You know you live in Alaska when......

I always love this type of joke....."you know you're a redneck when...." "You know you live in Utah when....."  "You know you grew up in the 80's when....."

My new favorite is, "You know you live in Alaska when...."

Yesterday mac and I walked outside to the truck to run some errands around 1:00pm.  It was a GORGEOUS day in Anchorage with blue skies and a bright sun.  This was a very welcome change as it has just been dreary and cold and dark for the last little while.

As we were walking to the car (bundled up in like 1,000 layers) I said, "wow, it is really warm today!!" I was thinking to myself that I probably could have just worn a sweater today and been warm enough! When we got in the car and saw the temperature, it read 23 degrees.  HA!  I guess when it has been in the negatives, a freezing 23 degrees can feel like a warm spring day!

So.......

"You know you live in Alaska when you think 23 degrees is WARM."

Maybe you have to live in Alaska to appreciate this one....but I think it's pretty funny. :)

Bored......Really Bored.

Last week I was beyond thrilled to have survived my last day at my miserable awful job.  It was SO MUCH FUN to be home and hanging out with Mac everyday.  We were out and about a lot and made yummy dinners and had epic ping pong battles.

BUT.......

Now Thanksgiving break is over.  And Mac is back to work and school, and I'm sitting here at home!  If you know me, you know I don't do well with "nothing to do".  It drives me crazy.  I already cleaned the entire house yesterday, cleaned out old clothes from the closet, organized, read a book, cleaned, watched a show, surfed fb and people's blogs, and cleaned some more.  I'm seriously losing my mind here!!  Hopefully I'll be back to work at my new job by next Monday as long as my background check comes back in time!  If not then my start date will get pushed back another week.  PLEASE NO!!!

I know I will be begging for the days of "no work" once I start working again, but for now I'm ready to be productive again, and I just don't think my house can survive any more cleaning!

Fundraising to bring Maria Flor home from ECUADOR!!

A lot of you know (but some of you don't) I spent three months volunteering Orphanages in Ecuador during college.  To say this experience changed my life would be an understatement.  I arrived in Quito an accounting major and left with a plan to change my major to social work.  My life would be VERY different right now if I hadn't donated three months of my time to volunteer.  Oh, HOW I WISH I COULD GO BACK!!  This experience was truly incredible and I hope to one day work in adoptions myself.

My AMAZING friend Kim Perry and her husband Devin are toward the tail end of adopting one of our sweet babies from Ecuador (something Mac and I plan to do one day!).  They have FINALLY been officially assigned to Maria Flor and are in the last leg of this long, difficult, stressful, emotional, and amazing process.  They are having one last push for fundraising before they get a loan to cover the remaining travel costs, etc. to Ecuador to pick up their little girl.

So here's the deal.  Go to their blog http://strobeliteblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/fundraising-raffle-you-know-you-want-to.html and donate at least $5 to the Maria Flor Fund.  Then leave a comment saying you donated, and you will be entered into a raffle to win one of the awesome prizes they have listed on their website!  (read the directions for ways to get more entries) This is for a really good cause and my only sadness is that we can't donate more.  Let's help em out!!

For more information on the backstory of how Kim and Devin came to adopt Maria Flor, see their blog here: http://strobeliteblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/re-introducing.html

Thank you in advance for helping out Kim and Devin!!

Things just work out sometimes...well, most of the time

It is days like today that I find myself asking myself the same old question: "Why do I stress and worry that things won't work out?"  I am a worrier, a stresser, and a planner.  I go through this all the time when something doesn't go my way initially and then I freak out and then it all works out for the better and I find myself wondering why I did all the worrying and stressing to begin with.  Yeah, that day is today.  Life is good.  Life works out.  We really don't have a whole lot of control, but what we do have is trust that Heavenly Father has a plan for us, and He does.  Today I'm grateful for that knowledge!

Changes

I did it.  I turned in my two weeks notice and survived my last two weeks of work!  I can't really even describe the amount of relief that I feel knowing I never have to go back to my old job.  Of course, with that change comes more worry if I'll like my new job and what challenges that will present, but I'm up for the challenge as long as it is an environment where I am treated with respect.  For now, I'm taking the week of Thanksgiving to recuperate and then I'll start my new job.

One thing I've always struggled with is remember to trust in the Lord's plan for me, and not just make my own plan happen by sheer force of will.  I'm can be pretty stubborn sometimes (shocking, I know) and I like to think I know how things should go.  Over the past year I've been constantly reminded that I'm not in charge and I think I finally got the message.  I'm trying every day to see the big picture, and it is getting easier. Things will work out, don't they always?  In the moment we can't see how, but down the road it all makes sense.  I'm grateful for an eternal perspective and for everything I've been blessed with.

