June Fun

It's amazing how much E has changed in the month since his birthday.  He is now all toddler!  His motions seem more mature, he is starting to imitate more during his play and he is starting to run (ahhhh!).  

E's first real word besides Dada and dadada for dog was 'hot'.  Once he figured out that he needs to blow on hot things he started saying 'hot, hot, hot' whenever he saw the stove on or a candle lit.  He loves to watch candle flames, blow and say hot, hot, hot.  He woke up this morning blowing and saying hot, which was him asking to go see the candles.  

Over the last month, E has become more affectionate and snugly.  He gives hugs and kiss and has become crazy attached to his soft and fuzzy blue blanket.  He takes it everywhere we let him and we wouldn't even think of going to bed now without it.  When we come inside from playing he runs to his blanket and rubs his face all over it with a huge smile.  

Ethan has been working his fine motor skills lately.  He really concentrates when putting small items in spots he wants them or trying to screw on lids.  His favorite is putting screws and bolts in holes and playing with his toy toolset pieces.

We did our first running race as a family this summer, E's first race ever!  It was the Twilight 12k (we did the 6k) and started at 7pm.  He was the smartest of all of us and spent the whole race sleeping in the Chariot and then enjoyed the post race celebration...

Post race family shot.  E can't take his eyes off the food for one second...

E and I finishing.  It was my first race pushing a stroller and it might be my last.  Aaron and I are not stroller people, we don't ever take E out in a stroller except when skiing or biking and definitely avoid it when people are around.  After this race, I remembered why.  It was fun getting to run with the whole family though!

Daddy finishing.  At this moment he is thinking about the pizza and beer he was going to enjoy post race.  :)

Watermelon!

We've still been out hiking and biking and enjoying the summer.  We recently did the bluff trail along the inlet.  E even got down and hiked a bit on his own:

We recently took the boat offshore out of Whittier into Prince William Sound on a cloudy day (it's ALWAYS cloudy in Whittier...) and set out to see glaciers, seals, otters and porpoises: 

A group of otters hanging out on an iceberg floating in the Sound.  We saw hundreds of otters swimming around, many coming up close to check out our boat.

There were several child otters swimming close to their mommas and many babies that were still hanging on momma as she swam around, as in the picture above.  

This picture is inside College Fiord, with eight glaciers coming down the mountains into the water.  The whole area was filled with icebergs that had calved off the glaciers.  The clouds were so low they covered the tops of the mountains.