Our past week was pretty uneventful. The weather was kind of crummy - rainy, cold and cloudy. But I did paint the ugliness out of our 2nd bathroom, to a beautiful tan color and built a new piece of furniture for the bathroom. We were hoping that by the weekend, the weather would clear up just like it did the past weekend. But, not really. We spent the weekend running errands, as it seems rather never-ending lately. We bought new nightstands though, that was kind of exciting! We also went to a few local things, that was interesting.
On Friday night, while running errands, we finally buckled down and bought not only some fishing poles and gear, but also got our fishing licenses. Then on Saturday, we went to the "Only Fool's Run at Midnight" 5k race. Apparently it's just like Halloween, except instead of getting candy you run a 5k. So we went to the convention center that there was a pre-race party so we could see what it was all about. It was pretty entertaining and we will be participating in this next year - anyone want to join us? Some of my favorite costumes were the Alaskan Lady Gaga, Cookie Monster and his Cookie (another person), and Scooby Doo's gang. There's also a centipede branch, where you have to have a minimum of a few people and must be tied together in some way. Last year, a group of six guys dressed up as Alaskan Beer bottles and they were connected by the 6-pack container. It was pretty funny.
On Sunday, we felt we needed to get outside and do something. The weather was still cloudy and cold, but at least it wasn't raining. We decided to try out our new fishing poles and see what skills we had. We quickly learned that neither of us really knew what we were doing. Well, I knew absolutely nothing. Eric at least knew how to set up the line. We tried watching others to see what their techniques were. Just like every location, there are fishing rules that you need to abide by, or get your license taken away. One of them is you cannot use bait and so need to catch fish by lures or bobbers. It seemed that most people were using lures, but I tried a bobber while Eric tried a lure. We didn't catch anything, but I can proudly say that I'm more comfortable casting the line now. We were only out for about an hour and a half, it got too cold for me. We watched one guy catch about a 30lb. salmon, which took him about a solid 20 minutes to get out of the water. We also watched some other people catch smaller fish.. and then cut them up right on the rocks. While that was kind of gross, it was also kind of helpful because while I don't have any desire to clean a fish, neither of us would've known what to do with the fish if we had caught one. Now I think we slightly have a better grasp on it. The fun part of that day was that when the guys were gutting the fish, they left the guts on a rock and a handful of eagles instantly appeared. They started fighting each other for the meat, some were even grabbing it out of the talons of one eagle while they both were flying. It was entertaining!
After heading back home to warm up, we then headed to A Salmon-chanted Evening at the Thane Ore House. It was a local event to sponsor a local theatre, so the restaurant was putting on an all you can eat buffet, followed by a dessert auction - Eric's perfect night. Ha! The food was okay, but the location was beautiful. Technically, the restaurant is "out the road" and so it's away from all the tourists and had stunning views. They did, also, have an amazing beer-battered halibut - the only thing really worth going back for. The dessert auction was fun, but we didn't buy anything. Some people were paying $100 just for a pie! I'm going to see if next year maybe I can enter my carrot cake. :)
That's about it. Nothing too exciting. The house is getting more organized, but still not done. We're trying to finish filling out our claim form so that we can start getting our broken furniture fixed or replaced. Sorry for no pictures this time, I haven't taken any this week. I hope that next post I will put up pictures of our home, as we should be getting our coffee and end tables this week, so the house will look more 'done.'
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Happy Summer Solstice!
Today is Summer Solstice, which means that it is the longest day of the year. Juneau can expect 19 hours of daylight today. Other parts of Alaska will have 24 hours of daylight. From this point on, the days start getting shorter, but with 19 hours of sunlight... we won't notice it for awhile. :)
We had a great weekend! We finally got the opportunity to really start exploring Juneau. Last weekend Eric was sick and then most of the week it rained. One night it cleared up, so we went on a hike near our house, right behind Costco. It's kind of funny, sounding, but after 10 minutes on this trail you feel like you're completely in the middle of nowhere. It was great though, because we started our hike at 9pm. You can't say that in Chicago! We hiked for about 40 min, and stopped when the trail started getting a little too muddy. This is the Lemon Creek Trail, we'll definitely go back and spend the time to hike to the creek.
