A trip to civilization for my birthday!

I'm a week behind, so I'm going to just blog about our trip to Anchorage last weekend for tonight and then I'll try for the baby furniture building fun later this week. Oh, and just to get it out of the way up front - Jason's out of town so I don't have any bump updates. Sorry!

Last weekend was probably my last trip off the island until some time after the baby is born... probably quite a while after, actually. And it was great! We left on Thursday morning and didn't fly back until Monday morning (too early!), and we definitely got our fill of the real world in those four days! Luckily we flew on miles, so we didn't feel as bad about the amount of money we spent on baby stuff (and a few things for ourselves!). How the heck can babies be so expensive and need so much stuff when they're so small!??!?

Anyway, besides the inevitable shopping, we actually branched out a little this time and took in some culture and the zoo! By way of culture, it was a night of theater on Friday with the touring production of Spamalot! with John O'Hurley as King Arthur. He was perfect and it was a blast to laugh our tooshies off for a couple of hours. Plus, it was just nice to get in a show - one of the things we always enjoyed doing when we were in Boston. We also hit our favorite fancy-schmancy restaurant in Anchorage - The Crow's Nest - for my official birthday dinner on Saturday night. Of course, since there's a baby comfortably lodged in all the places where my stomach would normally spread out in the event of a large meal, I got full after a salad and about four bites of my duck, so I didn't really get to enjoy the main part of dinner. I did, however, save room for dessert because they have fabulous creme brulee! I took the leftovers with me and put them on ice back in the hotel room, but never did get around to eating them. What I had was fantastic, though. We definitely weren't disappointed!

I think the highlight of Jason's weekend was our trip to the Alaska Zoo. If I'm being honest, I enjoyed myself, too. Unfortunately, we went early in the day on Sunday, when it was a little damp and chilly. It probably would've been even more fun to go that afternoon when it was gorgeous and sunny. Oh well!

The cool thing about the zoo is that they have mostly animals that are indigenous to Alaska. The one big exception to that would be the tigers. Yes, tigers in Alaska. I'm not quite sure why anyone thought it would be a good idea to include tigers with things like brown bears, eagles, moose, and other Alaskan animals, but there ya go. Tigers. Of course, it could be worse - they could still have the elephant. Maggie was one of the founding members of the zoo, and was recently transferred to a more elephant-friendly climate in California.

But where was I? Oh, yeah... the tigers. Definitely random, and in an enclosure next to the wolves... strange combination, but entertaining anyway! Here's a shot of one of the tigers, and one of my favorites of one of the wolves. We watched the wolves for quite a while... they were really amazing.

Besides the theater, great food, and the zoo we also had an afternoon at one of the local day spas there. Jason had booked me a pre-natal massage and I talked him into making an appointment for himself as well. He went back and forth about it until Saturday morning, and luckily they had a spot open at the same time as my appointment. I can't speak for him, but I can say that I THOROUGHLY enjoyed my massage... if for no other reason than the fact that they had a body support system for me to lay on that let me lay on my stomach! Ah, the little thrills when you haven't been able to do that in about 6 months!

Monday came entirely too fast (especially since I stayed up too late Sunday night), and we headed back to Kodiak and reality. At least it was my birthday, though, so the day wasn't a complete loss! Of course, work held no charms for me that day, but I came home to a flower delivery from Ryan and Gina and dinner and cupcakes made by Jason. Can't beat that! Here are those flowers... so cute!And, the coolest thing about that picture is that it was taken with my new 150-500mm telephoto lens that Jason got me for my birthday. I haven't had the chance to test it out much yet (need a monopod for it!), but I'm definitely looking forward to breaking it in on the Kodiak wildlife this summer. No more having to say "I wish I could zoom just a little bit more on those bears"... because I'll be able to do it! YAY!

So that was the birthday/babymoon weekend over in Anchorage. Now that we're down to just over a couple of months until Green's arrival, we have more than enough to do around here to keep us busy in Kodiak. One of those things was putting her furniture together... more to come on that later this week! And, hopefully sometime this week I'll have Christina come over and get a bump picture - I don't want to miss these weeks while Jason's gone. As the doctor told me at my appointment the other day, "Now's the time when you start to get enormous." I don't want to miss documenting that! (Wasn't that nice of him?)

That's all for now. Oh, and by the way, the picture at the top of the page is the view from our hotel window in Anchorage... not bad, huh?

Stay tuned for furniture fun!