Hopefully this post will "catch us up".  It's a pretty brief overview of the past month, but it will do.

Differences in Dillingham

So far we have been enjoying some advantages of living in a larger community.  Tim is able to drive to work in a car every morning, which means he doesn’t have to get dressed up in heavy rain gear or cold weather gear.  Kaylee and I have visited the library and attending story time for the first time.  Kaylee and I also try to take advantage of the bike path along the road and go for walks when the weather is nice.  We do have to walk over ½ mile to get to the bike path, but it’s really nice once we get there.
 
I have been surprised by the sound of traffic.  We heard 4-wheelers and snow-goes in Togiak, but here I can hear trucks and cars passing throughout the day.  I’m just not used to that anymore and I’m not sure whether or not I like it.

Settling In and Getting to Work

Tim wasted no time in getting to work.  We arrived on a Thursday afternoon (July 25th) and Tim reported to work at 8:00 am the next day.  Kaylee and I spent most of the next two weeks at home unpacking and putting things away. (Although, we did try to take advantage of the sunny weather and take a few walks.)

Tim didn't really have any time to be trained or get accustomed to his job before he was in a whirlwind of busy.  He had one week to unpack, sort, inventory, divide out, repack, and ship all the new social studies curriculum, move office spaces, and prepare for in-service.  His second week of work consisted of administrators in-service followed by new teacher in-service.  His third week of work consisted of all staff in-service.  School has been in session for nearly two weeks now so, for Tim, things should be slowing down and getting into a routine.  

I don't feel stressed out, which kind of stresses me out

I'm used to this time of year being full of anticipation, excitement, and stress.  It's the beginning of a new school year.  I'm always excited for the new year and the fresh start.  It's fun to meet all the new staff and start to form relationships with them.  It's also a time to start lesson planning again.  But, this is the first time in 23 years that I’m not having a first day of school.  My mind has been confused.  I've been feeling the beginning-of-the-school-year excitement, but none of the beginning-of-the-school-year things are happening for me this year.  I keep forgetting that.  I've realized that I'm not stressed out about lesson planning or the entire school year looming over my head.  Should I be stressed out that I'm not stressed out?  Nope.  I don't have to be stressed out!  I'm not teaching!  (Teaching is great, but my new job totally rocks!)

I didn't want to completely miss out of the new school year excitement. Tim was kind enough to let me come to the new teacher BBQ and the all staff BBQ.  We also had a few friends from the school district over for dinner throughout the two weeks of in-service.  I'm really excited about the new science teacher in Togiak.  She is quite a bit older than I am, but fairly new to teaching.  She seems really organized, proactive, happy, and kind.  I think she is going to do a great job in Togiak.  It will be hard at first I'm sure, but I think the students will learn a lot from her.  

Kaylee

Kaylee's adoption is finalized!  The judge signed the papers on August 8th, exactly 8 months after we took Kaylee home with us.  Tim and I have received all the paperwork in the mail, so we have proof.  At this point in time we can give her a name and a blessing, have her sealed to us, get her a new birth certificate and a social security number.

Kaylee rolls over daily now.  She rolls from her stomach to her back, but never the other direction.  She also has been a lot more tolerant of tummy time.  It might have something to do with the fact that she can easily roll over if she gets sick of her tummy.  Kaylee is also starting to put some weight on her arms and feet.  She doesn't push up much on them when she's on her tummy, but when she's sitting she'll walk her hands forward and put weight on her left foot and right knee.  She can transition from sitting to her stomach fairly easily.  I've never heard of a kid learning to crawl from a sitting position before but I think she's going to do it.

Church

Tim and I are now part of the Dillingham branch, which means no more phone church.  We actually go in person and see and interact with people face to face.  I must admit that it was much easier on Kaylee to have phone church, but we'll survive.  Church is from 10 am - 1 pm, cutting into her morning nap and her afternoon nap, which means she generally just misses both of those naps on Sundays.  

Since we came to Dillingham there have been between 17-25 people at church each week.  Tim and I were put right to work in helping in different areas.  I have spoken in sacrament meeting, led music, and played the piano.  Tim has taught Sunday school twice.  A couple weeks ago Tim was called as the first counselor in the branch presidency.  He will be busy with that calling, but we both feel like it will be a good experience.  We are really excited to be part of the Dillingham branch and be able to serve here.  

All in all, we are feeling pretty happy with our new home and are enjoying each and every day. 