On Saturday, the weather finally started getting gorgeous again. Before hiking, we had some furniture shopping to do. We had found a coffee table and end table we had liked last weekend, but were having a hard time with our dining room table. We have a very limited space for our dining room table and it's been tough finding one the size we need that we like. But this weekend was a success! We purchased our dining room table, coffee and end table! They'll get delivered in the next couple weeks! That was exciting... now we just need nightstands and to get all the stuff the movers broke fixed.
We then headed to Mendenhall Glacier to hike on some of the trails around it. We decided to take the East Glacier Trail, a 3.5 mile hike in the park. It was great! We saw lakes, streams, waterfalls, icebergs, the glacier, and a hoary marmot. What I love about Juneau, is once you start a hike, you feel like you're somewhere tropical. Juneau is filled with rain forests and everything is so lush and green. The trees are as tall as the sky and you can really find peacefulness just about anywhere. Here's one of my favorite pictures from that hike.
You can really see how tall the trees are, and did you notice Eric in the bottom left corner? He almost blends in. We will definitely do this trail again!
That night we went to one of the restaurants we visited back in March and loved, Hangar on the Wharf. It's downtown, right on the channel, so it has beautiful views. This was a delayed birthday dinner celebration for me. Sadly, their prices and menu change from the off-season and so we were not as pleased as we were back in March. Eric got snow crab legs, though, and those were pretty tasty. But I think this place may only be an off-season favorite.
On Sunday, we had planned to head downtown to take the tram up to Mt. Roberts. We had wanted to spend the morning doing some things around the house - as there are things I can't do without Eric. Those chores lasted longer than expected and then we headed to our first condo board meeting to get to know some of our other neighbors. We can't say that was much fun, but it was nice to meet other unit owners. And, the building that we were in, eagles like to fly and land right on the roof. So we got to see a couple bald eagles flying directly at us until they landed right above us. That was pretty cool! By 4pm we finally left to go to the tram. We headed downtown and found out that there were 3 cruise boats in and the town was just loaded with tourists. Here's the tram on the way up:
The weather was just gorgeous! Warm, sunny, blue skies = a perfect day to go up high. Once we got off the tourist track and onto some trails, the views were just stunning. Welcome to Juneau!
...and their ugly cruise boats. That's Gastineau Channel, and across it is Douglas Island. We considered purchasing a place on Douglas Island, but were told it was dark, cold and windy. There's only one bridge connecting Juneau to Douglas Island and no large boats can go under it, meaning the cruise boats have to go out the same way they came in. There's also a pretty nice looking beach on Douglas that we'll go to on the next nice day. We got a season pass for the tram, which is open from May - September, so we'll be heading up there often and next will try to make it to Gastineau Peak. While up there, we also saw a Mama eagle and her 2 babies about 2 weeks old, through a scope of the Rangers. That was pretty cool too!
We learned some things this weekend:
1. We both, desperately, need hiking boats.
2. People in Juneau are nice, really nice.. almost too nice! But we love it. :)
3. We officially live at Costco and need a bigger pantry to make up for all the bulk we're purchasing. While Costco saves a little in Chicago, it saves almost 50% here when compared to other grocery stores. An example of some of the ridiculousness, a 40 oz bottle of ranch at the grocery store is about $9. Two 40 oz bottles of Ranch at Costco is about $8. Or 1 lb. of carrots is $2, or 5 lbs. of carrots is $5
4. We will no longer eat fresh fruit.. soo expensive.
5. We need a dog. Seeing people bring their dogs on hikes, makes us want one more than ever.
6. There are no dogs available at the shelter. Which is good, since no dogs are being left behind, but bad because we might have to buy one. (We both grew up with adopted dogs from the shelter)
7. Salmon and Halibut are $12.99/lb. How?! You can throw a net in the water to catch them. (But you need a fishing license to do that.) That's more expensive than Chicago!
