Nothing too exciting going on in Alaska. Today, the temperature is 28. It is expected to snow 2-3 inches tonight. Evan is sitting alert and I am hanging out at home. Yesterday, our china cabinet and buffet table from Evan's grandmother arrived. I am excited! I love them! I cant wait to put all of our china in there. It will look sooo pretty! I'm excited! When Evan came home last night, he brought me some really pretty flowers....just because I was having a grumpy day. :) He is so sweet to me!
Evan leaves on Sunday for Cool School which is basically survival training in the cold. He will be gone from Sunday until Friday. So, that means another week for me to be by myself. Oh well....
Hope everyone has a great rest of the week!
~Jess

Evan's home!!

The title about sums it up! Evan is home!! I am happy!! He got back this afternoon and I took the afternoon off of work and went and got him from the airport. Now I am cooking dinner for the two of us. I think he might be tired of spicy food. He requested macaroni and cheese and corn for dinner. He brought me some chinese candy in chocolate and what he thought was blueberry flavored but it actually turned out to be grape. :) He also brought me a black star sapphire necklace which is beautiful!! (That came from Thailand.) Anyway, I am thrilled to have my husband back and I think he is glad to be home. Hope everyone has a good weekend!
~jess

Evan has enjoyed his time in Thailand. He said that it is a nice country. He has enjoyed going to malls and getting massages. I think he even got to ride on an elephant! I am ready for him to come home. I am tired of being home alone. I miss my husband. He says that he is supposedly coming home Saturday. We will see. I will believe that when he walks in the door. But as I said, I am ready for my husband to come home.
My car was towed to the jeep dealership when it had its little problems last week. The people at the dealership were giving me the runaround for 2 days, but what they finally decided was wrong with the car was that it ran out of gas because the little thing in the gas tank that sits on top of the gas and tells the guage on the dashboard when it gets low was broken. Unfortunately, this piece is attached to the fuel pump and they could not replace the broken piece by itself. So, my car has a new fuel pump in it so the other place could be fixed. It was $450 dollars for the fuel pump and $450 for labor. That is flipping ridiculous!! But at least my car is fixed and I can drive back and forth to work now. I have decided that I do the wrong thing for a living. I should be a mechanic....
Valentines Day was kind of fun but lonely at the same time. My husband was gone and so that was a little of a bummer. However, if he had been here, we probably wouldnt have done anything out of the ordinary anyway because we dont really celebrate Valentines Day. I went shopping with a friend and then we went over to another friend's house. We ate pizza and played wii. It was nice to hang out with the other girls whose husbands were gone too. We had a good time. All of those girls were discussing the flowers they got from their husbands. I didnt get flowers from my husband, but he did tell me that he is going to buy some seeds/bulbs for me to put on our deck and on our porch. He said he has checked into it and stargazer lilies(my favorite flowers!!) will grow here so he was thinking we would get those kind. So that was thoughtful of him...I am excited! Hope everyone had a great Valentines Day!
Today is President's Day and I am out of school. It is surely nice to have a break! I am going to paint the guest bedroom. That way it will be ready for anyone who wants to come visit! Im on a mission now! Hope everyone has a great day!

