Moab to California

Chris handled another busy week in the office and really loves learning from dad. Instead of just going on fun hikes by myself while he works, I started to get some pre-season work hours in at the river company's warehouse. We both had some long days, but it feels good to be working hard and saving up for school.

On Tuesday was Utah's republican caucus, and despite Moab's dominant liberal population, we had a good turnout. Chris mentioned it was almost like a church function because he saw so many people from the stake. With the way absentee ballots work, neither Chris nor I had ever been to caucus, so it felt good to participate in the election process.

The line was out the door!

Early in the week we went climbing on Wall Street and brought Jacob along. That boy slayed the routes! We were so impressed with his ability to complete intermediate climbs - especially since it was only his second time climbing. After a year of not consistently climbing, it also felt good for us to come back and do better than we thought we would.

Jacob toproping Lacto Mangulation - 5.10b

Much to Matthew's disappointment, both he and Olivia were too small to fit any of the climbing gear we own and therefore were unable to join us on the climbing adventure. We tried making it up to them by taking them out for a hike on Wednesday. Chris told us of this secret hike in Arches that goes out to a giant tunnel arch. It's an amazing hike, and barely anybody knows of it as it's not listed in any of the Arches pamphlets and doesn't even have a trail marker by the road. We spent hours hiking, and bushwhacking, as Chris lead the way on this hike he himself had only done once before about 6 years ago. Well, we never actually found this mysterious and secret tunnel arch. Nonetheless we still had a lot of fun hiking, and the kids absolutely loved the sand hills. Even though we never found our intended destination, we had a blast on our journey.

Matthew's bouquet for me - watch out ladies!

No joke - the piles of sand in Olivia's shoes.

Friday morning Chris and I woke up early and hit the road for a full day's drive to Fortuna, California - the start of our week long "Chris's Mission Tour/Meet Dani's Grandpa Adventure."

We spent Easter weekend with a couple that Chris had baptized three years ago (Saturday marked 3 years to the day!) that had moved north after their baptism. They have two of the sweetest girls we know. We had the greatest morning just chatting with all of them at their home as they got caught up with Chris and I got to know them better. In the afternoon we attempted to go out to the beach, but a storm a couple days earlier had gotten rid of all the parking spots and it started to rain. Instead they took us on a tour of the Redwoods and the Avenue of the Giants. Standing next to those giant trees is an easy way to feel small! The father had grown up in the area and he was the best tour guide we could have asked for. We had a nice evening with the family at home. On Sunday we went to church with them and stayed long enough to open Easter baskets with the girls (They even made Chris and I an AWESOME Easter basket). After that we hit the road to spend the next couple of nights with my grandpa in Rancho Cordova.

Our Easter Basket :)

Exploring an old railroad trestle 

See the fish up there? That was the high water mark from the 1964 flood that took out entire towns in Humbolt County.

Drive-thru Tree!

Remember to pray and remember to play,

Mr. & Mrs. Andrew

Ice Climbing and Northern Lights

Monday morning we got up before the sun did and headed to West Glacier trailhead. We met up with a couple guys from our ward to do some ice climbing on the glacier. Once we made it to the glacier the real adventure began as we put on crampons to trek across the glacier and find a good spot to climb. Chris was able to borrow a pair of ice climbing boots in his size with matching crampons, but I was too small to fit any of the men's gear. Instead I borrowed a pair of one-size-fits-all adjustable crampons that worked fairly well. They occasionally fell off my hiking boots, only making me realize how utterly useless my naked boots were against the slick glacier ice.

We both LOVED ice climbing! It was so fun to use the ice axes to get up a wall of ice.  The hardest part of the day was crossing the glacier to find a spot to climb - it's nerve wracking to trek around huge crevasses and bottomless moulins (like glacial storm-drains that flow to the terminus of the glacier) while holding an ice ax to self-arrest if you were to slip and fall (something I'm really good at even when there's not ice). All-in-all it was a fantastic day, and we are so grateful for the Tingey brothers for bringing us along on this adventure.

Tuesday morning was a different type of adventure as we spent the morning babysitting little Liesel - Ben and Camille's perfect baby girl. We had fun talking her on a walk, making her giggle, and just watching how cute she is. However, the best part was probably how Chris willingly volunteered to change her diaper!

On Wednesday there was a high chance of the Northern Lights coming out to dance, so we went on a late night hike up to the John Muir Cabin. Ben let Chris borrow his tripod and nice camera again (thanks Ben) and Lady Aurora did not disappoint. We've seen the northern lights several times now, but the show this evening put everything else to shame. Even though some of these pictures are out of focus, we figured they were all worth sharing just to give you a glimpse at how much the lights changed and danced throughout the night.

It started out pretty quiet....

 Then it grew stronger...

And before we knew it we had a fast-moving, color-changing light show that could rival any rock concert!

As it died down long ribbons of light pulsed across the starry night sky.

And before we knew it the show was over. The warm cabin called our numb toes and freezing noses in for a good night's rest. 

An Alaskan sunrise from the front porch (the only kind Chris will watch, because it's late enough he doesn't have to wake up early). 

All weekend I worked downtown for a conference ACSA (my downtown job) was putting on. Chris took advantage of me being gone on Saturday to have a "man date" with Ben and take more pictures.

Long exposure at Amalga Harbor

Remember to pray and remember to play,

Mr. & Mrs. Andrew

Birthday with a Bang

This week has been perfect. Dani planned a man-cation for my birthday on Wednesday! She bought me a box of bullets and we went out shooting at the range, and after that we exhausted ourselves climbing at the gym. She surprised me by preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner with all my favorite foods - bacon, raspberries, havarti cheese, and marinated steak.

I also enjoyed receiving birthday cards and calls from the Roylances, Naomi, both grandparents, and texts from several other family members and friends. Best birthday ever.

Slow-motion captured the muzzle-flash from my handgun. Sweet!

Despite my advanced age, that is not a dad-pooch around my belly.
My under-shirt was just bunched up beneath my tshirt. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Best marinated steak I've ever had!

Dani totally made this day awesome. I sure am lucky to call her mine - she's my greatest blessing!

Orcas in the Channel

Let's start this week's post with the "boring" stuff:

• Christopher is KILLING it in his classes. On top of working full-time he is taking 7 credits split between math and statistics, and he's being the smartest-mostattractivest-nerd in class. He took an exam in each class this week and scored 100% on both! I'm one proud wife.
• I'm loving my second job working for the Alaska Council of School Administrators. I go in four days a week in the morning before we head to the B&B for our regular job. The ladies who I work with in the office are super sweet, and it's definitely a great experience to build my resume. Plus, I have a lot of fun traveling downtown as I see between 3-6 bald eagles along the way every time.
• Our scheduling at the B&B has been a little confusing for us lately. There has been a lot of back-and-forth over how many days we will be working the rest of our time here. We have our solid five days a week, and every Tuesday it becomes anybody's guess of whether they will tell us we are going to finally have Wednesdays back on or if we are still going to have it off. Instead of getting frustrated by this situation we are taking it in stride, and Tuesday nights have become fun as we plan last minute adventures if we do have the day off.

Now time for the "good" stuff:

• In our Tuesday night scramble for a Wednesday adventure we were able to plan a double date with our friends Ben and Camille. Juneau has been in a constant state of rain lately (as in we legitimately had hurricane warnings this week.... it's SO wet!), so we chose some indoor activities - primarily rock climbing in a gym. Ben picked us up and on our way downtown we saw some orcas swimming in Gastineau Channel! Holy amazing! A lot of Juneauites driving down the highway stopped, and we joined them on the side of the road and watched the killer whales in a state of utter reverence (pardon the grainy phone pictures). Ben is a Juneau local and has worked on whale watching boats for years. He said judging by their movements and the large amount of seagulls flying around that the whales had just finished a hunt and were eating, probably a sea lion. After our free orca show we walked around some local shops, tired out our muscles climbing til our fingers were exhausted, and then went out for dinner.

Remember to pray and remember to play,

Mr. & Mrs. Andrew

We Got a Dog!!!

Just kidding. We did however dogsit for a full week, and took our job very seriously. The majority of our week was simply filled with going on runs and walks with Fynn. This was actually a really good experience for us as our time dogsitting made us recognize that we are not ready for the responsibility of caring for a living creature. Fynn not only needed to be walked twice a day but also needed to be fed twice a day and had to be let out to go to the bathroom. As Chris said, “How are you ever supposed to leave the house?” Not to mention neither one of us enjoyed picking up dog feces and having to carry it around until we saw a trashcan. So we probably won't be getting our own dog any time soon, but we sure had fun getting on some trails with Fynn.

This week we also spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen. After all, I had gallons on gallons of berries to deal with. So,

We made fruit leather for hiking snacks...

Only a small portion of the fruit leather we made. 

And freezer jam!

We also had the opportunity to take advantage of a sunny day and get some climbing in. We both really wanted to climb at a place called the Sea Cliffs (it's super beautiful and you can only climb it when the tide is low or there will be no place for the belayer to stand). After spending some time bushwhacking and searching for the climbs we were disappointed when they were finally found. All the bolts were completely rusted and although some rusted bolts can still be ok to fall on, it's impossible to tell which ones so we decided not to risk it. *We're more saftey cautious than most of you think - take a moment here to just be proud of us.*

There was a climb that was just off the road which we saw driving to the Sea Cliffs so we decided to do a quick climb there before heading home.

Other than all that our week was filled with lots of work, math homework, and yoga (I'm trying to get into it, and this was a good week as far as actually taking the time – Naomi should be proud). Oh, and we watched a really cool documentary called Breaking Ice with our friends Ben and Camille. Yah, we like glaciers.

Remember to pray and remember to play,

The Andrews

Climb Alaska

So neither Chris or I are feeling overly chatty this week - shocker, I know - so you're in for a short post.

We had another full week of work, math homework, and play. The highlight of our week was getting vertical on the rock. Oh, how we've missed climbing! The climbing scene in Juneau is quite sad, especially compared to Moab and Logan Utah. But we both loved how great it felt to get on the rock and just go up. We definitely need to make the time to get in more climbs while we are here.

 Chris has a habit of picking me wildflowers while we are out adventuring - golly I love him.

You'll notice we are starting to make some changes to our blog. It's time to get serious about the PCT! (Can it be next summer yet? We can't wait!)

Remember to pray and remember to play,

Mr. & Mrs. Andrew