8. We are going to learn how to do this:
Do you see the little specs? They are para-gliders. They run off a cliff with their parachute and just float around. Can you imagine the views up there? I need to figure out how we learn how to do this..
In other news, we've seen 'Betty' and 'Dallas', a mama bear and her cub. Yes, her CUB! We almost didn't see the cub, because the mama was SO large, and the cub was sooooo tiny. He was adorable!! Again, right from our living room window! They were only out for a short amount of time, so again I didn't get a picture. We've also seen 'Elmo' which may have been Leroy, but I think it was a different bear, so we'll stick with him as 'Elmo'. :) That makes 5 bears and 1 cub from the living room. I love it!
Here's another one of our neighbors, although they usually perch at the top of the trees, but this was on a lamp post when our ferry pulled in to the docks a few weeks ago. (I just unloaded my camera.) These guys are everywhere! You cannot walk outside without seeing one or more.
We had a great weekend! We finally got the opportunity to really start exploring Juneau. Last weekend Eric was sick and then most of the week it rained. One night it cleared up, so we went on a hike near our house, right behind Costco. It's kind of funny, sounding, but after 10 minutes on this trail you feel like you're completely in the middle of nowhere. It was great though, because we started our hike at 9pm. You can't say that in Chicago! We hiked for about 40 min, and stopped when the trail started getting a little too muddy. This is the Lemon Creek Trail, we'll definitely go back and spend the time to hike to the creek.
On Saturday, the weather finally started getting gorgeous again. Before hiking, we had some furniture shopping to do. We had found a coffee table and end table we had liked last weekend, but were having a hard time with our dining room table. We have a very limited space for our dining room table and it's been tough finding one the size we need that we like. But this weekend was a success! We purchased our dining room table, coffee and end table! They'll get delivered in the next couple weeks! That was exciting... now we just need nightstands and to get all the stuff the movers broke fixed.
We then headed to Mendenhall Glacier to hike on some of the trails around it. We decided to take the East Glacier Trail, a 3.5 mile hike in the park. It was great! We saw lakes, streams, waterfalls, icebergs, the glacier, and a hoary marmot. What I love about Juneau, is once you start a hike, you feel like you're somewhere tropical. Juneau is filled with rain forests and everything is so lush and green. The trees are as tall as the sky and you can really find peacefulness just about anywhere. Here's one of my favorite pictures from that hike.
You can really see how tall the trees are, and did you notice Eric in the bottom left corner? He almost blends in. We will definitely do this trail again!
That night we went to one of the restaurants we visited back in March and loved, Hangar on the Wharf. It's downtown, right on the channel, so it has beautiful views. This was a delayed birthday dinner celebration for me. Sadly, their prices and menu change from the off-season and so we were not as pleased as we were back in March. Eric got snow crab legs, though, and those were pretty tasty. But I think this place may only be an off-season favorite.
On Sunday, we had planned to head downtown to take the tram up to Mt. Roberts. We had wanted to spend the morning doing some things around the house - as there are things I can't do without Eric. Those chores lasted longer than expected and then we headed to our first condo board meeting to get to know some of our other neighbors. We can't say that was much fun, but it was nice to meet other unit owners. And, the building that we were in, eagles like to fly and land right on the roof. So we got to see a couple bald eagles flying directly at us until they landed right above us. That was pretty cool! By 4pm we finally left to go to the tram. We headed downtown and found out that there were 3 cruise boats in and the town was just loaded with tourists. Here's the tram on the way up:
The weather was just gorgeous! Warm, sunny, blue skies = a perfect day to go up high. Once we got off the tourist track and onto some trails, the views were just stunning. Welcome to Juneau!
...and their ugly cruise boats. That's Gastineau Channel, and across it is Douglas Island. We considered purchasing a place on Douglas Island, but were told it was dark, cold and windy. There's only one bridge connecting Juneau to Douglas Island and no large boats can go under it, meaning the cruise boats have to go out the same way they came in. There's also a pretty nice looking beach on Douglas that we'll go to on the next nice day. We got a season pass for the tram, which is open from May - September, so we'll be heading up there often and next will try to make it to Gastineau Peak. While up there, we also saw a Mama eagle and her 2 babies about 2 weeks old, through a scope of the Rangers. That was pretty cool too!
