The second week of December, I took my kids on a plane to Alaska by myself (I’m crazy, I know) to visit my family.  It was a bit of a spontaneous trip (i.e. we only bought our tickets in the middle of November) and I’m so glad we went.  This will probably be a couple of posts best enjoyed by my family (i.e. not so many glorious Alaska scenery pics) but read along if you’d like!

The kids slept for most of both of our flights on the way there. I was SO thankful for this because our travel time was around 10 hours and we got in at 11:30 pm (which was really 3:30 am our time.) We almost missed our connecting flight in Seattle.  Not exaggerating, I got off our first plane, ran (pushing Ellie in the stroller laden with bags, Mark strapped on my back), ran up saying “WE’RE HERE!!!”, got on, and they closed the doors not long after.  I’ve never been so thankful to make it onto a plane!

My sister and I reunited after being apart for 17 months.

We did have some lovely views of the mountains, although YIKES, I had forgotten how how dark it is in the winter (i.e. that’s the sunset glow on the mountains, at 3:45 in the afternoon!)  More truthfully, it was the morning darkness that I’d forgotten about.  It was pitch black until around 9:00 and sunrise wasn’t until close to 10:00.

I got to snuggle with my newest niece (and observe my brother taking a nap with a newborn – just about the best thing ever!).

Once we got there, there were all kinds of cousins to play with (11 to be exact).

Monday morning, we played out in the snow on my sister’s deck.  Ellie and Mark enjoyed having snow for making “ice cream cones” and then we even built the world’s craziest looking snowman!

It’s hard to see but that’s downtown Anchorage behind us, with Sleeping Lady and Cook Inlet behind that. 

Gabe missed out on the snowman fun that day because he was napping but at least he got in a hug before we left!

This isn’t true now that Mark’s turned two, but while we were there, these five cousins were ages 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and they kept lining themselves up that way, with no help from us!

Come back tomorrow for more cousin cuteness and a crazy bumper sticker!