The month of April, in Pictures :)

Wow, so a whole month has gone by and man has it been busy. On Friday, April 9th Rene and I began our road trip from Indianapolis to Alaska. On our way out of Indiana into Illinois we saw a sign for Yogi Bear's Jellystone so we went to check it out and guess what.... We found Yogi!!

Here's Rene and Indy with Yogi himself :)

And then Yogi took Indy for a little walk.
While Indy was doing his thing, Rene and I took a walk down memory lane and played on the teeter-toter.
After Jellystone, we went to Nauvoo, IL - a historical site for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Here is the beautiful temple
And again at sundown
We left Nauvoo pretty late and continued to drive for some time before stopping at a truck stop for some sleep. The following morning we made our way to Colorado Springs, CO to see my older sister and her family. Silly me didn't take many pics, I was enjoying my time with them to be bothered with a camera :) However, we did take some time to tour the Olympic Training Center there with Jessica and Kaitlyn (2 of my beautiful nieces, the 3rd was at play practice). Here we are with the Olympic rings
This statue is out front and Rene, Jess, and Katie are trying to jump up like them. This is just one of the many takes
And Rene, the first 'Strong Man' ;D Look how he holds the entire world with just one little finger
Katie, a natural ballerina
My nieces are so very spectacular, with no training at all they jump into the bobsled and make it look so easy.
Outside again, Katie shows her superior Taekwondo skills and kicks Jess in the head (no one was actually hurt in this picture). lolWe were in CO for an additional day, but again no more pics were taken. We then headed out for Salt Lake City to see Rene's brother Ammon and his family. They were so wonderful to let us stay in their new home. We had a lot of fun with them all, it was a lot of fun to see our nephew Kai and new little niece (or not so little anymore) Mia. They are dolls. While in Utah I went to Ikea for the first time and fell in LOVE with the store. Rene on the other hand changed his first diaper, oh the milestones we reached! And again, I'm so sorry that I did not get any pics while we were there. :(

This was the sign I wrote on the rear window, 'Alaska Bound.' I wrote another one on the side of the car that I never got a picture of, it said "Caution, Slow Turns, Puppy on Board."
After Salt Lake our next destination was Yellowstone National Park. We went through Idaho where I saw a sign advertising the Potato Museum. Really? Seriously, a potato museum?!! How could I pass on a gem like this so I persuaded Rene to stop here. Unfortunately it was closed when we got there but we were able to get a pic of Rene and Indy with their HUGE baked potato.
In Northern Idaho, on the outskirts of Yellowstone, we stopped at a Ranger's station to make sure we were on the right track to get to the Park. However, sad news was awaiting us... Yellowstone was closed for the season and would be reopening in just 3 days!! Just our luck, eh? Oh well, we did make a stop at a local place to have some lunch and let Indy play in the snow. He loves snow, he's an Alaskan dog at heart.

Since Yellowstone was out of the picture and put us an entire day ahead of schedule, we really took our time and made some stops in small towns. We drove for 16 hours that day and around 8pm we got into a small town called Coer D'Alene, ID and decided to stop. I thought we'd sleep in the car or something but Rene had other plans. We went down to the water where there was this beautiful hotel. Rene took me in under the impression we were only going to look around, but he worked his magic and got us the Honeymoon suite for a mere $125 (the room normally goes for $350!!). My hubby, the silver tongued devil ;) Here's a pic of our room

And the view from our balcony, what a way to wake up!
We then stayed overnight in Seattle, WA with Troy Green and his beautiful family. For the third time, I neglected to take any pics with them but again Thank You to them for having us in their home. Oh, and while we were at Troy's place Rene ended up getting a pretty had bite on his nose. He was playing with Indy and ended up taking a bite to the nose, a pretty bad bite that needed stitches. However, there are NO 24 hour Urgent Cares in the Seattle area. How absurd is that??!! I ended up cleaning it for him and putting a band-aid on it so he could sleep the night and we'd go to the doctor in the morning. After the doctor's we headed North to Vancouver, BC (Rene's mission).

