to the mountains, I can rest there, to the rivers, I will be strong, to the forest, I'll find peace there, to the wild country, where I belong

Saturday, 07/29/17, 8:14am, 9:55am, 10:47am

Well, it's been quite some time since my last blog post and I am now finally getting around to doing my Alaska post... I wrote up a summary of Alaska the morning I started electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), but that post has yet to be completed. Here we are, 5 weeks later, finally. Sigh.

And just for some perspective, we'll include the intro part of that post I wrote, for my pre-ECT thoughts...

"Holy crap, I start ECT today! 3 seizures a week time, for the next 2-6 weeks, right??? And Nasser is "24-7'ing" me since I require that amount of supervision.

I'm scared (in many different ways), I'm excited (in many different ways), I'm hopeful (for so many different things), and I'm anxious and overwhelmed. Last night Nasser sat with me, while I dictated to him this massive list of things to-do that were floating around in my head over the past several days. Including organizational things around the house, etc. Sigh.

I plan to blog as much as I can, but more importantly I plan to journal and use my daily app to keep track of things that I'm likely to forget, with the short term memory loss thing. I want to "remember" or be able to look back on this time as much as I'm able."

That was the intro part I wanted to include, but before we jump into Alaska stuff, I want to say that I have NOT been good about journaling so far, blogging has been rather infrequent, but I've been decent about using my daily mood app... there have been several missed days, but that daily app has been the most useful so far. About 2-3 weeks in to ECT, we started seeing some improvement, and now, 5 weeks in, I can more confidently say, we *think* it's working. Rather incredible thing, in fact. I actually didn't have treatment at all last week since we're starting to spread them out more. It was 3x a week for about 4 weeks, which meant that the cognitive side effects were kind of tough for awhile there, but have improved significantly this past week. Hence, I'm getting around to this blog post.

Anyway, let's go back a bunch of weeks, I guess it's about two months now... to the start of the Alaska trip. Our family flew to Seattle late the night of Wednesday, May 31st, along with my one sister and her family, a week after the boys got out of school.

We were only in Seattle until Friday morning before taking the Amtrak up to Vancouver on Friday, with the cruise leaving from Vancouver on Saturday afternoon. In Seattle, we visited with some friends of ours who have a new baby boy, we played in the pool at the hotel for the boys' sake (plus some of the other family started arriving soon after us too), but we also had to run some errands- we bought a new suitcase from Target since the one we brought broke- the handle wouldn't go into the suitcase- and I bought a new swimsuit from Kohl's since I didn't have something I was super comfortable with.

The Amtrak train ride was a great choice with the kids. We chose not to let the kids have screens, really, on the train ride, other than bits of RG reading The Hobbit on Nasser's phone and TK playing short spurts of brain-y games on my phone... a game called "Brain It On" which has you solve puzzle-type games and some "Solitaire". It was good, avoiding screens for most of the ride, since it meant that we saw lots of bald eagles along the way, we used the dining car to get some snacks for a portion of the trip, and the kids really seemed to enjoy the train ride and looking out the window. I spotted a couple sea lions in the water, at one point, on my way to the bathroom, which was pretty cool too.

Despite the nice train ride, though, I think we were all tired, grumpy, and likely hungry when we got to Vancouver. We had been hoping to meet up with another group of friends who live in Vancouver who also had a new baby we wanted to visit, this time a girl, but the kids were just too grumpy the rest of the afternoon in Vancouver, so we had to save that visit for Saturday morning, just before getting on the cruise. These friends also had several pets, which the boys really enjoyed visiting with, especially RG.

When we were done with our visit with our friends, we rushed onto the cruise and through check-in, a bit on the later side. But it meant that we had no lines, whatsoever, which we were pretty excited about, as were the kids.

Now, let's talk about the cruise a little bit... it was awesome. I mean, of course, there was lots and lots of eating; beyond the first night, we split up into a kids table and an adult table. Our group had 16 of us- there were my parents and 7 other adults between the siblings and spouses, and 7 kiddos amongst all the grandkids. Have I mentioned that amongst my parents' grandkids, there are only boys? Haha, yeah... so they really enjoyed having their own kids' table at every dinner.

The first full day on the cruise was at sea, but then our first stop was in Ketchikan, AK (06/05/17), where it, unfortunately, rained for most of the day. Some of us checked out a nearby wildlife type center where we could learn a little bit, in the safety of the indoors, before heading back to the boat.

There's our ship in the dreary rain...

See? It really was cold and wet...

RG, on the right, was especially upset about the rain...

