Getting into the groove!

Kimberly and I are feeling more and more at home as time goes by... dont get me wrong... THIS (tanana) is not home. It is nice to not have to deal with as much homesickness. Im still overjoyed to see family and friends again! Speaking of which, Kimberly and I are kinda planning a trip home. In either mid febuary or early march. We still have to talk to Cynthia and Dale but some time will work out. I have talked with my mom about it and i never mentioned febuary but there is a race (iron dog race)... during this time Cynthia and Dale will be in town, they will be REALLY busy so im not sure if they want us to be around or not but that would probably be a good time to get home.

As for myself I am fasting today. I have found myself, much like a drug addict, not being able to say no to food and when i get it i lack the self control to put a limit on what I eat. not to mention my relationship with god could ALWAYS be stronger, so im working on beating the addiction to food while spending a bit more time with god. MAN its hard... 4 hrs of the day dealing with people throwing all this amazing looking food on the counter. I can do it though im almost there, hopefully only about 2.5 hrs more to go till bed time.

THERE IS SUN!!! yes you heard me, after dealing with a solid month of pretty good darkness, today is the first day it had clicked for kimberly and I that there is more sun! It was dark 35min to 1hr into work (10:30-11:00am) before we got sun then by 2:30-3:00 it was almost completely hidden behind the hill. now the sun lasts till about 4:00-4:30 and it comes up at like 9:30ish.

Also my amazing sister got me a great book that ill be hunkering down to in about 10 minutes. I have also been working on the guitar... its really fun to pick up songs, and it feels rewarding to look at a new song and know what the chords are. right now i have about 2-3 songs down really well... its so much fun!

We love you all and cannot wait to see ya! Hopefully when our stint up here is done we will be able to make it out to yall in kentucky too!

How Sweet It Is....

TO BE LOVED BY ANDREW!!!

hey yall... this is kimberly. i just wanted you all to know that andrew is wonderful and I am so thankful for him. Ya know, this is gonna be kinda girly, mushy stuff but i was thinkin. i saw this article or something a while ago (first off, for those of you who dont know me well...my memory is absolute trash. i can remember events happening, things said, things read....but if you ask me where they came from, who said them when or any type of detail about any encounter i completely cannot remember. yes, at the young age of 21 i am already slipping into craziness.) but, anyway, i was reading something, at some time, somewhere that there was this couple and they had been married for years (like 50) and one way that they always kept loving each other and showing their love was that they would write a simple note and hide it. then, the spouse would find it and hide it again. like the wife would put it in his lunch sack, then the husband would find it and tape it to the fridge, then the wife would put it on the husbands pillow et cetera. well, they did this for years and it always brought a smile to each other. then, it said at the end of the article that the couple always wrote the same thing on every note; SHMILY. so, youre thinking what does shmily mean, yes its funny and would make you smile but how is that romantic or wonderful or anything. well, SHMILY stood for See How Much I Love You. i think this story is just fabulous and i love SHMILY....because it is a simple phrase, easy to write that you can put anywhere and it is a way of saying that you are thinking about your spouse and you take the effort to show them just how much you love them. so, needless to say, whenever i go downstairs there is a good chance that i will find a sweet little note taped to the inside of the cash register, or in the bottom drawer (where we keep the quarter money - we sell quarters so people can use laundromat (try 4 dollars to dry one load of clothes...yikes) and its always a wonderful surprise and sweet reminder of my loving husband upstairs. so, all you men who just gagged your way through reading this....thank youl. it is my thought of the day.
oh, i have another cool thing. i got a phone call from a friend/missionary in huslia yesterday before work who was asking me how things were going and it was so wonderful to hear his voice. him and his wife are splendid and i got to spend a week with them last summer. so, he gave andy and i some great ideas for kids activities and get togethers that i am pretty excited to try out. also, a lady moved into town with her young adorable daughter and she wants to start a bible study. i was amazed too, because she had a lot of people interested in it. unfortunately, it is tonight at 7;00. and there happens to be a city council meeting. andy and i have to make dinner for our B&B guys at seven tonight and another couple has to work. so, i dont know what the turnout will be like, but i hope we get to do it more and more. she is just a wonderful woman and her daughter is so stinking cute. but, anyway, i am so proud of her because ya know....i dont know what andy and i's response wouldve been had we jumped in and said we were gonna do a bible study. but everyone knows this woman and she is part of a large family in tanana and so i think she just did the right thing. and andy and i are gonna do whatever we can to support her and keep the bible study going. yeah!! so cool huh?!
well, ok...we love yall and hope things are going well. later...