We learned some things this weekend:
1. We both, desperately, need hiking boats.
2. People in Juneau are nice, really nice.. almost too nice! But we love it. :)
3. We officially live at Costco and need a bigger pantry to make up for all the bulk we're purchasing. While Costco saves a little in Chicago, it saves almost 50% here when compared to other grocery stores. An example of some of the ridiculousness, a 40 oz bottle of ranch at the grocery store is about $9. Two 40 oz bottles of Ranch at Costco is about $8. Or 1 lb. of carrots is $2, or 5 lbs. of carrots is $5
4. We will no longer eat fresh fruit.. soo expensive.
5. We need a dog. Seeing people bring their dogs on hikes, makes us want one more than ever.
6. There are no dogs available at the shelter. Which is good, since no dogs are being left behind, but bad because we might have to buy one. (We both grew up with adopted dogs from the shelter)
7. Salmon and Halibut are $12.99/lb. How?! You can throw a net in the water to catch them. (But you need a fishing license to do that.) That's more expensive than Chicago!
8. We are going to learn how to do this:
Do you see the little specs? They are para-gliders. They run off a cliff with their parachute and just float around. Can you imagine the views up there? I need to figure out how we learn how to do this..
In other news, we've seen 'Betty' and 'Dallas', a mama bear and her cub. Yes, her CUB! We almost didn't see the cub, because the mama was SO large, and the cub was sooooo tiny. He was adorable!! Again, right from our living room window! They were only out for a short amount of time, so again I didn't get a picture. We've also seen 'Elmo' which may have been Leroy, but I think it was a different bear, so we'll stick with him as 'Elmo'. :) That makes 5 bears and 1 cub from the living room. I love it!
Here's another one of our neighbors, although they usually perch at the top of the trees, but this was on a lamp post when our ferry pulled in to the docks a few weeks ago. (I just unloaded my camera.) These guys are everywhere! You cannot walk outside without seeing one or more.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Can we relax now, please?
What a whirlwind we have been through in the past few months. That whirlwind is almost, finally, coming to an end and all we can say is, “We’re exhausted!” We are flying back home to Juneau right now, for good. We can finally stop living out of a suitcase, as we’ve done for the past month. We can finally get settled in our new home and our new town, and I didn’t think I would say this, but right now I am glad.
You know it’s bad, when you go to visit one of your best friend’s and when he asks you how married life is, we both respond, ‘stressful.’ But, even he assured us that it wasn’t because we were married, but because of life. Haha, that sounds bad too.
The last blog I wrote covered our ferry breaking down. Well, life in Juneau for the 4 days we were there only got worse. Eric started his first day at his clinic that Tuesday, May 25th. Coming home he said it was a great first day and thought he would really like it there. On Wednesday, we had our condo closing at 2pm and our final walk-through just before that. When we got to our walk-through, our realtor told us the title agency did not have our paperwork to sign and so that we would just wait until they got it. Well, 30 minutes later the bank, Wells Fargo, cancelled our closing. Saying that they couldn’t get our papers to us to sign that day. The reason… well all we were told is because they wanted to relook over Eric’s employment verification letter that they had in their hands for over a week. So, by 6 p.m. I was finally called to say that the closing was rescheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday. The flaw was our movers were supposed to deliver everything at 8 a.m. Thursday, so the next morning we had to wake up early to call the movers and explain our situation. At 10 a.m., Eric and I arrive at the Title Agency for our closing, to only find out that they still don’t have our paperwork. When our realtor arrives, he gets on the phone with our mortgage consultant to try to find out what’s going on. She has no explanation. It is the underwriters who are taking their time and she doesn’t even understand what the problem is. So our realtor tells us that we are just going to wait there until the paperwork comes in. By 11:30, still nothing. Since this is now Eric’s second time getting out of work for the closing, he needed to get back to work. We told them we would not come back until the paperwork was here. At 2, the papers were in, but after some more hassle and other deadlines that needed to be met this story could go on and on. We did officially close and the paperwork all got recorded on Thursday, making us official homeowners! But, now once I get back home, I need to fight with Wells Fargo. They have a closing guarantee – if they miss your closing they’ll pay your first month’s mortgage payment. Well… they missed two and they will be doing something about it because this was such b.s. Luckily our mortgage consultant is 100% on our side and was working last week to try to help us get something in return for all the crap they put us through.
