Alaska = Devotion

I want to start out by giving a little information about how we ended up living in "The Last frontier". Bryan && I have been together for 10 months as of August 12th. We're from different parts of the country but both ended up in the Bay Area of California. He's in the Coast Guard && my mom works for the Coast Guard. So I gradually became friends with many Coasties && that's when Bryan && I met in early October of 2007. We've been inseperable since. We got an apartment together in November in the Lake Merritt District of Oakland && soon after, he had to make a choice of where he'd want to go next. I told him right away that I would stay by his side. We wanted to choose a place neither of us had ever been. Somewhere laid back, away from the lively Bay Area lifestyle.

Looking at the above picture, that's exactly what we got when we chose Valdez, Alaska. The biggest change of our lives. Bryan grew up camping, hiking, fishing && hunting. My upbringing was the exact opposite. We both decided to throw ourselves into the unknown. I was excited && scared at the same time. When you think of Alaska, you think of wild animals && tons of snow. Both are not far from reality. Despite the snow on top of the mountains depicted above, we took this picture in June. It's gotten no warmer than 65 degrees since we got here at the end of June. I've heard that we'll have snow before Halloween this year. We had no idea what we were in for.

The day we got here we viewed the place we had only seen online through pictures. It was furnished. Something we'd planned for because of the lack of furniture we brought with us. We only brought what we could carry in the back of the truck. As you can imagine, we didn't have much. After seeing this place I knew we had to look further because it was far too dark && depressing. Bryans mom went for a walk down the street && happened upon another place for rent && peeked in the window. She came running back down the road && told us we had to come look at this place. It had wood (fake of course) floors, && the entire inside of the house had been redone. We called the number immediately && decided it was where we wanted to live. Although it was a trailor, it was the Taj Mahal of trailors as our landlord put it.






Above are pictures of the inside of the trailor && the last picture is looking out or kitchen door. The view is unlike anything I've ever seen. I still can't get over the fact that we live someplace this gorgeous!

How amazing is it to be able to take pictures of a glacier! They're all melting of course, at least the ones in the glacier field are where I took this picture.

On another note... I just found out on Labor Day that I'm pregnant. Everyone said that it was only a matter of time. I guess Valdez has a reputation for people moving here && getting pregnant. No matter, I'm completely excited about it!! I'm only about 5 1/2 weeks along so the baby looks like a tad pole according to sites I've visited, LoL. Soon it'll look like a baby whale, then an alien, a monkey && finally at around 16 weeks it starts to resemble a human. =) I can't wait to find out what we're having. Bryan && I were already talking about marriage so when he gets back from his patrol we're going to have a court house wedding until we can afford to have a larger one with family && friends in New Mexico. I can't even voice how exciting this is.