Winter Is Almost Here...

Hello Everyone!!

The Joke is that Alaska has 2 seasons...Winter..and Summer. Our Spring and Fall last only a few short weeks. The Summers in Alaska are AMAZING, I have heard hundreds of times that "it is the summers that make the winters worth it". However, I am one of the few who feel the exact opposite. While I love the Alaskan Summers and think there isn't a more beautiful place to be during the summer, I actually like the winters here the best!! I feel like the winters are just so romantic and peaceful. Lots of fluffy white snow, cold enough outside to keep you inside by the fire, wrapped up together. I just love winter!!! SO..imagine how excited I was when I walked outside and saw this...

That's right...snow on the mountains!! My guess is that we will get our first snow here in Anchorage within the next week or so. I had guessed between the 10th and 14th and I think I will hold by that.

It is hard to believe that we will have snow that soon when I also took this picture off of our balcony today. It is of the hill right behind our house. Looks like a nice summer day!!

Only 78 more days till Christmas!!!

Quite The Update...

It has been a couple of weeks since we have updated this so here is what's new in our world...

• Sherri has worked for Curves for 3 1/2 years, it has certainly had its ups and downs. We are glad to say that she no longer works there. This isn't TOO recent, it actually happened a couple of weeks ago. This is totally a good thing. Because we have no debt and are doing well financially there is no rush for her to get out and find "the first job available", instead she is taking her time, looking for a job that she will enjoy and that fits her gifting!

• We recently celebrated our 2 year anniversary! We had a great day! We went and saw the play "Defending The Caveman" and it was SO funny, a perfect anniversary play! We then went to Benihana for dinner, it is Sherri's favorite restaurant. We came home after that and had cake. I had the same lady who did our wedding cake make us a smaller "anniversary cake". It was so great!! (Here is a picture of our anniversary cake)

• I have been traveling a lot with work recently. I was gone some last week and I will be leaving again tomorrow afternoon for another trip. Hopefully travel will slow down once November hits.
  
  
  
• Sherri's 26th Birthday is coming up soon! I think we are going to have a bunch of friends meet us at Moose's Tooth, our favorite local pizza joint, for a fun evening.
  
  
  
• We are taking a class at church on Wednesday nights on the book of Acts. We are co-leading a table of young married couples with no children. Its great, we are only 2 weeks into the class and we are already loving it, and forming relationships with the other couples. We have about 700 people in the class so its pretty hectic, yet fun!
  
  
  
• We recently had a going away party for some friends from our small group who are moving to Texas. It was a great event and really good to get everyone together! (here is a picture from the dinner)
  

That is a quick snapshot of whats new with us. I will try and be better about updating this on a more regular basis!!

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!!

Perfect Alaskan Evening...

The pictures from Top to bottom: Sherri and I, Me exploring, Sherri of the Valley, The view of Downtown Anchorage from where we were hiking, wild blueberries that we were eating.

Click on any of the pictures to get a BIGGER view!

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Last night Sherri and I decided to spend some time outside. We went to Flattop Mountain and hiked around on some of the trails. It was a beautiful evening and we had such a great time being outside in the "wild". We also bought a new camera recently and wanted to try it out. Here are a bunch of pictures from our adventure last night.

Enjoy!!!

Thoughts from a hotel room...

Howdy -

I'm writing this from Fairbanks, Alaska. I have been traveling lot lately, only been home for 2 nights in the past week. I go home tomorrow and I will be home for a few weeks! I'm very excited about that!!

I wanted to write this and give you a few updates on us...

First, and most importantly...as of late last week we are totally credit card debt free! We paid off my car, and all of our credit cards!! It feels SO nice!! I received a great unexpected bonus from work and we decided to use that to get out of debt! Between the car payment and credit card payments we are able to save about $600 more a month!! What a huge blessing that is!! It is so nice to be able to move forward without the "chains of debt" that so many people are tied to.

We have both been staying busy with work. We are really looking forward to a 3 day holiday weekend to just relax! Last weekend we went to the Alaska State Fair with friends and had a really great time!! It was perfect weather, 70's and sunny, and combine that with friends and great fair food, how can you go wrong?

We have our anniversary coming up in under a month and we have a pretty awesome weekend planned for that! I will post more as the day gets closer.

