Alaska Adventures 2016

What a trip Alaska was--it seems a lifetime ago!  Steph, Sven, and Svea were so gracious in welcoming us into their home for almost TWO weeks and driving the adventure.  The boys looked forward to it for a couple months and still talk about it now.

Here are Svea, Lars, and Leif in Whittier post-26 Glacier Cruise...

Post-Mayor's Half Marathon...  Steph and I both survived!

There were a few family photos, so maybe we'll send out a holiday card in 2016 after all, and we have several photos of our boys being civil to each other...  Here's one from our loading up to head out to Whittier for our camping trip.  

A HUGE number of shots can be found here:  Alaska 2016 Photos

I'm not sure what was everyone's favorite activities...

• The boys loved the hiking, camping, boating, and exploring, especially in low tide, in Prince William Sound and soooooo much sunshine;
• There was hiking Flat Top Mountain and seeing the bear
• Hiking the mud flats out at Bird Point
• Mayor's Half Marathon (beautiful route, beautiful weather)
• 26 Glacier Cruise and becoming honorary captains!
• No moose  (What's up with that?!)  
• Jellyfish!!!
• Riding the tag-along for Lars--biking adventures begin!  
• Great family meals
• Legos, Legos, and more Legos...

The trio of youngsters were great together (Svea was very tolerant of little-boy behavior!). There was even a family effort in creating a home theater area in Sven and Steph's new house--there was a celebratory viewing of Star Wars to christen it.  Steph and I will claim responsibility for selecting the TV stand, but we best give credit to Mikael for the rest of the efforts (and Sven as the tag-along).

Next summer, if the Alaskan trio do a long road trip to the Lower 48, we will try to go meet them in Utah for some red-rock adventures.  This trip was our first official family BIG trip...  Many more to come.

I'll work on getting photos up from this summer's trip to the Blaha's cabin as well!

Ethel the Easter Bunny

It's Easter time, and we are fortunate that Young-Uns provided us with a great shot of the boys with Ethel the Easter Bunny from yesterday.  I LOVE this photo.  I'd almost create a holiday 2015 card to send out, but....  Then I'd have to find time to do the rest of the process, and that's not going to happen this year.

All is well here.  Leif starts soccer in a couple weeks (which I look forward to coaching!), and Lars will surely be his biggest fan; however, I'm sure Leif will ignore him on the sidelines as much as possible.  Baseball season is just around the corner then, and both boys are excited for that.

Ingrid and the 3 VBs (no Neil :( ) as well as Grandpa and Grandma are coming this weekend.  Finally it's not raining during their visit (usually does), and I expect some great soccer games, jumping on the trampoline next door, and hunting for Easter eggs.

Below is a video from Lars's spring concert at Young-Uns.  He was, as expected and with young Wolke tradition, quite the performer.  We never doubted he'd be a star...

Lars's Preschool Concert 1

More photos later--hopefully from this weekend--and eventually from the coming trip to Alaska.  The boys are sooooo excited, and we are, too!  Leif will also be joining an all-guys' Work Weekend at the Shack/40 with Berglunds...  Leif and Oskar are sure to have a blast.

A Thanksgiving shot

Pat and Ron had already left, so they were not able to join in on the family photo (Silly kids!).  Here is the rest of the crew who celebrated Thanksgiving 2015 at our house.  With 13 visitors (11 humans + 2 dogs) and 17 of us total, it was a FULL house.

Leif and Lars couldn't have been any happier having cousins and all the elders around.

It's too bad we didn't have snow yet, but that did not stop the crew from enjoying the sauna.

Family photo time!

We manage to never get a family photo, so here we are in one of the few family photos we have (of the four of us).  Here we are in Minneapolis before heading to Julie and Jesse's wedding in October.

And I managed to get a couple other shots off on my phone from that day and evening.  

The boys each wore ties for the first time and enjoyed getting dressed up.  They were both looking forward to dancing that night, but Leif ended up being too shy to get out on the dance floor while little bro decided he owned the dance floor. (I need to figure out how to get the video of him dancing off my phone and on to this page!)

This latest post captures only a fraction of a percent of the great days we've had with these two boys over the past nine months.  More coming (yeah, I always say that)...