Orlando, Bahama's a wonderful place

Alright where should I start this blog off, btw its been forever since i have posted so bear with me. First of all our trip begin in lovely Anchorage, Alaska as we had to prepare for a fab trip down to Orlando. In case you didn't know Shanna didn't tell me where we were going except to Orlando and i needed a passport :) so back to Anchorage we took a beautiful walk along turnagain arm as we basked in the sunset, geese and dog poop. So our trip took us to Seattle then to Orlando and talk about a long flight!!! 3 and half hours to Seattle then 6 hours to Orlando. Luckily we got upgraded from Seattle to Orlando as we got first class on the way down which was hot!!! Especially for a long flight it was wonderful and i was over joyed. So we got to Orlando and the place is humid!!!! We got there at night and decided to check out downtown disney. Which is just a downtown place with shops and some disney stuff around. More like a shopping area then rides or anything like that. We ate at the joint call T-rex, which had pretty good food. So we were exhausted and had a crazy day the next day so we got some sleep and started off at the Wild Animal kingdom, not to friends arrive at the park early and get on rides fast!!! By the Shanna outside of Anchorage

time 10 am came around the place was packed!!! I would recommend the Kali river rapids ( you get soaked) , everst the ride, and the bugs life 3d film. After peeping out the animal kingdom we took our act to the Epcot, Epcot was alright but i thought it would have more but nonetheless fun. Hey were on vacation!!! Oh how i wish it was 2 weeks ago!! but i had a problem because seattle airport croc store didn't have Shanna and I at the 3d movie, Above Shanna pulling a cart at Animal Kingdom

my sandal crocs and i had to buy some disney ones that tore my feet up but anyways we went on rides around epcot and did dinner at the italian themed area of the giant place.....there are different types of areas of the world around epcot and not as much rides. We were going to stay over for the fireworks and show but after running around for 12 hours we decided to go back to our room to get ready to leave the next day. I still didn't know where we were going yet. So we get back and to nurse our soar feet we decide to swim in the pool and hot tub. This is where Shanna unleashed the suprise on me. We were going to the Bahama's to the Atlantis resort!!! What a start to a vacation!!! Hang out in Orlando for a couple of days then to find out i'm goign to a tropical area with only the best water park ever and a casino :)


On our way to the Bahama's




Epcot was Fab

The View from our Hotel Room

So the next take off the next day on Jet blue, btw jet blue rocks!! they have satellite tv's on every seat and makes the trip go by so fast. So we land at the Bahama's and we are going through immigration and in front of us are a couple around our ages and we get to talking and find out were both staying at the Atlantis and they suggest we share a cab over.....we chit and chat with them on the way over and my impression is they are great people so once there we decide we should do Dinner together. Oh there names are Christie and Scott and they are from Tampa bay. Go Bucs!! So we do dinner and afterwards we explore the area and by this time we are aquainted well and every day afterwards we hang out with them. Great people i tell ya!! The next day at the Atlantis we check out the waterpark which is Huge!!! they have so many different rides and rivers and its located right on the beach. So my recommendation is to do all the rides but chillax out on the curren/rapids river. You go down rapids and a wave machine. totally awesome ride!!! We also hang out at the Beach which is awesome as they have white sand, aqua oceans and cute fruity frozen drinks :) We spend the whole day relaxing and swimming and it was awesome. We go out and eat a nice little bohemian restaurant called Behimini road!! Totally recommend it there great food, great drinks and great atmosphere. There we had my

Us and our New friends Christie and Scott

birthday a little early :) As they did there drums and what not celebration for my birthday. Totally cool.

So on Monday Shanna had planned that we go on the Dolphin excursion. This was really fun!! it was a little short but definitely a experience that i won't forget. They had to use two dolphins for me :) also we got to use the water scooters that took us down to the bottom of the habitat and there were dolphins all aound with us. Definitely an experience i won't forget. So that night we ate a nice little eatery called the Luciano's which is in Nassau and that place is grand!! good food and what not.....the next couple of days we basically did the water experience again as i couldn't get enough of it. On tuesday night we ate at the fish fry and its located like in the mountain view area like Anchorage....Scary place i wouldn't go down there by myself as i was afraid i would get

