Kaylee with her Jensen cousins 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.
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.
Kaylee meets Jaxon 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.
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.
Kaylee with McKennah and Jaxon 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.
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.
Kaylee showing off all the boxes that need to be unpacked 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.
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.