Our blog is going through an unofficial change today.  We will no longer be writing about our adventures of Togiak, but sharing stories from Dillingham.  With this change, Tim and I’ve decided to forego the weekly numbering of the posts and may be writing less often than every week. The last couple of months in Togiak I felt like our posts were becoming kind of dull.  I felt like writing was becoming a chore.  We are more accustomed to bush living and the Yup’ik culture and there doesn’t seem to be nearly as much to write about other than day-to-day activities.  With that being said, I love having this record of our life and being able to go back and look at it, so we will continue on if only for ourselves.  Today’s post will be a little bit of a “catch-up” post.

Our summer vacation ended on July 23rd when we started our journey back to Dillingham.  We spent our last few days in the lower 48 with Tim’s parents at his Aunt and Uncle’s house.  Our original plan was to spend the majority of the summer with Tim's parents in Utah in their new home.  Unfortunately, those plans had to be adjusted since the home-buying process took months longer than originally expected and Hal and Joyce didn't have a home until after we returned to Dillingham.  It was sad to leave them and the rest of our family.  We would love visitors in Dillingham.  Please come if you want.  You can use sky miles to fly all the way to Dillingham!  (Just one of the perks of living in Dillingham and not Togiak!)

Tim, Kaylee, and I flew from Salt Lake to Seattle and were able to spend about 8 hours with the Jensens.  We love being able to see them nearly every time that we fly to and from Alaska.  Those Jensen girls are so cute with Kaylee and we love all the good food and cooking that Carmen introduces us to.  We left Seattle in the evening and flew to Anchorage where we spent two nights.    

Tim and I purposely scheduled a two-day lay-over in Anchorage so that we could do our grocery shopping.  We stayed with our friends, the Petersens, (thanks for making room for us!) and rented a car.  On Tuesday night (July 23rd) we didn’t do much besides go to sleep since it was late, but Wednesday was a busy day.  Tim and I spent 5-6 hours shopping.  First we went to Sam’s club, completely filling up two carts.  In the past we’ve always shopped at Costco, but Sam’s club will let you keep things in their freezer for 24 hours.  For that single fact Sam's Club won our business.  We left one cart full of perishable items in their freezer and took the contents of the second cart with us.  Next we headed to Wal-Mart to pick up the items we didn’t want in bulk.   You can imagine that a 7-month-old baby doesn’t really like shopping all day long.  Luckily, once we got Kaylee's car seat on the cart she spent much of the time napping.

After all that shopping we headed back to Petersen’s.  We had a dinner appointment to make, but before that Tim had homework he needed to finish for his master classes and we had totes to pack.  While Tim did school work and watched Kaylee, I madly packed totes as quickly as I could.

We made it to our dinner appointment on Wednesday evening only a few minutes late.  It is so good to be able to see Kaylee’s birth family periodically.  Open adoption is something that completely scared me when we first started the adoption process and continued to scare me throughout the process, but things just work with the Heckman’s and we don’t feel awkward about seeing them.  They look forward to being able to see Kaylee and I look forward to seeing them.  Kaylee got to spend some time with her half-sister and meet her new cousin.

After dinner, Tim went back to homework and I went to the post office to mail 5 totes.  (Good thing the post office in Anchorage is open until 11:00 pm!)  Earlier in the day I had mailed our 3 suitcases and Kaylee’s portable crib. 

Thursday morning (July 25th) we woke up early so we could get out the door and to Sam’s club to pick up our cart full of frozen items.  We stood in the parking lot and packed our frozen items into 4 totes.  We somehow ended up being 35 pounds overweight, despite the fact that we had recorded the weight of everything we had put into the cart to make sure we didn’t go over 200 pounds.  I guess we must not have recorded everything as perfectly as possible.  We needed to head to the airport, so we didn’t have time to figure out some alternative plan with the extra weight.  We figured we’d just bite the bullet and pay the overage fee.  When we check in the attendant pointed out  that we were overweight but didn’t charge us.  There are a lot of people that work at the airport that realize it’s hard to live in the bush and are pretty sympathetic to the situation so they just let things slide.  You never know if you’ll be given a free pass or not, but we were grateful for it. 

Our flight was pretty uneventful.  Kaylee did a great job as she always does.  I know that this will probably change the older she gets, but I’m going to enjoy it while I can.  We got to Dillingham just after 1:00 pm.  I was all smiles.  I was so happy to be home, even though we hadn’t even moved into our apartment yet.  It just felt good.  Kyle and Erika met us at the airport with our car.  Earlier in the week they had picked it up for us from the barge, unloaded all of the groceries, and put them in our apartment for us.  We headed straight to Choggiung Unlimited to pick up our keys and then headed home.  I spent the rest of the day unpacking and moving in while Tim and Kyle made several trips to the district office and back to get all of our boxes.  Later in the evening, Kyle brought over a hot dinner that Erika has just made.  Those two totally took care of us.  I guess we'll just have to pay it forward.