Update

Hey all its Andrew (again)

Not to much has been going on since the last blog... I cannot remember all the details kimberly gave on the shooting, but the update is that the shooter, his girlfriend are already dead, died within hours of the shooting (the shooter died on the scene), Cynthias brother is alive on machines but is brain dead... they have decided to donate his organs, so they ran an oxygen tube into him, im no doctor so im not sure of the exact reason but basically it will help the organs to survive. we heard that yesterday morning they were going to pull the plug on him, they said that he COULD breathe on his own but he could also very well just die... Its SO tragic, in the paper it explained why the shooter shot himself in the middle of the street a distance from the shooting... It said he was running after 2 of his friends, i can only assume it was because he was scared out of his mind and wanted help... but they refused to stop yelling back at him telling him to stop chacing them. And then it clicked with im what he had done and he had no one to lean on.

Beyond that tragic story kimberly and I have just been working away... As kimberly mentioned i was installing a microwave that mounts over their stove... im SO happy with it, it looks SO nice, and it feels good to know i didnt cut corners... all the screws are in plus i made a false bottom to cover up all the other holes in the bottom of the cabinet (the one it mounts to)... some from me and some from the previous microwave... it looks SO good and it fit PERFECTLY!! I was telling Tom (uncle) in an email about how that NEVER happens, i always measure 5 dozen times then cut and come up 1/2 an inch short on one side or dont make a straight cut and its tight on one side and not on the other... whats even more amazing is i took all the measurements up stairs and drew all the lines on the board up stairs then went down and cut ALL the holes at the same time then came up stairs and it fit in perfectly and snug on every side). I amazing what can i say... BUT...

Im not half as amazing as my beautiful wife. She works SO hard down in the store, she is a great motivator to help me shed some pounds... while i do have do deal with SO much of her mess, she she deals with my (tiny tiny (haha)) messes. And the best part about her is at the end of the day she still loves me even more than in the morning no matter how the day went... not to be cheasy but it reminds me of a line from a james taylor song "how sweet it is to be loved by you". It is so amazing to be loved by kimberly! I LOVE HER!

thanks for reading the blog... we are getting a bit better at staying current... speaking of which the weather is in the +... so we go from -49 last tuesday night to +5 to 10 today. BUT we have had a constant snow for the past like 3 days, im SO excited to get out on the snow machines, they are SO much fun to ride in deep snow!

