experience, WE experienced!

As for how pictures go, our camera has decided it was tired of taking pictures how we wanted them. The zoom in button shuts the camera off. This after realizing the two outer covers encasing the guts of the camera were about to fall off seeing as like 5 screws that hold them on decided they wanted to go find another job. Also, putting them on the internet has stopped. with the amazingly slow connection up here and upload issues we have had, not to mention the probably about 500 pictures worth of space we have taken since the last upload is overwhelming when thinking of uploading 5 pictures every 15 minutes. While we were in town for Christmas we picked up a 250mb external hard drive and i have just been loading the pictures onto that so they will be ready for viewing when we get home.

Dale is so great! He came out with Kailey on Thursday for a meeting and so Kailey could help us with the HUGE order we have coming in along with him he brought some fresh fruit for Kimberly and I along with a cheese cake and other meal goodies. It ended up being a bust as Brice INC. had the only road to the dump closed from Thursday morning until today (Sunday) and now the back of the store is PILED with garbage and trash and smells terrible because our trash truck is beyond full. The power guy has had some issues with the HUGE diesel motor powering the city this past week. The power has been cutting out intermittently in the night which is all fine and dandy except we have a carbon monoxide detector in our room that goes BEEEEEEP! when it shuts of and BEEEEEEP! when it comes back on which really gets the blood flowing ha ha. When I was bringing Dale and Kailey out to the airport she was telling us a story of how her friends like to go around roundabouts really fast in their convertible, down where she is going to college. She mentioned how when they are all done everyone is squished to one side of the car. Dale said "thats how people get killed" when Kailey spoke up saying "we were only doing it because no one else was using the roundabout and we were wearing our seat belts"... so i spoke up and said "If your all wearing your seat belts how did you all end up on the same side of the car?" Kailey went into a mad explanation dash while Dale started cracking up and told me i'm going to make a great dad some day. He then went on to say how he was really sad we were not staying this summer not because of the work we could help them do but also because we are "really fun to hang out with" and hes bummed hes going to miss the opportunity to get out and just hang out with us. It was SO nice!

We also had the Post Master tell us that we "HAD" to come back next year. She said that we do a better job than ANYONE that has ever worked in the store even Cynthia and Dale, WHICH is very flattering but i know better. Cynthia and Dale are light years better than Kimberly and I, this is their money, their lives depend on this job and some days we just want to sit back and take peoples money (TO PUT IN THE TILL! ha ha) when the floor could use a sweep or a garbage is full. We really appreciate this opportunity to do this, Cynthia and Dale are such great people that have truly blessed us with this opportunity and their friendship.

The temperature is fluctuating from mid 30s to the 60s or so on any given day. The ice is all off the river and big chunks of ice are floating down the river from the ice breaking up farther up. Unfortunately the breakup was REALLY boring all the locals tell us. The water didnt rise much so it wasn't a very violent breakup. in front of the store basically all that happened was the entire middle of the river just gave out in one big chunk and floated past us (of which i have some video). While it may have been uneventful it was still cool though, this chunk of ice was probably the size of 20+ football fields just floating down the river!

A coming home update:
We will be leaving the village probably on the 6pm flight on June 13th. We will then be picked up and taken directly to the airport where our flight is scheduled to leave about 2 hours from the time we land in Fairbanks from Tanana. We will depart from Fairbanks to Anchorage at about 9:45pm and after about a 2 hour layover in Anchorage we will depart directly to Portland at about 1am. We are scheduled to arrive in Portland at about 5:45am on the 14th (Thursday).

We love you all SO much and miss yall SO much! We cannot wait to be home!

portland....here we come!

hey everybody,
this is kimberly. i just wanted to update you all on what was going on. currently andy and i's heads are spinning and we fight each other for back rubs every night to ease the stress. so far andys been the faithful one giving me back rubs when i am tense. i think they just feel so good because one of his hands can cover over half my back! haha. lets see, the weather is absolutely beautiful, sunshine until midnight. beautiful blue skies, the river is flowing just as it was 9 months ago (well, there are still chunks of ice flowing down but its pretty well open.) ive been riding my bike every other day for the last 3 weeks, weve gone on picnics, rode quads and best of all.....andy got one of dales motorcycles running. its old and beat up and kinda slow but wonderful. the other day we went on the 4 mile loop that i ride my bike on and he was on the motorcycle. we were side by side looking like dorks while i was pedaling like crazy to keep up with the motorcycle. it was very fun. so, this is just an update to let you all know when we are thinkin of leaving tanana. we have a team from church coming up on the 15th of june and we are looking forward to showing them around and letting them see our lifestyle for the past nine months and then we will probably try and come home on the 16th of june. this is one month earlier than anticipated which is exciting. we are looking forward to friends and family. i will let you guys know more when ive got more figured out. all in all, our trip has been just amazing and we wouldnt have changed it at all. the possibility of coming up here again next year is open and we are excited to come for the second semester of school (december - june). that way we would be home for friends and family at christmas time and the holidays and still get to come up and see all our friends up here. we really do get sad when thinking of leaving everyone up here. they have made such impacts on our lives and we want to keep in touch and see them again. so, thats about all i have to say. we love you all, thanks for checking the blog.