Evan finally made it to Thailand. He was sort of late but he made it. I have talked to him several times on the phone. He said he is having a great time. Thailand is awesome, according to Evan. He has been to Bangkok and has been touring around the city. The food is very spicy according to Evan. The only thing he has described in detail to me is the mall. I wonder why... :) He said he is having fun. A lot of the guys of his squadron that are there have been sick this past week. I dont know if it is the food or a virus, but so far, Evan is not sick...knock on wood. Today was a holiday for Thailand's government, so they were not working today. Today was a holiday for the guys as well. Lucky them. Evan said that he went to Thailand to fly a jet and so far all he has done is sight see and be a tourist. He said he hasnt bought much but everything he has bought so far is for me! WOO HOO! He said this is a great trip and he is having a great time. He also thinks anyone would love this trip. Sorry Lindsey that you arent there with him!!
Last night was girls night out. I am really glad for the other wives of the squadron. I am glad that they are wishing to hang out often while the guys are gone. I would be really bored if they didnt want to hang out all the time. So anyway, last night we went to dinner and a movie. We went to see "He's Just Not That Into You" I wasnt that impressed. It was ok. The movie was definitely a lot better since Im married and dont have to date any more. More than anything, I realized while watching that movie how glad I am that I dont have to date any more. Dating is just troublesome sometimes.
So tonight I went to dinner with a friend. That was alot of fun. We chatted and giggled and shared a delicious dessert that neither of us could have ordered with our husbands there. It was great. Everything was going well. We had fun and finally left the restaurant. I started to drive home and got about half way here on the highway and all of a sudden, my car started acting weird. I was unable to steer very well. The steering wheel got tight like the power steering had gone out. I pushed the gas and nothing happened. I was losing speed real quick and decided I had better get off the highway so as to not block traffic. I pulled to the side of the road and put my car in park. As soon as I put my car in park, the heat started blowing extremely cold air and the oil light came on. I had to call a tow truck to come and tow my car. I also called the squadron commander's wife because she lived close to where I was. Jamee came and sat with me until the tow truck got there and then let me borrow her car. I really was unsure of borrowing her car but she pretty much insisted. So I have Jamee's car now and my car has been towed to the Jeep dealership. I have to call them in the morning and hope they can fix it. I suppose whatever is wrong with it is probably not going to be cheap. Oh well....
So that is the update for the weekend. I hope everyone's having a good weekend. Mine is rather expensive and slightly stressful but I suppose it will be ok. Tomorrow it is back to work. Hope everyone has a good week. I will post more when I know what is going on with my car.

Evan's Journey

Evan finally took off from Alaska on Sunday morning. He had a tremendously long journey but finally made it to Japan, where he has been ever since. He was supposed to only be there one night. As it turns out, he has been there for 3 or 4. They are hopefully going to take off tomorrow morning and will arrive in Thailand sometime tomorrow afternoon/evening. I have talked to Evan twice since he left. He is able to call me from the base phones and talk to me for a few minutes. He said that Japan is beautiful and he has gotten to see some of his friends from Tyndall AFB in Florida. He was hoping to go snorkeling this afternoon. He said that he thinks that I would really enjoy Japan. It is warm, beautiful and there is a beach. It is really really far away from family and friends though, so Im not so sure. But that is neither here nor there... (Maybe we could take a trip and just visit there sometime!)
Evan is safely in Japan and has enjoyed a few days there. However, he is ready to go on to Thailand and experience that country. He said that apparently there is a group of his buddies going to Bangkok at some point in the next few days. He is going to be very upset if he misses that so lets all hope that he makes it to Thailand in time to go. Anyway, hope everyone is having a good week. I will write more when I know more!
~Jess

The best Christmas present ever!

So I gave Evan this sweater for Christmas. He asked for sweaters and I found this one in a thrift store and couldnt pass up the opportunity to give him something that he asked for! I knew he would love it. He seemed less than thrilled when I gave it to him. I cant imagine why!!! At any rate, I made him put it on and let me take a picture. Boy, I hope we have an ugly sweater party to go to. I feel like Evan would have a good chance of winning in this killer sweater! Hope you enjoy these pictures! ~Jess

Well, it has been a while. Im lazy and have been really tired lately. After New Years, Evan and I went to the squadron Christmas party. It was alot of fun to get all dressed up and go somewhere. We had a good time at the party. It was at the Air Navigation Museum in Anchorage. Here is a picture of us all dressed up and looking nice!

After the party, we went out with some of our friends. We stayed out until the wee hours of the morning, but it was lots of fun!! However, that was during the time when the temperature was in the negative numbers all the time. We were walking around to several different places and I had on open toed shoes. Needless to say, I was freezing! But we had a good time. The next morning, we got up and went to the VFW in Eagle River. Every Sunday morning at 11:00, there is a lady who pulls her car up in front of the VFW and feeds the bald eagles. The eagles come from all around Anchorage to eat that day. We got there about 10:50 and we couldnt see any eagles anywhere. We were beginning to wonder if they were actually going to come. At 10:59, they all just appeared out of nowhere. It was really amazing to watch the eagles swoop down out of the trees to get the fish parts she was throwing out. There were probably between 25 and 40 eagles. They were everywhere in all the trees and flying all around. It was a very cool experience and it was definitely something we would like to do again.

