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Mia's Class

Check out this article about Mia's class. Let us know if you want to trade cards!!

Birthday Fun!

Here are a few pictures from Mia's birthday. She had a celebration at school and one at home. We just had a small family party for Mia. She got a little digital camera from Mom and Dad. A cool lap desk and scrap book from her cousins. And Grandpa got her a season's pass for the local ski area. All and all a great 8th birthday!!

This is part of Mia's second grade class. Mr. Beck (in the red shirt) is her teacher. When they sing Happy Birthday in class they throw in some CHA, CHA, CHA's. It is very cute.

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This is Mia and Reed with her birthday cake. She didn't make her mind up on the type of cake she wanted until the morning before we planned on having it. She wanted a butterfly, this is what I could come up with with just a few hours of notice. Not my best but Mia didn't mind. You can also see that someone had to sneak a taste of the body

Halloween Fun

Halloween is twice the fun for the Loree's. We all love the festivites surrounding the holiday and it is Mia's birthday! Here is a picture of the kids in their costumes. Mia was a Kan, Kan girl and Reed was Iron Man.

Caden Came to Visit

Caden came over to visit while his parents were in Las Vegas. We love to have Caden over, he and Reed are like two peas in a pod. Plus is confirms the fact that the Loree's will be happy with just two kids...forever!!

Pumpkin Carving

We had some friends over to carve pumpkins on Saturday. Everyone had fun and now we have some fun pumpkins for the porch.

Ten Years!!

Well, October 16th was our 10th wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe that we were in Las Vegas ten years ago gettn' hitched!! We went to dinner at the Gold Room in the Baranof Hotel, very fancy. The kids came with us, we wouldn't know what to do if we didn't have them along on our anniversary. This was also an opportunity to pose for a family photo.

Indoor Softball!

What?! Softball inside you ask, the answer in Juneau is YES! Mia had the opportunity to start playing indoor softball in the brand new, super fancy field house. It is a great facility that allows all the water logged Juneauites a chance to play some of their favorite outdoor sports indoors. Mia played the month of September for a session of Arena softball which was typically 5 v 5 and the pitches were with a pitching machine. A great chance to work on the basic skills.

This is Mia in the field. I think she has some fancy dance step confused with the "ready" stance. Here are a few more of her at bat. She actually is a pretty good hitter. She had such a great time that she wants to play this winter with the club team "Midnight Suns". You know what that means, be ready to pony up to buy the yearly calendar...more on that later.

The Last Camp Out

This is a bit out of order, we went camping over Labor Day weekend. It was the last long weekend of the summer break. When I say "we" I mean me, the kids, a friend of Mia's, my girlfriend Hilary and her two girls. No men, they both had to work. They did manage to make it out to the camp site in the evenings but they "had to" go back home to sleep in order to go to work...yeah, right!!

This was our camp site. We camped at the Mendenhall Campground the same one we camped at over the 4th of July. As you can see we are pro's at stringing up blue tarps. Actually Hilary's husband Kevin hung the majority of them, Hilary and I put a few more up to cover our tent. Low and behold the sun actually came out. This is Mia and Morgan (Hilary's youngest) playing UNO!

Here is Mia, Morgan (red), Audrey (blue, Mia's buddy) and Reed.

This is Hilary and her oldest Devyn. Devyn is in middle school and defiantly a good sport. Poor thing had four little kids running around for the weekend. It was almost too much for me and I'm a mom!!
Cheeseball Reed, not sure where he gets this from ;-)

The First Day of School

Today was the first day of school in Juneau. Here is Mia ready to tackle the 2nd grade. She picked out her out fit last night. Everything is pink, who knew I'd have a kid who LOVES pink??

She has a new teacher this year, Mr. Beck. She is really excited, her best friend Audrey is in her class again.

Reed also started at a "new" daycare, Juneau Christian Day Care. This daycare includes preschool. Reed actually went to Juneau Christian when he was an infant, so he is returning for a year before he starts public school next year.

Another Trip to the Glacier

The rain stopped for a bit a few Saturday's ago and we decided to go to the Kid's Day adventure at the Mendenhall Glacier again. This time we looked for mushrooms, since this has been the wettest summer since 1976 (or something like that) we had plenty of mushrooms to classify. Most of the mushrooms we saw were typical cap type but we did get to see these cool coral mushrooms.