We ran into my brother, sister, and brother-in-law going for a run in the rain!

I liked walking through this miniature park with flowers.

The next stop was Juneau, AK, and our little family split off and did our own thing that day- a quick trip to Mendenhall Glacier (where we saw a porcupine! I missed the picture of that one)

RG and TK posing by a bear in Juneau...

Mendenhall Glacier. 06/06/17

and whale watching (all these pics are credit to Nasser since my phone ran out of battery by the time we got on the little whale watching boat for that). Before I show you the whale watching pictures from Nasser, I'm going to include a picture he took of us at Mendenhall Glacier that day...

And he got a nice shot of a whale's back and one of a tail from the whale watching I'll share...

whale watching, 06/06/17

So then the next day was in Skagway, AK, where we took the famous White Pass Railroad. It had gorgeous views along the whole train ride.

These are the glacier pools at the top of the White Pass Railroad, before we headed back down the mountain, 06/07/17.

These are the 3 youngest kiddos, TK at right, is within 5 and 6 months of age of the other 2.

So Skagway was the last cruise stop, and the last two days of the cruise were cruising through Glacier Bay and College Fjords, lots of gorgeous, gorgeous viewing. Here are some pretty highlights from my pictures.

Above 4 shots from Glacier Bay, 06/08/17

At left: my boys hanging out on the pool deck; at right: some glaciers in College Fjords, 06/09/17

At left: RG being silly in front of glaciers; at right: more glaciers in College Fjords, 06/0917

and more beautiful glaciers in College Fjords, 06/09/17

Then the next day, 06/10/17, we had to get off the cruise, after a really nice week. I'll tell the story through pictures mostly, although, I have to mention, I had some serious "land sickness" after getting off the boat, so the travel that day was a bit tough for me.

At left: TK with some cousins as we're making our way off the boat;  at right: last shot of our cruiseship

Pictures from the tunnel between Whittier, where our cruise ended, and Anchorage.

Pictures from the bus ride to Anchorage, still 06/10/17.

More pictures from the bus ride to Anchorage.

I had to include this picture of my one nephew, AS, who has celiac disease. He's finishing up his bowl of full size pho at the Vietnamese restaurant we found in Anchorage. It's like when he finds something gluten free at a restaurant, he just gobbles it up. :)

We rented cars in Anchorage, three for our group, and made our way up to Denali National Park, where we had rooms rented at the Denali Touch of Wilderness Bed and Breakfast Inn, a really great place to stay at, and they accommodated my gluten free nephew at breakfast really well.

The next day, 06/11/17, we all went on an amazing 6.5 hour bus ride through Denali National Park. With even just the start, in the parking lot at the entrance of the park where you pick up the bus ride, we got to see a huge, huge moose and its calf, picture with the calf courtesy of Nasser.

And here's a bunch of animal pictures from the bus ride. Man, oh man, it was amazing. One of the coolest things we saw was a huge grizzly bear, on top of the caribou kill that it had apparently stolen from 3 wolves, and we got to see one of the wolves running away with a piece of meat from the kill.

grizzly bear on top of the caribou kill.

2 pictures above: wolf running away with some meat.

4 pictures above: mom and 2 older cub grizzlies we saw on the side of the road, the cubs made their way in the road to play fight. Super, super cool.

At the visitor's center in the park, we played around with the caribou antlers...

and then just some shots of my kiddos being silly...

and the 8 year old cousins in some footprints...

And then we have some bus shots...

my nephew, DS, fell asleep towards the end of that 6.5 hour ride.

Then we have some pictures from the dinner after Denali. We had some good portable, travel game things to entertain the kids while we were waiting for food.

Then, the next day, the very last day of the trip, 06/12/17, we had to leave the Bed and Breakfast and make our way back to Anchorage. I took a few pictures of kids in the car I was in, with the 3 youngest of the cousins. In the first shot, the 2 kids on the right were just pretending to sleep along with their cousin on the left who actually had fallen asleep, and in the second shot, TK was the only one still awake.

then at the end, they were all awake and happy and snacking.

and I had to share, we got a flat tire on the way back to Anchorage, and RG decided he had to help.

Several of us flew home that night, a red-eye to Denver. Funny little story: I got pulled aside in security and the TSA agent who searched my stuff knew the story of the wolves and the caribou kill, but he had heard from people on an earlier bus ride who only knew about the kill. I got to fill in the part of the story about the grizzly who stole the kill.

And to finish it up, I have a picture from the airport in Anchorage, sometime after 11pm... so crazy.