About 1 hour away he received a call from a friend in Vancouver who advised him the new Vancouver Temple was currently having an open house so we changed our plans and went straight to the temple. Again, a beautiful temple.
While in Vancouver, we were blessed to stay with a family Rene knew while on his mission. There were many sites Rene wanted me to see and here are a few of them:

The Vancouver Aquarium - a pic of some Jellyfish
On the road we saw this beauty - A Viper.... enough said :)
Now, has anyone ever seen one of these?? It's a spider spruce tree... really, that's what it's called (according to Rene). It was pretty neat so I had to get a picture of it.
Here we are at the Lynn Valley Suspension Bridge (it's just like the Cappilano -as seen during the Winter Olympics 2010 - but FREE). As much as I wanted to see this and as cool as it was, I did not expect to get weak knees while crossing. The bridge moves a ton while you walk across, especially with others on the bridge at the same time.
There were other trails around the bridge and while perusing around I found this spectacular picture worthy site :)
We did quite a bit more while in Vancouver, but this entry is already too long so I'm keeping it brief. After Vancouver, Rene and I decided we wanted to just drive right on through Canada and get home as soon as we could. I had to get in and get some paperwork done for my new job and we had a lot of things to set up. It took us about 52 hours to get from Vancouver to my parents home in Eagle River, AK. Here's one of our 3 hour nap stops... Indy is attacking Rene's face :)
We also saw a little too much wildlife, although nice it was a little scary late at night when we'd see them on the highway crossing right in front of the car. We had to slam on the breaks once to miss hitting some Caribou.

This is a Big Horn Sheep
Caribou... one of the many
And Wood Bison!! We were super excited to find them. The road sides were littered with bison poop... I must say the Bison are a lot nicer to look at! lol
And finally, we're Home!!!!
Our mountains!! :)
So that was our Road trip in a nutshell. Once we got home (it was last Tuesday night) we were constantly on the go. On of our first priorities were to pick out paint colors for our condo. Here are the before and after pics.

The entry/living room...
From white to 'antique silver' with a red accent wall.
The backside of the living room with part of the kitchen (Rene helped paint the first two walls and taped this one for me)
Now the finished product, again the antique silver with our olive green kitchen (from here on out I did all the painting. It took me 4 days to do all this)
The kitchen before... plain white
and now, a pretty green (my original plan was to restain the cabinets mahogany but that wasn't going to happen - not enough time. Perhaps I'll get to it in the future)
The view as you walk into the condo
Do you like the colors picked? We think they go well together.

The half bath downstairsWe did a two tone wall, yellow on top and a light blue on the bottom. Again, we'd like to later get some crown molding to make more of a distinct line and make it cleaner as well.
(no before pics for the bedrooms, they were all plain white) Now, the master is this grayish color
The office is 'kiwi kissed' which I think is more minty
And the bright yellow workout room :) This is my favorite room because it's so happy and bright!
So that was our month of April, we stayed super busy and it will continue throughout the summer. I'm working for the cruise company again so I don't know when I'll have time to post anything but I'll try if there's anything interesting to share :) Rene however, will be working hard to memorize all of the new maps and begin his training all over again.

A Day Late

I've never been a huge fan of April Fool's Day. I'm not the type to do practical jokes, and even when I do try I don't succeed... people just don't believe me, but I attribute that to being a poor liar. Anyways, growing up my dad would always play a small joke on us. One year, while I was in college, my dad called to tell me the college was closed due to snow (not uncommon) so I said, OK and went back to sleep. My dad called me like 30 mins later to see if I was up, which of course I wasn't, and said 'APRIL FOOLS!!!' there's no snow and schools open!! What??!! I had to race to school that day, so late cause of my dad's joke. :)

However, April Fool's has become a special day me now. That is the day Rene proposed to me! I know, right? Seriously, who does that???? Rene does! :) So, 5 years ago Rene and I got engaged. As the story goes, for those who haven't heard it, Rene and I had just come back from a singles ward activity and where watching a movie at his apartment. Out of nowhere he gets up off the couch and started fumbling with his keys. He comes back, gets off the couch and kneels before me with this humongous keyring and asked me to marry him. I stared at him and was like, 'seriously, are you sure?' I did say yes, big shocker there, but proceeded to ask him if he was sure like 50 times that night. However, the next morning I went to pick him up for an activity we were going to and ended up waking him up. He comes out of his room and says, 'I had the craziest dream last night...' I knocked him in the gut and said, 'don't you even!' But yes, April Fool's is a wonderful day now!