After that weekend, I returned to work and life resumed as normal. School was still school. Evan didnt get to fly as often as he would have liked but the went to work and flew some. Life was just rocking along and was going just great until the temperature warmed up alot and made the roads all icy. School was cancelled for 3 days because the roads got icy and they couldnt put the school buses on the road. Evan got to stay home from work one day. I had 3 glorious days at home. Sure was nice to have a vacation! It was made even greater by the fact that the next week we had monday off from school for Martin Luther King day. So I worked two days and then had 6 off from school. It was great!! The only part that wasnt great was the fact that Evan and I had been planning to go skiing over the long weekend. There were several couples from the squadron that were going to be up there and it was going to be alot of fun. As it turned out, we were afraid the roads would be too icy and the ski slopes wouldnt have any snow. We decided to move our reservations to a weekend in March when most of the squadron will be there. So, we missed out on our ski trip but it was still nice to have the time off. The next week was a short week and we definitely enjoyed that.

Then we began to prepare for Evan to leave. His whole squadron is deploying to Thailand for the whole month of February. He will be gone until February 20th (ish). He was originally supposed to leave Thursday morning. 4 out of the 8 jets that were supposed to take off actually did. As far as I know, they made it to Japan (where they were going to spend the night before going on to Thailand) as they were scheduled to. However, Evan was in the group of 4 that did not take off. They were going to be flying with a tanker for refueling. The tanker that was supposed to be with Evan's group broke before they took off and so therefore, his departure got pushed back until Friday. On Friday, the tanker still was not fixed, so they got pushed back until this morning. So, this morning, I got up really early and took Evan to the base so he could get in his jet and go to Thailand. Unfortunately for Evan, (But not so unfortunate for me!) they were unable to take off yet again this morning. So, Evan is home for another night and I am glad! (He is not as glad, as he was ready to go.) Hopefully, they will be leaving tomorrow morning. Evan will be glad if they do, even though that means missing the super bowl. I do not have any plans for the super bowl and frankly, dont care one way or another about it. I will probably watch it for the halftime show and the commercials but that is all I really care about. Anyway, for tonight, I am going to go and enjoy the evening with Evan. Hope everyone is having a nice weekend!

~Jess

Pictures of our house!

Here are some pictures of our house! And by the way, in case anyone wanted it....here is our new address: 19700 Highland Ridge Dr.

Eagle River, AK

99577

Upstairs

The office:

The moose room! (otherwise known as the guest bedroom!)

Our Bedroom:

Living room:

Dining area:

Our kitchen...check out the awesome tile work on the backsplash!

The living room, dining room, and kitchen are all one big room.

This is the view off of our back deck. There is considerably more snow on the mountain and the rest of the world now but this is a better picture.

Hope you all enjoyed these pictures of our house. If you want to see the house in more detail, you will have to come visit us!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone!! We hope you all had a night of fun, friends, family, and good times. We spent the evening with the Yerringtons. We had a delicious dinner and then enjoyed the company and played card games all evening. It was a great evening and a wonderful way to spend the holiday. Today, I am cooking a large meal for lunch. We are having pork tenderloin, for good health in the new year, collard greens, for money in the new year, black eyed peas, for good luck in the new year, macaroni and cheese, because it is yummy, and apples and cinnamon, also because it is yummy. :)

I finally made it back to Anchorage on Monday afternoon. My plane left very early Monday morning from Atlanta. I had to change planes in Charlotte, and Las Vegas. I got back to Anchorage finally after a long day of travel. Evan picked me up from the airport and I was definitely tired, hungry, and glad to be back. When I got on the plane in Atlanta, the temperature was 65 degrees. When I got off the plane in Anchorage, the temperature was -22. WOW! What a shock! I was FREEZING!! It has been in the negative numbers everyday this week. The high has never been above 0. Man, oh man, talk about a shock. I have been freezing all week. I sure did enjoy that warmer weather. It has been nice to be at home and be able to get some things done this week.

Today is a day of good food and football. Hopefully, GA can beat Michigan State. :) We hope everyone has a great day and enjoys the time if you are off of work. We wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009!

