New travel spots

Here I am in the Upper Dublin Library in Fort Washington, PA typing on my blog.
I am suffering from a cold which I think I recevied from my mother who caught it in Alaska while we were there. She passed it on to me and perhaps others of my siblings because we were hugging each other so much since we were so excited about our trip in Alaska.

We are here in PA for the first Moulder Family Reunion and we are just getting everyone in town. It will be a fun time. Ed and I drove up from Houston (that is another story for another day) and arrived at his mom's house in time to drive to the Newark, NJ airport and get Ashley who flew in from Scotland at about 6pm and then we waited there until Autumn and Derrick came in from SLC about 11:30 pm. We were all so tired but we had a 2 hour drive back to Ft. Washington and grandma's house. Diane and Ian have arrived too and we have all come to the library to catch up on email, do homework, etc. We will meet everyone tonight at Grandma's for dinner and then the festivities will officially begin.

I left home on Friday, June 20th and flew to SLC where all of my siblings gathered at my mom's house and boarded the plane to Fairbanks, Alaska on Saturday night, June 21st. It was a festive time for all of us. We tend to the sillier side anyway, and we were all so excited for this trip that our mom has planned for us that we were giddy.

We arrived in Fairbanks at about midnight on the longest day of the year.....no nighttime at all. The streets of this little city were still busy with people who had celebrated the summer solstice with a famous baseball game starting at 10:30pm. We, however, were tired so we went to sleep once we got to our hotel rooms at the Westmark Hotel. It was very interesting to go to sleep with sunlight streaming through the outside of the curtains in the hotel room.

Sunday we woke up and went to have breakfast together in the hotel restaurant. I had Oatmeal with raisens, brown sugar and walnuts. It was excellent. We had rented two cars for the day so we could drive to see the muskox that mother had told us about so often. When we finally found the place where the muskox were we were disappointed to find that they had hidden themselves back inside the trees because of the heat (it was a very pleasant 77). We would have to pay to have the tour down inside the facility a litte farther where they lure them out with food. It turned out to be a very good thing because we actually did learn alot about them and the reindeer and the caribou there. We were also able to get up close and personal with the three baby muskoxen at the facility. They were very cute.

After the muskoxen we return briefly to the hotel to clean up for church. We had decided to attend the 1pm sacrament meeting and then head up to the museum at the University. We loved the ward...they had a lot of people there and they all sang!.....enthusiastically! They did love having us there. After the meeting mom went to the Bishop and told about dad. He invited us into his office for a few minutes and one of his counselors came in with the bound book and a little spiral book that are histories they have compiled of the church in Alaska. The larger bound book was passed around to all of us (they gave it to mom and we were looking at it) and when it came to me I leafed through a couple of pages and the 3rd page I looked at I saw a small paragraph written by dad as the District President. It was amazing!! I read the words he had written so many years ago about this place he loved and how sad he was to have to leave. I couldn't help but choke up a bit as the room became silent when I read his words outloud. It was a a wonderful memory and a tender moment to feel our dad was there with us on this trip that he had always wanted us to enjoy. He was there to share in the beauty and wonder we would now experience.

My time for today is over so I will leave for now and be back soon.