tragedy strikes again

Hey everyone!
this is kimberly. i hope you guys are all doing good. ive loved all the comments from you guys and hearing whats going on back in portland, or wherever! andy and i just got the tapes from abundant life.... they have all the sermons on them from the last couple months, and andy and i appreciate them much. weve been busy here in tanana lately. as most of you have heard, the temperatures been crazy lately. we went from the lowest temp in the state (49 below) to a huge earthquake, and now up to like zero or just above. after church today andy and i went for a quick walk. i was wearing jeans, sorels, a long sleeve shirt and jacket. thats it! and at first i was telling andy that it was like summer.....sun shining, beautful fresh coat of snow (that part may not be summer) but after such a huge temperature increase it felt wonderful!! then, right as i said there was hardly no wind, it totally picked up and i was cold the whole rest of the walk! crazy huh?! but andy was so sweet and carried my bible for me so i could stuff my hands deep in my pockets! so, then the "handyman" part of andy came out last night and hes been working on installing the new microwave dale and cynthia bought. the kitchen is a disaster but it is wonderful to have such a hard working husband! and what a blessing that he's so tall! the microwave goes above the stove underneath the cabinet and andy is just the right size to install it. Andy and i are hoping to have a movie night this friday with the kids. hopefully, we will be able to do it at the city hall building and Bear (cool guy whose like in charge of the city) said he would send some fresh pizzas down. yes, in tanana we bring the whole "pizza delivery" thing to a whole new level. go have a friend buy a pizza in fairbanks, take it to the warbelows airport and they send it down on an airplane, then a man picks it up in tanana, takes it off the plane and delivers it straight to your house. crazy thing too is that sometimes it takes less time than in portland. it usually only takes an hour or something. so, hopefully, on friday we can watch a movie, have pizza and talk to the kids to get some ideas for sunday school. right now we dont have any kids coming to church (except maybe the little little ones) so, we need to come up with some ways of getting them involved.
now, onto the latest tragedy. i got a call at 10 this morning from a lady in tanana asking if cynthia had called us to confirm that the rumor that her younger adopted brother died. ( his name is jon and hes like 17 or something.) cynthia's mom and dad adopted him when he was real young from a lady in tanana who just couldnt take care of him and his brother (whom they also adopted). so, i said i didnt know and hadnt heard anything. when we went to church we found out that last night jon was shot along with his girlfriend and that the shooter also killed himself. they said that it didnt look like the son and girlfriend was gonna make it but that they were in the hospital. andy and i met jon when we were in fairbanks. he came by with cynthia's mom and dad after they bought him a brand new snomachine and were tying it up at dale and cynthia's house. right now we are just getting lots of phone calls of people wanting to know cynthia's cell phone number (which she doesnt have because she gave it to nancy when cameron died). so, things are chaotic and really sad. so far, we havent heard from cynthia or dale, but i did hear that cynthia and her mom flew down to anchorage. andy and i are gonna just lay low until they call us. they are already getting bombarded with phone calls that we just want to let them breath a little. but, once again, andy and i and the family would so appreciate all your prayers for everything going on right now. the funeral for cameron is on monday. i feel awful that cynthia is having to be so strong right now. she is doing all the cooking and helping nancy with camerons funeral and now this is her 3rd brother to lose and her sister was murdered too. there is just so much sadness up here and they could really use Gods comfort and peace.
so, thank you all for checking the blog and being with us even though your miles apart. we appreciate you all and will keep you posted.

alone at last

Hey all,
Hey its just a bit of an update... This week we had to deal with people and death. Untill last night there was at least 1 man in the house since we got back. Its not too big of a problem but we were really were excited to be ALONE. We are now that way (THANK YOU LORD), we almost had another bed and breakfast guest last night, he was in working for the school for the day and the runway lights were down, so it was looking like the late flight wouldnt be able to come in. Fortunatly they were fixed and he left.
Not to much has been going on, just working in the store, hangin out at night. I helped dale replace his flat tire on his plane on wednesday. The temperature in tanana was the lowest in the state on tuesday night at -49 but the temperature skyrocketed to 0 degrees yesterday (thursday). We have about a foot and a half of snow on the ground, kimberly and i are excited to get out in it but it has just been SO cold. I did run to the dump yesterday, it worked out fairly well... Cynthia and dale bought a new flatbed pickup with a hydrolic lift on the back... unforutunatly with the cold temperatures the hydrolic fluid is a step away from solid and with only up being powered by hydrolics down just relieves the pressure in the lines... back to the state of the fluid, it doesnt like to relieve with nearly solid hydrolic fluid. Fortunatly i figured that out when it was a bit warmer and was able to get the liftgate from vertical to horizontal and that how i left it... so i just drove out there with the liftgate down. It worked, i didnt dump anything out.
I have to go fax some information to some companys that owe on their store bill so i gotta leave. We love you all and appreciate you reading the blog!

Please pray!

Kimberly just walked into the room and told me that Dale was just told that his bookkeepers son (approx 18 yrs old) was being life flighted to seattle after a serious car accident. As of this time they dont know if he is going to live.

Nancy is their book keeper, she is an amazing woman, a dedicated mother, and she loves her children with all her heart (like most mothers). Kimberly and I got to spend some time with her in fairbanks less than a week ago, a bright smily woman. I have not met her children or husband but i just ask that you pray for them all. This is one of the hardest times of the year with taxes and what not, she has 8 clients or accounts or whatever you would call people like cynthia and dale who have hired her for book keeping purposes, which means ALOT of work this time of the year, and now this.

