#12

Evelyn May Preece was born on Aug 18. She is our 12th grandchild - an even dozen. I was watching the rest of the kids and brought them to see their new little sister. They got to see her feet first, because mom was feeding her. Finally they got to see what she looks like. Look at all that hair.I get to hold my darling granddaughter. The kids had fun watching her get her first bath.Everybody gets their turn to hold the precious bundle.What a good looking family.Jacqui posed Evelyn and we took some pictures after the hospital picture lady came and took hers. Jacqui's were just as good if not better than the professional.Well, I wasn't sure I was going to pull it off, but I managed to not break my tradition of making a quilt for each of my Grandchildren when they are born. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do it with my broken wrist, but it was pretty theraputic working on the quilt. I hope she enjoys it.We are sure glad Evelyn joined our growing family.

A Preece Wedding - Our nephew Richie & his beautiful wife Lauren

Terry and Becky (Bro & Sis-in-law) invited us to attend the wedding of their oldest son. I love to go to see Temple weddings. It reminds me of my own wedding and the covenants we made to each other. Sweet feelings. Well, we are here waiting for the bride and groom to show up.Paige came looking so beautiful. Her hair was so magnificent, that I had to get the view from both sides.Aren't these girls so cute? Grandma, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter.So here they come the newest Preece family. They are such a cute couple.Of course there were the obligatory group shots.After the wedding we headed over to the Joseph Smith Memorial building for a luncheon. They had a little slide show of Richie and Lauren, which was fun to see them grow up and then seeing them as a couple. Here they are sitting at the head table. In the lower right corner is a little box that Becky made for favors on the tables. It held 4 little treasure candies. It was so cute, but I could tell a lot of work.Later that evening, we headed over to the reception. All the girls in their golden dresses. Richie's sisters and neice. They all look so beautiful.And yes Derek and I were there. I did manage to get one picture of us. We sure enjoyed the whole day of festivities. We need more weddings in the family.

"The Preece Family Reunion"

We held our Family reunion for the Richard and Dorothy Preece Family in August this year. On Saturday we all got together at a park near Karen's and had a picnic. We already got together with all the adults the night before at a Golden Corral, where we were able to catch up on everything. Dorothy was able to come and enjoy the park for awhile in her easy chair. Connie, Whitney and Courtney are seen below.Just some pictures of those that I was able to capture. We had a good time playing volleyball, until the wind came and took over. Jeff (Ingrid's husband) Paige & Janette, Jacob & ElizaJared & Kathryn, Karen, Jacqui & Alan, Ethan & Kaitlyn, Chloe.Haden, Daniel holding Garrick, Jeph, and Connor.Derek & Rita, Becky & Dave, Mike and Audrey and Terry & Becky.It was great seeing everybody!

On our way Home or at least to Seattle

The last couple of days were mostly at sea and we had to find things to do. We took pictures and watched shows and movies.So we read alot and relaxed. That was hard for Derek to do, but by the end of the cruise he was doing pretty good at relaxing.Our last night at sea we stopped at Victoria, B.C. - which we had already visited, but we got off and walked around again. Here is the Empress Hotel, with these beautiful flowers hanging from the lamp posts, which were everywhere. It was beautiful.Doesn't the ship look pretty all lit up at night.We had a good time on our vacation and now we are ready for another one. Hee Hee!!!

Our Next Port of Call - Skagway

PANNING FOR GOLD
We took the tour to pan for gold, because we were in Alaska and what would a trip to Alaska be without panning for gold.They had this character explaining to us how to do it. He was quite comical and funny to watch.Can you see the gold at the bottom of the pan?Derek and I panning our hearts out. We combined our take and it came to about 18 dollars worth. Now it sits in a film canister gathering dust. It was quite interesting though and kind of fun. There is definately an art to it.
THE KLONDIKE HIGHWAY AND WHITE PASS TRAIN RIDEOur next tour consisted of hopping back onto the bus and ascending up into the mountains that followed the route that miners took to get up into the interior. The views were gorgeous, and our tour guide told us stories of Yukon.Taking my picture at a scenic overlook.The scenic overlook;)We stopped at the border of Alaska and Canada. We had to bring our passports along because we were going into Canada for a total of 30 minutes. It was too funny. We didn't even go into a town or anything. We stopped at the train depot and got on the train and went back to Alaska.A look at our train and everybody boarding.We are taking off and looking forward to it.Don't I look excited? Derek got a picture of me where I spent most of the train ride, taking pictures.It was kind of cloudy the whole day so we couldn't see the peaks real well, but it was fun taking pictures. On one of the pictures below you can see the original Yukon trail.This building is said to be the most photographed building in the world. I don't know how they can measure that, but it was an interesting building. It is covered with Deer or Elk horns.The streets of Skagway. It was so windy there, my hair was all over the place.After a long day we made it back to the ship for some more fun.

Later that Day... Juneau

Our first stop in Juneau was another Glacier called the Mendenall Glacier. They had a nice visitor center that told you about the life of a Glaciers. Outside as we walked to the viewpoint they had Glacier ice for you to inspect and touch. Kind of cool!They also had a trail to hike out to this water fall that was huge, but too far to walk to in our limited time.You can see the visitor center up on the hill and here we are posing.A closeup of the ice. It was so blue in some spots. It was pretty amazing.

THEN WE WENT WHALE WATCHING
We hopped onto this boat and were excited to see some whales. It was overcast and quite cool, so we were bundled up.We had our binoculars at the ready so we could see everything.Sadly, this is all we got to see, pretty much the back of a whale and sometimes the tail fin. They just didn't jump out of the water like they do in Hawaii. We didn't see any Orca's either. We did see a couple of Eagles, but they were so far away, it was hard to get good pictures. We saw some seals and that was about it. Oh well.But I found me an Eagle in town, that I could get real close up too.And we finally saw a bear. He was pretty tame and allowed us to take his picture:)Our last look at downtown Juneau and back to the ship.

A Trip Up the Tracey Arm Fjord

After we left Ketchikan and before we headed into Juneau we took a side trip us the Tracey Arm Fjord to see the Sawyer Glacier. I was really excited about this. It was also one of the reasons we decided on getting the balcony with our room.We navigated through this valley that was beautiful and we were lucky that the fog lifted so we could at least see the scenery.Our view of the glacier. Way over on the right.A closer up view as we got closer.Finally we see the Glacier. the disappointing thing was - this was as close as we got. I thought we were going to get way up close and personal, but if you wanted to do that you had to take a separate tour for that. Oh well!What I didn't expect was how cold it was. My hands were freezing, so right after that I went and bought gloves and then never used them again. Too funny. Sadly we never got to see a Glacier calf. Which is what I really wanted to experience. Maybe another time.On our retreat we passed another ship and we were encouraged to yell hello - we were that close!We saw some incredible icebergs along the way. It was a beautiful morning. After we finished there we headed on up to Juneau.