Cinco de Mayo 2012

Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence day. The French desired to assist the southern states in their civil war battle with their northern brothers. The French waged a war with the Mexican's in order to move north to supply the southern states. The Mexicans defeated the more powerful French army, thus preventing them from assisting to break up our still young country. Thanks Mexico.

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo this year, I took our four older children on an all day adventure. Carolyn was in Juneau with our youngest child trying to sell our house there. Good luck with that.



We started our day off with a train ride courtesy of the Alaska Railroad. They had an open house today at their historic depot. We went on a short ride from there to Westchester Lagoon.

This young many was all smiles as we motored along the tracks. "This was awesome dad."

The younger kids don't look like they are having any fun, but they did enjoy themselves. We had just returned from the train ride and were about to take a tour of this locomotive.

Smoky the Bear was eager to shake the kids hands. I am holding Canyon because Smoky scared her.

We went to Elderberry Park for lunch and to play on the swingsets. We then drove to Earthquake Park. We mounted our bicycles there and drove to Pt. Woronzof to watch the planes take off from the north runway. That was fun. Yes, our daughter is a ninja. Boys don't mess with her.

We rode our bikes to Anchorage International where we attended an air show. There were many planes on display. The kids were excited to get toy gliders from some of the booths. Here the kids are posing in front of a really cool fire truck. They got to sit inside and look at all the buttons.

We were able to climb inside of several airplanes. This is a C-17 in air refueling plane. We also walked around inside of a C-5 Galaxy. Pretty impressive aircraft.