Now, on this note, Rene believes that ALL guys should propose on April Fool's because if the girl says no the guy can always be like, oh yeah April Fool's! and get off scott free with no real hurt to his ego and no rejection. Then, if she does say yes you have a wonderful story to tell.

Officially Moving Home!!

Thursday evening we received Rene's official offer letter from the Anchorage Air Traffic Control Center. He's to report to work on Monday, April 26th. That gives us exactly 2 weeks from yesterday to get out of our home and begin our road trip! We are wanting to take about 10-12 days to drive from Indianapolis to Eagle River, AK. We've mapped out a few stops we want to take and then stop whenever the need hits us. :) It's going to be a great trip!
Luckily, we did sell the house. We sold it to those same people who wanted my table. They actually accepted our second counter offer which was great and so we wont be losing any $$. We're super stoked about that considering we haven't even lived here for a year.

The BIG Secret

Per Rene, it is now okay to reveal our secret, the subject I've been dancing around now for a while. Are you ready???? We're MOVING!!! Where you may ask...... the only place we've ever truly loved...... ALASKA! Originally, we planned on being here in Indiana (and our lovely new home) until 2012 or 2013. Rene would have completed all of his training here in the next few months and then we'd try to transfer back to Alaska. However, Rene found out that once you CPC (become a certified controller) it's harder to transfer then when you are a trainee. He was told we could potentially be stuck here for 10 years. :-O Ahhh! That was not going to happen, so Rene began the transfer process. Now, we were trying to keep all of this on the DL because if his co-workers found out Rene was trying to transfer it could cause him trouble. We didn't think it'd be too hard not saying anything, but when you're so excited to go home and then there are all these issues arising it gets difficult. Of course, our families have known about everything but that's it.

So now for the drama..... we started the transfer right after we got home from our vaca in Alaska (so January). That same month our renter neglected to pay his rent and moved out in result. Because we were hoping to be home in March/April we did not set out to get a new renter immediately. I cannot remember when this happened, but a while back we received news there were 2 possible dates for when Rene had to report to work in AK. They were April 12 or 26. We were pretty excited about this but really felt the pressure to sell our home. Now these dates weren't official, really nothing is official till we have the offer letter but it was looking good.

About 6-7 weeks ago we put our home on the market and right after, Indianapolis was hit with snow that actually stuck! Normally it'll snow here and then melt away, but this time we had like 6-8 inches in our yard. Now I don't know if anyone knows this, but people don't like to go see homes in the snow :( But the weather's turned around and we've had quite a few showings! But, we have had a lot of house drama as well. Such as, last Monday we had an offer made on the house but it was not a good one. It was actually really insulting. They completely low-balled us and was requesting tons of stupid stuff. We were going back and forth with counter offers but then things took a turn Wednesday morning (the 10th).

The previous evening while at work, Rene heard the supervisors were talking about him and his training. He never found out what it was about so he decided to call AK. The people there told him there was a problem with his transfer (aka ERR).... The entire NW region was on a hiring freeze, it could last 30 days to 1 year, they just don't know. Rene and I were in quite the predicament as to what we were going to do know. With the house here and the condo in AK, our budget is to the max. After much talk we decided to rent the condo for 6 months and see where we were after that and then decline the current offer on the home and wait for an amazing offer. It was set, we had a new plan or so we thought. Thursday evening Rene got a call from his facility manager, Randy, to tell him how he was upset with what was happening, he didn't think it was right for AK to do this when everyone had already spoke about the dates and were waiting for the official letter. So Randy called the NW Regional Director and others in the office to have them push Rene's ERR through. Randy was confident he spoke to the right people and we'd hear something by Wednesday of the following week. So we were again in limbo, no plan but to wait. Wait to rent the condo, wait to receive word, wait, wait, wait.

This morning we received the call.... another tentative date, April 26!! A little over 5 weeks away. We're hoping to have an official letter next week but right now, we're glad we didn't rent the condo and hoping we get a great offer on the home. Which we did get one just a little over 2 hrs ago... it's not super great but a whole lot better than the first one! :) But can you imagine they wanted my table???!!!! I mean, I can't fault them cause the table is amazing but really, there's no way I'd ever give up my table. We countered and told them that instead of the table they could have our piano. (I'd like to keep the piano, but it would just cost too much to transport.) So, there's our news and all the drama. It's pretty condensed so you may not be able to feel the stress in all of it, but believe you me, it was there!! Lets just cross our fingers the stress is gone, or will be soon!

