Shop til you Drop

This is how we rolled out of Houston, AK leaving Greg and Aimee's house. Remember Ray Johnson, the pilot who flew us out of Galena? That's his red truck that he let us borrow. All 5 of us can fit in it, and it can pull a heavy load, so it was exactly what we needed to do all our shopping in Fairbanks. How wonderful!

So, you are probably wondering why the big load of stuff. Our friend Gunner (from Galena) was giving away a boat on a trailer that was in Anchorage, so we accepted the offer. We bought a 3 wheeler and snow machine and sled through Craig's list sometime in April. Thanks to our friend Chris Hoffmeyer in Anchorage for looking at the 3 wheeler and making the transaction happen, and thanks to Greg for checking out the snow machine and making that happen.

So as you can see Chris did some work to the trailer to be able to put the snow machine and then the boat on it. The truck bed contains the 3 wheeler, other 3 wheeler parts, a rocking horse (hand-me-down from Nate), and a bicycle.

It was a 6 hour drive to Fairbanks and part of it was going through Denali State Park. The drive was really beautiful. Other details that God took care of...We needed a place to stay while in Fairbanks and a hotel was not in our budget. Chris had a contact with JR, a youth pastor at a church there. We asked if anyone at his church would be willing to house us for the week. His answer: The Seegers. We made some wonderful new friends, Bob and Debbie Seeger. They were wonderful hosts and loved and cared for us like family. We were even treated to homemade banana pancakes one morning!

Also, do you know what its like to grocery shop with 3 preschoolers? Lots of you do, and I just didn't see how we could possibly survive that for 3 days and actually get anything done. Jason and Kim and the kids decided to do their shopping a week early in Fairbanks just so they could help us, so they drove up with us. Such a blessing to have older nieces who like to be helpful! The kids played at JR's church during the day with cousins while we did our shopping.
This was our receipt from Wal Mart. FYI: Wal-Mart will allow 503 line items to be rung up before it shuts down and insists you pay before scanning anything else. We had 7 or 8 carts worth of stuff. I felt like an extreme coupon-er when I began parking my carts in line at the register. I explained to the cashier that I just lived in the bush. You would not believe that all the employees we dealt with were so kind, helpful, and patient. I've never seen that many happy employees at a Wal-Mart.
The next day we picked up our click n pull order at Sam's. We got this used crate from a trucking company for free. Chris did a few minor repairs, and we were ready to load. Click n pull is an amazing feature at Sam's. If you are not familiar with it, basically you place your order on line, they pull it off the shelf for you, and you pick it up and pay. No lifting (other than loading it into the crate), pushing carts around, etc.

That would be my dining room chairs in the boxes on the far left. :) I got the very last table and chair set (of the kind we picked out) in the store. :) I can't remember if I sold my table cloths, or gave them away, or boxed them up. Hmm.

All done and full to the max. In case you were wondering, this crate weighed 3,320 pounds. We filled another crate 3/4 full with our Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer purchases. Oh, plus a few home items like a freezer, couple of storage cabinets for the bathrooms, and blinds for the windows. Oh, and some luggage we could do without for a week or so.
With the crates full, they were driven 40 miles to Nenana, AK, where we paid Inland Barge to barge our goods to us. Its about a 3 day float on the Yukon River.Cara picking flowers at the Fairhill Community Church of God (where they played while we shopped). Daniel (below) played lots of football with the boys. It was so great that they could play there.

So then we were planning to fly with Ray Johnson back to Galena, but the larger plane was having high oil temps so leaning on the side of safety, it was either fly in the smaller plane like last time and have no room for baggage, or fly commercial. We flew home with Era a day later than originally planned. We had one ice chest and 5-18 gallon rubber maid totes with all our frozen and refrigerated items.

Since then we've been settling into life here. I got my pantries cleaned out and ready for the new stuff. Chris did some cleaning out in the garage, and our stuff arrived and was unloaded this afternoon. Let the unloading/unpacking begin!!