Christmas Excitement

Christmas is over now. It has been quite the week. I arrived home in GA on Sunday afternoon after a very very long flight. I was tired, to say the least. Evan and my parents drove to the Atlanta airport to pick me up. It was so great to see my husband and my parents again. Evan's absence was very difficult for me and I now have a newfound appreciation for all the military wives whose husbands are gone for months or years at a time. We stopped and ate dinner on the way home and then pretty much went to bed when we got back to the house. I think I slept about 11 hours Sunday night. This week was spent wrapping presents, baking cookies, and just generally gearing up for Christmas. The Christmas tree had many many presents underneath by the time I was finished wrapping everything. Evan and I made several batches of cookies to give to the neighbors. My mom made several other kinds of Christmas goodies. Needless to say, we definitely did not go without sweet things this week! It was great for those of us with a big time sweet tooth!!
Evan and I enjoyed spending the week with my parents and getting to spend the time together as well. On Christmas Eve, my brother, grandmother, and aunt all came to the house. We all went to church for the candlelight service and then came home and ate a very well prepared, very large meal. It was definitely a nice night. The night ended with the Walton family Christmas tradition of reading the Christmas story out of the Bible and also reading The Night Before Christmas. Eventually, everyone went to bed. It was a late night and we were all tired. While we were sleeping, Santa Claus came to visit. He left many presents for Tim, me and Evan. Evan got some screwdrivers, some legos, some clothes, and a razor. I got a North Face jacket, some clothes, some puzzles, and a bride doll to name a few. We enjoyed getting up Christmas morning to find what Santa had left us all! Then it came time for breakfast. Evan had his famous strata that his mom makes every year. It was quite delicious and Evan was happy that he got to continue that tradition. We began to prepare for the day and after a while, the rest of the family arrived. It went from mild chaos to pretty chaotic for a while. It was so nice to have all of my family around though. We had tons of food, lots of presents and lots of fun. We all ate Christmas dinner and ate so much that most of our pants didnt fit anymore but it sure was delicious! Eventually we got around to opening all the presents. That lasted for several hours and everyone had lots of stuff to open. Towards the end of the night, everyone started leaving and eventually it was quiet in the house again. It was great to have all the family gathered in one place and I was glad to be a part of it. Who knows what the next few years will hold, but this year we had a large family gathering and it was great!
Mama and I took Evan to the airport yesterday afternoon so he could go back to Anchorage. I think he was sad to be leaving and kind of regretted having to go back so soon. However, he had to be back to sit alert for his squadron to make sure the Russians dont attack. It is really too bad that he had to go back early but Im sure he was glad to get home to our house. We werent sure he was going to make it because of airport delays but he managed to get back to Anchorage this morning around 2ish. He told me that he went home and had to shovel several inches of snow off of the driveway before he could pull the car in the garage this morning. Welcome back to Alaska, Evan!! :) Today he started sitting alert and will be doing so until Monday morning at 7:30. Basically all that means is that he has to stay on the base at the "alert hut" for two days. He can not leave and has to always be ready to jump in his jet and take off in case there is a problem. He is glad to be getting this part of his job out of the way for this month while I am not there. I will be in GA until Monday morning. I will take off from Atlanta early Monday morning and will be back in Anchorage Monday afternoon. I have really enjoyed being here and seeing my family and friends. It has been in the 70s all week and it has been wonderful! I even wore my flip flops one day this week! WOO HOO! It sure is going to be tough to go back to 13 degree weather. Oh well....suppose I will be ok!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I hope you all got to spend the time with family, friends, and everyone who is important to you. I also hope ya'll got everything you wished for. We are sorry we didnt get to see everyone and hope to see you all soon. As always, you are all invited to come to Alaska and visit us at any point you would like to. We love having company and have an extra bedroom that always has clean sheets waiting for you! We hope to talk to you all soon!
Jessica

Well, it is finally here! Tonight my plane takes off at 12:05, headed to the land where the peaches grow!! I can not wait. I am soo excited to be going home. I am also excited to see Evan tomorrow. My plane lands in GA at 4:30 pm tomorrow afternoon. Evan and my parents are coming to the airport to pick me up. I will be tired but happy. Evan is getting to my parents' house today. He rented a car from Panama City and is driving to their house today. He will be there sometime tonight. He is driving the rental car to Atlanta tomorrow and my parents are taking us both home when I get there. It will be nice to be back with some warm weather. I will definitely enjoy the time with my family as well. Evan and I are waiting until we both get back home to exchange our Christmas presents with each other. We have quite the pile of presents under our tree at home. :) How exciting!!

I went out to dinner with some of the wives last night at a restaurant in town. Dinner was nice, but boy oh boy were they SLOW!! It took forever to get our food and they were slow slow slow. Oh well, the company was good. We enjoyed hanging out and catching up. One good thing that has come from Evan being gone is that I have made some friends with the other wives. It is nice to hang out with people who understand what you are going through.

