Home for the Holidays?

Angela and I have been struggling lately with the decision of whether or not to go home around the holidays. The biggest obstacles to our hopes for a Washington Thanksgiving or Christmas are getting the time off from work and money. Angela and I both have positions that make it tough to get time off from work. But I think the larger issues is whether we spend the money now to go home, or wait and spend more time on our vacation and time with our families next summer. Plus we have several short trips that we are taking to Anchorage, so that makes money a little tight right now.

The more we talk aout it, the more we seem to be torn on the subject. We both kind of like the idea of having our own little holidays with just the two of us and maybe hanging out with a couple friends. But we also feel sad because it would be the first holidays we have really spent without our families.

We haven't made a final decision yet, and things might change between now and the holidays to make us lean further one way or the other, but the problem is that right now the ticket prices are way down, so if we wait to decide, we might end up paying twice as much.

Well, we will update on our holiday plans (especially if we decide to do our own holidays, because that will be quite the experience).

In the meantime, we are planning on going to Anchorage in October and December (and maybe November). We look forward to that, as we miss seeing movies and shopping, etc. It can be hard to understand why people love Anchorage so much, but I think we are starting to understand as we live longer in Bethel.

Radio Days

We are a little out of our blogging schedule after our trip home to the Seattle area to see our family, but I will definitely put up some new pictures from our trip down south and from some recent events in Bethel.

But I really wanted to put up a new post about last Saturday.

I had the opportunity to play guitar on the radio. There is a Christian radio show on Saturday nights that plays Christian rock and rap and I was asked to play some guitar with my friend Roger. It was fun and interesting. Roger's wife took some pictures, so maybe I can get a copy and put it up, until then, please imagine me with headphones on in a small studio playing into the mic for about 10 minutes or so. It was pretty cool and I hope to do it again.

Bethel has given me the chance to really start playing guitar again. I play at least 2-3 times a week (sometimes more) at the church. I'm really starting to get a handle on the electric guitar and bass as well, and I think I am also going to be learning the drums (our former drummer just left for Masters Commission in Anchorage).

Anyways, we are doing well. We are struggling with the amount of light already a little as we are down to about 12 or so hours of daylight again (about 7:30am is sunrise, and about 8:30pm is sunset I think). I think we lose about 10 minutes of daylight a day and the darker mornings are making it really tough for us to wake up... I've been late a lot to work since we've been back from Seattle.

Well, we are watching Predator right now (can you believe how far the guy in this movie has come... first Predator, then Predator 2, then Alien vs Predator, then AVP requiem... that predator is one tough cookie and quite a star), and then we are off to bed (where we fall asleep watching The Office season 4 (we just got it in the mail). So goodnight everyone... jim, pam, toby, kevin, phyllis, angela, kelly, michael, meredith, oscar, darrell and especially Dwight. FACT: Bears can climb faster than they can run.

The River is Here

Today was our first time out on the river (The Kuskokwim River). We went with our friends Roger and Charley and their friend. It was a cool experience and it reminded me how much I miss the water. I really wish that Bethel was on the ocean, but being on a river is pretty cool too. We were on the Church skiff from Bethel Community Assembly of God and it was awesome! We stopped at a fish camp (Charley's aunt's fish camp) where they catch and dry and smoke fish at certan times of the year. Then we landed on a beach up river and went out on the tundra to pick berries (mostly blueberries and salmon berries and some blackberries) and get eaten by mosquitos. It was a fun little trip and we are excited to get back out on the water soon. Here are some pics.

Independence Day

On the 4th of July, we saw what people do in Bethel and got to be a small part of it. There were no fireworks that we were aware of (we would have had to wait for 4am for it to get dark enough to see them well). But there was a parade, a little fair (our church had a booth) and live music (which Luke was a part of). Here are some pics.

Busy Days

Its been really busy the last couple months as our lack of blogging may or may not indicate. I have a goal of posting once a week though now, whether it be just a picture or something more significant. For now, here is a picture of our home out on the Tundra and a view of the sky from our home at around 2am these days (when the weather is decent.

Freedom ended... kind of

So a week or two after the last post, we got into a car accident. I was looking left while taking Angela to work one cold, icy morning and hit a car in front of me. Everyone was ok, but our car's front-end was destroyed. So we were again without the freedom of a car. Luckily, our insurance reimburses us for part of the cost of rental cars in the case of an accident, so we were able to both borrow our friend's car (Thanks Alessandra) and get a rental car (which is actually very spendy up here in Bethel).

It took them a month to fix our car, and we just got it back a couple days ago after our trip to Mexico and Seattle. I will cover our trip and some of the new updates (new house, etc) in the next couple posts.

The freedom of the open road

Our car finally arrived. I picked it up yesterday and I can't describe the feeling we now have. I don't know if you know, but it is cold in Bethel. We have been walking a lot (and bumming a lot of rides), but now I feel like I just got my license and have newfound freedom. Our Honda Pilot is a great car for Bethel's snow, mud and potholes, and it is a huge relief to have our own transportation. Plus we had 4 boxes of clothes in the back and our bedding. I never realized how soft our sheets are until last night!