Alaskan Beach

I'm going to pretend that the above playground picture shot is a beach - I think it kind of looks like it, if you substitute sand for the rocks and imagine some water! While you're at it pretend Viva's in a swimsuit instead of a jacket and pants. Living in Anchorage we have to take what we can get! We have a couple (literally - 2, I believe?) beaches in town (although given the weather we haven't been tempted to seek them out), and if you venture forth further out of Anchorage you can find some pretty beaches. But we're certainly no Hawaii or Florida.

Which seems to be okay with my daughter. Genevieve, as has been mentioned before, loves loves LOVES to eat these gourmet playground rocks. She shovels them in almost faster than we can get them back out. Jackson, on the other hand, is mostly content to pick them up and let them run through his hands. He gets an A+ for playground behavior. Genevieve... well, she's not an A student at the playground yet.

Speaking of playgrounds, we haven't been seeing as much of them this summer as Bentley would like. An article in the paper on Thursday mentioned that we're on track to have the coldest summer on record. I had known the weather wasn't the greatest and that last year seemed a lot nicer in my head - it's good to have that confirmed. The article also reported that although the summer has been unusually lame we can look forward to a warmer than normal Oct - Dec. Geez - great! I think I'll save my hopes for warm weather and direct them towards next summer. The kids only get so many summers when they're little and we need some more sun to fully enjoy all those fun summertime activities that kids are supposed to - sprinklers and parks and popsicles and trikes and frisbees and picnics and sunshine and good times!

We're hoping summer of 2009 will deliver. We're doing our best with what's been offered this year, but we want more!