We know that its in gods hands and we are doing all that we can (prayer).

thank you
-Andrew and Kimbery Long

Home sweet home!

Ok, considering we have no idea where "home" is, i will just assume while im trying to figure it out that it is Tanana. We arrived at about noon yesterday and it is SO nice to be home! To have something to do every day, something to keep us busy. The plan as i mentioned in my last blog was for us to come down thursday and cynthia and dale were going to go home today (friday). well dale called in his flight plan, i drove them to their plane at the airport. Helped them load all their stuff into their plane. stood around while they loaded in then took off once they got it running. I got back to the house feeling like a million bucks because we were home alone again! Just after i removed my cold clothing (it was about -30 during the day today) we got a call from the airport... seems dale forgot to check for condensation on some tray, when he got out to check it the plane died... simple problem, the battary just didnt have enough juice to restart it, so we jumped it which involved dale running home and getting a special set up jumper cables (the end that hooks up the the plane is like a round trailer electrical connector that plugged into the side of the plane). we finally got it started and i decided to stick around till they took off. another warbelows plane took off first, then they went out to taxi, only to turn around for some unknown reason about 1/2 way down the runway... as they pulled up closer i could tell that one of the tires was flat. sure enough.... the tube in the tire blew... he said it happens with the cold weather, he wasnt the happiest camper but he managed really well. cynthia and landen ended up jumping on the next warbelows plane, and dale got his new tube on the same plane, so hopefully by mid day tomorrow we should have the place to ourselves again!

Here in tanana like i said its about -30, there is about a solid foot of snow on the ground. The store is really clean, all the christmas clutter has been picked up and put away, the store is back to just hardware and food... its really nice.

We love you all and it means so much to know so many people are keeping up on the blog!

HAPPY NEW YEARS!

Kimberly and I have been enjoying our time off... our first Christmas and New years have come and gone and it was not as bad as we though it was going to be. Dont get me wrong thats not saying alot considering we were expecting to just about hit rock bottom.... The calls from family were AMAZING! Kimberly and I truely felt at home with calls from family, from oregon to Kentucky.

Some gifts kimberly and i bought oursleves while we were in fairbanks were:

Kimberly - Hair highlights, clothes, ice cream

Andrew - guitar, contacts

Its getting depressing being out here... There is a hole in the wall of our bank account and the money is pouring out of it like water. Kimberly and I just got word that Cynthia and Dale want us to leave on thursday at about 11am for tanana, and they will come back on friday. Kimberly and I are super excited because other than spend money there is NOTHING to do out here.

we did go to Chena Hot Springs last night... was it worth it (20 bucks for us to get in + gas + headache driving in fairly heavy snow fall for an hr and a half)... well no, but would i do it again, yes. It was really cool once there, the water from natural hot spring, thus the name, is really hot. Its nice to not be in. It is said the average tempereature of the large outdoor pool is 110 degrees F. so you walk down a snow covered path in -15 degree F temps and walk down a ramp into the pool. The pool has a rotten egg smell, but its not horrible and the cool experience made it worth dealing with. because the hot and cold extreams there is a fog over the water at all times, so its just a dark foggy pool thats about 4 foot deep, at some times the fog is so dark you cannot see across the width of the pool (about 20-25 foot). It really was a cool experience.

We are enjoying ourselves out here, but we are also excited for our return to Tanana. Kimberly and I were just talking about home sickness, and how we have both been told either "home is where your husband is" or "home is where your wife is"... its just much easier said than done being so young. We are both doing way better but we still miss our familys. When we came up here we were looking forward to going down to anchorage for a conference where we would meet up with our marriage councelors, while they were up here for the conference (we were also invited). Then we found that he couldnt make it, and that it was going to be VERY expensive to go anywhere (from the crazy airfair to the lost wages from not working) and we miss our familys so much. Kimberly and I for that reason are leaning more towards using some time to come home considering we may be spending upwards of a year hear unlike the 9 months we though it would be and there will be no good time to come home in that extra time we will be here. We are still anxiously awaiting our abundant life sermons on cd (what 2 months now) and we are dying to see all the family and friends again! (also shaun i apologize if this is the first you have heard of this, kimberly sent an email to you earlier and im assuming that you would recieve that before seeing this).