Cinnamon Rolls and Baths

Here are the cinnamon rolls from tonight. Rene woke up from his nap ready to help me. They turned out pretty good, but the dough still just wasn't amazing. I think it's because the dough didn't rise really well. We normally keep our home pretty cool to save on our heating bill but I turned the temp up A LOT, but I guess it wasn't enough. :( After 1 hour they hadn't risen at all so I turned on the oven to see if that would help. Anyways, the dough will continue to be a work in progress but so far, not bad. We sure did enjoy eating them! :)

After enjoying our treats we decided to give Indy his first bath. I don't know why I thought he was going to like it but he didn't. Once we were done I blow dried his fur a bit he went crazy!! He was running around like a mad man and rubbing his body all over the floor. It was really funny. He also wouldn't come to me when I called him... I think he was a little worried I might give him another bath.

Doesn't he look annoyed here?? :) He's probably thinking what nerve I have to give him a bath and then think he's going to pose all cute for me. lol

Sunday Naps

On this lazy Sunday afternoon, Rene and Indy (our dog) are taking a long deserved nap after they've hardly been working all day! lol :) I, on the other hand, am hanging out in the kitchen making our dinner and some cinnamon rolls. Originally it was supposed to be Rene and I baking, as he had this strange urge to bake with me, but as you can plainly see that isn't what happened. :)

Speaking of cinnamon rolls though I have yet to find an amazing recipe. I have tried quite a few recipes out and although they come out tasty, it just isn't amazing. Hopefully this will be the batch to beat all. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

As for our daily life, things have been all out of whack. I really cannot elaborate as we're still keeping everything on the DL till things are confirmed, but man it's been a headache. Nothing ever seems to go easy, even when it seems like every thing's lining up perfectly and looking good there's always something that has to come up. We just have a lot of Big decisions to make and cannot do that until we get more information.

Welcome Home

Last night I received this rush call from Rene telling me Skip (the guy we bought our dog from) had called and said our puppy was ready to go and we could pick him up tonight. Rene wanted me to call and see if I could get the little guy right away and Skip told me to come on over. It was so exciting and about 1.5 weeks ahead of schedule. For a recap, here's a little info on him: he's a Shihtzoodle (3/4 Shih Tzu and 1/4 Toy Poodle) and as of today, he's 6 weeks old. :)

When we got the little guy home we still hadn't picked out a name for him so that was the number one thing to do, aside from getting food and a color. We narrowed down our selection to two, Ollie (for the Olympics since that's when we got him) or Indy (as in we got him in Indiana). We decided upon Indy because we thought it was cute, had reference to Indiana Jones and cause we're hoping to make it back to Alaska and so we can say we got him from Indiana. Anyways, he's super cute and a bundle of joy. Here he is hanging out in his new bed with his toy turtle. :)

And now for the playful side of him.... being as he is a puppy, he has a ton of energy and loves to play.
This is from today, he wouldn't let me do any work. He just wanted to run around and play (and since he isn't potty trained yet I didn't want to let him run off too much and leave me a surprise). Isn't his little tongue cute??!! :)

We are Certifiably CRaZy!!!!!

With everything going on right now and the stresses we are under, Rene and I really miss Ash. He was a great comfort to us and helped 'distract' us. When Rene got home on Saturday from work he told me how he'd been thinking he wanted to go pick up Ash and bring him home, it was just a thought - he's still believes we made the right choice. Anyways, when we had dropped Ash off at the Rescue Farm they told us they'd be out our way again on Saturday (today) with some more pets doing adoptions and invited us out. We really hadn't planned to get another pet for awhile but I suggested we just go and look. When we arrived the adoptions were over however, they were going to have adoptions going over the next few weekends. Since we were already out Rene and I decided to drive down the main road and stop at places we'd never been. There was no agenda, just something to do as we are boring. :) So we stopped at a few pet stores and held some puppies but didn't take any home as they wanted so much money - there was this one puppy who was really cute but they wanted like $550 for him. AHHHH!!! That was a little steep for us so we got back in the car. At our last stop, a pet supply store, they had a bulletin board where people advertised pups for sale or lost dogs. There was one flyer that caught my eye for Shihtzoodles (Shih Tzu/Toy Poodle mix). The pups were born around the beginning of January and the owners were selling them for super cheap. Rene and I decided to go ahead and give them a call to see if we could just look at 'em. Well, we went right over that night, fell in love with one of the puppies and put down a deposit on him!!! We get to bring him home in about 2 1/2 weeks after he's been weened and had his shots. We are super excited to bring him home and raise him to be loving and a non-biter. :) Neither of us are very excited about potty training since we haven't had to do it before and will all the craziness around us this probably wasn't the most wisest of choices but..... it's going to be good for our souls. Financially not a good choice, emotionally the best choice!

