sunflowers of north dakota

the sunflowers here are awesome! i was quite surprised this spring to hear that the sunflower is one of the big local agricultural products and i was excited for summer to come so that i could see all the wonderful flowers. and they are wonderful!! there is also a large amount of canola and flax grown so, combined with the sunflowers, the fields are the most wonderful of colors! the flax fields are oceans of blue, the canola fields are oceans of yellow and the sunflowers are golden suns. it's gorgeous! there are also a lot of other grains here which i really can't tell a difference between but i've got the flowering plants down!
i've been going out and taking pictures of the sunflowers and i just wanted to share some of them with you. i've absolutely loved seeing them! when i'd be out among the flowers i would imagine that i was alice in wonderland and would hope that the flowers would start talking and singing to me. just so you don't start worrying, no, the flowers never did talk to me but they definitely mumbled among themselves when the wind would start blowing. :) they certainly have a personality because of their ginormous size.





the weeds next to the fields are quite pretty, too. they're definitely photo-worthy...

Alaska trip continued...

To continue my alaska vacation...
i made it my goal, after the family reunion, that i would go hiking everyday, or go on some outdoor adventure. i stuck to that pretty good except for sunday and 4th of july. i just wanted a rest from being busy everyday so it was just nice to stick around my parents house for a day. so here is another baldy hike. this is krystal, keith and me. and the pic of dad is in the next frame. so this is my "summit" pose that i borrowed from some family friends. every time i reach the top of a mountain i have to have some sort of dominating pose (ha!) to show that i'm at the top and the world is at my feet. corny, i know, but lots of people do it, so there! :) and way to go keith! not bad for a six year old, especially since he beat me to the top! (i'm a slow, steady hiker...)
here's my dad doing what he thought was the karate kid stance. i disagree and think it looks more like a spider man pose. either way he looks rather limber in this photo, ready to swoop down and pounce on unsuspecting villains!!
one of the hikes i did was up to the hatcher's pass area. i parked on the side of the road on the way up and me and raisin took off up the side of the valley and found this beautiful bowl. the tundra flowers were GORGEOUS up there with little streams running here and there. it was great! we stayed up there awhile but i could see a storm moving in from further in the mountains, so when it started to sprinkle on us we headed down.
and just as a side note, a tribute to raisin. she is the greatest hiking companion ever! i don't like hiking by myself, just in case something happens, so i've always taken raisin with me and she's wonderful! she's a great bear alarm and she's not the type that will chase the bear, just warn me of it. she also is very conscious of who she's hiking with and constantly plays "mother hen" making sure no one is left behind. she's nearing the end of her life now and is stiff and has trouble walking smoothly but she never wants to be left behind. as soon as she sees me put my backpack in the car, she is there jumping in my car. she's also now deaf and so it's hard to call her to let her know where i am. so if she looks around for me and can't find me, she starts panicking a bit. so then there i am jumping up and down, waving my arms so that she can see me. i do love her and appreciate her being such a good companion to me.
and here's a photo of me on the drive down from hatcher's pass, after my hike. this is the matenuska river and it's beautiful! and a perfect place to stop and take pictures. and just fyi, the daisy picture at the top of my blog was taken right next to this river. beautiful flowers!
while i was home i probably went and ate sushi two or three times at my family's favorite restaurant. mmmm! there's no sushi here in minot so i had to eat as much as i could while up in alaska since i knew there'd be a sushi draught coming on. ha! anyhow, here is one of my all time favorite rolls - the dynamite roll (the one in the center of the picture that looks like a volcano). it's fabulous! whenever i go that roll always gets ordered even though i'm trying to branch out and find something as fantastic as that but i always come back. oh dynamite roll, how i luv thee! :)
carolyn's family came up and spent the day at mom and dad's house so i got to spend some good times with here kids. here's cayden, pretending to sleep in some baby fireweeds. he's trying to pretend but had a hard time trying not to smile... :)
and here's the youngest, cathryn. she's a very smiley baby who is always into everything! she's very adventurous and has a very strong personality. and notice that nice gouge in her head? that happened when i was watching her and she smacked her head on the corner of the counter. it really makes me feel horrible because she carries that nice reminder on her head.
and here's whole bunch of wildflowers that my mom picked and put on the porch. daisies, columbine, geraniums, blue bells. i love the wild flowers from home!
i know this doesn't show much but the kids are sitting in the flower garden that i started back in 2004. i made a nice little stone walkway and a flat area at the top for chairs that was soon overtaken by weeds. when my youngest sister got married, we pulled out all the weeds, really flattened the area, put some of that black fabric stuff that stops the weeds, covered it with gravel and put some nice boulders around to add to the charm. here's cassidy and cayden sitting in my garden. i'm so glad that my mom and dad have kept it up. it looks great every time i see it!
and one last wildflower picture. i don't know what these are called - i'll have to look them up later and add the name once i figure it out. but they're gorgeous! they're really tiny flowers that grow in clumps and just look so angelic. mmmm!

deKay family vacation, part 2

i mentioned that the kids entertained themselves the whole time and found lots of things to do. they decided that they all wanted to make bows. they would go find the perfect sticks and have my dad tie string on them and then find great arrows. here's hannah with a great arrow that she found. i don't know that it'd be that functional but it really does look great!
for all that really know me, i am a true deKay, which will be defined in a second. this is my campsite. i had to find the perfect site and then i hung my tarp over my tent, just in case it decided to rain the entire time, which it didn't. it only sprinkled a bit the first day but i left the tarp up because it sure heated the air under it up quite a bit. anyhow, i have to have everything perfect and just so and all the knots tied correctly and all. it's amazing how nit-picky i am. anyhow, every time i'd walk up to my tent i'd get a little thrill of pleasure by how perfect it looked. i know, it really sounds obsessive and ridiculous but for some strange reason i love making things work efficiently and neat. And that is the definition of a DeKay.
here's a pic of jennifer and thomas looking out at the ocean. i just love thomas' face in this one. he is such a master of facial expressions and you can tell exactly what he's feeling. water is such a draw for almost everyone and it's exciting and relaxing. especially if you can throw rocks or sand in the water - then it's even better!
the last full day we were there curtis and robert took the kids out in the kayaks. cathryn was not very thrilled at all about being out there and being confined so she screamed and tried to stand up. needless to say, she didn't stay out very long as curtis was afraid that she'd tip the kayak over. the rest of the kids were great! here they are, swarming around the double kayak, waiting for their turn to go out.
one final picture and then you'll be done with my family vacation (although not my alaska vacation)! here's the whole group that came, minus krystal who's taking the picture, bringing the total to 24. my mom's brother and his three sons came, and then krystal and then various siblings and their kids. for the deKay family, we were almost complete with the exception of three: shawn (because of work), tyson (because of training) and jonathon (he's still on a two year mission for our church - but will be home in november! wahoo!!). next time we do something like this i hope that we can all be there. i loved spending so much time with everyone that went - it was a blast!
and just a side note - do you like the shirts? i know you can't really see the print on them but i did it! i learned on YouTube how to screen print shirts, bought some photo emulsion off of a screen printing shop, built some nylon screens and did it. it was great to learn how the whole process was done. next time i do it the shirts will look even more fabulous because then i'll know what i'm doing. :)

