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 :)

The adventure continues

The amazing adventure continues. School is not even out and our summer is booked! 10 more days of school and Granger is done with his 4th year of teaching and I am finished with my first. School has gone well for both of us this year.

We stay busy between church, Young Life and school. This summer, both of our families are coming to visit. I guess I should start from the beginning. Right after we are released from school Granger is going on a bear hunt with some guys from our church. He is very excited about the potential of getting a bear for our wall! ;) When he gets back he leaves again to climb Mount Spur (for the third time!). This time they will make it!

Just about the time Granger returns a few days later I leave to visit the family in Michigan. I am very excited to have some sister time! Living in Alaska definitely has its perks, but it is far from family, which makes it hard too. After I get back the Nyboer's come for a visit at the end of the month. We are excited for their visit and can't wait to give them a great Alaska experience.

The day the Nyboer's head back to Michigan, we are taking 16 kids to Young Life camp in Oregon.

Once we come back exhausted :) (in a good way), we will prepare for the Klunder clan to arrive. This is going to be a unique experience because all of my siblings and their spouses are coming and leaving the kids with the in-laws (minus the buns in the oven!)We are looking forward to all of our summer visitors.

On the days that we don't have visitors or adventures, we will most likely be fishing, hiking, camping, and hopefully getting in shape! :)

Thanksgiving

So one perk about having a house is being able to host Thanksgiving! And that is just what we did! All together we had 3 couples, Banyan, and my mom, who was able to come visit for a week and spend Thanksgiving with us. We enjoyed a great meal, (although the Turkey took a little longer than expected) though that seems to often be the case. We still have lots of left overs that we are enjoying. We are so blessed to have developed friendships that have formed our Alaska family for those special times when we can't get home to spend it with our biological families!!

It was so much fun having my mom up here to see our new house. We really enjoyed the time together. While mom was here we were able to take her to the dump (I know sounds lame right?) but she was able to see all the eagles that come and hang out in the trees. It's a pretty cool sight actually. We were also able to go over to our friends house, Donny and Andrea, to cut down our Christmas tree. We came back and decorated it together which was always a great past time event that we were able to do together again. This is the first year that we have had a Christmas tree since we've been married! I was also able to make our stocking and hang them by the fire place!!

Mom had a great visit. We were able to take her cross country skiing on the trails near our house and even see a few moose. Mom seemed to like Alaska and I think even debated moving here (not that dad would ever go for that)!

Overall we are doing well. We look forward to seeing our family over Christmas in a few weeks! We hope you are all doing well and would love to hear from you!!

Life

Life in Soldotna is good. We are enjoying our new house! :) It is fun to think about how to decorate for the Holiday's now that we have our own place. We put up Christmas lights on our house and since it is dark now when we leave for school and get home from school, we are enjoying the lights.

Granger is enjoying his job at Kenai High School and I am enjoying mine at Sterling Elementary. Between school, church and Young Life we stay very busy. The snow is here now and we have been able to get out and enjoy cross country skiing.

Our new address is:
33085 Community College Drive
Soldotna, AK 99669

Summer fun!

The summer has come and gone very quickly. We had a fun filled summer of adventures! Our summer started with a lot of trips to Anchorage! In the beginning of June, I was able to fly to Michigan for 10 days. During which, I rode to North Carolina with the fam to attend my cousin Michelle's wedding. It was a great time to spend with family that I don't get to see very often.