I have a cookie exchange to go to this afternoon. I had to bake 10 dozen cookies. Whew!! What a stinking lot of cookies! I baked cookies all morning. This is the never ending project! But the cookie exchange will be fun and I will get to take home 10 dozenish cookies so that is a good thing. I like cookies! :)

For now, that is all that is going on. I have to go get in the shower and eat some lunch so I can get ready for the cookie exchange. I hope everyone enjoys their weekend and this joyful merry time of year!

Yay! Only one more week before I get to see Evan!! His whole squadron has been in Florida for the last week-week and a half. They can not fly in Alaska when it is snowing. So during the winter months, they leave and go warmer places. They leave their poor wives here to freeze their buns off while they go and gallavant in the warm weather. Seems fair huh?? I think not. I pretty much think it sucks! So anyway, Evan has been gone and I am here alone. It is kind of lonely...no, it is really lonely. Our house is empty and quiet. I do not like it much. But I suppose I will manage. It is only for another week or so.
Evan is meeting me in Georgia to spend time with my family for Christmas. We really wish we could be with his family as well. Christmas is such a fun time. It is my favorite time of year. I love all the decorations. We put our Christmas tree up in our house before Evan left. I have gotten to enjoy it at least! It looks really pretty. It has red lights and a star on the top. There are also lots of presents under it! Evan finished his shopping before he left and I have finished mine too! WOO HOO!! That is exciting!
Anyway, I think I am tired now and I need to go to bed. I have to get up and go to work in the morning. Blah! But at least this is a fun week to work at an Elementary School...Crazy but fun!! We like Christmas and Santa Claus and all that fun stuff there! Hope everyone has a good week!
~Jess

Today is the day...

Hello everyone! I thought this would be a nice way for our friends and family to keep up with what is going on in the lives of Jessica and Evan. We are so busy that we dont often have a lot of time to catch up and we are 3-4 hours behind almost everyone we would want to catch up with! The time difference makes it difficult to talk on the phone. I figured if I can post things on here at least once a week, it would be a good way for everyone to know what is going on in our life. So here is the update since the wedding. Most of you know that we went on a cruise for our honeymoon. That was awesome! We had a great time. When we got back, we went to the Chicago area for a few days. We spent the time with Evan's parents and had a great time. They threw us a reception/party to celebrate our wedding with all of their friends and family who were unable to come to the wedding(and some who were able to come!). The party was fun. We talked to lots of people and had a really good time! After that, we started our trip across the country. We drove from Chicago to Washington and had many fun stops along the way. We stopped at the Corn Palace, Wall Drug, Yellowstone National Park, and in Seattle. It was a true road trip and it was a ton of fun!! Once we got to Washington, we put our car on a ferry and rode on that up through Alaska's Inside Passage. Some of the most beautiful coastline in the country, right?? Well, we wouldnt know. We couldnt see any of it because it rained for all 3 days we were on the ferry. That was kind of disappointing. But we passed the time by reading lots of books, doing crossword puzzles, playing lots of games of cards and fighting off sea sickness. (well, i was anyway!) When we finally got off of the ferry, we were very glad to be on dry land. We drove for the next 2 days through Canada, the Yukon Territory, and Alaska until we finally reached Anchorage. What a long way!!!! We were really ready to get out of the car by then. We checked into our hotel room on the base and enjoyed sitting farther apart than just 1.5 feet. We started looking for a house soon after we arrived in Anchorage. It took us a litte while but we finally found a house that we liked and that we could afford. We have since bought the house (it was the third one we put an offer on!!) and are working on getting settled. I will try to put some pictures of it on here soon. I started my job and Evan has started his as well. He is really enjoying his new squadron and really likes flying over the mountains. My job is ok. I am working at an elementary school in Anchorage as the speech therapist. It is ok. I dont love it but I am managing. My kids are great. It just isnt the best working environment. So, I dont love it. It is definitely not as great as my last job was but I will make it work for this year. And who knows, maybe next year I will switch jobs. For now, I will make the best of it. It has already started to snow. We have a lot of snow on the ground. I am not so sure that I like snow but it is a fact of my life now. For now, I am going out to dinner. I will write more later....
Jessica