It's a good day to be an Alaskan!!!

Today the State of Alaska announced the amount of this years Permanent Fund Dividend check. This is the check that is paid to every Alaskan resident each year, based on the state's income off of oil. The amount this year is......drum roll please....$1,654!!! So that is a nice little $3,308 bonus to us next month!! The only plan we have for the money is that we are going to use $1,000 for our cruise in January, but the other amount will go right into savings!!!

This years dividend is over $500 more then last years, and they expect it to keep increasing!! Next year could be over 2K each!!

Wahoo!!

Just one more reason to live in Alaska!!

Quest...

This week our church started a new series called "Quest". This is a curriculum that our church created several years ago. This will be the 4th time that I have gone through Quest. This is the cornerstone curriculum for our church. It is BY FAR the best series I have ever gone through. It is such an eye opener, and really makes you change the way you think. It challenges many of the "traditional thoughts" of Christianity. I credit this series for helping me go from "christian" to follower and enjoyer of God. I HIGHLY reccomend that you listen to, at least, the 1st message in this series, it can be found on the church website at www.changepointalaska.com under the "message" section. Also, you can go to the "blogs" link on the website and you will see a Quest Blog, that is a site that we just set up for our church to interact with each other over these ideas.

Listen with an open mind and dont be afraid to challenge some of the typical christian misconceptions. Whether you are a christian or not, I believe that this message is relevant!!

Let us know what you think!!!

A Day At The Zoo....

Hello Hello Hello -

What a fun day! We didn't have anything planned and we didn't want to sit around the house so we decided to go and spend a couple of hours at the Alaska Zoo. Our Zoo is certainly no San Diego Zoo, but it is always fun. One of the best things is that you don't feel like you are in some "overdeveloped" space. It still has a real "outdoor" feeling to it. We saw the Polar Bears, Brown Bears, Black Bears, Snow Leopards, Tigers, Wolves and all of the other animals. Including Maggie the Elephant.

(adam's editorial comment of the week)

The Alaska Zoo has had elephants for as long as I can remember. However, Maggie is being moved in a few weeks and most likely there will not be another elephant in Alaska ever again. There has been a big national outcry against her being in Alaska. PETA and all of the other animal activists have protested and complained for so long that Maggie is now being moved to an Elephant Sanctuary in California. I agree that this is probably what is best for Maggie, however, there are 38 Million people in America who have a tough time putting food on their families table, but we will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an elephant. Our priorities may be a little off.

Best Deal In Town...

Howdy!!

SO, we and our friends have stumbled upon the best deal in town. We love ice cream...who doesn't? The local Carls JR. Restaurants recently began serving ice cream. At first a single scoop of ice cream for .49 cents isn't a GREAT deal, but still a good price. The thing is, these are no ordinary scoops of ice cream. They are the gigantic hugely mondo single scoops. I took a picture tonight of the "single scoop" that they gave us. Can you believe that you can get that much ice cream for .49 cents?!?!? There is still hope for this world!!

Happy Labor Day!!!

this is a huge crevasse in the glacier we were walking on. These are massive cracks in the surface of the glacier that can go down hundreds of feet. It was pretty amazing to look into.


This is a picture of the glacier as we were walking towards it. You can see the glacier up in the mountain.



Here is Adam walking around on the glacier.



Here is Sherri next to a creek on the hike to the glacier.




Here we are on the glacier!! What a GREAT day!!


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Hello!!!

We hope that you all enjoyed a long holiday weekend!! Today we went and hiked to Byron Glacier. It is about a 45 minute drive from Anchorage to the start of the trail. It takes you right up to the face of the glacier where you can actually climb up and walk around on it!! We had a great weekend and our hike today was the perfect ending!!! Enjoy the pictures from todays hike!!