Travels

Hi, all. Hope you're well. I know I haven't posted in a while. Like I said, it's summer! Got too much to do! We've had a month of travels, and we'll keep it up through the fall, till the last baby visitors have departed. It's an exciting time.

Brianna came to visit us for a week in June. We wish she could have stayed longer. But she had to get back home to start summer school. We did some things close to home, like hiking in Chugach State Park and to Thunderbird Falls.

Unfortunately, the weather was gray and rainy for most of her time in Alaska. :o( Predictably, it cleared up and became lovely a few days after she left. What can you do? Despite the weather, we were able to do a little traveling.


We covered a lot of Anchorage, metropolis that it is. Went to the Native Heritage Center, to which I had never been and which I found very informative. And we checked out the Alaska Botanical Garden. Eh. It could've been bigger (It's 110 acres if you count the hiking trails, but we were mainly there to see the cultivated parts and check out the plants). The planted portion was not very large. But we had a nice picnic lunch in the herb rotunda (very appropriate), and I picked up some super cool plants -- among them, bright blue Siberian poppies -- for our garden. They are really neat. The garden is covered in color now, by the way. It has been a very odd spring. One of our latest in years. Everything was delayed, from the salmon runs to the flowers blooming. :o(

By the way, that's my work badge Meggie is wearing in the picture. She fished it out of my bag and put it on. But I surrendered that badge (in exchange for my final paycheck) when I quit work last week. *sigh* It was the right time, but I'm sad. There's a possibility I may be able to do as little as one or two days a week, so that's something that I may look into when the time is right.

We got down to Seward, where Alan and Brianna did a nature cruise. You may recall... my last venture onto the cruise was plagued by seasickness. And I didn't think chasing Meggie around a boat sounded like a good time for anyone. So Meggie and I hung out downtown and then napped at the hotel room for a few hours. Neither Brianna nor Alan got sick, and they saw a whale! We were fairly skunked when I went, so I'm dying to go again. Anyone want to come up and go with me? Next summer, I suppose, after Laurel's birth -- when I am no longer rotund and less likely to roll along the deck in rough seas.

Alan had to leave Seward the next morning because he was in the middle of a trial. But Meggie, Brianna and I took in the SeaLife Center -- always fun -- and did some shopping in downtown Seward. It's a really quaint town with some nice shops and cute cafes.

Meggie really loves her cousin Brianna. She took to her right away. We were afraid she'd freak out when Brianna left, but I think that Meggie is used to the comings and goings of relatives and friends. And I think she's used to traveling a great deal herself. That's a good thing. We started carting her all around Japan when she was a few months old. She flew from Japan to the U.S. at 4 months, and she hasn't slowed down since. It's a good thing for her to be comfortable with, since Alaska is so far from ... pretty much everything.

And, of course, you can't go to the SeaLife Center without taking an obligatory puffin picture. They are pretty cute.

The kiddo thoroughly enjoyed the SeaLife Center. Although she loves animals, she's a true part-Filipina, thinking always of the stomach first. She admired all the animals and said they were cute or pretty. But when she got to the crab tank and I said something like, "Look at those crabs! Aren't they neat?" she tapped on the glass and said, "Mmmmm. Crabs are good to eat. We all like crabs." She loves seafood. She takes after her great-grandmother. I remember a particular trip to the beach with my grandmother many years ago. She was admiring the winging seagulls at length. I said, "They really are beautiful, aren't they." Her reverie broken, grandma just said, "Hmmmm. I wonder how they taste. I think they would be tough."

But back to Brianna's trip. We really enjoyed her visit. And Meggie misses her and talks about her a great deal. And I have to go on record as saying that Brianna is the best baby sitter EVER. She made us a cool certificate good for a night of baby-sitting, so Alan and I went to dinner and a movie sans kiddo. We left Brianna in a house strewn with toys and with a toddler running amok. We returned to a CLEAN house, a peacefully sleeping Meggie and a batch of fresh-baked cookies. Now if that isn't multitasking ability and talent that presages a brilliant career, I don't know what is.

So after Brianna returned home, I had my final week of work. As said, I was sad to go. I worked with such amazing people. But it was the right time to go. I don't want to work three days a week with a newborn, and immediately after I got home from my final day at work, I had to start packing for a trip to Hawaii. I've felt for a while that it was time for Meggie and me to see my grandmother (Meggie's "Nanang") again. She's 92, after all, and it will be harder to travel until Laurel is of a certain age. I knew Alan couldn't make this trip with us, so I had to do it before Laurel is born. He's really busy at work nowadays.

(Quick segue: While Brianna was visiting, we quizzed Meggie on where everyone lives. She placed her grandparents in their correct states -- "Abama," "Cafornia" and "Hawaii." She knew that cousin Brianna lives in "Cafornia" and that Meggie and Mommy live in Alaska. But when we asked where Daddy lives, she said, "Daddy lives at work!" Haha. Before you start to feel bad, she sees him quite a bit, and until I quit work, she saw him exclusively from evening to bedtime three days a week. She's in no way deprived. But even she has caught on that Daddy is more busy than usual right now. And my explanation to her that the reason Daddy can't come to Hawaii is that he has to work has confirmed her suspicion that Daddy must now be at work all the time.)

So now we come to Hawaii! Meggie and I got here two days ago. It was a rough trip (departing around 3 a.m. on Wednesday), and I'll spare you the usual traveling-with-toddlers anecdotes. But we're settled in well at my mom's in Waipahu. Meggie, always a great traveler, is just about as comfortable here as she was at home now. I discovered that fans greatly improve her ability do deal with humidity. And there's always a breeze here, so it's not as bad as I feared. Still, she doesn't like the bright sunshine, and she refuses to go into the sun without her hat. She must have absorbed the preference for outrageously large sun hats through osmosis when were in Japan, where older women wear gigantic bonnets to protect and preserve their smooth complexions.

We spent most of yesterday at Ala Moana beach park. Meggie had a blast. Mom and I had a hard time getting her out of the water. Yesterday was such a full day that we decided to hang close to home today. Meggie spends most of her time outside in the garden. She plays with her toys and colors on the patio. Or she plays in the sprinkler with Mom's dog, Ivy, a true Hawaiian poi dog.

Took this picture this morning, when she had to go outside, even before she changed out of her pajamas.

We're going to Waikiki this afternoon, to walk around and go the International Marketplace. It occurred to me that I haven't been here in three years! And there may be a similar interval between this and my next visit, so I'd better get around to all the sights. Going to do the tourist circuit -- snorkeling at Hanauma, watching the sun set in Wakiki, the swap meet at Aloha Stadium. The whole bit. :o) We leave here on the 26th, so there's tons of time.

Alan's dad is traveling to Alaska tomorrow. He and Alan will do some fishing and traveling while Meggie and I are Hawaii. We'll have about a week of overlap with him when we get back to Alaska at the end of the month. We're really excited to see him!

That's all I've got. I know it's rambling and overly long. But I have no time to edit. And I'm posting on my mom's Mac and using Safari, which doesn't seem to be fully compatible with blogger.com. So the format is funny and half the tools are missing. It's taking me a long time. So I'm leaving this as it is. Hope it's not too bad.