At the Dolphin Experience

jacked!! Our friends left on Wednesday and they were such a great couple and made our experience that much better.....we have a lot of great memories and look forward to seeing them again.Shanna and I didn't leave till Thursday but one more thing we did the time share presentation and got free money and stuff and they are quite convincing but its expensive and not sure if its worth it. So we left on Thursday back to Orlando and went to Hollywood studios which was my favorite they had cool rides and just a good atmosphere...the tower of terror rocked as did the aerosmith ride too....our day was too short there as we had to make our way over to the magic kingdom for the parades and fireworks. Before we went there we celebrated my birthday dinner at Narcoosse's which is at the grand floridian...This was the best food of the whole trip!!! Afterwards we capped it off at the magic kingdom. By the time we made it back to the hotel we were beat!! The flight back was long but not that bad thanks to gossip girl :) xoxo.....So we gave our gifts to my nephew and he loved the snorkel set i gave him and shirts....Shanna departed to Nome on Saturday and i unfortunatley got stuck in Anchorage till wednesday due to red dog weather. So back at work and can only day dream of the beaches of Paradise island. Thank you Shanna for a great trip and yes i did get Doxie!!!

take care

My nephew, proud with his snorkel

Shanna and I on the Aersomith ride...she loved it

Jennie's Baby Shower

This weekend I threw my friend here in Nome a baby shower with her Mother, Tricia Schield. Jennie is 7 months pregnant and so beautiful. We threw her shower at her parent's house. We made Angle food cakes and layered them with sorbet and covered with cool whip. They were so good, as was our other food....we had cheese cut in the shapes of hearts, fish, horses, cats and more hearts! We had veggies, yummy dips, and this tasty June punch. The entire thing was so much fun and just a joy to get to help throw for Jennie.

I made a few things for her. I sewed a receiving blanket that had a strap for her neck so she can nurse and little Luke won't pull the blanket down all of the time. I also made a burp rag and a bib. When I made the bib, I cut it in two pieces (instead of one) so I had to figure out a way to sew it together...it turned out pretty gaudy but her mother and Jennie thought it was great! :) Tricia and I decorated with an umbrella b/c it was a shower. We had to put it on the tripod that they have in their big window that looks out at the ocean. Tricia said, "what happens if a polar bear comes, we won't be able to see it!" We covered the tripod with purple crepe paper to try to make it look pretty. I'm not sure it helped or made it better! :) You can see it in the big picture.

T-3 days until Sam and I head on our vacation to Florida and the surprise destination for Sam's 30th Birthday!!! :) We both are so excited especially me b/c I am tired of the wet weather here in Nome which is causing our snow to melt and leaving me with roads that are flooded with slush.

Trips, and randoms

So i went out on a trip to Kivalina for work and got alot of nice pictures and good models as you should say. We go out to the village quite a number of times and was my second trip out there. This trip was nice, the people are nice and we got hosted and got to have good eskimo food. Beluga muktuk, quaq, soup, fresh bread and akuutaq. So here are a few pictures i took while i was there. Thats all i have to report besides it was sunny and fab out there.

Cute little Puppy that was very nice

Kayak patiently waiting its turn in the sea

Mukluks !

Inupiaq , future Nanook of the north

The snow was so high they had to make stairs to get in there house.

Lots of models, apparently the second one liked her apple more :)

There all happy cause we brought food

More models, cute parka

A few April 2009 Events from Shanna

So Sam pretty much covered our amazing Kotzebue trip, so I thought I would share a few exciting things that have happened in my life during the month of April.

The first thing is for my job, I get to travel to one of our regional villages in my region. The village is in the middle of the ocean on St. Lawrence Island. Savoonga is the village and it has about 900 people there. While I was out there for work this time past time, someone had just gotten a polar bear. I wanted to tell everyone on the blog that I shot it, but of course all of my friends in Alaska would know different b/c that can't be possible b/c I am not native. Polar Bears are in a sense a protected animals and can only be taken by an Alaska Native thru subsistence or anyone if they are in danger of the bear. Obviously I was no-where in danger of this bear as it was just hanging on the "wood clothes line" :) It was my first polar bear that I had seen in the "wild" or hanging in a village. I'm going again this week for work to both of the villages (Gambell and Savoonga) on the island. They are catching bowhead whales right now which is a very common thing that they catch to harvest and eat. Hopefully I will be blessed in getting to go see one!!!

Another thing that was great fun for me this month was hanging out with my 13 year old "little sister" friend who I like get to hang out with if I am lucky, a few times a week. One Saturday we went on our routine swim after my pottery and then we came to my house for supper and we dyed Easter eggs. I haven't dyed eggs since I have been home at my mom's!! This year I learned something too....You can dye eggs with food coloring, a small amount of vinegar and boiling water. My mom always bought the "easy" egg dying packets, and this year they sold out of them at AC (our grocery store) so I was forced to use liquid food coloring. Wow, the things you have to learn in order to improvise in a vill, huh? :) We only had 11 eggs to dye, but man it was so fun!

