So, I should probably just say that the Phillips household is sorry for the tardiness of our posting.  We have had a few other things keeping us busy, however, things are starting to mellow out a little and we can get to our missing posts.

Weeknight Phone Call

Monday and Tuesday were normal days to our standards up here in Togiak.  School demanded all our attention, and we worked hard giving it our attention.  Every Tuesday night Kaitlyn and I watch an TV show called “Castle”.  It’s one of our favorites.  We had just finished that show (about 10pm) and were thinking that we weren’t quite tired enough to go to bed, so we decided to put on an Office episode to finish up the night.  We had just turned on the show when we got a phone call on Kaitlyn's cell phone. This was quite unusual because it was 10pm. Kaitlyn took the call and it was Kristine Heckman, Kaylee’s birth Grandmother (Jessika’s mother).  She was the one to drop the bomb on us that Kaylee was going to come early.  Apparently, when Jessika went in for a doctors visit she mentioned that Kaylee hadn’t moved much recently.  To keep a long story short, they did some watching of Kaylee and decided that it would simply be better to prevent any medical emergencies and have Kaylee be born early.  As you could imagine, when we got off the phone both Kaitlyn and I were a little excited.  Excited may not be the best word to describe that feeling and I’m not really sure what would be the best word.  The closest thing I can think of describing the feeling is to relate the experience of little kid trying to go to sleep on Christmas Eve when their excitement, anxiety, and anticipation make them wide awake for hours.  This is what it was like for Kaitlyn and me.   I got about 4 hours of sleep that night and Kaitlyn got even less.

Kaitlyn called Alaska Airlines that night and the soonest we could fly to Anchorage wasn’t until Friday morning (2 full days away). We decided that we were going to be useless as teachers, so we took Wednesday and Thursday off.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t just walk away, so both Kaitlyn and I spent Wednesday and Thursday in the school library making lesson plans for the next two weeks for our classes.  I feel so bad for our students, I don’t think they’ve seen so many worksheets in their life!  Jessika’s mother kept us filled in as we worked, but it was hard to get anything done as we waited, filled with excitement.  Kaylee Cikiun Phillips was born by C-section at 3:54 pm on Wednesday, December 5th.  She weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces and was 19.5 inches long.  

To be safe, we flew to Dillingham on Thursday evening and stayed at Steve Noonkesser’s house.  Steve is the Director of Instruction and Technology (or something like that) for our school district.  He’s kind of the under-Superintendent for the district.  We had a great visit with him and his family then flew to Anchorage the next morning.  When we arrived in Anchorage we were met by Kaitlyn’s parents, Lewis and Myrna Hart.  It was actually a little bit funny, because they met us on the way to baggage claim.  Just happened to be on the escalator to meet us….good timing!  We were really excited to see them and even more so….the McDonald’s cheeseburgers they had ready for us (you really learn to miss that greasy goodness). We rented an SUV and headed on to the hospital to meet Kaylee. 

On our way to the airport we picked up some flowers for Jessika.  We met Jessika’s mother, Kristine Heckman, at the hospital gift shop and she took us to the Jessika’s room to meet Kaylee.  It was a really sweet experience and difficult to put into words.  Both Kaitlyn and I were really excited.  Kaitlyn held her first and held her for a while.  I was asked if I wanted to hold Kaylee, but I declined, because there were way too many people in the room for me to feel comfortable (I can’t imagine what Jessika must have been feeling).  In the room with us was Jessika, Jessika’s mother Kristine, Myrna and Lewis, and Valorie Rampton and her husband (LDSFS rep).  We stayed there in the room visiting until the attorney showed up, then we retreated to the waiting room and allowed Jessika to sign her legal papers and we signed ours.  Really, to make a long story short….we got there, we visited for a few hours, we signed some paperwork, we left.  We then checked into our hotel, the Homewood Suites off of C Street.  

Saturday morning we did some last minute shopping and then met Jessika around noon.  This was a great time for Kaitlyn and me.  We got a few hours to just be in Jessika’s room with Jessika and Kaylee.  We both got time to hold her and feed her.  It was great; and  difficult to express with words.  We spent most of the day there just visiting.  Bro. Rich Hartman, our LDSFS Alaska case worker came over around 5:30 and we signed the official adoption papers.  We gave some time for Jessika and family to get ready for the placement ceremony.  It was originally scheduled for 5:00, but was pushed back to 6:30 because Bro. Hartman arrived a few hours after he said he would.  The ceremony didn’t really start until 7:00.  Jessika had scheduled someone to come take pictures and she spent about 30-40 minutes doing that.  Afterwards, Jessika shared a letter she wrote for Kaylee to be saved for her when she gets older and gave her a little charm bracelet.  Jessika’s oldest daughter, Mckennah, gave her a gift (which was a blanket) and a drawing.  Kaitlyn and I then said a few words and we presented Jessika a necklace with Kaylee’s birthstone.  We also presented Mckennah with a Build-A-Bear.  Kaylee has a matching one at home.  The service ended around 8pm and we began to bundle her up and take her home.  

