The last frontier

We had a studious start to our week as Chris studied and tested, studied and tested, studied and tested, studied and tested, and did great on all his finals. He had a great semester both in school and with his additional EMT and CNA courses and we are super grateful for his education. We still aren't sure where we will be for nursing school next year, but it's nice to know we are on the right path.

As Chris was spending time with his education I got really good at cleaning, labeling boxes, and packing up our life. We've always been such mobile and adventurous people that it was quite surprising to both of us when we realized how much stuff we've accumulated since we've become a "we". No longer can we throw things into a couple of suitcases and backpacks and call it good, now we need a storage unit - and not even the tiniest storage unit, but we needed to go one up in size! We are glad we have furniture and a fully furnished kitchen, but it sure was eye opening on how "adult-like" that seemed to make us now. Luckily with some help from friends we were able to have some extra muscles and trucks that made moving all our belongings a lot easier.

We did take a mid-week-stress-break-date as we used Chris's 50% Olive Garden discount for the last time, and with the gift card he won from having good sales we enjoyed a nice free lunch in the park.

Right before we left Logan we stopped by the Duersch's for dinner and good-byes. Austin was a little concerned that we were going so far away and wanted to know if phones still worked in Alaska. We assured him they did and he plans on testing it out on Monday. Feel free to get in touch with him if you want to know whether or not it is possible to contact those in a different countr....oh wait, Alaska IS in the United States. Yes. Our phones work.

Our parting shot of Cache Valley

After the testing and moving nonsense we headed down to Pleasant Grove for a nice visit with the Hall Grandparents. We loved staying at their house and are glad we had the opportunity to help get their Christmas lights down, clean out the rain gutters, and help take Charlotte's green waste to the dump. We also had an opportunity to meet up with Dad Andrew in his Springville office to do some swapping of items and use Ondamed. Thanks to him we should be nice and healthy up in Alaska! If not, he also gave us supplements to fight off whatever might try and get us. Alongside the errands we had some quality time just being with Grandma and Grandpa. They were worried their fridge was getting too full but by the time we left there was plenty of space. We were stuffed to the breaking point. As a matter of fact, Chris borrowed their bathroom scale to weigh our suitcases before we took off - we did some on Friday night and some Saturday morning. Chris said that in that time he gained 5 pounds!  Maybe it's a good thing we are flying away from such loving family for a while...we're not ready for the kind of weight gain staying at grandparents houses brings upon grandkids as cute as us.

Although he finished his CNA class over a month ago, the state has been incredibly slow in getting testing vouchers to Chris. Finally, early this week the panic set in and he began calling to try to figure out who could test him THIS WEEK. The state UNAR office broke down and finally emailed him his vouchers instead of snail-mailing (c'mon, aren't we in the 21st century?)(and to the wrong address might I add) so Chris got busy calling all the testing centers within driving distance of us. The good people of Tooele took pity on him and scheduled a testing time right away, so Friday afternoon we were driving out there for his exams. Chris feels they went well, but once again we won't hear back for another week or so for them to use the pony express to get his results back.

Finnnnnnnaly, what you've all been waiting for, we moved to Alaska! We left SLC at 5pm mountain time and after many hours of flights we landed in Juneau at 9:15pm Alaska time (3 hours behind Wisconsin, 2 hours behind Utah). When we were on our second plane I noticed that I recognized the girl sitting in the row across from me, and she noticed me too - it was a friend that I had in the Juneau Singles Branch 4 and 5 years ago when I lived here! Chantilli and I remained friends on facebook, but we haven't spoken in years. It was so fun to connect with her and it turns out that her and her husband decided to move back for the year to make some more money before finishing school. Chris and I realized it was a tender mercy running into her as she was able to tell us that Sunday was Stake Conference. Without that tidbit of information we would have been showing up at the wrong time and would have missed church completely!

Stake conference was a really neat experience. There is some amazing strength in this stake, and the spirit was very strong. Chris was utterly amazed when he noticed which wards some of the stake members were from and put together how large the stake was. For example, both Ketchikan and Sitka Alaska are in the same stake as Juneau - Sitka is 165 miles southeast of Juneau and Ketchikan is 286 miles south. Needless to say, we were being put up in a hotel here because our apartment was not ready, and we were not the only church members staying at the hotel. Many people had taken the ferry and plane to Juneau for stake conference, and those who were not able to do so were able to watch it at their local church buildings thanks to satellite transmitting.

Since stake conference was a distance from the hotel we took advantage of having a few miles under our belt and spent the afternoon walking and exploring the area around Auke Bay and Auke Lake. We had absolutely beautiful weather and it really was fun to have a picnic lunch on the ocean docks. We saw two bald eagles and a sea lion! But we were too slow to get any pictures so you all just have to come up here and visit us to see the wildlife for yourself.

Our training started on Monday and the apartment should be ready for us on Tuesday - we'll cover all of that in next weeks post.

Until then, happy adventuring!

Remember to pray and remember to play,

Mr. & Mrs. Eskimo Andrew