July

The activity day girls hiked flat top and Tom went as a chaperone and took these pictures. Celia still talks about that hike. She loved it so much.

Also in July, the Blue Angels came to town for the airshow. Instead of going out to base to watch the whole show, we went to the roof of a parking garage downtown to watch them fly over. It was the perfect compromise. Not to long. Not too loud. And no crowds at all.

Then it was dipnetting time. My favorite time of year! We arrived on a Wednesday evening and Tom got right in the water. He only caught 4, but they were gigantic. Each morning you can legally start fishing at 6am. I heard people talking about how they were catching, so I nudged Tom and we headed to the water. Tom caught 23 that morning in 2 hours! We filled up our coolers with gigantic fish and had to stop (even though the fish were still coming!). Our total for the year was 27 making 87 pouds of edible meat. The smallest fillet was 12oz and the biggest was 40oz (the biggest on record for us!). 

We all had an absolute blast. Celia proved she was a true Alaskan by being able to correctly identify the sex of all 27 salmon correctly. Sabrina proved her Alaskan roots by participating in the tradition of throwing the salmon eggs up into the air to watch the seagulls dive-bomb to grab them. 

This was also the first year that we had a real amount of raspberries. They're successfully taking over the garden. Last year we just got a handful, this year we got to enjoy eating them every time we played outside. The girls invented "summer sushi" where they wrap a raspberry in kale or lettuce or spinach.