Tracy Arm Bay

Next day was Tracy Arm Bay where the ship sails up a long fjord hoping to get far enough in to see the glacier.

The sail in was almost more intriguing than seeing the glacier. It was a tight and winding path through the mountains that jutted out straight from the water.

And we weren't the only ones navigating through. It seems they purposefully don't meet up in the tighter sections of the route.

We inched our way every close, avoiding the larger chunks of ice.

Especially the ones with seals on them. The rules state that they can only get as close as they can without disturbing the seals. This one, apparently, is not disturbed.

The smaller ferries can get closer. This gives you some scale to the size of the glacier.

And the full glacier as we could see it from the ship.

At Sea on Disney Wonder

The happy Putaansuu family starting their Alaska Disney Cruise from Edmonds Washington! OK, the ship didn't pick us up in Edmonds, but we did catch an Amtrak train up to Vancouver BC where we stayed the night and then boarded the Disney Wonder in the morning.

I remember visiting this pier during the 1986 World's Fair. Didn't realize that I'd be coming back to catch a ship.

The ship has 3 or 4 pools. The Mickey pool is pretty much for kids only. Anyone over 65" can NOT go down the slide. There was a family pool that was a bit more normal and then there was the "No Kids" pool where adults could relax away from the clammer.

I didn't realize it, but each Disney ship has unique characters hanging off the back of the ship. Ours was Donald Duck and Huey.

The first full day on the ship was an "At Sea" day with no Ports of Call planned. The ship cruised up the inner passage where we could enjoy the tree covered mountains shooting up on both sides of the ship. It wasn't long before human influence on the land was no longer visible. Truly beautiful.

Our Stateroom wasn't a fancy one, but it certainly beat the one I had on the aircraft carrier. Not only did we get a porthole, but it was HUGE. You could almost call it a "Window". And if we didn't like that view, we could turn the channel and we could watch the view from the bridge. The room had a double bed and the couch flattened out into a single bed for William. We had a separate shower room and toilet room. A nice feature when the whole family is trying to get ready for the day.

We usually dine in one of the three big dining rooms and rotate which dining room we eat in every night. For the second dinner on board, we signed up for five star dining in Palo's where our truly Italian server guided us through an exquisite Italian dining experience. Where is William, you ask?

At the Oceanier's Lab! Disney Cruise has kid's clubs for many different age groups. The one targeting William was the Oceanier's Lab. This is the Piston Cup where the kid's teamed up to build soap cars (carved bar of soap with wheels and flag attached) and they race them until there is a final winner. William's team won, earning their car a place on the shelf (for the week anyway) and a Magical Moment Certificate. He was pretty proud.

This allows the parents to party it up... Here we're in the movie theater where they run current Disney movies through out the day. It's a quality theatre with most of their movies showing in 3D. We hadn't caught the latest Pirates movie, so we caught it here. I also caught up on "Mars Needs Moms" and "Tangled". I'm about 3D'd out...

Disney characters were available daily and their schedule and location were posted so you could catch them (or in our case, avoid them) except...

... for the Character Breakfast. One of your mornings on board is a character breakfast where all the characters stop by your table for hi-jinx and pictures (Pluto gave me a wet willie while I was trying to butter my toast...) We got a few pictures, but Chip is one of my favorites!

You always sit at the same numbered table (even though you rotate dining rooms) and you get the same servers and you sit with the same people. We were paired up with a five membered family from California that were a delight. Here is William with the three kids.

Lots of activities to participate in. Here is a beer tasting. It wasn't a wonderful selection of beers on board, but certainly drinkable.

Yes, it was a little cold at times, but it was truly beautiful and worth eating outside to see it (or were all the tables taken inside.?)

Here is Jorge from Portugal who was our lead server. He, and the others, were an absolute joy. They catered to the kids and kept us all entertained as well as fed. Here we are in the Animators Palate dining room. The whole room is black and white to begin with and then the whole room slowly gains color (even the server's vests go from black and white to colored).

Before..

After...

Video is of the train we took, getting on the ship and the Welcome Aboard party:

Eugene: Start of Vacation

OK, OK, it's been pretty darn quiet on the blog front here for the last couple of months. It's not to say that we haven't been doing anything. We've actually been quite busy on vacation and have had limited internet connectivity and very little time to sit and blog. So, as William and I hang out at home and recover from the vacation, we'll try to share our vacation adventures with you over the next week or so. First off, visiting Eno Brad and Mummi Kay in Eugene, Oregon.

