Secured Love: In the Life of Everyday Chaos... and birthday party pictures!

I believe I will print out t-shirts for our family if we make it through the rest of this month... They will read :

"I survived a Thornbury summer."

If you couldnt have guessed, we have had a bit of a nutty summer.

When we returned from the states, our family got a short break...just to meet the prime of the Alaska summer activities. Up here, you dont just twinkle your toes in the waters of summer, YOU dive in. You go all the way, or you aren't really getting the most of your summer, considering its only about three months long... This being said, you can only guess how much we have gotten into. And being short term resident and new parents, our family was very seasonly occupied, leaving little time for anything else... Especially blogging! Sorry I have given it the backseat for so long, but it's been very necessary. Now that the weather is getting progressively chillier, I will be blowing the dust off my keyboard and getting back to regularly updating you about life in the last frontier.

Another reason for absence is my computer has been on the no-go. With many weeks of the computer being at the shop and many hours of telephone consults later (and many deleted blogs-to-be), my computer is on a hopeful mend.... Hopeful.

To update you all on what has actually gone on in the last two months and three days of blogging absence, I will make a few bullet pointed sentences, just so we keep it short and sweet...

Let's begin where I left off (I think it was hanging out with Brett Bell):

* Michelle Bell came up shortly after, and hanging out with her was refreshing and a super blessing. It was a good short visit!

* We farewelled some friends and our commander, welcoming another great family to lead our squadron.

* Pulled our first 24 hour suicide fish run to dip-net on the Kenai, but didn't catch many fish...

* Andrew went down under to Australia at the beginning of the month. It was amazing-- and he brought back all sorts of yummies and fun lovelies for Elyse and I.

* The airshow came to town. It was a sobering time as we all remembered the crash that occurred in 2010 when practicing for the air show, but it was also a very good time to really appreciate those who fly and serve in our military, and all of those who dedicate their time to serve others... our nation.

* Elyse started walking at 10 1/2 months and, currently one year old, she is walking like a champ!

* Andrews responsibilities have been changing as he pinned on Captain in August, making things a bit more challenging in the balancing act. Yet he has not flown since Australia.

* We took a camping trip to Talkeetna as a family, got some famous sourdough pancakes and a breakfast fit for a king, finishing our camping trip out in Palmer, near Hatchers Pass and the old Independence mine. It was great.. Bt it was kind of stressful too, so we have taken a break from all of that for a while.

* We met up with a new couple that came from Dover, where our dear friends the Hoppens live. It has been nice getting to know another couple with a kiddo our kids age as well.

* We became members of our church just recently. It was good to feel as if we finally felt a little more settled in Alaska with people who are aiming to get to know the same God we are.

* The sun was out for an unreal amount of time for Alaska, and we soaked up every moment of it (I think I might have even got tan lines! Faint, but there!). We took advantage of it by taking a lot of hikes and runs. It was so amazing.
It was a good thing we did since it rained the weeks following... And we have watched the temperature slowly drop. Ah!

* We have experienced some nutty storms around here too. It's been crazy how affected our area was with the trees down and the power outages.

* As Elyse grows and the start of bible study also drew closer, we decided a new set up for the downstairs was required... Thus, we completely redid the downstairs. Making it guest friendly, kid oriented and study savvy with andrews study area was completely in chaos. After a lot of hard work, a week and a half later, we have almost (there is always more to do of course) finished the our little downstairs haven, which serves all of us with our different needs. It's going to be a blessing in the winter months, even if it didn't work out for the bible study.

* Our wonderful friends came out last minute on August 27thto celebrate a surprise party for Andrew. It was such a blessing to see supportive faces and friends that we cherish sacrifice an weeknight evening for a little celebrating-- we are so blessed by them all!

* Our friend Ashton came back from a long trip home as her husband has been deployed. It was so nice to have her stay with us for such a good chunk of time before she settled into her new house. She's expecting and Baby Augustine will be joining us shortly in October! Yey!

* We got our first termination snow on the mountain three weeks ago.

Dang... Here's comes the winter.

* Our squadron Bible study started off well as we are going through a wonderful book about purpose. It' gotten off to a great start-- please pray for us to continue to thrive throughout the year.

* Our squadron sponsored a spouse flight for all of us gals (and a couple of brave men!) to fly and experience what our husband's do on a day to day basis. Andrew led it up and it was quite the success! We had a blast! (I'll post pictures after this posting...)

* Elyse's little birth friend, Sawyer, turned one on the 7th.

* ..... Our little Elyse turned one last Friday.

*.......... Wait. Where did our summer go????

*............... Where did time go?

It's crazy how fast time will go on you.

Celebrating Elyse's bithday on Friday and Sunday just had me really awestuck at how fast the time went, though I feel like we took appropriate measures to savor each stage the best we could.

Here are some pictures from her birthday celebration we had on Sunday: