Since Hawaii...

... our lives have been pretty crazy! Dani got a job (the day we flew back to Utah!) as a second grade teacher at Ellison Park Elementary in Layton, and after a few more days in Moab we moved up here. Dani was immediately swamped at work (I can't tell you how many hours I was in her classroom to help her get everything set up, I had no idea how much work it was!) and I started the first semester of my nursing program at Weber State University.

This cute woman's first day of school!

While I studied full-time Dani worked double-time (literally, 13-14 hour days, 6 days a week). Fairly soon after starting her job, Dani realized she wasn't getting paid enough to loose her sanity and knew there wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel, so she resigned so she could function like a normal person. All the other teachers told her that "It's just your first year - by your third year it will be a lot easier," but we're hoping to start a family sooner than that and we felt like if this wasn't going to be a life-long career for her then it wasn't really worth it.

Anyways, I like having my wife back.

School has been going great for me! I'm just wrapping up the semester and I loved just about every minute of it. Clinicals have been in a nearby nursing home, which although it isn't very exciting, it's been a great opportunity to practice my new skills. I'm also working for my dad on Fridays down in Springville, which I love. I've always told people that I want to become a nurse anesthetist, but since working with my dad I've discovered how much fun it is to help people in ways that not all doctors can. I'm considering becoming a nurse practitioner, and Weber just started their own NP program that I think I'd love. Anyhow, I still have plenty of time to determine what I want to do after I graduate.

Not long after moving into our new ward, they called me to my dream calling - the new Scoutmaster! I was pretty stoked to accept this new responsibility. Thanks to mom for buying me a large uniform back when I was 11 (it looked ridiculous at the time but is saving me money now), I just had to take off a few patches and Grandma sewed on my new ones! I am excited to have some awesome adventures with the boys.

I think that about sums it up! Here are a few pictures of what's been going on with us.

Our first hike in Layton was Adam's Canyon.

Adam's Canyon in the fall.

Slow shutter of the waterfall at the end of Farmington Creek Trail.

One of Dani's best high school friends Claudia was in the states from Spain (where she lives)
for a couple weeks and she flew to Utah for 24 hours just to visit us!

Summiting Ben Lomond above Ogden.

At the peak. Mantua and Cache Valley are behind us.

"The stare down"
We nearly ran into this cow moose and her calf on the trail. We didn't stick around long after this picture.

First Full Week in the Desert

After I trained at the doctor's office in Springville last Friday, Dani and I drove down to move to Moab to live for the summer. After settling into the guest bedroom at my parent's house, I had a full week ahead of me of training at the office. I'm working Monday through Friday, 8am-5pm. Dani took advantage of her free time to get out and enjoy the plentiful sunshine on some day-hikes in the area. She sent me PLENTY of pictures throughout the day just to make me jealous:

The Moab Valley from the top of the Rim trail.

Morning Glory Arch at the end of Negro Bill Canyon.

Dani's arm around an imaginary me while I'm at work.

Friday night we went on a short overnight trip to Culvert Canyon. We brought our tent, but the weather was so great that we decided to cowboy camp under the stars. We sure love the desert. After we hiked out of the canyon we stopped at the Moab dinosaur tracks and petroglyphs.

Sleepin' in in the morning sun.

Dino tracks!

Petroglyph panel at the Poison Spider Trailhead

Back in the Promised Land

As Tuesday rolled around we gave some big hugs, and sad "see you laters" to my family as we headed to the airport and flew back to the promised land. Upon landing in Utah we were both relieved with a feeling of "welcome home." Our plane landed around midnight and Naomi graciously let us stay at her apartment for the night so we didn't have to worry about traveling out of Salt Lake. We were grateful for the bed and Chris had a great night's rest while I spent all night bonding with Naomi's cat Simon, who felt that my face was the best place to tap with her paw and sleep on!

On Wednesday morning Naomi, who had spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa Hall's house, drove our truck up so that we could spend the day running errands. We enjoyed a great breakfast with her and then headed up to Logan. After switching out all of our Alaskan winter gear for Moab summer wear at our storage unit, we headed to the Logan Temple and did a session. This was our first time back to a temple since we moved to Alaska a year ago (no road access to a temple from Juneau) and it felt wonderful to be there. We were glad that we took the time to prioritize attending the temple even though we had a million other things to do that day. After our uplifting and much needed session we picked up Chris's sister Anna and headed over to Aunt Julie's house for family dinner. It was fun getting caught up with the family and we definitely felt the nostalgia for our time living in Logan when Julie and the kids would often have us over for dinner.

We spent the night with Grandpa and Grandma Hall, and Thursday morning we continued our temple tour by going to the Timpanogos Temple! We did initiatories for some family names my dad had given us while in Wisconsin. I always feel as though the veil is extra thin when doing the work for family members, and I was once again overwhelmed with gratitude for being close to temples so that I can help those who have been waiting so long for the blessings of the temple. We then spent the day shopping for scrubs and professional business clothes for Christopher (if you haven't heard, he will be working as a medical assistant/student intern at his dad's office, and I will spend the season river guiding). Late in the afternoon we went down to BYU and met up with my younger brother Jacob and his girlfriend Jill. We had a blast hiking the Y with them, enjoyed a good dinner, and played some Yahtzee before Jacob had to take off for work. The rest of the night we spent enjoying quality time with Grandma and Grandpa Hall.

Jill, Jacob, me and beardless Chris

Friday was Chris's first day of work, and he helped his dad out in the Springville office. Since we were still in Utah Valley I lucked out and was able to catch up with a few of my favorite former roommates, and enjoyed a most needed girls day. When Chris got off work at 8pm we had another late night as we drove down to Moab.

Saturday was spent relaxing, unpacking, and being with our family. It sure is great to be back in Utah!

Remember to pray and remember to play, 

Mr. & Mrs. Andrew

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