A few random things....

our church launched a new webpage, check it out at www.changepointalaska.com

I have been doing a lot of research into the upcoming presidential election and have been VERY impressed with Mike Huckabee. I don't know if I have ever seen a politician that I am as impressed with as him. http://youtube.com/watch?v=3sdZY3oSupU
check out that video clip of him. I think you will be impressed!!

What A Day!!!

Today was the Annual "Fantasy Football Draft Day" for Tim, Jason and I, and the Annual "Spend our husband's money day" for the wives. The day started for Sherri and I at about 7:30am when we woke up to put the buffalo wings in the oven. We arrived at Tim & Jana's at 9:15, had breakfast and the ladies left to start their day. Our draft started at 10am and lasted till about 4pm. It was 6 hours of uninterupted football, buffalo wings, snacks and all around "guy stuff". The ladies got manicures and pedicures, went shopping at Pier 1 and Michael's to get craft projects, they had lunch and went and saw the new movie "Becoming Jane". The ladies had a great day, and us guys had an awesome time at the draft! I feel very good about my team this year!!

So, just how good was my day you ask? Well..I had my first buffalo wing at 8:30 this morning, and it is now just after midnight and I have just had the last of the wings. So, yeah, it was pretty awesome!

Oh How We Love CAKE!!

Last weekend Sherri, Me, Jason, Jana, John and Ashley went and saw the band Cake in concert. Cake was pretty big in the 90's and early 2000's with songs "The Distance", "Love You Madly" and "Short Skirt, Long Jacket". This was an event for the 11th Anniversary of Mooses Tooth, the most amazing pizza joint in Anchorage. There were 3,000 people there for the event and it was AWESOME!! Cake was amazing, such a good live band! It was a beautiful sunny day and I just dont know how it could have been any better!!!

We love it, it's perfect, don't change...

Last night Sherri and I went with Jason and Jana and saw a production of "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change". It was the first time that Sherri and I had seen it. It was SO great and we highly recommend it!! It is currently the longest running off-broadway musical. It documents the different stages of relationships, from dating, to marriage, children and empty nesters. It was so funny and the cast was awesome!! There are only 4 cast members but they play a total of over 60 roles!! It is very creative and anyone who has ever been in a relationship can certianly relate to several of the situations!! You can check out more info on this play at www.loveperfectchange.com

Oh How We Love IKEA!!!

I was in Seattle last week on a business trip and while I was there I made my usual visit to the local IKEA store. Sherri and I are both big fans of a more modern / contemporary approach to home decorating. Many times this type of furnishing can be very expensive, this tends to be the "in" thing right now, so a lot of companies really mark up the prices on anything "modern". However, IKEA always has an amazing assortment of products that are both modern, and well priced!! We have a lot of IKEA products in our home and our newest additions are the floor lamps that you see in the picture on the left! (you can click on the picture for a larger view). These lamps have a great contemporary look and were only $16.99 each!! Thats a great price! If you have never been to an IKEA or seen any of their produces you can check them out at www.ikea.com. The only downside to IKEA is that they currently do not ship to Alaska!! So, till they start shipping here I will continue my regular visits to the Seattle store!

Enjoy!!!

Is This Really A Deal?!?!?!

OK, so here is the deal. Sherri and I were in our local "One Stop Shopping" store tonight and we were browsing the electronic section. Sherri saw this clearance sale tag on a TV. The regular price is $1,299.99 and the clearance price is $1299.97? Really? A whopping .02 discount! How generous! We laughed pretty hard at this! Sorry for the bad picture but we just had to share it!!

Finally...AN UPDATE!!!

Well Hello Strangers!

I know, I know, it has been a while since an update. So, we have a lot to catch up on!

Our trip to Indiana was Great! We had a really good time and it was very nice to get to see so many people!! Thanks to everyone who was able to make the BBQ!! We got to spend a couple of great days with Eric, Lisa and Ian. We had such a wonderful time in Bloomington and really enjoyed finally getting to meet our nephew!! Who is now walking!!

Work has been going well, Sherri is back to her normal 9 - 4 shift and is liking that much more then the early mornings she was working. I haven't been traveling too much recently, but I have some trips coming up, so that may change.

We spent a weekend in Homer, Alaska recently. We were there for the wedding of a very good friend. It was a beautiful weekend and Homer is such a great little town. It was nice to just relax and be away from home for a couple of nights.