All in all we made it home safely and are happy to be here.  I’ll write more about our first few weeks here in another post and perhaps in a future post we'll give a tour of our apartment.

Kaitlyn had this great idea a few weeks ago about writing down what she thought was important points about her time in Togiak.  I too thought this was a good idea; so here is my list of things Togiak taught me.

I wanted to write a post about Togiak, something reflective and comprehensive of our three years there.  I wanted to think about where we began and where we ended up, what we learned and what we appreciate now that we once took for granted.  Some of the things I have learned may seem vague or broad and others very specific.  Some are important and some are trivial.  Some are easy to express and others are impossible to express.  The purpose of this post is to give the reader (whoever you are), but mostly myself and my family, insight and remembrance of our time in Togiak.

Togiak taught me:

• I learn the most when I am placed outside my comfort zone or am in an unfamiliar environment.
  
• The Yup’ik people, including the teenage boys, love babies.
  
• It’s totally fun to have a 4-wheeler as my main mode of transportation.
  
• Slow down and be patient.
  
• Living without a cell phone is a breeze when those around me don’t have cell phones either.  But oh it’s hard to live without one when it has become part of the culture.
  
• -30 degrees Fahrenheit really isn’t that bad if I have heating oil and proper winter gear.
  
• Fur is warm, really warm.
  
• I love teacher potlucks.
  
• It’s nice to have the opportunity to learn crafts and skills from others.
  
• Kuspuks and mukluks are beautiful.  I still can picture Margie at my first Eskimo bingo party.  She was wearing fur mukluks that went part way up her calves and a kuspuk.  She looked beautiful. Ever since then I have longed for my own pair of tall mukluks.  
  
• Fresh fruits and vegetables are so good.
  
• There are many, many good things to do, but when I have a large quantity of things to do, quality suffers.  It is better to do less so I can do it well; I just need to make sure that the things I do continue to do are the best things.
  
• It’s easy to be mediocre, but there is nothing more satisfactory than knowing I have done something well, the best I could have done it.
  
• Sometimes I can’t do everything perfectly.  
  
• Care packages are awesome.
  
• Working all the time isn’t healthy.  I have to take time away to enjoy something else.
  
• All that stuff I need, I don’t really need.  But, some of it is sure nice to have.
  
• Plan ahead or go without.
  
• Curtains and pictures make a place feel much more homey.
  
• I am so reliant on the Internet, but it’s because it is so cool.  I can communicate with family and friends through email, blogs, video or voice conferencing, and even phone calls.  It can tell me what to do to make my washcloths stop stinking or how to make that recipe better.  It can tell me what that word means and how to pronounce it.  It can tell me how much it costs to ship that box.  I can shop and sell.  I can find cool videos or illustrations to help explain that confusing concept in science class.  I can learn to do that weird crochet stitch or find out what in the world pickle ball is and how to play it.  I can access all the church materials and music.  I’ve learned I can live without the Internet, but I don’t want to.  I rather have the Internet before a lot of other modern-day convinces.  
• No matter how hard I try, I just don’t like fish.
• Good friends are priceless . . . and therapeutic.
  
• I REALLY like my parents.  I’ve never thought of them as my friends, just parents (like there’s such a thing as just parents), but after living in Togiak I felt being apart from them was like being apart from my best friends.  (Don’t worry Tim; you’re my best best friend.)
  
• Moonlight on the water is beautiful.
  
• There’s power in being able to look at something objectively without emotion or placing blame.  When I look at something objectively I can look at what was and the discrepancy from what could have been.  Then, with an objective outlook, I can look at what I can do differently in a similar future situation to get closer to the outcome I want.  
  
• Things I’ve always thought are obvious or simply “the way things are” are really just part of my culture and there are so many alternatives.
  
• It can be very discouraging (and damaging) to be raised in one culture and have your success measured against standards of another culture.
  
• The government’s assistance has very long-lasting, culture-altering, and unintended effects.  Self-reliance is invaluable.
  
• Don’t ship distilled water in the same tote as your powdered laundry detergent and food.
  
• If I assume others have the same priorities or thought processes as I do, we are bound to misunderstand one another.
  
• It’s important to observe and experience.  I gain insight and avoid a lot of confusion and contention when I strive to know and understand others before trying to “help” them or “fix” the problem.
  
• My way is not always the best way. My husband has some pretty good ideas. (That second sentence was totally added by my husband.)
  
• I have control of my attitude and happiness.  I have the power to be unhappy in a desirable situation or happy in an undesirable situation.
  
• There are good people everywhere.

Enjoy the selection of pictures below from the past three years in Togiak.