Summer highlights

As you can see, I might have taken a wee bit of a break from blogging.  I'm back now and I've got lots of things to show ya.   I'm gonna hit the highlights of summer just to get started.  I have a ton of great pictures, but I'll try to keep it sufficient to the favorites.

In June Galena Bible Chiurch took a trip to Bethel to volunteer with Samaritan's Purse as they worked to build a new dormitory and teaching building for the Moravian Seminary there.  We had six from our church that were able to go.  What a wonderful time working together with other people from all over the US.  I was especially thrilled to spend some time with Dan and Pat who served the previous summer managing teams and projects all over Galena for SP.  It was also great to see some students who have attended Galena's boarding school while we were there.  AND, much thanks to our friend Heidi, who was able to stay with the kids so I could go!

Also in June, we planted our garden.  This year Chris built me 2 of these planter boxes to expand our growing space.  If you want to keep your produce in Galena, it must have moose protection on all sides.  It worked!!

The beginning of June we increased our flock of chickens.  My nephew, Daniel, was ready to move on from chicken life, so we inherited his 5 chickens.  After a short adjustment period, all the ladies were getting along fine.  We sure are spoiled to our fresh eggs!

We also purchased 24 Freedom Rangers to raise for meat this year.  They didn't get their picture taken because they were doomed for the freezer in just 10 short weeks.  We butchered in August, and cooked a Jambalaya the next day, and boy that's some tasty chicken!

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Other June things included working on the rental property next door.  The project included repairing the flood damage and adding on a bedroom.  It is finally finished now though!  Preston decided to try softball this summer, and he enjoyed it.  Unfortunately, we flew out for vacation the same day as his only tournament, so he missed it. 

.Although there were many serious fires in Alaska this summer, Galena wasn't in any danger.  We did however experience a lot of smoke.  It made getting outside difficult and really got old fast..

We've wanted to put our canoes in the river up at the Dunes and float down to the boat launch in old town, but between weather, life, and unexpected things, it felt like it would never happen.  The day before we left for vacation, in the smoke, we finally made time to do it.  It was so relaxing and fun!  I can't wait to do it again next summer.

 

One extremely exciting piece of info I'm happy to share is that we found out in June baby number 5 will be making an entrance sometime in February.  After having a miscarriage last April, we were extremely shocked and blessed to find out we were expecting again.  Can't wait to meet our little girl!

July equaled visiting family! We left Galena and headed south for 3 weeks between our 2 families.  We had endless amounts of fun.  Some of the highlights included 2 days at Schlitterbahn water park, touring the NASA space center, a trip to the largest movie theater I've ever seen, eating amazing food, visiting all the family we could connect with, time with cousins, camping, visiting an old plantation, the zoo, tea parties, and lots of watermelon.

Oh, and this girl lost tooth #2 as we were waiting to go through security to fly north.  All it took was a loving, accidental head butt from one active brother. Seriously, our time with family was really great! Our flights home were hard as expected.  Long overnight flights coupled with short spans of sleep in the airports or maybe on the planes was so exhausting, and we had a full day of shopping waiting to greet us when we stepped off the plane in Fairbanks.  We were offered a free flight home (the plane was already scheduled to fly out empty to Galena to pick up a team) which sounded amazing, but meant we needed to get our normal 5 day shopping trip done in 3 days or less.  Well, I'm happy to say we survived first of all, and we set a new record.  2 1/2 days of shopping plus loading the crate for the barge-done!

And this is pretty much what you should look like when you've traveled all night and shopped all day!

This is our Sam's order (the bulk of our total purchases) getting packed into the U-Haul so it can be driven to the barge.  The kids were a great help this year, and we were blessed to have pretty good weather.  Shopping for a year is always exhausting, but the flip side is, we don't have to do it again til next year!

I'll be sharing more about Fall soon!!