Hard to Say Good-bye

This past Wednesday Rene and I dropped off our little Ash at the rescue shelter we adopted him from. Ultimately, we decided that it would be better for us not to keep him because we are hoping to go home where we'll be around our families and friends and we just cannot chance Ash biting anyone other than us. Hopefully, the people working with the shelter will be able to find out why Ash was biting and help get him to a place where he will be adoptable again. Ash would make a wonderful fit in any home.

It has been so hard not to have Ash home with us. We feel like we made the right choice, but how can you know for sure? We miss the joy he brought to our home, the empty place in our lives he filled... I know there are some who just wont get it, who don't understand the connection you can make with your pet. But, Rene and I did love Ash.... we still love Ash. This picture of Rene and Ash was taken just 2 days before he left our home. Aren't my boys cute? :)

So Stressed! :(

This past month has been really hard on Rene and I. As the saying goes, "When it rains, it pours." That is so true! Our most recent troubles have a lot to do with emotional things and money. Per our last post Rene and I were debating whether or not to keep our little pup. We love the little guy so much and so this really was the hardest thing we've had to do. After much deliberation, heart ache, crying and talking with family, we have decided to give our little boy back to the rescue organization. At first we were going to 'surrender' him to animal control as they were coming by the house for us to sign some paperwork for Ash's quarantine and when we spoke with them on the phone they said they could 'take' him. However, when the dude showed up he advised us that if they took Ash they would NOT be able to adopt him out again as he's a bitter and would therefore euthanize him. What??!!! No one had told us this and the dude was pretty shocked the person we spoke to on the phone didn't tell us either. So, we opted to go ahead and quarantine Ash for the 10 days and then give him back to the rescue home we got him from. We found out that they'll try working with him to try and find out why he's biting and after some time they'll make the decision of what's best for Ash. It's so hard to have him with us still.... I want to cuddle up with him, play and just love on him but at the same time I'm a little scared of the guy. Although he's bit Rene before, it was because of food. With me, there was no reason. Am I the reason??? Anyways, we have till Feb. 3rd or 4th so we just plan on loving Ash and making the best of our last week together.

Now, another headache we're dealing with: our condo in Alaska. Since we moved out in September of 2007 we've had a renter in our condo. It was blessing at the time as we were unable to sell the thing but man has it been a constant headache since. The individual we got to rent our place had a good job and their employer was going to foot the bill so we thought it was going to be easy. Nope! We've had constant battles with them paying on time, or at all. And as of Monday night we still had not received our rent, which had been due the 1st, and so our condo is now vacant. :( Although I'm super happy about not having to deal with this person anymore and not having to wonder if the money will arrive, it's going to be rough for us trying to make both mortgage payments plus a very possible HUGE investment in just a few months. (more to come on that bit of vagueness later when we know more - are you enticed??)

Third, we are getting our ceiling fixed in the office. About a month after moving into our home we had the pleasure of ripping out the ceiling in our office due to a leak. We haven't had it fixed (the ceiling mind you, the leak was fixed right away) yet as it wasn't a priority but due to this 'possible HUGE investment' we are getting it fixed. It's going to cost a ton more than we thought... I don't like to talk numbers like Rene does, but it'll take the guys about 3 days to fix so that may help with giving you an idea about the price. The work will begin tomorrow so we hope to have it done by this upcoming Monday.

These were just some of the items on our plate currently. We hope things turn around soon, I don't know how much more 'rain' we can take. lol