Well, we love venturing out and doing things as a family. This time when we went out kayaking, we took Skylar and Adriana out with us. It was fun, girls were excited to go out with us! This time we didn't go far, just in front of St.Michael, since we had the girls. We spotted some seals fifty yards ahead of us and decided to watch them for a while and hopefully take some pictures of them. We sat there for awhile hoping to get a little closer. We didn't pay much attention to where we were and how fast the ice was coming in. Well, when we decided it was time to go home, girls were falling asleep in the kayak, making it harder to paddle. We got ice jammed and had to think of what our next move was. It was a little nerve wrecking at first, I was nervous, just cause we had the girls and wasn't sure if we may need to call town for help or even the Coast Guard, being St.Michael was just a few hundred feet from us. You can see people, well, kids on the beach playing. After thinking this clearly, we started heading out to open spots where there wasn't any ice and slowly made our way to open waters. Drew and I had to get up onto floating ice a few times to pull the kayak to more open spaces. I was getting a little afraid for him to go jumping out of the kayak and onto the ice. I didn't want him falling in, the waters here are very cold, at least 15-20 degrees. Ulapa!!!! Meaning, cold in Yupik. We had a VHF radio with us, we called out to people we knew and thought would have their radios on and would come and help us out of there. But we didn't get any response back. Our radio wasn't working! We didn't give up, we had another to keep calm, we had no time to panic. We just knew we had to get out of there fast and before it got colder out. It was drizzling, so I put the girls hoods on to keep them warm and dry, I wasn't sure how long or late we'd be out there or even if we'd get out. We saw some guys at the beach, at firls we though, " Hey, they saw us, their coming to help us out!" We were happy and excited and thought help was heading our way. But no, we called and called. I tried whistling their way, but no, they didn't hear us. They were out to hunt seals. We left at about 7pm and didn't make it home till near 10pm. It may have not seem long, but sure felt long enough trying to get out of the ice. You can see in one of the pictures St.Michael was so close but, yet so far for us. But we made it home, girls had no idea we were in trouble, but we did and we had to get our girls home and on land safely.
