Kiah's 1st Birthday and a Taste of Spring!

At the beginning of this month, we celebrated Kiah's 1st birthday! It's hard to believe that we have had her for almost that long already. She has been a lot of work, but she has certainly gotten us off the couch during this long cold winter to enjoy some time outside together. So it was only appropriate to spend the day in her favorite place-outside.

Starting with a walk.

And some play time on the tundra with her favorite toy.

Showing off her tricks learned in the past year

Ending the day with a leisurely drive on the ice road. This is the Kuskokwim River in March. They plow the road all winter long, and it's a common way to travel between villages until it thaws and turns into boat traffic!

This was supposed to be a nice family picture, but clearly there is still some puppy in this girl. She likes to break these little "trees" in half just for the fun of it.

It was so good to spend the day outside to get some fresh air and sun! We haven't quite gotten the early spring everyone else has. When it was 80 degrees in the Chicago-area, it was -20 here. But now it's up to 20 or 30 degrees during the day, which feels like a regular heavy winter coat is totally unwarranted. I will never look at winter weather the same. Plus, it's stays light until well past 9:00 at night, almost 10:00 at this point. So we're on the up and out!

Tidbits About a Bethel Winter

A few tidbits about wintertime here:

1. The darkness is really no big deal. At least not for us. Everyone from back home always wonders what it's like to experience the winter darkness up here, but honestly, we haven't noticed it that much. Sure, it's dark when we wake up in the morning and go to work, but it's dark like that a lot of places across the U.S. during the winter months. The sun doesn't rise right now until between 10:30 and 11:00, but it already stays up well past 5:00 at night. I don't think it gets really dark until 6:30 or so. The gain in darkness and then light after December 21st is so much faster here than elsewhere that you hardly get used to the amount of darkness before it starts staying lighter longer. We're already on the upswing for gaining more light!

2. The moon here is unlike any place we have ever lived. Not only can you see it throughout most of the day when it's clear; when it's dark, the moon looks huge and as if you could just reach out and grab it because it's so clear. A lot of time in the dark morning, the moon is hovering really close to the horizon rather than high in the sky, and it just lights up the white winter tundra.

3. Everywhere else in the U.S. may not be having a cold winter, but we sure are! The month of January set a record here in Bethel for the most cold days in a row in recorded history. The average temp was -17 degrees F. http://kyuk.org/bethel-experiences-record-cold-for-january/. That's not including windchill. Most of the month windchill made it feel like -30 to -50 degrees. So our first winter in Bethel has been a milestone weather year! If we can make it through this one, I think we'll be fine. Today we had a heat wave though! It's +30 and feels like +14. It's amazing how warm that feels after having the bitter cold for so long.

Entertainment in Bethel

Bethel, Alaska is not known for being an entertainment destination, but just recently we had one of the biggest and most entertaining events that Bethel has to offer, the Kuskokwim 300. It is a 300 mile race that begins and ends here in Bethel which draws some of the biggest names in the sport of mushing. This year’s racers included Lance Mackey (four consecutive wins in the Iditarod 2007-2010), Josh Baker (last year’s Iditarod champion), Martin Buser (also a four time Iditarod champion), and local legend Mike Williams Sr. (finished 14 Iditarod races). The winner of the race ended up being Rohn Buser who was the second youngest to ever win the race at 22 years of age. These are just some of the many racers who were competing in this year’s race. Rox and I ventured out on to the river to watch the racers take off and then enjoyed the fireworks that followed, and I must say, the race lived up to my expectations. It made me want to be a dog sled racer and race in the K300. Maybe next year! Kiah will be my lead dog. This was truly an exciting weekend and we had great fun!

Holiday Traditions

The holiday season passed by quickly and crazily. It felt like several months crammed into just a few weeks' time. Somehow we managed to get in all of our holiday traditions, with fun new things along the way. It's a little late for an update, but it feels like we are just now getting back into routine after the crazy but fun holiday season.

Our Christmas Cookie Baking Marathon is a staple of the holiday season, tiring as it is.

After a whole day of making a mess in the kitchen, we completed the feat. The cookies didn't look so pretty once we got to Illinois and Michigan, but they sure looked nice fresh out of the oven!

On our way back to the Midwest to celebrate the holidays, we had a day to spend in Anchorage. Enjoying a rare Starbucks date, we had a strange request from a guy who noticed us playing around with our camera: take a picture of him with his shirt off and email it to someone. Turns out, he is an up and coming UFC fighter who was heading to Russia for his first big UFC fight. The head person needed a picture of each fighter before the fight. It was very awkward taking this picture in a public Starbucks shop, but it's a funny memory.

