Culture Camp Afognak Departute

This is Scott dropping me off at the airport so that I can go spend a week off the grid. Afognak, my final destination, is a small native village north of Kodiak. Tonight, I fly into Kodiak and spend the night in a hotel. Tomorrow I drive 30 mins out and then ride a boat for 45 mins to the location of my camp. Right now, I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight on a small plane. However, it's not as small as the plane Scott had to take on his one of his flights to Kenai. 

This will be an intersting week. Scott and I have a spent more than a week apart before, not that we enjoyed it, but then we could at least call or skype each other every day. Not the case this time. Tomorrow morning will be my last chance to talk to him until next Monday. Also, this is the first time I'm the one who has left. Normally Scott is the one who goes off and leaves me at home. 

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Nothing Much

I feel the need to write something. It's been about a month now, the problem is that I'm not sure what to update about. School is now over. YES!!! I had a special class and I'll always remember them, but it was time for us to separate. Oh, our Seward trip! 


The 4th grade went on an overnight field trip to Seward, Alaska and it was amazing. I will admit that I was TERRIFIED at first. I know how some of those kids can behave and I did not want them doing that on the trip. But they were excellent and the boat crew said that they were actually one of the best behaved groups they had had so far this year. Woo Hoo! Maybe we threatened them enough :) Anyways, we headed down, hung out at the park, went to the Sea Life Center, back to the park for dinner, swimming at the high school, slept at the elementary school and took a Marine Science Education Cruise by Kenai Fjords. We could not have asked for a better day. The sun was out, it was warm and the water was calm. While on the boat, the kids participated in 4 different classes, Marine mammals and seabirds, Salinity, Plankton, and Ecosystems. It was a blast! We were also able to see Dall Porpoise, sea lions, a lot of different birds, black bears, mountain goats, sea otters, and a humpback whale. 

Dall Porpoise

Sea Mammals Class

Best part for me: Scott got to come too! :)

The whole group

Pregnancy

Since the end of school, I've laid around and ate a lot. Supposably that is somewhat normal being pregnant, but I don't really like it. Laying around can be nice to do for a day or so after you've been really busy, but to just not have the energy to do anything, that drives me crazy! Luckily, hopefully that should go away soon. I'm about 12 1/2 weeks now so I'll be starting my 2nd trimester, which people tell me is supposable the best time of being pregnant. 

I've also learned that since being pregnant, dairy makes me sick. That has been an adjustment. I love cheese and it's in, like, everything that I make for dinners! Also, chocolate ice cream. AH! As much as I like sherbet and sorbet, they just aren't the same. Pizza, tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, or even just a nice cold drink of milk with pancakes. Yup, definitely an adjustment. I'm doing what I can, drinking almond milk and looking for new recipes. I'm hopeful that this is just a pregnancy thing and that I will be able enjoy those things again. However, I know that I'll survive even if it doesn't go away.

Class & iPads

Since the end of school, I've been busy. Continuing to work on my masters, I have been taking a 3 week course on Trig and Calculus. It kind of sucks because it's 3 hours a day in the evening, 4 days a week for 3 weeks. Luckily, I'm almost done with it. I can't wait. I'll only have 2 more classes to finish my endorsement, and then 5 more classes for my Master's. 

Besides my Trig and Calc class, I had 4 days of training for iPad use in the classroom. My school is getting iPads for just about every student in the school. I'm excited for it, yet it's going to be a lot and take a while to become accustom to the technology and what it can do. 

Scott has been working hard, as usual. :) He has been so supportive of me and my lack of energy. Hopefully, we'll have more time to spend together now that my class is almost over and I truly have a summer! 

It's amazing what you can think of to write once you get started....

New Chapter

I have been horrible at keeping our blog updated lately. Life has just been crazy! We moved into our new house, both of us were going to school, and I'm into my last weeks of my first year of teaching!

The house is fabulous! We're both enjoying it and I am very excited to see how the yard looks all grown in and green. I know we have A LOT of strawberries and raspberries. I'm going to leave the yard alone until June so I can see if other flowers and plants grown in so I don't get too carried away and rip things out. However, that may be difficult because it has been so long since I've been able to play in the dirt! After mowing lawns/doing yard work for 8 years and then working at a greenhouse for 5, it's kind of hard to not love the dirt.

Scott finished his 1st semester back at school. I finished another semester working towards my Master's. Both of us are glad for the semester to be over. It's not a lot of fun going to work, going to class, and having homework on top of that!