Brad scored some tickets to the Track Finals that were being played at Oregon State. William loves to run and we got to see some of the best runners out there. We also had choice seats in front of the pole vault and got to watch these guys do something that seems impossible to do.
Though, many of them did miss (if you look closely, this guy is just touching the bar...) Made me feel a little bit better knowing they weren't perfect.

A happy family at the start of a vacation... No, we didn't fall apart at the end of the vacation, but we were getting pretty road weary...

Eno Brad found this can of pancakes. Looked a little sketchy to us...

So we took precautions...

We borrowed some bikes and went for a nice family bike ride along the river. Eugene has some wonderful bike paths.

The cats usually go to their hiding places when William comes to visit. Sometimes the only evidence that they are in the house is the food being eaten. To determine where and when they were moving about the house, William set up several data collection dishes and kept regular track of how much food was being eaten from each location. Lots of data... still waiting on a correlation...

The video is the first pancake to come from the can:

Japanese Piano Teacher

The piano teacher comes to our house! Wow! Saito-san is a very nice lady who has travelled a bit in the states. She's a lot of fun.
At the end of lessons, there is a time for learning without music. Wm has to sing the note names she's playing, and echo her rythms. It's different, but I think there's value in it.

William loves piano. He occasionally doesn't want to practice the full 15 minutes, as he's already perfected the songs, and can rip right through them.

On one of his finger power exercises, she has him do it normal, staccato and with a particular rhythm. It's funny hearing her say, 'Staccat.' Usually in Japanese, you have to have a vowel ender, and thus it should be 'sta-caw-TOE'. Funny

NEW (to You) BIKE

My Japanese teacher was PCSing out and asked if I would like a bike. I said, 'Yes!' So, we went by and picked it up. William was so excited because it has GEARS!!! He was so funny. He would open windows in our house and peer out to look at it because it was so cool.

It also has a couple of lights, one with a charger, and it still has a basket!

It had a flat tire, so mom pumped it up. It worked for a few hours, then dad had to help fix the tube. The second time it went flat, Tim had William fix his own tube! It was so heart-warming to see the dad/son bond, and how patient Tim is with William while he learns skills that are useful in this life.
The wheels are much larger than his last one, but he sits low enough to easily put his feet down to balance.
This is his old bike. Not only is it small...
but the tread was GONE he'd ridden it so much! It was most definitely time for a new bike!

Last bit of School

When we got back to Japan, we had only a few weeks of school left. William's teacher, Ms. Bailey took the option of staying in the US, so her children could stay and finish the year with one less disturbance.

Our 3rd teacher of the year was Ms. Fryday. What a fun lady!

I thought this little egg as a planter thing was funny. William only made one of the eggs have a face.
"Know Your Life Cycles" may never hit Broadway, but it was a very cute play. Some of the kids got to ham it up and it was pretty funny. I came braced to endure an evening of mediocre performance, and was truly impressed!

They did it with Ms. Davidson's class. My friend's son is on the left as Master of Ceremonies!
William got to be a plant (notice the morning glories around him for a costume). Alexandra, the neighbor girl is in orange and is a butterfly.
And William's other role was as a fish. I got to help with these. I love glue, paper and cardboard! William made his, as did Anthony and Carl. I wish you could see the scales on the goldfish. They are backwards!
Then, we had the music presentation for the year. William loves performing!
Usually these things are pretty long, but with other teachers not coming back from the evacuation, it was only their class and short. Whew.
Ms. Fryday's class.
They had a bowling field trip. I went along to punch in the names and get kids started. Some of the kids were pretty good! But they cheat (with the 'bumpers' those guard rails for the gutters).
The very last day, they sang their classroom songs to us. William was star pupil for the day, thus in the rocking chair up front.

We're looking forward to second grade next year!

Pressurized Pancakes

Eno Brad found this at the Safeway. Pressurized Pancakes! We were a little concerned about what might happen.
Tim figures this means that if you make a mess, there's no clean-up required!
So, we took all protections against the can blowing up and causing casualties.
You just can't be careful enough when there's a breakfast food involved!
Looks like a funnel cake.
But still tastes like a pancake.

We love trying new things, whether on the other side of the Pacific or at home!

All people involved in the pancake making evolution survived with all limbs intact. We'll see how we fare on the Fourth of July.