ALASKA

Jake turned the big 3-0 on July 17th. Yep, he is 30!!!

Let's be honest, he hated it at first; he says he's an "old man"

 but I think after a few weeks he is finally getting use to it.

Since it's such a big birthday we decided to make the best of it and go on a trip. 

I told Jake we could go anywhere he wanted to and he chose ALASKA! 

We took an Alaskan cruise and it was beautiful! It was the first time either of us had been on a cruise before, and besides the bouts of sea sickness, we both LOVED it!

Jake getting on the airplane: Because Jake was on heavy pain meds after his surgery, one night he got up to use the bathroom and passed out, hitting his head on the shower door pretty bad. He got pretty banged up from it as you can see in this picture. The incident happened maybe two days prior to us leaving, so for the whole trip, workers on the cruise kept asking me if I had hit him.
It seemed like everywhere we went people thought I had beat him up. Really guys?

Fishing: Look at how HUGE our fish are! This was my first time fishing and I actually really enjoyed it, except for the part where they hit the fishes head against the boat to kill it. That was sad! I caught the bigger fish and it was a King Salmon. Jake caught really good size fish too. His was a silver salmon. They filleted the fish for us and now we have tons of it in the freezer. I need to start learning some good new recipes now. 

Mendenhall Glacier: This was a glacier with a huge waterfall in the background. It was beautiful! We learned a lot about glaciers on our trip and saw the evidence of them melting. It is a sad thing to see and hear that these magnificent pieces of ice might not be with us in 10-50 years.

Hiking in the rainforest: who would have thought there are rain forests in Alaska? Well there are!

Glacier Bay: AMAZING! We feel really lucky that we were able to go see these beyond beautiful glaciers.

Reindeer: Yes they really do exist and I think this one might even belong to Santa.