Lately I have really been missing family and friends at home.  There is just something about having people who truly know you and love you and accept you for your quirks and all.  We are going home in January and it will be much needed time to spend with our loved ones.  In the same breath, I can't believe how much closer Mac and I have grown since moving to Alaska.  We have loved having so much time to spend together and having to be creative in entertaining ourselves since it is in the negatives outside and it gets dark at like 4:30.  We have been playing lots of UNO, enjoying our favorite T.V. Shows, and looking forward to our first summer in Alaska....in just FIVE short months. :)

I guess it is time for some new photos since I've been so busy lately that I haven't even processed most of them from the past few months.

Enjoying our weekend getaway to beautiful Seward, Alaska

I can't wait to come back next year when it is a little warmer!

Having fun at the Sea Life Aquarium in Seward.

I love starfish!

Getting a little Salmon Education

We must have watched these Sea Lions for 20 minutes.  They were so entertaining!

Practicing my dogsledding skillz

Mile 0 of the Iditarod.  Can't wait to experience this next year!

Beautiful snow capped mountains EVERYWHERE.

Our first Alaskan Landslide.  We really wished it would have blocked the whole road so we'd have a reason not to go back to work and school, but unfortunately we got around it.

One of our favorite spots....The Wildlife Conservation center!  Almost every time we go we see the bear trainer, but this time we were pretty much the only people there and got to talk to him one on one about the bears.  These Kodiak bear cubs are being sent to a zoo in Sweden next year.  The trainer just stopped going in their enclosement a few weeks ago because they have gotten too big and its not safe any more.  Uh, yeah!  This is how they feed them now...with a big pipe!

We LOVED having Jeff come visit us in October!  We tried to get him to see a glacier while he was here, but the weather wasn't cooperating.  We could hardly see anything, and it was FREEZING!

I'm cold, can you tell?

The Anchorage, AK LDS temple.  I still think it is funny that it shares a parking lot with the stake center!

Beautiful Alaskan sunset

As always, we found a few moose at the airport.  This little moose was just right off the side of the road!

Greetings From the Great White North

So I can never get Mac to post on our blog, but a lot of times he sits by me while I update and puts in his two cents.  However, he has a blog he shares with his buddies back home and occasionally posts on that blog, so I just stole it and am posting it here!!  Some of it might be a little bit of a repeat of my last post but it will give you a different perspective. Enjoy!

Alaska, the final frontier, these are the voyages of the starship USS Little Godzilla (thats my tiny 2wd Toyota!)....Something about boldly going where no man has gone before, star date something, I don't know.

Anyway, as you all know, I would like to be kept up to date with the goings on in your lives, and it's only fair that I share whats up with me.

To begin, Alaska is awesome, albeit the strangest place I've ever been. Tucker can vouch for me on this, Alaskans are strange Jose's. It's hard to explain why it is so weird up here, but it almost feels like it's ten years ago. Red Box came up here just 2 years ago, and Verizon doesn't even exist north of the Lower 48. It's pretty archaic. But like I said, it's amazing. In my private pilot ground school class we are working on maps right now, and every time I open the Alaska one I'm blown away by how immense this place is. The state is 1/3rd the size of the whole contiguous United States, it would take years to even get a grasp of what there is to do here.

I don't know how long we'll be here, but I am trying to convince Jaime to let us stay and work here for awhile. I will be graduating in December 2012 and I found out that at that time, there will be tons of positions opening in Alaska, Hawaii, and Guam. So those might be where I submit my name to work when I get done here. I voted on Guam, but Jaime isn't so hot on that idea, and she wants to live in Hawaii. So let me know what you guys think.

We are not pregnant yet. We just passed the one year mark of trying to have a kid, and it's starting to get to me. I know it can take awhile to conceive, but I didn't know how taxing it could be emotionally. So keep us in your prayers, and we name the kid after one of you...

Anyway, I better sign off. I have a test in my aviation history class in a few hours and I didn't study as much as I wanted to. So adios mi amigos, I shall talk to you laters.