That same weekend I also made my Easter Kuspuk. I didn't have enough fabric and since we have no place to buy fabric here in Nome, I had to make it work. I had to scrap the sleeve and use all of my scraps for the trim on my hood....but luckily, I am just so good (yeah right) that I was able to blend it all together and you can't even tell that I had to "patch"! It turned out awesome and is so beautiful!!! And the best thing is that I did it all by myself!! I have also made a really pretty sundress for Sam and I's trip but I can't show anyone yet b/c it is as much of a secret to Sam as our final destination of our trip for his 30th birthday at the end of the month!!

The other night I got to go to the Brownies and Daisies (Girl Scouts) group meeting for work. I talked about nutrition, sugar in drinks and You are What You Eat, so since I eat blueberries every morning with my oatmeal, I of course, had to dress for the occasion. The entire thing was so FUN!

AND LASTLY.....It is SPRING in Nome, Alaska!!!! Some people in the lower 48 were I come from say that Spring is when you can pull out your spring jacket or when flowers start to grow and bloom, but we say it is spring when you can see the roads, it starts to get muddy and you get to pull out your "mud boots" or "rubber boots"....and when the snow starts to melt. We don't get to pull out our spring jackets yet, but YAY, the snow is starting to melt, it is getting muddy, I can run outside, I can maybe consider walking or biking to work and I have giant icicles hanging from my house. Oh, and it is WARM at 20 degrees! :) It's spring!!! YAY! :)

A Giant Icicle on my Deck.

Sheefish, Caribou, good company!!!

Down the Noatak river to the town of Kotzebue!!! So as I promised i would give an update about Shanna and I's trip to Kotzebue. So this all started by me and Shanna meeting up on the plane as i rode in on flight 152 and she hopped on in Nome. So we got there Friday and got a nice tour of Kotz and everyone knows that you can't go to Kotz without experiencing Empress so we ate dinner was it ever delicious!!!! So we didn't go out fishing till Saturday, it was a nice morning and got to open my eyes to the delicious smell of Bacon and sourdough pancakes!! Mmmm Shanna is getting the whole pancake thing down!!! So we all hopped on our snowmachines and made our trek out to the sound of Kotzebue and boy was it cold!!! We fished off of lockheart point and had to make some holes and

My cuz Chad and I making holes, as you could see our cool dude snowmachines in the back!!

right when we put our hooks in Bam!! Immediately we caught fish!!! But um wrong kind of fish as we got bullhead, tomcods and smelts. I couldn't believe that the smelts were biting that big of hooks. So no luck there so we wandered around looking for people to get a fishing report. Since if there are people in one spot then that probably means that there are fish there. So we tried Pipe spit which had no luck close to the spit. Luckily Ellen and I forgot his name stopped by and tried fishing a little farther out. As we were sitting there we could see that they had caught one so we decided to move out there.

Me and Chad trying our luck at these holes :)

Only one problem, Chad's backup snowmachine wouldn't start :( so Chad volunteered to stay and try and start it while Shanna and I went out an tried our luck out there. Not long after making some holes, we decided it was time to change our lures and Shanna took the best one a silver/orange Krocidile....and who bought it? yes me but i let her use it because that's what you do when you love someone. So Shanna brings her new lure and decides to try another hole, while the guy next to me has already pulled up 4 i start to get disappointed :) and just when i am thinking there are no fish in the sea. Shanna PULLS one up!! She starts yelling and saying I got one I got one!!! I run over there and she pulls it up and its a nice size sheefish and she is ever so elated. I sit there smiling happy as a parent would be but I'm really not her parent but still overjoyed she got one.

Shanna and her first sheefish!!

So since Shanna caught one all our moods were up and Chad showed up and we decided get down to business and next thing you know we are catching sheefish like Michael Jordan wins titles!! Were catching them like native people like pop....were catching them like cops catch robbers :) OK you get the point but we stayed out there for the rest of the day and caught 18 or so sheefish which was definitely one of the funnest times i had fishing. This was my first time sheefishing since i was a little kid and it definitely brings back memory's. (pause) (holding back tears) . So the real work was just about to begin. We had to cut up all the fish so some we made in to steaks and the others we filleted. I tried my cool hand luke on it and i grasped the steaks no problem but had a few problems with the filleting them. So the rest of the night we spent packaging them. Let me tell you its a lot of work!!!

Me with my first sheefish in a billion years!

Shanna posing with some her catch :)

Chad fishing in style!!!

Ellen from Noatak transplanted to Kotz and works for Bering air as she is just pulling her fish out of the hole. As you could see its definitely an action shot as i had alot of fun taking pictures and watching peoples faces as they got excited that they got the familiar tug on there line. When your sitting there your jigging and the next thing you know you get a big tug and you start pulling the line up. Its one of the funnest things to do!!! I can't wait till next year!!