Mendenhall Glacier

OK, we seriously live only 3 miles from one of the most visited glacier in the world and we just never go there. I found out that on Saturday's the Forest Service has a "Kid's Day" activity. Typically we are at the pool on Saturdays but for the next few weeks we are swimming lesson free and so we went to the glacier.

The ranger went over some of the activities we were off to find the letter 'C' in nature. Mia's favorite 'C' was the tail fin of the Sockeye Salmon and Reed's was the way the the chipmunk tail curved into a 'C'. Enjoy the pictures...and notice, no rain!!

Mr. Hosta

We had this flower bed in front of our house. The lady who owned the house before us had some crazy wild flowers in it. We had decided to remove all foliage and take out the flower bed. My boss offered a plant that she had. I told her I did not have any type of green thumb. She assured me that she had a mighty hearty plant that loved Juneau weather. So, change of plan, we will keep the flower bed and provide a home for this is our lone little hosta plant, I named him Mr. Hosta. He was delivered and planted early June.Now check out Mr. Hosta, he is lovin' our flower bed. Maybe if this plant thing works out we'll add some more.

Rock-n-Roll Party!!

This is Makenna, she turned 6 recently and she was the Queen of her own "Rock Diva" birthday party. Her parents (Brandon and Megan) had the party at the local pizza parlor. There was pizza (of course), video games and CAKE!!








Mia was pretty excited to wear her Hanna Montana wig.

Reed loved his new look.

Keeping up with the Mercers

OK, so my friend Kelly (Mercer) is a blogging nut, Anyway, she has added some fancy background on her page, links to my page, and music. Well, I have managed to use the templates provided to "spruce" up our background and I added a little music. Eventually I'll add some links, including one to her page so you can see just how fancy hers is. In the meantime enjoy the music. I'll try to add more, maybe some of the kids favorite songs.

Washington

We had to visit Washington in May. It was for a 'celebration of life' for Art Shelly. Grandpa came from Hawaii and Uncle David lives in Washington so we got to spend some family time together. Here we are at Uncle David's house as you can see Grandpa loves his Grandkids. At least for the week we were together. By the end of the week Grandpa was exhausted and couldn't wait to get back to his laid back Hawaiian life.

We left Seattle to go to Bremerton for the 'clebration of life' party. Art's youngest daughter Alison has been one of my best friends for over 35 years. She has two kids who are 'cousins'. Jon is 6 and Lauren is 5, Mia and Reed seemed to love having more cousins and the four were quite a handful.

BEARS!!

Del is working for Channel Construction and they have a contract out at Greens Creek Mine to create a tailings pit. Greenscreek is located north of Juneau so Del has to take a boat to and from work so you can imagine it is pretty isolated. Here are a few pictures...


This is a bear that was sitting outside of Del's backhoe. He said it was a bit creepy to have such a big animal just walking around in front of his machine.


Apparently here the "little" guy decided it was time to sit down and rest.
This is the ore warehouse where Greens Creek mining stores all the product they pull out of the hillside. They are pulling mostly Zinc. (Sorry for the glare, Del was in a moving truck when he took this picture).


You can see here the long tube that is a conveyer that dumps the ore material into the ship.

Opening Day!!

Saturday was opening day of Little League in Juneau. It was supposed to be last Saturday but there was still a bit of snow on the fields. We also had our first game. Mia is playing 'farm' league softball. Farm league is when the coach pitches. Mia had fun, she was 1 for 1 and threw out two players when she was in the pitchers position. She loves to wear her costume, aka uniform.

Easter in Alaska

Athough Easter was early this year it was a typical Alaskan Easter. Snow and rain. Here are some pictures of our local egg hunt. Needless to say the Easter Bunny came to our house but all eggs and suprises were hidden in the house...ya think!!

Reed's B-day Fun!!

This is Reed's cake...yes I made it. In case you can't tell it is the Autobot symbol from the Transformers. Reed just loves anything to do with Transformers.

This is the pizza place where we had the party. You can see Del (in the red) and a couple of his buddies in front of the games. The rest are our friends along the table and of course I am behind the camera...just where I like it. :-)

Happy Birthday to you!!

This is where we were singing "happy birthday" and he was so embarrassed he kept staring up at the ceiling.

Christmas Vacation

In case anyone was wondering where the "Griswolds" moved to they now live in Juneau. This house was completely decked out this winter and we just loved to drive by and admire all the hard work. There were other houses that were fun too but this one always made us laugh and think of the Griswold Family. Enjoy!!