Noteworthy Notes about Life in Alaska

Hi Family and Friends!  I know, I know, it has been a long time since our last update, and to be honest, not that much has happened!  Life has just been so busy and we are just trying to keep up.  So here are a few noteworthy notes about our lives in Alaska:

1. Mac is rocking Air Traffic Control School!  Seriously, he is so smart and it is fun to see him doing so well and learning so much!  His Aviation History teacher was giving him tons of praise because he is at the top of the class and said, "You know Mac, you really get it.  I wish I had a whole class full of Macs!!"  Hahaha, he'll be embarrassed I told you that but I can't help but share.  :)  He was invited to do summer semester next year which means that he will graduate in December 2012 instead of April 2013!!  That is great news, but really crazy that it is only one year from now!  We found out that when he graduates there will be a lot of Air Traffic Controllers retiring in Guam, Alaska, and Hawaii.  I vote for Hawaii but Mac has his heart set on staying here in Alaska for a few more years.  There is just too much hunting and he needs time to hunt Bear, Caribou, Mountain Sheep, and anything and everything else.  We'll see....but right now it looks like we will be picking Alaska and Hawaii as our two states to work in!  (For those of you who don't know, after Mac graduates we will submit two states to the FAA, saying that we will work in either of them.  We only get two states, so we will end up in one of the two that we pick.)

2. We finally got callings in our ward!  Yay!!  Mac is a ward Mission Leader and is loving going to the Gospel Principles Class.  And drumroll please......I'm in the PRIMARY!!  Surprise, surprise! :)  It was a fun month and a half of socializing with adults in relief society, but it is back to the Primary I go!  I get to work with the blessed 4-5 year old boys who are totally crazy and out of control!  They are really sweet though and I think I'll really enjoy teaching them.  Our ward is having a Chili cook off this Saturday and Mac entered the contest.  Keep your fingers crossed that he wins the best Chili!

3. My job is awful.  I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not.  My boss is really quite mean and it is a pretty negative work environment.  I'm contemplating changing jobs, but starting a new job is so much work.  I'm trying to decide if it is worth starting over again, or if I should just tough it out for a while longer.  I just hate having a job on my resume that I only worked at for two months.  It just doesn't look good, so I may just stick it out for a while.  Mac is really supportive though and always helps me change my really bad attitude by asking me what I'm supposed to be learning from this experience.  One thing I have learned for sure is that nothing good comes of tearing people down.  I never realized until now what it feels like to basically be told you are worthless if you make one tiny mistake.  The hard things in life make you stronger.....right.....RIGHT??

4. Infertility is the worst.  This has probably been the biggest challenge of our lives to this point.  We hit our one year mark of trying to have a baby this month and in a way I can't believe it has already been a year, but at the same time it seems like it has been an eternity.  Some of you might not know all the details, and honestly I didn't really want to tell everyone because I didn't want to have to deal with people asking about it, but it is clear that we are in this for the long haul and I might as well just get it out there.  The doctors "think" I have polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS.  They "think" this because I have enough symptoms to qualify for that diagnosis, but I don't fit the profile of someone with PCOS.  They have done a million tests and everything is normal so I guess that is the best they've got to work with.  I really like my doctor here and he is being really pro-active and I'm really really grateful that I found him.  This experience has given us many opportunities to turn to the Lord.  How else do you deal with something like this?  It seems like something so good and worthwhile and righteous should be easy, but for us it isn't.  Everyone keeps telling us that when we finally do have a little baby of our own we will appreciate parenthood so much more, and I think that is true.  We know our kids are out there somewhere, so keep us in your prayers.  We need all the help we can get!

5. We are going to Seward this weekend!  This was a trip we wanted to take right when we got here but we weren't able to make it happen.  We only get to go for a day because of work and everything but it will just be nice to get out of anchorage and enjoy such a fun town.  Our good friends go to Seward all the time during the summer and they say you can camp right on the beach and hear the waves crashing as you doze off to sleep.  Doesn't that sound A-MAZING?  

6. It is freezing here.  Literally!  I got into my car the other morning and the temperature on my rear view mirror said the temperature was "ICE".  haha.  It was below freezing, so it told me to beware of Ice.  We've got lots of snow in the mountains but it hasn't reached us yet.  I can feel it in the air though, I bet we have our first snow in the next few weeks.  The days are getting much shorter now too.  It is getting light about 8:30ish and it is dark outside by the time I get off work at 7:00.  It makes me dread the days of December when the sun rises at 10am and sets at 4pm. I think the only thing that will get me through is knowing that Summer is coming.  Summer here is going to be unbelievable!

Well, I guess that is it for now. All in all we love our lives here and are so glad we took this crazy leap of faith and moved 3,000 miles to the Great White North.  It has been an incredible experience and we are so excited for what the future will hold for us.