Day 28 - Missoula to Hardin, MT

12 July 2007

Motorcyle Lotto: Jared won today.

Quote of the Day: “I’m protecting my brain” - says Zander as he plugs his NOSE and dives under. It seems that water can go up your nose, into your brain and YOU WILL DIE!!!!

Ugh - Mike and I are not feeling well...but we have to travel. LOL Few words this evening.....

Visited with Cindy and Emily at a BK off the freeway (this is me with no shower or makeup and sick LOL) Cindy this is becoming "our place".

We're staying at the KOA in Hardin. Wow the stars in MT. I miss them. I cried when we parked here....such a good season of our life was spent here. Our time in Hardin was the only time where I lived in a town with my parents, my uncle and my grams. The kids and I walked to visit grams daily. All the children were home....well the ones that had been born....it was a good season.

Ev had called while we were at BK and wanted to have a potluck. Mike suggested that we keep it low key and that they come over to the KOA. Great. The children played and we visited.

Mom - recognize Grandma Lorraine?

These are our twins ::snort:: They were in our youth group when we were here....and we loved catching up with them and their children

My good friends Cindy and Ev (twins mom)

Sam (Ev's husband)

More could be said, but it's nearing midnight and we have an 0600 pull out call. ::snort::

Lynn, I really, really thought about mailing you a pizza from Moose's Tooth.

Photos are loaded from Day 23 - 26.

Day 27 - Marathon Travel Day or We’re BAAAACCKK - in the lower 48
10 July 2007

Motorcyle Lotto: Mike hit it dead on today. I’m still not sure who is where in the contest as Jared and Mike are updating the way to score it.

Quote of the Day: “I want to go back to our Big Old House!” (House in Eagle River)

This was an 18 hour travel day. We began in Anchorage late last night.

We boarded the plane at 8 p.m. We left the airport in Seattle at 2 a.m. We arrived in Missoula, MT at 2 p.m. A couple of us are feeling sick again…..”Flu Across America”. LOL

Moses Lake, WA

We are staying at the KOA here. Nice. We went swimming and then dinner. Mike filled the van with gas, bought a bunch of fruit, and is now swimming one more time with Arielle, Nolan, and Zander. The children loved being able to swim and we’re hoping that they’ll go down quickly if we let them swim a lot.

Zander began swimming under water today....

Cindy, we’ll try to connect tomorrow. If the flu is raging, we probably won’t want to meet…..I’ll call when we have a better idea of when we’ll be in your area.


Lynn, visiting PWOC yesterday brought back memories and thoughts....I'll have to share some soon....but at this point I'm doing good to do the "this is what we did" thing. ::snort::

Day 26 - Going Outside (Anchorage - Lower 48) 10 July

Quote of the Day: “I saw Mr. De’Etta outside and had to come find De’Etta.” ::snort:: Said by one of “my ladies” - Heidi. She’s coming your way Kristine - y’all are so lucky!!!
Would you believe we were out of our apartment by 8:30 this a.m. In fact, we were sitting at McD’s and I was uploading photos. ::snort::

After breakfast, Mike suggested I attend the PWOC Bible Study. What a nice guy. He visited with Ch. M, went and bought new shoes for Zander, and chatted in the halls. I only knew one lady at PWOC - but it was fun to be there. I did meet several new Chaplain’s wives…never know when paths will cross again. Lynn, I met Sherri B. today.

We drove around the back of base one more time......beautiful.

This is the view I saw a lot of in Alaska. LOL Following Mike's rental car.

Josiah and Jamin treated us all to an afternoon at Chuck E Cheese. We don’t have one of these in our towns. It was a pretty penny, but fun. We all got sketches made at the little booth - that was fun. I’ll scan them when we get home. Here they are in the roller coaster simulator.

Stacia loved anything with a steering wheel....

I was thrilled that we were able to catch up with a kindred spirit, Valerie. That was an unexpected blessing.

Currently, we are waiting to catch our flight outside (anywhere outside of AK). Another blessing occurred when we checked in. The lady asked why we were going to Juneau. “Um….because that’s where the free tickets go!” ::snort:: She changed our tickets and has us all sitting next to each other….flying from Anchorage - Seattle NON STOP. We won’t have a 6 hour layover in Juneau. We leave an hour later here….but we’ll arrive in WA at midnight instead of 4 a.m. Breakfast in Spokane? LOL

This was a great trip. We’ve had several offers to stay at other’s homes next time we are up. The boys really, really want to come up next summer for a fishing trip. It’s being billed as a “senior trip”. We shall see how much $ they save towards it. I belive next time that we will rent a couple of trailers from the base and stay at the fam camp....or stay at someone's home....Maybe we should plan a "reunion camping trip to EAFB Fam Camp". ::snort::

Saying goodbye to AK again is tough, but we know that God moves us and that HE has a reason for moving us to the places He moves us. He has people for us to touch and people to touch US ….and so we rest in the process. . . But sometimes we are sad. LOL

Day 18 - Photos

Picnic at the back of the church (Jared must have been chasing Stacia - there are only seven children here - this was our goodbye to the girls)

Tickle Time

Mike took us to DQ after saying goodbye to the girls - can you say COMFORT FOOD???

