Update: The Last Few Months

The past few months have been packed with adventures, so many that we haven't updated our blog for way too long. Here's a brief update:

-In addition to Natasha's stay with us this summer, we had Liz's parents from Oregon and Brent's cousin, Chris, and wife Maureen from Pennsylvania come visit us. We thoroughly enjoyed our visits with family.

-In August we went for job training in Hollywood, California to be field interviewers for the International Survey of Adult Skills (ISAS) http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/isas/. While in California we had the opportunity to see Liz's sisters, Julie and Melissa. We had a great time reconnecting with both of them! Another joyous connection was seeing Dave Stambaugh, Brent's friend from ATS who is pastoring at Hollywood UMC. On the way back to Alaska we made a special 24 stop-over in Oregon to see our dear friend and mentor, Don Bubna who had been diagnosed with cancer and had been given 6 months to live. Little did we know that visit would be our last time connecting with him. Don died exactly one month after that visit.

-Once we returned from our significant training and connecting time with friends and family in California and Oregon, we hit the ground running with our field interview jobs. The field interviewer jobs are temporary and may run into January or even as late as March. Like many of the other temporary jobs we've had, they are very intense and then they end suddenly.

-In October we flew back to Oregon for Don's memorial service, it was amazing. Then about a week later we flew to the East Coast for Quay (Brent's brother) and Hallie's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and we thoroughly enjoyed connecting with family. After the east coast we went to California to see Liz's sisters, stay with the Stambaugh's and go on the Warner Brother's VIP Tour. Then we flew up to Oregon to connect with Liz's family and many friends. On Liz's birthday, 10/27, we flew back to Alaska.

-A few weeks ago the casting director from Big Miracle (formally Everybody Loves Whales) called and asked us to be extras in a new movie being filmed in Alaska. We enjoyed a day of filming at the airport.

As you can see the last six months have been action packed. Now we are planning to write blog posts about these experiences. We have several blog posts from the past year that we will call "2011 Highlight..." and we will also have other posts that will be current posts. The goal is to be caught up by 2012!