Our movers then came on Friday. Everything got loaded in and the house is a disaster zone. But, since this is our lives, something had to go wrong. Well, they broke just about every large piece of furniture we brought with us. My bookcase is shattered, my couch – they broke a recliner in it, they tore our mattress, they dropped my dresser chipping off wood and forcing it to swell at the bottom, they snapped a wheel off the sport cart we put all our gear on, and they broke the gear shifter off of my bike. The only other large furniture we brought was another couch, dresser and mattress. So they broke like 80% of our large furniture. Isn’t this why we pay professionals…so that our stuff doesn’t get broken? It really makes me angry thinking about it all. I can understand one or two pieces, but almost everything? Really? But the mover’s response was that everything just got stacked too high or dropped. Granted it went through 3 moving companies, so we can’t track who did it exactly, but it’s all under the military move and that’s who we go through to fix all this. The process is that they will see if they can repair it, if not, then they see if they can find a comparable piece of furniture that they can purchase for us in Juneau. And lastly, if not, then they find a comparable price and then give us the money for it. While most of our stuff is old and it’s not a huge deal, it’s the principle and the hassle. My bookcase and dresser were part of a set with another dresser and my bed frame– so how do you find new ones to match? Just another thing for us to do.
On the bright side of things, we have already seen two black bears from our living room window!! Meet our new neighbor, Carl:
See how close he is to the grill? He was a big one, about 250 pounds. The second one we saw, Leroy, was about 130 and happily crawled around on his stomach to lick up as much birdseed as he could. He hung out for about an hour, right outside our window! I love it! Eric has been the one naming them. We also had fantastic weather that week, although we barely got to enjoy it - 75 degrees and sunny, everyday. We hear that’s unusual. Damn. We did fit in a short bike ride to explore the Twin Lakes that are just down the road, along the bike path, from our new home. I was shocked to see people swimming in them! But it looks like a great place to grab some intertubes and just float on the water. I will be doing that once it gets warm. ☺ We already have about 14 hours of sunlight, getting light at about 5 a.m. and dark around 10 p.m. It’s been awesome!!
We had a great time during our last week in Chicago. Good friends, good family.. although not enough time to see them all. We flew back home last Sunday and arrived very late. Monday, Memorial Day, my Mom did an awesome job setting up a last minute barbecue with all my close family friends. It was great getting a chance to better catch up with them, since at the wedding we were all over the place. Thanks again, Debbie and Jim, for letting us use your home for it. Tuesday, we spent the day with Eric’s Mom since she was off work. His brother, Fred, joined us and we spent the day in the park playing Boom Ball and tossing around the Frisbee, then went home to play our usual card games with them. Then for the first night in what seemed like forever, Eric’s Mom cooked us a home-cooked meal. It was glorious!! No more crappy fast food or restaurant food, we had been dying for something from home and finally got it. Wednesday, we spent the morning spending our wedding gift cards and taking care of some things we needed to while in the city. Then in the afternoon we headed over to Matt and Meagan’s place for our favorite meal with them and to play our favorite game with them. It also happened to be Game 3 of the Hawks/Flyers run for the cup, so we spent the evening with them drinking margaritas and watching the game. On Thursday, Eric had Part 1 of 2 of his Pharmacy Board exams and I went shopping with my Mom, followed by another home-cooked meal with both of our parents. On Friday Eric took his 2nd Board exam, I got a mani/pedi for the wedding, and a whole bunch of other stuff that we had to do. That night was the rehearsal and the dinner. After all that, we went to celebrate our buddy, Joe's, graduation at his party on the south side. We had a blast getting to hang out with all of our friends, but we didn't get home until almost 1 a.m. The next morning we had to get up before 8a.m. to start getting ready for the wedding - mainly me for my hair appointment. The whole day was devoted to the wedding. It was beautiful and of course a good time! Our last hoorah before leaving. Congrats to Matt and Meagan! And thanks Pharmacy friends for yet another great time! We will miss you all, so start planning your trips!