Graduation for my Master's program fell during the holiday season, so I was fortunate enough to take part in that as a way to celebrate being DONE forever! I'm grateful for the opportunity to continue my education and accomplish its completion.

Of course, we had some play during our time off down south. Keegen enjoyed driving some new machines.

We bought Keegen a local fox fur from Bethel for Christmas, which still looks like a living animal in this picture.

Liam is a growing, sweet boy.

A very curious and pensive little guy too.

We came home to Bethel with lots of supplies and goodies in tow to get us through the next couple of months, which we purchased on our way through Anchorage. Even Kiah got some presents from the spoil.

We also bought our stocking stuffers for each other while we were in Anchorage. It's our yearly tradition to go to Target or Walmart, split up for a half hour or so, and pick out stocking stuffers. It's fun to do it at the same time because we always end up running into each other in the store and have to quickly rush away so the other person doesn't see what's in our bin. Aaron did pretty good this year for me.

We ended our Christmas season at home after a busy two weeks of travel by watching the movie Elf with homemade German pancakes, a Christmas tradition we started in Zambia three years ago that we brought to Chicago and now Alaska.

It was so great to spend the holiday season with our families down in the lower 48. It's just as good to be back home in Bethel and being able to continue our holiday traditions here too.

New Year's Resolution

We decided our New Year's Resolution this year is to pay off our student debt by January 1, 2013. It may be a lofty goal, but we think we can do it. Plus, we don't have too much to the point where it is daunting. It's just enough to be a challenge but not too much to be unrealistic. Perfect.

We're not really resolution people, but this one seemed like a worthy one. We just don't want to be those people who are 40 that are still paying of their own student debt amongst millions of other payments, as the interest doubles the initial loan in a matter of years. So on to the journey of being debt free! (at least for a little while again)

Winter Is Here!

It has been a long time since we have updated. Life has been busy and good! Here is what we have been up to:

Winter walks on the tundra

I got to go down south to attend the wedding of this lucky guy. Grandma Jeanne is so proud.

And I got to see these two!

Cutest little guy in the whole world (besides Keegen, of course)

We had some visitors up here too! We forced them to endure the blistery cold, just for the experience.

Snow "machining" as they call it up here

Our first hosting of Thanksgiving dinner! Success

It has been a good few months. We've had some super cold days to the point where 20 degrees feels warm and spring-like. Our next adventure is a trip back to the Midwest to attend graduation from my nonprofit master's program and celebrate Christmas with the family. Of course, there will also be a mini vacation in Anchorage that includes shopping to stock up on some items we need, good food and drinks that we don't get here, and hopefully a little side-trip to take in some mountain views!

Morning Walks

I figured that an update is long overdue, so here it is...

Life here in Bethel Alaska has kept us quite busy, which is a good thing. We are both settled into our jobs and have developed our weekly routines. One part of this routine is the morning walk.

Every morning, weather permitting, Kiah and I walk with Rox to work at the hospital and then return home, about a mile walk round trip. What's funny is Kiah refuses to let Rox out of her sight until Rox gets all the way into the hospital, then she is ready to walk home. She wants to make sure Rox is safe, what a great dog! The morning walk has become a tradition, one that we really enjoy. When we first started this tradition, we made the walk with the sun completely up. Now we walk with the moon as our source of light because the sun isn't rising until around 9:30. We are steadily loosing about 10 minutes of day light each day. That is right, 10 minutes! We also have made our morning walk twice in the snow. Our first snow was last week and we also had a dusting of snow this morning. The snow hasn't stuck yet but I am guessing the ground will be covered in that white stuff very soon. This is very good news because it means no more rain! Our morning walks together have become one of my favorite parts to the day. We have also been going to the boat docks on a weekly basis to take Kiah swimming, one of her favorite activities and ours as well. Although the river is on the verge of freezing over, Kiah is unfazed as she swims out to retrieve her favorite toys. This activity will soon come to an end but we will continue to head to the boat docks every chance we can get until the cold is unbearable.

We also have some knew news since our last post. We invested in a "new boat!" Well, at least it is new to us. It is a 20' Allweld with a 45 HP Honda Motor. What makes this boat awesome is the canopy which will keep us warm on those long 3 hour boat rides to some of our favorite camping and fishing holes. It will be a perfect boat for us and for any guests who happen to come and visit! You can't beat free housing, free food, and some of the best fishing in the world. Sadly we were ony able to take it out once before having to winterize it, but because we bought it in the fall we got a really good deal. Summer can't come soon enough!

Life in Bethel has been good and we look forward to what the future has in store for us, both the challenges and blessings. Until next time, God's Love and Peace...