Japanese Gardens

The Car....like mother, like daughter, like granddaughter

I'd started this one about a week ago. From now on I'll put the photos in the post that tells about them.....to read about this - it's DAY 18. ::snort::

Day 25 - Eagle River/ Anchorage AK - 9 July

Quote of the Day: “Oh, De’Etta. I wondered what all the screaming was about.” Quote by Bernard from our Elmendorf Gospel Service. God is so good. We couldn’t make it to the gospel service as Mike was sick yesterday. Monica and Quincy told us that they had a softball game tonight. We showed up and watched one of their first wins…..I was quiet and visited with spectators until the team got off the field. Then I simply had to yell….”Cole”. My dear friend Nichole, spotted me and returned the yell. Then Monica, Elvie…..oh it was great. I miss “my ladies” but God moves us on for reasons. Sweet fellowship.

We woke up this a.m. with the knowledge that this was our LAST full day in Alaska weighing on our hearts. We decided to do as much as we could.

Mirror Lake: This is a quaint lake out by Eagle River - where we used to live. The younger ones wanted to fish - so we headed out. I used to bring the kids out here quite often. The older ones would hike, fish, play baseball or volley ball and the youngers would swing. We’d picnic and fish. It was fun to take everyone out there. Trish, I think Mirror Lake is one of the first places we went as friends…..after the Eagle River McDonalds where we met. ::snort::

Mirror Lake
House across the lake. There are several of these houses being built - love the float planes

No one caught a thing, but we had fun.

Caches: We couldn’t leave AK without caching. We found 4. The 5th I THINK is under a bulldozed field.

One of our cache finds....

Returning equipment: Alas our fun is ending. We returned all the fishing gear to Chaplain Matt B. Thanks, Matt. The men folk are talking about flying up for a week of fishing next year. Gregg, Nichole’s dh, says he can let us know when they are doing a halibut trip next year…..maybe.

Softball Game: Already shared about that above. What JOY to see such dear friends again.

Packing: Mike ran out to buy diapers, pacifiers and ½ a gal of milk. Necessities for our trip tomorrow. I’m doing laundry and packing things up.

Day 24 - Anchorage/Kenai AK - 8 July

Quote of the Day: Arielle to her friends, “We’ll see you again. We’ll see you in two years!” Sadly, most of our friends have moved or are moving this summer. BUT we are blessed that Darshia and Dayton and Tammy LIVE up here…so we WILL see them again - Lord willing!

Mike woke up with the bug. The children ALL wanted to go to chapel and we don’t all fit into one rental car. Mike decided we’d go to the first service and play it from there.

We happened to sit behind a new (to us) chaplain’s family. They have 3 little boys. Zander and Luke hit it off IMMEDIATELY. I offered to pull strings to get them reassigned to W TX, but they thought they’d rather stay here. ::snort:: I used Arielle’s quote for the day, since Zander has so many, but when it was time for the family to leave Zander said, “C’mon I have plans to play with Luke!” ::snort::

It was GREAT to see some of “My Ladies” at chapel. We also got to visit with the last chaplain that was here when we were. He and his family are moving out next month to be Sr Prots at McCord AFB.

After chapel we went to BK with Dayton, Tammy and their children. The kids have had so much fun up here with friends. We “stormed Midnight Sun Park”. We had hoped to make it to the Gospel service, but by this time Mike needed to come home and sleep. Stacia also took a nap.

This paved the way for Arielle, Jamin, and I to head downtown to the tourist shops. I didn’t think there would be a moment; we seized the opportunity. Jamin enjoyed Title Wave (bookstore) and Arielle and I managed to cover all of 4th and 5th avenue before the parking meter ran out of time. LOL

These Salmon Statues are all over downtown

Anchorage is known as the "city of flowers" and "city of lights"....we drank in the lush flowers Back at the apartment, we found everyone stirring but not wanting to do much. We talked about things to do on our last day in AK. The big plan was to drive up to the Russian and fish all day, but Mike is not going to be up for such a drive (total of at least 6 hours) before we begin the flying/driving marathon back to TX. We have a list of things that we “could” do tomorrow. We could climb the mountain behind our old home, go to Mirror Lake, fish at Ship Creek or Eklutna, go to the Wildlife Conservatory, Portage Glacier….and we still have about 6 folks we’ve not caught up with yet. We shall see. I have a feeling we are NOT going to get it all done.

One thing that DID work out was to meet with Dody. She had to pick up her son at the airport at 1 a.m. We met at Village Inn at 8:30 and had a fun visit. Dody is a fellow USAF spouse, homeschooler, and long time SHS member. She moved up here the month we moved to TX. She lives OUT of Anch. We’d met before but this time we had a nice long visit….it was 11:00 p.m. by the time we noticed it was getting late. We asked a kind manager to take our photo. We even switched sides so that the same photo wouldn’t be on both of our blogs. Hmmmm….when Cindy met Dody, Cindy tried to break into a gentlemen’s car…..when I met with Dody last night I tried to leave without paying….just what sort of HomeSchool support list IS SHS? ::snort::