We are now officially back in Juneau and starting to get more settled. The boxes are all gone, our couches are cleared of stuff and I've seen our 3rd bear, 'Annie'. I'm going to start naming them alphabetically so by the end of the season we know how many we've seen. I didn't get a picture of her either, she was just walking by, but now my camera sits on the window ledge. I'm ready. :)
Once we get a little more settled I'll take pics of the place. We've continued to have great weather this week, but today and this weekend seem to be nothing but rain. We've gone for a couple walks this week and I've laid out in the sun reading. I've met a lot of nice people this week too, and competent - it's nice to know those people still exist in the world!
Thanks to everyone for putting up with my super long posts. They should start getting a little shorter now that we are in the same place for a long period of time, as I hope to make updates more frequently. Oh and did I mention? I've also received all of the high-res photos from our wedding. I'll leave you with a few of the favorites... although there are a lot! Our photographer took over 1300 pictures!
You know it’s bad, when you go to visit one of your best friend’s and when he asks you how married life is, we both respond, ‘stressful.’ But, even he assured us that it wasn’t because we were married, but because of life. Haha, that sounds bad too.
The last blog I wrote covered our ferry breaking down. Well, life in Juneau for the 4 days we were there only got worse. Eric started his first day at his clinic that Tuesday, May 25th. Coming home he said it was a great first day and thought he would really like it there. On Wednesday, we had our condo closing at 2pm and our final walk-through just before that. When we got to our walk-through, our realtor told us the title agency did not have our paperwork to sign and so that we would just wait until they got it. Well, 30 minutes later the bank, Wells Fargo, cancelled our closing. Saying that they couldn’t get our papers to us to sign that day. The reason… well all we were told is because they wanted to relook over Eric’s employment verification letter that they had in their hands for over a week. So, by 6 p.m. I was finally called to say that the closing was rescheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday. The flaw was our movers were supposed to deliver everything at 8 a.m. Thursday, so the next morning we had to wake up early to call the movers and explain our situation. At 10 a.m., Eric and I arrive at the Title Agency for our closing, to only find out that they still don’t have our paperwork. When our realtor arrives, he gets on the phone with our mortgage consultant to try to find out what’s going on. She has no explanation. It is the underwriters who are taking their time and she doesn’t even understand what the problem is. So our realtor tells us that we are just going to wait there until the paperwork comes in. By 11:30, still nothing. Since this is now Eric’s second time getting out of work for the closing, he needed to get back to work. We told them we would not come back until the paperwork was here. At 2, the papers were in, but after some more hassle and other deadlines that needed to be met this story could go on and on. We did officially close and the paperwork all got recorded on Thursday, making us official homeowners! But, now once I get back home, I need to fight with Wells Fargo. They have a closing guarantee – if they miss your closing they’ll pay your first month’s mortgage payment. Well… they missed two and they will be doing something about it because this was such b.s. Luckily our mortgage consultant is 100% on our side and was working last week to try to help us get something in return for all the crap they put us through.
Our movers then came on Friday. Everything got loaded in and the house is a disaster zone. But, since this is our lives, something had to go wrong. Well, they broke just about every large piece of furniture we brought with us. My bookcase is shattered, my couch – they broke a recliner in it, they tore our mattress, they dropped my dresser chipping off wood and forcing it to swell at the bottom, they snapped a wheel off the sport cart we put all our gear on, and they broke the gear shifter off of my bike. The only other large furniture we brought was another couch, dresser and mattress. So they broke like 80% of our large furniture. Isn’t this why we pay professionals…so that our stuff doesn’t get broken? It really makes me angry thinking about it all. I can understand one or two pieces, but almost everything? Really? But the mover’s response was that everything just got stacked too high or dropped. Granted it went through 3 moving companies, so we can’t track who did it exactly, but it’s all under the military move and that’s who we go through to fix all this. The process is that they will see if they can repair it, if not, then they see if they can find a comparable piece of furniture that they can purchase for us in Juneau. And lastly, if not, then they find a comparable price and then give us the money for it. While most of our stuff is old and it’s not a huge deal, it’s the principle and the hassle. My bookcase and dresser were part of a set with another dresser and my bed frame– so how do you find new ones to match? Just another thing for us to do.