deKay family vacation, part 1

ok, ok. so i haven't posted in a LONG time. it's only been a little over a month, but a lot has happened since then, hence the "LONG" instead of "long". so in the middle of june i took off to alaska for a family reunion. i was only supposed to go up there for two and a half weeks but i ended up extending that by a week. unfortunately shawn was unable to go with me because of work, so i went up by myself. when i got there the flowers were amazing! i absolutely love wildflowers! perhaps i'll have to dedicate a whole post to the best flowers that i took pictures of since i think i spend most of my time photographing them.
here's some of my neices and nephews in a lupine patch in my parents backyard: cayden, rachel, cassidy and keith.
one of the first days i got there we took a nice family hike up baldy, the mountain that my parents house is on the side of. we hike straight up from their property up to the top. not all of us got to the top, as hiking with little kids slows things down a bit. here's a pic of cayden and rachel part way up the mountain with the town of eagle river spread out below. and here's one of those gorgeous flowers! this is a chocolate lily, which are everywhere in the woods around my parents house.
my sister sarah and her husband, chris got to come up with their one month old son, dalin (or is it dallin?). i got to take some baby pics so i'll get those done and posted. and yes, sarah, i'll send them to you. :) he's a very cute baby and was great during the whole trip. people were surprised that they took a baby on the trip (across katchemak bay, out of homer, alaska) but he did fantastic!
i drove down to homer with my sister carolyn and her husband, curtis, and two of their three kids. we stayed the night at a campground in anchor point and while carolyn was putting cayden down to bed me and curtis and cathryn went down to the beach. i was down there at first with cathryn, taking pics and there were some huge bald eagles that swooped down towards cathryn. i think they thought that they might be able to carry her off. i didn't let her get that far from me after that. she had so much fun finding all of the perfect rocks to throw into the water. i really think that's every kids favorite pastime. something about seeing that splash is so thrilling!
and here's a lovely self portrait of myself. i just really liked the effect of the clouds and the sand and the reflective water. *sigh* it was hard to leave.
so the whole troupe met down in homer for our five days of fun and we had water taxis take us across the bay and drop us on the beach that was to become our home away from home. there was a yurt (kind of like a cabin) there that we rented from the forest service and the rest of us set up our tents in that same area. it was pretty isolated there. when the tide came in it completely blocked our beach, so we were stranded there until low tide. it was great!
the sand, dirt, sticks, sea weed, plants, trees, water and rocks provided so much entertainment for all the kids. there was never a moment when they weren't busy. they would find flowers and plant gardens on the beach, they would make castles with mote systems for the incoming tide to fill up... i got the kids to make a mermaid with me. we made sure she was modestly dressed (a full shirt instead of just shells) and we used only the things that we could find on the beach for her composition. after we were done winnie decided that our mermaid needed a mer-dog, so we made one, complete with a sea weed leash. here's winnie, cassidy, me and hannah.
we brought two kayaks with us on our trip - curtis' and my parents. curtis had taken a five or six day kayaking course in katchemak bay earlier in the summer so he was our guru teacher. he took all of us out and instructed us in safety and all the little techniques that he'd learned. it was great! it was wonderful to have someone who had actually taken a formal course instead of just having us use the trial and error method to find out all the ins and outs of things that you never really think about until you do it the right way and find out that it works so much better that way. here's curtis virtual kayaking. i guess the class failed to teach him to use an actual kayak! haha!
and if you know me i have a need to take a random meditation picture everywhere i go. it's just one of my constant poses that define me. so here i am on the beach, sitting on very uncomfortable rock covered in mussels. i didn't really meditate there but if i had it would have been good practice on ignoring the pains of the body, especially those sharp points i was sitting on.dad and keith started building this great tower. they very strategically balanced all the rocks and then dad very carefully lowered keith on it to see if it'd hold him and to see if he could balance enough to not knock it over. he did great! then i decided that i wanted a turn. let's just say that the great rock tower is no longer standing...i just had to put this one in. mad cow disease finally got dear 'ol dad.curtis taking me and krystal bundy (my brother-in-law's sister) out for a kayaking jaunt.
we decided that we were going to go on a 16 mile hike to a glacier. we had to time it just right so that we could hit the tides right, since our beach gets isolated at high tide. chris, krystal, curtis and cathryn came part way in and then turned back to get to the beach before the tide cut them off. they were being the responsible ones and went back to make dinner, help watch kids. the rest of us went the whole way. me and my dad split off from the rest of the group towards the beginning of the hike and so got to sit and enjoy the glacier for a while before everyone else caught up. then my dad decided that he wanted to go down to the glacier, so everyone went down except for me. yeah, yeah, rub it in. i was freezing and the last thing i wanted to do was go and stand on the ice. i probably should've but i didn't. the group did bring back freshly melted glacier water flowing in streams on top of the ice and it really did taste great. i guess i'm just a wimp. ha! so here's dad:
and here's the crew down on the ice below me:
and here's the group on the hike back: my uncle mons, cousins bryce, kyle and tyler, dad, robert (brother) and me.
here's a pic of the kids and krystal climbing on the rocks and peering into a tide pool that had sea anemones in it!
and finding lots of little snails in the water...
dad with winnie, rachel, cassidy, keith and cayden.
earlier this year shawn wanted to get matching celtics shirts. i have to admit that i haven't really worn my shirt since i'm not really all that into sports but i did make sure to bring it with me and to take a picture of me wearing it. i did it for you, shawn! in this pic i'm holding cathryn.
i had decided before i came that i was going to go swimming in the ocean. there was never a day that it was really, really sunny so i had to just go with a cloudy, breezy day. i convinced krystal and several of the kids to go with me and we had a blast! i don't know if you can really call it swimming, though. krystal and i dunked all the way in and i was on my way out when i realized she was still in. the kids were squealing because of the cold and she was patiently standing in the water convincing them to come in. i think they all ended up coming in and krystal would float them on their backs until they decided it was just too cold. i felt like a huge wimp because i just wanted out of there! i did bring soap and did a quick saltwater hair wash but she was just the image of patience and it seemed like the cold wasn't bothering her at all. great job, krystal! the kids all came out of it smiling and laughing and shivering and blue but we had a blast doing it. the picture below is the "before" picture. i don't know that we could've stood around long enough to get an "after" pic.