Meanwhile, back at the home front, Granger and his buddy Donny attempted Mt. Spur for the second time. They had quite the adventure and unfortunately did not complete their goal of making it to the summit. The weather turned on them and it was unsafe with all the crevasses and lack of visibility. They had some unforgettable experiences however! After leaving base camp to attempt the summit, they turned back to see a black bear tearing through their campsite! They continued on their way until they decided to camp out for the night. That night it snowed 6 inches and was topped off with rain! In the morning they decided to turn back because the snow and rain made it too dangerous to attempt. They turned back and headed for base camp to assess the damage the bear had caused. Once they arrived at base camp, they found the tote that had their dry clothes in it was strewn all over, since the bear had carried it with his mouth and ripped it open. An empty can of Jet Boil fuel lay on the ground where the bear had bit through it! (That probably didn't taste very good!) Luckily they found everything, however, Granger's Bible got destroyed and his only dry clothes were soaked! Once they were back at base camp, they signaled the pilot on their friend's Spot (a device that notified the pilot to come get them) and waited for the plane to arrive. They will attempt Mt. Spur again in the future.

Once I returned back to Alaska things started to get busy! We signed the papers that locked us into our new house on June 18th and got the keys! Almost immediately after that we drove to Anchorage where I ran a half-marathon with a group of friends. The race went well and I finished around the time that I was hoping to. The next day, we returned to our new home!!

June 20th
Our 2nd Anniversary! We packed a small "weekend bag" to spend the night in our new house! The new house was pretty empty, all we had was an air mattress and enough food to last us a few days. We celebrated our 2nd anniversary in our 1st house which was very special! The next day we decided to go on a Summer Solstice hike with our friends Donny, Andi, and baby Banyan. We hiked from Fuller Lakes to Skyline. It is called a traverse hike, but in my opinion is anything but. For those of you who know what Skyline is, it felt like we basically did that three times in a row. It was definitely an adventure and I think my feet are just now healing from it almost a month and a half later! The hike took us 12 hours! We were pretty tired after that!

The next week consisted of packing and moving! We were able to take our time packing which allowed us to enjoy the great Alaskan outdoors! By the end of June it finally felt like we were making progress into making our house a home!

House

We are home owners!! Yes, it is true. We have bought our very first house! It is a very cute little place. We are excited about it and we should close on it the middle of June! It is 4 bedroom, two bath. It also has a hot tub!! I'm super excited about that. We have lots of extra rooms for guests!!

On Friday, I finished student teaching! I am done with my Master's program and will graduate in May!! I am currently looking for a teaching job and will sub for the last month of school here.

Granger is doing well. He still likes his job but is ready for summer to come and the fish to start running. Summer is going to come and go fast, but we are excited for the adventures we will have and the time we will get to see family. We are continuing to like where we are and are meeting a lot of people. Our circle of friends is growing which makes it better. Our address is going to change again soon, so I will post our new address when we are getting ready to move! We love and miss you all.

So it's been a long while since we've update you all. Our last post dates back to before Thanksgiving. We'll start there. We flew to Michigan over Thanksgiving to be with the Nyboer's for the traditional Nyboer thanksgiving feast!! We had a great time. It is always good to be with family over the holidays. We of course had to support the Hope College basketball team by going to the Thanksgiving Tournament. With the help of my siblings, we lured my parents to the game to surprise them. As they entered the arena and saw us, they just stared. It took a while but they finally realized it was really us! It was a great time. We were able to hang out with the Klunder's for the night before we had to head back to Alaska.

The school year has already gone fast. In the fall I was able to find a job as an Intensive Needs Aide in Soldotna. In January I began my student teaching and will be finishing up at the end of the month. Granger has enjoyed working with high schoolers. The transition to the peninsula has been great. We are continuing to make new friends and become more involved with our church. We have found a church that we really enjoy and will start to be more active there. We also have started helping with Young Life. We both love Young Life and are glad that it is in the area.

Over Spring Break we went up to Girdwood and stayed at the Hobbit House. We skied two days and went to a friends wedding. Then we headed up to Anchorage for Granger to get PRK eye surgery. Jan and Bernie graciously let us stay with them while Granger recovered. We had a great time hanging out with them.

We are staying very busy, between Young Life club, church, working, and yes...house hunting, our days seem to fly by. We are continuing our search for a house up here as we have decided we would like to stay for a little longer yet. It is hard being away from our friends and families, but it makes the times we see each other that much sweeter.