On the bright side of things, we have already seen two black bears from our living room window!! Meet our new neighbor, Carl:
See how close he is to the grill? He was a big one, about 250 pounds. The second one we saw, Leroy, was about 130 and happily crawled around on his stomach to lick up as much birdseed as he could. He hung out for about an hour, right outside our window! I love it! Eric has been the one naming them. We also had fantastic weather that week, although we barely got to enjoy it - 75 degrees and sunny, everyday. We hear that’s unusual. Damn. We did fit in a short bike ride to explore the Twin Lakes that are just down the road, along the bike path, from our new home. I was shocked to see people swimming in them! But it looks like a great place to grab some intertubes and just float on the water. I will be doing that once it gets warm. ☺ We already have about 14 hours of sunlight, getting light at about 5 a.m. and dark around 10 p.m. It’s been awesome!!
We had a great time during our last week in Chicago. Good friends, good family.. although not enough time to see them all. We flew back home last Sunday and arrived very late. Monday, Memorial Day, my Mom did an awesome job setting up a last minute barbecue with all my close family friends. It was great getting a chance to better catch up with them, since at the wedding we were all over the place. Thanks again, Debbie and Jim, for letting us use your home for it. Tuesday, we spent the day with Eric’s Mom since she was off work. His brother, Fred, joined us and we spent the day in the park playing Boom Ball and tossing around the Frisbee, then went home to play our usual card games with them. Then for the first night in what seemed like forever, Eric’s Mom cooked us a home-cooked meal. It was glorious!! No more crappy fast food or restaurant food, we had been dying for something from home and finally got it. Wednesday, we spent the morning spending our wedding gift cards and taking care of some things we needed to while in the city. Then in the afternoon we headed over to Matt and Meagan’s place for our favorite meal with them and to play our favorite game with them. It also happened to be Game 3 of the Hawks/Flyers run for the cup, so we spent the evening with them drinking margaritas and watching the game. On Thursday, Eric had Part 1 of 2 of his Pharmacy Board exams and I went shopping with my Mom, followed by another home-cooked meal with both of our parents. On Friday Eric took his 2nd Board exam, I got a mani/pedi for the wedding, and a whole bunch of other stuff that we had to do. That night was the rehearsal and the dinner. After all that, we went to celebrate our buddy, Joe's, graduation at his party on the south side. We had a blast getting to hang out with all of our friends, but we didn't get home until almost 1 a.m. The next morning we had to get up before 8a.m. to start getting ready for the wedding - mainly me for my hair appointment. The whole day was devoted to the wedding. It was beautiful and of course a good time! Our last hoorah before leaving. Congrats to Matt and Meagan! And thanks Pharmacy friends for yet another great time! We will miss you all, so start planning your trips!
We are now officially back in Juneau and starting to get more settled. The boxes are all gone, our couches are cleared of stuff and I've seen our 3rd bear, 'Annie'. I'm going to start naming them alphabetically so by the end of the season we know how many we've seen. I didn't get a picture of her either, she was just walking by, but now my camera sits on the window ledge. I'm ready. :)
Once we get a little more settled I'll take pics of the place. We've continued to have great weather this week, but today and this weekend seem to be nothing but rain. We've gone for a couple walks this week and I've laid out in the sun reading. I've met a lot of nice people this week too, and competent - it's nice to know those people still exist in the world!
Thanks to everyone for putting up with my super long posts. They should start getting a little shorter now that we are in the same place for a long period of time, as I hope to make updates more frequently. Oh and did I mention? I've also received all of the high-res photos from our wedding. I'll leave you with a few of the favorites... although there are a lot! Our photographer took over 1300 pictures!
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