June 2025

June was our last full month in Alaska, and our move date is rapidly approaching! The emotions are high & the to-do lists are long, but we are doing it! This month has been a delicate balance of spending time with family, trying to allow the girls to soak up their last days with their friends here, and preparing for our move. Our days & hearts have been oh so full, and there is much to be grateful for! With so much change on the horizon, I am especially thankful for the sunny days {we've had so many nice days lately!!}, marathon Monopoly sibling games, morning runs with Shelby, evening family walks, Shelby's bike rides to hang out with friends, and library visits. Our life here has been really sweet.

{Hadley's creation for Derek in honor of Father's Day}

{Shelby's first time to the shooting range!}

I'll have to be careful with this blog post or else I'll start to get too emotional, but these next few pictures are from what will probably be our last hike up Baldy...

We also checked a big item off our Alaska bucket list this month with a flight-seeing tour of Denali in a float plane! It was such a cool experience, and I think my favorite part of it was seeing people hiking up & down Denali from the air! Even though we are surrounded by mountains & Alaskan beauty at every turn, this was an entirely new experience seeing Denali like this!

{Talkeetna is a fun small Alaskan town about two hours from Eagle River where our flight took off from. It's also where everyone who is hiking Denali checks in.}

{crocheting en route to Talkeetna}

{and this is what the drive home from Talkeetna looked like, ha!}

The Alaska State Civics Bee fell on Derek's birthday, and he was able to take the day off of work to be there. Shelby placed third in the bee & received a cash prize of $250. While she was very disappointed with the outcome, we were so proud of the hard work she put in to prepare and her boldness in the delivery of her speech to compel our school district and others to employ full-scale cell phone bans from elementary schools up to high schools. 

While preparing for the move, Derek randomly found an old unused notebook of his, which Brady was thrilled to take ownership of! Since then, Brady has been journaling almost every single day! It has been so much fun to watch him just writing away!

{Brady's breakfast of choice is almost always oatmeal, and he learned how to make it himself this summer from start to finish!}

{it's been a busy month filled with lots of adventures & long trips in the car}

{Hadley's second batch of guacamole for us!}

{Derek was disassembling our deck furniture in preparation for the move & Brady was very eager to learn how to help}

{Hadley attended a birthday party for a friend at Mirror Lake & had so much fun! Sometimes I still can't believe we've gotten to call this beautiful place home for the past three years!}

{handwork buddies}

This next picture makes me so happy. While the Gardners were in town visiting, we had planned to meet them at Mirror Lake one morning. We got there early & these three just had the best time playing volleyball together while we waited for their cousins. It ended up being such a memorable day--we got to watch a float plane land on the lake & a bald eagle swooped down and picked up a fish that Brady and Logan threw back into the lake. So, so cool!

{two doing handwork & one puzzling while I read aloud to them...this is what dreams are made of!}

{Hadley organizing all of her yarn ahead of the move}

{We have lots of gorgeous mountain views out of our windows, but this one is pretty special, too. I'll never forget looking out our bedroom window to see Brady climbing in this tree.}

{working on a Kiwi Co kit together}

Shelby attended a camping trip at Eklutna Lake with her youth group, so the rest of us took advantage of a little lake time when we dropped her off. We had our family pictures taken here our first fall in Alaska--it's so beautiful!

{Brady getting lessons on gun maintenance from Derek as he was prepping his guns for the move}

I don't know how much longer Brady will want to do this, so I wanted to capture it while I had the chance! Whenever I would do laundry during our homeschool days {which is pretty much every single day, ha!}, Brady would want me to dump the clean, warm laundry on him straight out of the dryer and he would snuggle in its warmth while I stole one piece at a time to fold & put it away. I was doing laundry the other day, and he eagerly hopped up our bed to fall back into our routine together.