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!