For the last 4 years my family has made an effort to plan a 5-10 day trip to a destination we have not been to before. This is our attempt of reconnecting with each other. Our parents got divorced when I was 8 years old so we are used to spending every other holiday alternating between dad or mom. After high school we each went to different Universities throughout California making it even harder to get together for the holidays. At times one or two of us would not be able to make it home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years etc.

 When my father realized that we were loosing touch with each other he and my mom got together and decided that as a family we needed to reconnect. So they agreed that since my sisters and I have all graduated we really did not have an excuse to not make an effort to take time off work and our lives to spend time as a family. 

   The first thing we decided to do was take a trip to Alaska. I think this came from my baby sisters desire to see glaciers, wildlife and spend time in the snow. I saw it as our last attempt to see if we can spend more than a day with each other. Picture 5 people with strong, independent personalities that love each other but have not spent more than a day together in the past 6 years...yup we were bound to clash at one point or another.

   I thought it would be a disaster waiting to happen. I am not going to pretend like if there was no bickering, but there sure wasn't as much as I thought there would be. I think what helped  was that most of the time we were all unbelievably mesmerized by the sites. It was crazy seeing so much snow everywhere you looked. We made it a point to experience everything Anchorage had to offer, and honestly with days as long as 23 hours it was hard not to take full advantage of the daylight. We had a blast playing in the snow, we got to see the wild life up close and personal, see an actual avalanche (from a safe distance), spend some time sledding and snow tubing down a mountain and most of all experiencing the memorable sunsets and sunrises.

   The trip helped my family get closer together, we learned so much about each other and how much we enjoyed the snow and the cold. We left Alaska with the desire to learn how ski and snow board and do more activities that involved the snow.  Up next in our list for adventures is a trip to Croatia and Switzerland.