ketchikan was a quaint little town that prided itself on how much rain it got! After our tour we waked around the city and found somewhere to have lunch, as well as found a yarn store for my mom. Today we are sailing to Vancouver, where we will disembark tomorrow and hop on our plane home. The boat was pretty choppy last night and today since we are traveling our farthest distance now. Today is a pretty chill day, just packing and relaxing!

Ben's sick

Jess and Ben are not kayaking today since Ben saw this ship doctor and he has a sinus infection. A ZPak, nasal spray, and rest should hopefully help him feel better!

Mendenhall Glacial Float

Yesterday in Juneau, we went on a raft and "floated" through glacial water on a raft. It was a pretty awesome trip but since we were rafting through some rapids, we did get a lot of glacier water (32-34 degrees warm) in our raft so it did get pretty chilly. We saw a lot of beautiful scenery and houses on our ride. Today we just docked in Ketchikan, our last Alaskan port city. We're going kayaking in a little bit, and we are about to start layering up! Hopfully it will be
a little warmer today! Our boat is in Ketchikan until 6:00 pm then we're off to Vancouver, where we'll dock on Saturday and head home. I hope to post pictures today of out day before we leave. Have a fabulous day!!!!

Duck Farts

Ben and I walked over to the Red Dog Saloon to enjoy an Alaskan Summer Ale to escape the Juneau rain while my mom was buying some fabulous jewelry. While we were at the Red Dog Saloon, we were encouraged to try a Duck Fart, a shot with baileys, kaluha, and crown royal... So we had two! Now we are on our way to float in a raft to the Mendhall Glacier... In the pouring raining. Luckily, our tour guide assured us that we'd have rain gear and boots before we get on our raft (in addition to the rain gear we are already wearing).

Red Dog Saloon in Juneau

Dog Mushing Camp

Today we went to Dog Mushing Camp in Skagway. Check out the amazing pictures below. We even saw a BEAR when we were getting back on our bus to head into town! CRAZY!!!! I made some new baby furry friends which I really enjoyed while Mike rolled his eyes and said dream on... I think Wrigley and Summer would be jealous but these puppies were too cute! We did some shopping in Skagway today as well and sample some beers at a local brewery. We are now on our way to Juneau where we'll be "floating" to a glacier tomorrow!

Skagway

Downtown Skagway

The Google Maps car on the 8 mile dirt road!

Ragged Ass Road was 8 miles long of gravel and dirt on the way to dog camp!

I was ready to explore!

We are ready for the day!

We are docked and ready to go dog sledding!