Dipnetting

Ivonne and Jed, this post is for you. Remember, how we tried dipnetting in 2006 and thought it sucked. No fish. Rain the whole time. Stood in the ocean for hours. Well, this summer, Scott Banks and family took us dipnetting and clearly, in the first few minutes we arrived at Beluga RV Park in Kenai, we knew that we had no idea what we were doing back in 2006. Check this out:The entire weekend we were there, the mouth of the Kenai was packed with people, combat dipnetting and camped out on the beach. In a few hours, we scooped out 13 salmon with this huge net about 5 feet in diameter. Thomas got drenched through immediately with the waves, so he decided to do most of the fishing. Plus, it rained the whole time and the kids got soaked, so after I fished for my one salmon, I took the kids back to our tent. The beach is really nasty. Fish guts everywhere. Seagulls feasting on the raw flesh. Fish blood soaking the sand and these old iron boards, that everyone appears to use for cutting fish.

Kyra didn't mind the guts at all. In fact, she stood an inch away from our cutting board and at her eye level the fish was being filleted right in front of her nose. She told me that her favorite part of the dipnetting experience was cutting fish and she asked me if I could teach her.

Ethan, on the otherhand, freaked out when he touched my fish with his little index finger. Hilarious how different our kids are.

Kyra turns 5

Some things haven't changed much about our little girl, she is still in love with Lightning McQueen (yes, that's a Lightning McQueen watch on her wrist, Mommy thinks it is ugly as hell) and Thomas the Train. She still wants to be a race car driver when she grows up. She hates dresses and anything pink or princessy. She is as bossy and fiesty as ever, except now she has lots and lots of words.

When Mommy is on her cell and isn't giving Kyra her full attention, Kyra folds up her rail thin arms, sticks out her lower lip and says, "Mommy, you broke my heart."
When Daddy is up late playing his Playstation 3, Kyra gets out of bed and points her little index finger in his face and says, "Daddy, you need to go to bed!"

And when we shower her with kisses or hugs, she pushes us away and says, "Okay, that's enough."

She is a wiz at technology. She knows how to operate Daddy's Playstation 3 and work all the remotes of his big screen T.V. and sound system. She reorganizes all of Mommy's iphone apps and labels them Kyra this or that.

Her favorite pasttime is picking flowers or getting a glass of water for you.

On our Southwest adventure recently, she made Mommy and Daddy very proud, racing up and down mountains and cliffs and ladders with her new hiking boots, letting Daddy place her in crevices six feet above the ground, becoming junior ranger at Canyonlands and Arches National Park, and dancing in the streets of Aspen.And sometimes, for a brief moment, her girly side (inherited not from Mommy, but probably from all the godmother Ivonne kisses she received as a baby) will surface.