Click here to see pictures from the placement ceremony.

We took Kaylee back to the hotel and ordered a Papa Johns pizza to celebrate.  That night was very special to Kaitlyn and me….Kaitlyn got up and fed her ever two hours, whereas, I slept all the night through (probably for the last night).  We spent that weekend simply enjoying our precious little bundle.  We got to video chat with a lot of the family and we were very grateful about how much everyone cared and congratulated us.  Sometimes, it feels like congratulations are said without feeling….but this time all the congratulations received seemed to give us strength, so thank you all.  

Hello everyone.  This is our first post since returning to Alaska.  We count our years from August to July, so in a sense, this is the beginning of the New Year.  This past week was very much a “preparation” week for us as we were getting ready to make the move back to Alaska.

We started the week with Tim finishing his first semester of Graduate School at Boise State University.  He spent a lot of the summer working on classes and finished late Sunday evening.  He did well and received two A+’s.   Tim really enjoys his masters program; so the long days of working on it is equivalent to him playing anyway.

Monday we went clothes shopping and found a ton of deals.  It feels so nice to go shopping for cool clothes, especially when it’s 80% off!  While we were in Idaho Falls shopping, we decided to take a break and go to lunch.  We decided to go try this new place that we had heard about in the news called Chic-Fil-A.  If you haven’t already heard of it, it is a fast food restaurant that serves nothing but chicken as the main food group (as opposed to other fast food joints that serve beef).  Another cool thing about this restaurant is that the founder is a strong Christian, and chooses to operate his restaurants based upon Christian principals namely: not going into debt, closing all the stores on Sundays, and being super kind to all of their patrons.  I have to admit, it’s pretty nice to hear a business operate with a set of values these days rather than operating based on a bottom line.  Anyway, we just have to say that Chic-Fil-A is our new favorite restaurant.  It was simply a fantastic visit.  The food was great, the service was extremely nice and polite, and the atmosphere of the entire restaurant was very mellow and calm (no buzzers or beepers going off in background).  They even had a carnation on each table in the restaurant.  Suffice to say, that we were super impressed and would very much return to eat there again (when we live in a place with restaurants).

Tuesday we picked up our car from the mechanic (we’ve been trying to get the cruise control fixed for some time now).  We picked up our car around 1:00 pm and headed for Tim’s parent’s house in Zillah, WA.  It’s roughly a 9 ½ — 10-hour trip to Zillah from Rexburg.  We passed the time listening to an audio book (which is pretty common for our traveling road trips).  This time we listened to Percy Jackson: The Titans Curse Book 3.  We like the Percy Jackson series.  We arrived pretty late at Tim’s parents house, around 10:30 pm.  We spent the next two days hanging out there.  We stored our car on blocks under their back deck, which worked out great for us.  We also got our one and only chance to watch the Olympics in London.  We flew out to Anchorage on Thursday evening.

We arrived into Anchorage late Thursday evening, around 12:30 am.  We rented a car and were lucky enough to stay at Chris and Julie Petersen’s house.  Chris is our branch clerk.   We slept pretty hard that night and awoke around 10 am.  We started our day by shopping at Costco in Anchorage.  This is one of Tim’s favorite parts. It’s really fun to go on a shopping spree. We spent three hours in Costco for round of shopping number one.  We packaged up all the non-perishable items into three totes and took them, with two of our suitcases, to the Post Office.  We must have arrived at the Post Office at an inopportune time, because we waited in line for 90 minutes before we were able to ship our stuff.  Once we got to the front of the line we were told we needed return address labels on all our totes, something we forgot; luckily we weren’t sent to the end of the line! By this time, it was pretty late in the day and we had scheduled to meet with the Alaska chapter of Families Supporting Adoption leaders for dinner in Eagle River.  We grabbed a quick bite (because we hadn't eaten lunch yet and were starved) and drove up to Eagle River for dinner.  They live just across the street from the old LDS church building that Tim used to attend as a kid.  We spent a few hours with them, and then went back out to go shopping for round two.  This time we went to Walmart, for all the smaller non-bulky items.  We spent another two hours in the Eagle River Walmart.  We filled another four totes with goodies to take back to Togiak.  Instead of going to the Post Office then, because the Anchorage Airport Post Office is open from 6am to midnight, we decided to just go home and mail everything in the morning. 

Before going to bed we packed up three more totes and one additional suitcase and then Saturday morning we mailed them to Togiak, which hardly took any time at all.  We then went to breakfast at the Village Inn and relaxed for a few minutes.  We packed up all our frozen items in coolers and used them as our checked bags.  This is a nifty little trick that saves us a lot of money!  We made it to Togiak around 6:30 pm.  We traveled with Alaska Island Air from Dillingham to Togiak where Tim got an earful from the pilot how Bellview was the original capital of Idaho.  Tim chatted with him for the entire trip. 

We are excited to be back in Togiak.  The work is hard, but we don’t really remember that so much.  We do remember how awesome Alaska is and how much we like it here.  It doesn’t matter how far away we go, Alaska seems to always call us home.