Scott is also a volunteer firefighter for the Mat-Su Borough now. He was hired in March and since then has going through 2 different trainings. Almost every day for 3 weeks in March was Basic training and then in April for 3 weeks, he had Advanced training. Now it is time for a break from training. Although, Scott is looking forward to Rescue training in the fall. That will include extrication, basically, cutting up cars.

Only 9 more school days left in the school year!! Yahoo!! I'm am super excited!!! I've enjoyed my year but it has definitely been a tough year! I am ready for a break to hang out and spend time with my incredible, supportive hubby!

Last of all, Scott and I are excited to start a new chapter in our lives. Come December, we will be welcoming a little one into our small family! We've had our first appointment and first ultrasound which was a crazy experience. I don't know about anyone else, but I still think it's crazy that I'm old enough and mature enough to be married, have a career job, or to own a house, let alone be allowed to have a kid! We're definitely excited about it.  I had my ultra sound kind of early because of all the craziness with the end of school and not wanting to have a substitute for all that craziness, but here is the little one!

According to my nephew, Lucian, we are going to have puppy! Aren't we just excited! ha ha

(no posts on Facebook yet please.... Thanks!!)

Night Out

On our way to see Dierks Bentley and Eli Young Band! :)

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

Home Tour

I finally got our house pretty close to clean enough to share. There are definitely still things to clean up and find home for, but I'm feeling pretty good for being in the house for only 2 1/2 weeks :)

Welcome to our home!

When you come in, you choose if you want to go upstairs or down.

If you go upstairs, here is what you'll see:

the bathroom on the right, the master bedroom and a 2nd bedroom on the left.

This is our living room. It's wide open and I love it!

Some of the furniture isn't ours. The previous owners, friends of ours, left some and we'll be taking care of it in the next little while.

The dining area wrapping into the kitchen. The column in the middle is actually our pantry.

This is downstairs. The door straight ahead leads to the garage. The first opening on the right lead up stairs, the 2nd is a storage area under the stairs. The laundry room and a 2nd bathroom are on the left.

These next two pictures are of one long room down stairs. It is also the least put together. One half is going to be an extra couch (hide-a-bed) and the other half is going to be my craft/sewing area.

I'm going to be painting those tall cabinets and then I'll be able to organize my craft area better.

This is our deck. :) The swing and grill aren't ours, but we have our own grill to put up there. One nice thing about the deck is that it's water tight so the area below it stays dry.

Hope you enjoyed your tour! 

We painted!

So we've been in our new house now for almost two weeks and I am sick of unpacking boxes. I think we've done a pretty good job at getting settled and finding things a home. There is still a lot to do but I was just kind of done with it for awhile. I needed something new...so we painted a wall! This is in our entry way and it makes me so happy to look at it! We found the perfect color to emphasize the quilt but also compliment the valance that Scott made me. The quilt is very special. My grandmother hand quilted it and even though it's hard to see the design in the picture it says "Scott & Stephanie  August 9, 2008 Logan Temple" with a detailed picture of the Logan Temple.  Then we put pictures, our engraved servers from our wedding, and my vase with dried roses that has at least one rose from every bouquet Scott has given me. It makes me super happy to look at it. A lot of work has gone into that wall, more than just the painting, and it gives just the touch to make this house become a little more like our home!

Coaching

I love sports and coaching is a way for me to stay involved with athletics. I've been doing what I can to help get experience. So far, I've coached elementary track, elementary basketball and 2 years of being an assistant coach to a 7/8 comp. league girls basketball. It keeps me super busy, but it seems that I generally get more done when I only have a small time frame to work on it. Anyways, the point of this post is about my 7/8 girls team!

Comp. season is from the end of December until the last week of February. Last year I was introduced to Scott Olsen, a teacher at Colony middle, who coaches middle school ball and the comp team. This year, I joined him again. We had a great group of girls! They came from all different schools but we they got on the court, they were one team. We went into the tournament in 3rd place in the bracket. We beat out our first team and then hung on to win our 2nd game by one point. It was intense! I think I was more anxious and tense than I ever was as a player. At least as a player, I knew I could go out on the court to make a difference. As a coach all I can do it call out what I see and give encouragement, I can't go play it for them. Also, as a player, I know how I played. As a coach, I don't want the girls to feel down. I want to them to do their best so they don't have to wonder if they could have won. I hope that makes sense...

Anyways, we ended up making it to the championship! We'd split the two games we had previously played against the other team. They came out and played hard. We started out behind and just never were able to pull it out, but they still played hard. We took 2nd place (which still got a trophy) and the knowledge that we had at least beat every team in the league once!

Way to go girls!! I'm excited for next year. We only had two 8th graders so if they all come back, we should have a fabulous team next year!

I'll post our team pic with me when I get it :)