Friday, August 10, 2012

New and exciting life moments

Our lives have been busy and full of changes since our last post. Yes, I realize a lot can change in one year and 2 months! So first and foremost, we are going to be parents soon!! Our lives are about to change and our family is growing!! We are expecting a little boy October 21, 2012. We are very excited and eagerly getting everything set for the arrival of our little guy! Also new to our family is our kitten, Spurr. She is an active, crazy and adventurous cat. She is fun to have around and has been a great source of entertainment. Another school year is right around the corner. Granger is starting his 5th year of teaching (3rd at Kenai) and I am going to start my 3rd year of teaching, still out in Sterling. My title is changing a little this year as I am only going to have intensive needs students. All of my resource students have gone to another special education teacher that was hired. This will be such a great blessing this year, as I was stretched very thin last year. We have been in our house for 2 years now. It seems like it has flown by! We are continuing to make improvements and change things around. Granger and some buddies have completed a rock climbing room in one of the basement bedrooms. It is a great little bouldering space. After 2 years, we finally got a kitchen table that has more than 2 chairs. So now when friends visit it is a little easier to fit everyone. We has a great, and very busy, summer. Granger, Donny and Braxton attempted Mt. Spurr again at the end of May. They made it about half way up and made the smart decision to turn back due to "sketchy" conditions of the snow bridges. I'm sure they will make it to the summit someday. We continue to help run Kenai Young Life and took 10 high school students to Castaway camp this summer. After almost missing our flight (one leader did actually, after breaking down in Anchorage) we made it to camp. Camp was amazing. The weather was high 90's to 100's. A bit of a shock for the Alaska kids to say the least. Camp was the experience of a lifetime for some of our kids. They all seemed to have a great time and 5 of them decided to make a decision to follow Christ! It was truly an amazing time. The last day of camp, one of our kids had a medical emergency and needed to stay in the hospital, in Fargo, North Dakota, for a few days. Granger stayed with him and I continued on with the kids to get them back to Alaska. I continued on to Michigan after camp to spend time with family. Granger joined a few days later and we were able to celebrate the marriage of Caleb (Granger's brother) to Calla. The wedding was beautiful and it was great to see family and friends. After the excitement of the wedding we spent one day with the Klunder's to have our annual Klunder Family Fun Day! All 17 and a half of us gathered to spend one (hot) day together. Let me tell you, having 7 kids ages 4 and under, there is never a dull moment. Seeing our nieces and nephews was very precious time, as we have only met 3 of them once before. Time goes very fast and the kids change so quickly! The Klunder family continues to grow and we can't wait until our little guy can meet the families! After our exciting time with the Klunder's, we had the opportunity to go to Canada with the Nyboer's. The Nyboer's have a cabin in Lake of the Woods, Onterio. We road tripped it up with 8 out of the 12 Nyboer's. While at Chinook, we relaxed, fished, and played games. The weather was beautiful (and hot). Granger got to water ski, which he hasn't done up there in years. Our time with family these days is so precious and we enjoyed every minute of it. Finally, we make our way back to Alaska. We rested and started preparations on our house before the school year approaches. A week later our friends Chad and Julia came for a visit. We were very busy showing them the beauty Alaska has to offer. The weather didn't cooperate most of the week but we still got out and enjoyed the beauty and adventures. It was very fun to show them our town and spend time with them. Now we are finishing up the last of our projects on the house/nursery before the school year starts. We are anticipating a great year and only have 10 more weeks until we get to meet our son!! I will start updating this more to keep you up on our changing life!! :) lots of love, Bethany, Granger, baby boy, and Spurr :)