Last Day of School, Chickenpox, the Glacier, and Oreo Day

Tony's hairy like his Papa!

Cady showing off her ace bandage

Well, it's been quite an exciting weekend at the Naegle home! Thursday was the last day of school, and the kids couldn't be more excited! Cady being our little clutz of course fell down the stairs at school, and so she was proudly sporting her ace bandage. Apparently Scott remembers his mom shaving his head the last day of school every year, so he chose to pass this tradition on to the kids, and Tony and Randy got their heads shaved today. My favorite comment of the night was from Tony: "Mama! I've got lots of hair all over me! I look like Papa!" Haha! That's right. His father's a hairy monster, and now he is, too. On Friday night, I was checking on the kids after they went to bed, and Randy was complaining about not being able to go to bed because was so itchy. I suppressed my natural inclination to say "Whatever, go to sleep." and leave, and checked on him, and what did I find? A whole bunch of spots all over his back! Uh-oh! It couldn't be chicken pox! He's been vaccined! Apparently this doesn't matter, though, 'cause sure enough, the doctor confirmed he has chicken pox. Oh great. I remember chicken pox as being one of the worst sicknesses in my life with pox all over my body, including my mouth and down my throat. I called my boss to prepare her for me being gone for the next week at least as it cycles through the kids. Luckily, Cady started showing spots later on Saturday. This is one strange disease, though. Apparently since they've had the varicella vaccine, if they get the pox, it's a very watered down version of it. And you know what? It's true! There has been no fever, no body aches, and Randy only had spots on his torso and arms, and Cady only had on her arms. As for Tony, maybe he had it, and maybe it was just mosquito bites. I didn't really know.

I went to church on Sunday while Scott stayed home with the sickies, then came home after Sacrament meeting. The kids were still doing surprisingly well, so we decided to go for a little walk. We went out to the West Mendenhall Glacier, which is the path that you can take to go to the Glacier. We decided to walk just until we got tired.

The walk was absolutely beautiful! There were mountain streams and trees everywhere. 

We stopped to drink some water. This was a completely impromptu walk so of course we didn't have water bottles at home.  We did have an empty syrup bottle, though! Maybe it's about time to get a Nalgene or two?

About 1/2 hour into it, we got to the lake. Isn't it beautiful? So clear, and the weather by this time was beginning to clear up.

The kids pretending they like each other.

After the lake, things really started getting adventurous.   We hiked and climbed over the ridge of the mountain.

At the top, it was so wonderful to see where we had come from.

And very thrilling to think of where we were actually heading!  Oh yeah, by this time, we had decided that we were actually gonna try to get all the way to the glacier.

Now all we had to do was just keep on going.  Just one more climb.

After a scary passage across the glacial river (I wasn't even crazy enough to take pictures during it), we finally made it to the glacier!  We had tied up at the river, and we just kept right on into the ice cave.  Since this was a completely unplanned thing, we weren't too versed how safe everything was, but we did go inside a little to check it out.

The ice is the most beautiful blue you've ever seen!  It was very drippy, and all the melting made very cool shapes.

After having a quick snack in the shadow of the glacier, it was back up the mountain!  I'd like to say that since we'd been on the trail before, it was easier, but we actually got lost and wandered around the top of mountain for about an hour before finding the trail again.  In the end, though, it was so nice to have made such a rigorous hike (for us).  It really instilled in all of us a sense of accomplishment.  Especially while seeing all the helicopters flying over as tourists paid big money to fly out to the glacier, we were able to hike it to it for free and enjoy it so much more.

Today, though, we were  happy to have the second annual Oreo day.  We love it when our kids mispronounce things and we get to eat Oreos as a result.