Gone Fishin!

We took a fun trip this weekend to Seward, Alaska. It is about a 2 hour drive southeast of Anchorage. It is a pretty small town, only took us 10 minutes to walk from our hotel to the boat harbor. We drove through the town in probably 5 minutes:) It rained the whole way down and all that evening, but it was still beautiful. I ordered reindeer sausage at the restaurant cause I hadn't had it before, it was good and pretty much tastes like sausage. Travis got a tasty salmon sandwich:)

Here is the boat harbor in Seward

Not quite a moose or bear, but we saw some cute bunnies walking around the town

We woke up very early Friday morning and headed to the dock for some halibut fishin! It was very foggy on the boat ride out, but the rest of the day turned out just beautiful! It was perfect for a day for fishing. We traveled about 3 hours out in the water before anchoring the boat and getting out the fishing poles.

Our first catch ended up being a lingcod! Which ended up being a bonus cause usually on halibut charters you catch your 2 halibut per person and are done. I hooked it. Here I am holding the pole for a while. I am struggling to reel it in, haha, it was heavy.

So I had Travis take over and reel the fish in the rest of the way

  It was a 39 inch lingcod. Yay! You can keep one lingcod per person per day. Cod most often is used to make fish and chips, but they say that lingcod is a lot nicer.

Travis with his halibut

 We are lookin good!

 The boats haul for the day:) This included cod, a few rockfish, silver salmon, and halibut, two of which were over 100 lbs.

We ended up taking home 23 pounds of filleted cod and halibut. Yum!

 On our drive home Saturday morning we stopped to take a few pictures. It was a really beautiful day. Sunshine and a nice cool breeze:)

Check out the baby bump, great for baby but not for fishing, haha. Almost 30 weeks along now, pretty crazy.

We now have a freezer full of fish, enough to last us for a while. Sooo...everyone should come visit us and have some fish:)

Goodbye summer?? :(

Hello family and friends!

 

We wanted to send another blog installment your way. As we speak this very moment, Trav is at the ward building meeting with the bishop (most likely getting a call we believe), so, when he comes home we shall give you a little update on that. (Just got word that he will be a Ward Missionary). I have not gotten a calling in our ward yet, but that's ok:) There will soon be some ward boundary changes around here, so I think they are trying to see what's gonna happen with that. We really pray we stay in the ward, it is a wonderful one:)

 

Anyways, got some pictures coming your way...

 

About a week ago I went with some friends in our ward to witness some good ol' Alaskan dipnetting. I was not able to do so myself (I don't have a fishing liscense yet) but it was fun to see how it is done. Basically you drive to the mouth of the river, grab a huge net with a long pole on it, get out in the water and face yourself against the current, and salmon will come swimming into your net. When you feel one, run up to shore and smack your fish around a little bit to make sure he doesn't get away, and then go back in the water for more. People can get tons of fish this way around these parts, but when we went it was around the end of the season, so we only got 2. But they tasted great! As Alaskan residents you are allowed to get, and don't quote me on this, 25 salmon for the head of household, and 10 salmon for each of your dependents, in one year through dipnetting. Pretty cool huh?! We should do this next summer and we could get 45 salmon. YUM!!

 

Not a great pic, but maybe you can pick out the little rainbow we saw on the drive down to the river. We drove about 3 hours south of Anchorage. It was a beautiful drive, and these pics do not give it justice:)



 

 

Lovin' all the green

 

 

Tried to get a picture of the beautiful colored water while driving by.

 

 

The scenery quickly changed from mountains to this green plain with pines in the distance.

 

The shore and some people standing in the water dipnetting.

 

 

 

 

 

A really really good-looking picture of me (HAHA)

 

 

We made a goal to find some bikes and go biking together. It's been a little rainy lately, but nothing that can't stop us! We gotta get some good bike riding in before the snow comes:) Not only are we getting some exercise but we see some great scenery on the way. (Maybe we will see a moose or bear sometime?!)

 

 

 

Baby update: This is me at 27 weeks. I have my 28 week appt with my doc this Friday. I am gaining weight and getting very plump very fast:)

 

 

Supposedly this is what happens to my fingers when pregnant-they look like sausages. Might I also add that the ring I am wearing is one I have that is already 3 sizes bigger than my wedding ring, and even it is getting too small now. Wow, sad, haha.

 

 

Baby J continues to grow and kick around in there. Other than feeling plump and bloated, things are going great. I have to go to the bathroom every 30 min, but it's worth it:) Can't wait to see cute little baby J! As time goes on things just become slightly more real to me that this baby has got to come out, one way or another, haha. Kinda scary reality check, but exciting too.

 

Trav continues to enjoy work up on the slope. We also love the weeks he is home and we can be lazy and watch movies, haha. This next work week Travis will be doing a week of night shift, and then sleep during the day. We shall see how it goes. Needless to say our daily phone calls will probably be shortenend dramatically, ha. 

Well, that's all for this installment.

Love yall!
Travis and Acacia