The Ditto Heads

My birthday was just the way I like it: low-key with minimal attention on me. :) it started with a free day at a fun dinosaur museum-gotta love it when your birthday is on Columbus Day! Owen was fascinated with this snake. And thankfully he doesn't speak parsel tongue so it stayed in its cage. :)

Thanks to an awesome mother-in-law for watching Owen, Dan and I snuck away for a quick and delicious Indian lunch. Mmmmm. Thinking about it makes my mouth water. And to top it off they had Bollywood music videos playing so the entertainment was hilarious.

Husband came home from work early and then my dad and Kathy came to take us all to cafe rio. (Remember how calories don't count when it's your birthday?)

Speaking of calories, husband has perfected the art of the banana split. It might look messy, but holy AMAZING!

And we rounded out my birthday month by buying our first house!! We're so grown-up now. We've been looking for a while and fell in love with this guy. I already have a love-hate relationship with the giant walnut trees out front. However Toby was quick to point out that the trees provide additional food storage-I'll take it!

We moved in on Saturday (shout out to our amazing movers-FAMILY!) and I already have a love-love relationship with not living in a basement anymore. Hoorah for windows and knowing what the weather is without needing to walk outside. And did I mention it puts us 5 MINUTES from family? We're in heaven. Well, at least I am. Owen is still figuring out what just happened to his stable life, and husband now has a 30 minute commute. I just remind him, Happy wife, happy life! ;)

And here is the rest of the cruise. Enjoy the photo dump.

Our first stop was Juneau, which marked my first time to Alaska. (And now that I've been to Alaska & Hawaii, I definitely need to get to the rest of the continental states.) For being a state capitol, it was SUPER small. But every place we saw in Alaska was GORGEOUS.

We made a stop at the fish hatchery. I love Owen's face
in this picture.

Apparently he likes to touch cool sea animals!

My boys!

My adrenaline junky.

The Ditto Totem Pole

At the Mendenhall Glacier - glacier's are COOL! (pun intended)

When you play hard, you sleep hard!

Now that's a lot of sober people waiting to make fools of
themselves on the karoake stage.

Um, pretty sure they really need to start a Ditto Boy Band.

Not sure if any of my videos will work, but here is the boys audition tape.

The karaoke party turned into a dance party. But only the
Dittos stayed for the dancing. Oh yeah, and the crazy drag
queen. Too bad I didn't get a picture of THAT.
But THIS is a picture of us seeing the NORTHERN LIGHTS!!

Some guy on the boat took this picture, so Dan took a picture
of his picture. Hopefully you get the idea that the northern
lights are AMAZING.

Our boat wasn't super kid friendly. But Owen could have played
with this all day. Made me think of the Harry Potter chess set.
Thankfully these ones didn't come to life to pulverize my son.

On the bus to Sitka, Alaska. He didn't fall out.

The crazy lady in the background of this next picture totally made my day. She had NO issues with cutting to the front of a long line of people waiting to be bused into the city. She cut right in front of a pregnant lady who had a baby in her arms (me). I'm pretty sure her son was yelling at her, but since it wasn't English I can only assume. I'm also pretty sure she shrugged her shoulders and said, "who cares? I'm older and I can get away with anything I want." And she did. Because of her we had to wait for the next bus, which of course took FOREVER. Good thing we were on a cruise so we weren't in a hurry. But seriously. I can't wait to be old.

Tired, sleepy boy.

Totem park. We saw a TON of wild life here.

Hiking through Totem park.

Sitka is such a quaint little town!

Look closely and you'll see HUNDREDS of salmon in the water.

Selfie in Sitka!

There was no getting bored on this boat. We learned how to
make creme brulee!

The in-laws!

We are so embarrassing. We found out 15 minutes before this
picture was taken that it was formal night. Woof.

Cute cousins!!

My handsome guy.

Let's pause for a moment and talk about Owen's love of music. Each night on the cruise there was lots of live music to enjoy. A piano bar entertainer. A Russian violinist accompanied by a Russian pianist (they were AMAZING and I could have listened all night), and a jazz band who could perform almost any requested song. They were also amazing.

The cool part about the live music is Owen was ENTHRALLED and could have spent all night listening/dancing. We started out each night with the violinist. He and Owen became good buds and in the musician's broken English he told us we definitely need to get him into music.

One of the only times my busy boy held still on the cruise:
while listening to classical music.

This is Owen and his cousin stealing the show. Too cute!

Love this picture. The violinist played a little tune just for
Owen.

Then we would move to the Jazz band. They called Owen the Toys R Us dancer.

Dancing with Dad.

Pondering the meaning of life.

Us in Ketchikan!

Kayaking in Ketchikan!

The marrieds took a little break from the kids & went to go
on a kayaking adventure. It was SO great! We had a seal swim
next to us for a while, and Dan's head was almost taken off by
a giant bald eagle.

Thanks to our early-riser Owen, we got to see this gorgeous
sunrise.

All set for an adventure!

Team DITTO! We won the Trivia game. All our Trivia Nights
in St. Louis prepared us for that very moment.

Owen's very own concoction of fruit water.
He was happy, which meant I was happy.

Did I mention that we had the BEST weather! Seriously - I
got sunburned. In Alaska. Who gets sunburned in Alaska?

Waiting for the giant Hubbard Glacier.

This thing is bigger than the state of Rhode Island!

Remember how when you're on a cruise you don't do ANY work? Your room gets cleaned twice a day. You don't cook. You don't clear your dishes. You don't even pour your own water. It's a good thing I still had a kid to look after to keep me grounded. We loved that in all of the elevators was a mat that told us what day it was. Because seriously, it was easy to forget.

A pregnant belly and the Wednesday mat.

Rachel and Mandy were called up to help in the magic
show. Now they're practically famous!

This might be my favorite picture of the entire trip. There were
several photographers on the boat and they had advertisements
like these up everywhere so people could get their pictures taken.
Oh the fun we had mocking them!