Alright so that was Sheefish day, the next day was Easter so we got off to a late start. But it was totally worth it. Chad and I woke up to look for our Easter egg bowls that Shanna hid for us and boy they sure were yummy alright. We had church and sat behind the peacocks and Kanae's kids :) but after church they had a delicious brunch that was oh so filling. So afterwards we went up the mighty Noatak river to try our hand at caribou.....BTW during sheefish day i tried to catch some caribou but had no luck as i missed. So hoping for better caribou fortunes we went out on the flats. So we went out and the wind was rocking and the weather well below -10 we spotted the caribou, and unlike the day before it was much harder for them run in the deep snow. So our ever so famous hunter Chad and us caught up to them and selected a nice young bull and caught it. When we got closer we noticed that it had a caribou tracking collar so that was interesting. During the fall time ADF&G captures caribou and put tracking collars on them. So the real work was about to begin as it was windy and cold. When your cutting in the winter time its always nice to put your hand in the skin or the blood to warm your hands up. So it was Shanna's first time hunting caribou and to skin and i have to say she did a Fabulous job!!! It took us little under an hour to cut up. By this time our hands were frozen and we made the long trek back. As we got back we started right away to cut up the caribou in to steaks, roasts, and soup. Lots of work again. We also brought back the heart, liver and tongue!!! Hmmm the heart is one of the best parts of caribou and it was Shanna's first time trying them out. Not sure if she liked them as me and Chad....my lips were so happy to have heart, i am sure Chads was just as well. I would like to thank Chad Sheldon for our expedition and putting up with us. Mainly me, and i am glad that Shanna got to experience all the fishing and hunting up north style. Until next time, which will probably be tomorrow as i have some cool pictures of my trip to kivils.

So the first picture is Shanna fishing while some caribou ran right by her!!! crazy ah...

Second is Chad's dog trigger, it was nice having him cause after Shanna left and Chad was a work he kept me company.

Then the one to the left is Chad and I getting ready to work on our caribou.

Not many caribou pictures because both Shanna and I were working on it and our hands were bloody thus we couldn't take many pictures.

Times of a alaskan

So as you could see I am back up at work which is always nice but also some negatives. I spend 2 weeks at a time up here and then get one week off. That's camp work for you, there are definitely plus and minuses on the scale. But here's a decent photo of me today outside on the dock of the warehouse. Do I work outside? Um no i don't, while up here i rarely get to go out. Its good in the winter but summer time i definitely get office fever and want to go outside!! I really haven't posted anything fun or what not since the only thing we really did so far was Iditarod which is nice but that is only March. So since i really don't get out and what not to take pictures or anything else i figured i would post some older pictures of some of the places that we got to travel in the past year. Also i noticed i haven't put my favorite nephew in here Baby Samuel aka Bo Jangles who is my sisters boy. So i will include him in this piece today.

Shanna and I at the gold camp out side of Nome...Go GO GO Gold fever

Us outside of Nome on the road system i forget what they call this place....

Us at Dorothy Falls, long hike but beautiful out there...make sure you pack lots of bug dope!!

Chicago Bulls Game!!! Every native should experience a bulls game...MJ 23 for life :)

Shanna on the way for a walk...beautiful lights behind the beautiful girl in Chi town

Bean in Chicago that thing is cool!!! Its a bean mirror so doe s that mean you would fart off the walls if you were around it

Shanna got me a new tripod for my camera and utilizing it on a snowshoe hike out towards banner creek...nice but a little cold...yes i know i am photogenic or wait can you even see me ?

Shanna and Sam during his birthday at chuck e cheese!! That place rocks...i am glad that i have a nephew now so i could bring him there and become a kid all over again. Although i do have problems trying to fit in to the rides and maybe even broke the ride one where you sit in a single seat and it lifts you up...it just starting smoking and couldn't move with me :) sike...anyways that is it for now, i leave out of here in 3 days and am going to spend some time in Anchorage and visit bo jangles and then head up to Kotzebue and do some sheefishing and try my hand at caribou. we are going to be staying with my cousin chad and will be nice to finally sheefish and caribou hunt again. Shee fish taste like halibut but look like a big pike or something as for caribou you know how they are...actually below is a picture of a sheefish that i hijacked from one of my friends facebook pages. If we catch some i am sure i will have a cool blog about our experience...peace...

Also big news my friend Beaver and his girlfriend Roxy are getting married in Kenai on August 1 so congratulations. Below are pictures of the cute couple... Don't you like Beavers Baby Seal shirt :)