We joined a gym that opened earlier this month. We both want to have much more of a focus on living healthy, so we have been going to the gym daily, and we are already seeing some pretty awesome results!!

That is about all that's new with us, it is tough to believe that we are just a couple of months away from our 2 year anniversary!! We spent some time today talking about what we would like to do for it. Also, I must say that we are experiencing the sweetest time of our marriage!! We are really enjoying each other and all that we have in life! Times are just really good and we love experiencing life together!!!

We will certainly get back to updating our blog on a much more regular basis!

SO, till next time...Buh-Bye!

Alaska...

I came across this quote and, having lived in Alaska for most of my life, but also having traveled pretty extensively, this quote rang very true to me. It is from Henry Gannett who was the chief geographer for the Harriman Alaska Expedition.

"There is one word of advice and caution to be given to those intending to visit Alaska for pleasure or sight-seeing. If you are old, go by all means; but if you are young, wait. The scenery of Alaska is much grander than anything of its kind in the world, and it is not well to dull one's capacity for enjoyment by seeing the finest first."

It has always amazed me that I see the mountains everyday, yet they never get dull.

I have driven along the Seward Highway, which lies at the base of mountains and on the edge of the ocean, hundreds of times, yet I always stop for photographs and I am always amazed at the grandeur.

We are now entering "tourist season" in Alaska. It is the annual migration of millions of people who flock to see and experience Alaska for a short period of time. I sometimes forget that I experience daily, what most people dream of "one day seeing".

How I love this state!!!

So..We..Kinda..WON A CRUISE..and were given a new TV!

Howdy -

So, it has become a tradition to take part in the Alaska Visitors Industry Charity Walk with our friends. This walk raises money for several local non-profits. At the end of the walk they have a big event with live music, food and a lot of prizes from the Travel Industry. Last year we won a trip on the Alaska Railroad to Denali, a couple nights at a hotel and a river rafting trip, which was awesome. So, this year we go, not expecting to win anything of course, and what happens? We end up winning a 7 night Caribbean cruise for two!!! So, we just have to use the cruise by the end of March 2008. We get to pick the cruise and the dates. We are looking at December or January for the cruise. It should be A LOT of fun!! The most amazing part is that for the two or three weeks before the walk we had been looking at booking a 7 night Caribbean cruise as a vacation for us. So, it's pretty amazing how it all worked out!!

ALSO....

We have some friends of the family who are VERY well off. They recently purchased a 60 inch plasma TV for their new house and were getting rid of their, nearly new, 42 inch HDTV. SO, we were given their old TV! The TV that we had was fine, we bought it new from Best Buy a year and a half ago, but it was nothing compared to this new TV. We sold our old TV and stand on Craigslist for $250.

SO...

We got a cruise and TV and still came away with $250.00 more then we started with.

We are feeling pretty blessed.

Back to the Midwest....

Hello Everyone -

Sherri and I had been planning a trip to Indiana for Christmas this year. However, Sherri's brother, Ben, is being deployed out of country this July. We wanted to be able to see him as well so we have decided to take our trip this June, rather then December. SO, I just booked our tickets and we will be in Indiana June 5th - 14th. We don't know what the itinerary will look like for our time there but I am sure that we will keep this page updated with our plans.

That is all for now, will update more later.

- Adam & Sherri

April Update...

Hello!

Here is a quick update on us!

We had a GREAT Easter, church was amazing, they had over 6,500 people attend!! Dad and Susan came with us and we had Easter dinner at mom's house!!

Spring is certainly on it's way, temps have been in the high 40's and much of the snow is melted. It is nice to see grass again, even if it is still brown!!

Sherri is currently taking "Strategies For Life Coaching" which is a curriculum that ChangePoint developed, it is their main "leadership" course. She is really enjoying it and getting a ton out of it!

Adam has been traveling a lot lately with work and is really looking forward for spring, so he can play disc golf!! He also recently turned 27 and had a great birthday!!

Our small group is currently going through The Truth Project and it has been awesome, it really makes you look closely at what you believe and why you believe it!!

We saw STOMP last weekend, it was awesome!! Adam saw it a couple of years ago when it was here but this was Sherri's first time. We both loved it!!!

That is all for now!!

Feel free to leave us a message and let us know what is new with you!!!

- Adam & Sherri

Easter at ChangePoint