The Wind!!

It has been rediculously windy lately! The wind blew so hard the other day that it knocked our grill off of our deck! It's crazy! the cover didn't blow off but the whole grill just rolled down the stairs!

More of Valdez

This first picture is actually in Wasilla....

I love it when there's snow on the mountains..it's just so beautiful! Living in Alaska you take it for granted sometimes because that's all the background you ever see! But take some time and look around you at the amazing gift God has given us. We are so blessed to see it every day.

I will explain the bucket of noodles... so we got to our hotel in Valdez, i make Gabby and me some cup n' noodles for a midnight snack and i just knew she would tip the little cup over so i looked around for something bigger to put the soup in. I found the ice bucket that is provided in most hotels. I dumped the soup in it and started eating...Matthew came out of the bathroom and almost died laughing so hard, because Matthew though (and still does think) that bucket is NOT used for ice, it is used for throwing up in! And what i had in there kinda looked like throw up haha so i got him to take a picture of me eating out of the barf bucket eating what looks like barf...haha good times

dancin' at the bball game

Matthew, Gabriella and I all went to join Jake and his basket ball team over in Valdez this weekend. We stayed in a hotel for 2 nights and went to every game! It was so much fun. This video was the championship game saturday night. Palmer didn't win against ACS but they put up a fight against some 9th graders (i still don't think that's fair) Let me know what you think about the video! 

Days with Gabriella

Jake and I have been on Gabby duty for the past few days. My mom and dad are on vacation so we she's staying at our house from Wednesday the 14th till Tuesday the 27th of October. It has been so much fun with her here! We've become so attached, it's going to be so hard when she's not with us 24/7. It will probablly just make us want to have kids even more though! 

blue jeans and brown shoes

Last night we got together to celebrate Shaphan's birthday. It was lots of fun. A lot of people came, there was good food and fun games! It was nice being with church family and real family. Happy Birthday Shaphan!! This photo was taken when we went to Denali. It was freezing

Video!

So here is a taste of what we did last weekend! Denali was beautiful. Jake and I, Rick and Ant, Shaphan and Autumn and Sawyer and Sheila pilled into a surburban, there was one more seat left for Jeremiah, but he had to work   :(

The four of us met Sawyer and Sheila on Friday night and stayed in an RV, the next morning we drove all day long! Literally. It was fun! Even though we didn't see many animals an I was exausted it was fun being with family. 

something very heavy on my heart

I don't get it...how can you be raised in the church of Christ, your whole family are baptized believers. You went to church every sunday, every wednesday. You were involved in a youth group, you were even baptized yourself! How can you go from that to never going to church again, hating everyone involved with the church, sinning left and right. How can you stop this from happening? How can you look at someone, someone you grew up with in the church, someone who loved the Lord and not just scream at them, and cry and ask them how can this be! How does it happen? I can't tell you how much my heart just aches for my friends who have fallen away. You never expect it, never, and then it happens.

updates of what's going on

Do you like my project!? It took a while to get it done, the class started at 1:30 and we didn't get done till almost 4:00! But it was worth it, it looks really nice. It's a frame you're supposed to hang but I just decided to put it in a scrapbook page.
My kitty wanted to pose for you guys...haha she's so weird

Gabby came over on Saturday. My mom had class and my dad was working at Florence's and all the teens were at the youth retreat so they needed a babysitter fast. You know my mom, she didn't even start calling people till 8:00pm Friday night haha. While she was over I french braided her hair and she tried to do my hair, she loved it.

Matthew 19:14

So I recently painted the "woman room". It's the room I can do whatever I want to! I turned this room into a room that will hopefully be our daughter's room when we have her (I'm not pregnant) For now it is used as the Day Care room. The crib and toys and cubbies, everything baby-wise is in there right now so on the weekends I can just close the door and forget about it. The drawings inside the picture frames are by Ben Firth, he's a memeber of the Anchor Point church of Christ. His whole family is amazing at art. Just the other day when we were down in Homer visiting my grandparents I got a matching frame to put the other drawing in, instead of the blue one. Erin and I painted the room ourselves and my dad helped Jake put up the trim in the middle. It looks really good, I can't believe we did it actually. The border at the top of the wall is a bible verse. I plan to border the whole room but I haven't had the time lately. You have to put each and every letter on the wall, it takes a lot of time. The verse I have up there now is Matthew 19:14 (verbatim on the wall it says)  Jesus said "Let the little children come to me, and do not forbid them for of such is the kingdom of heaven"

Fair Photos

Last Thursday Jake and I went to the Alaska State Fair with Shaphan and Autumn. We had a lot of fun. We ate yummy food, entered a bunch of gun raffles, rode the faris wheel (that's where the mountains photos were taken) rode the squirl cages, looked at all the stuff going on in the Raven Hall,  saw the animals, talked with a lot  of people we know and just had fun with each other. When it was time for the fair to close we realized we hadn't gotten a picture of the four of us so we asked the people at the rat races to take a picture of us. So they told me and Autumn to hop up  and he would!We weren't sure if he was serious or not at first, but he was!

  

Art Projects

At my day care ( by the way is called "Tender Loving Child Care") every tuesday we do a project! Everyone tells me "you can't do art projects with babies!" but you can! You just have to help them out a little more... So last Tuesday we painted hands. Babies, if you've noticed, slap their high chair or slap the ground or slap mid air, so it was easy to get Jesse to slap a piece of paper with paint on his hand! The only difficult thing was babies can tell when there is something they are slapping...So Jesse was grabbing and trying to eat the paper, that didn't work out so well. So if you try this project remember you have to tape the paper down or they will just eat it! 

This Tuesday we painted turtles. This art project is a little bit more difficult and takes a couple of tries. What you do is paint your child's knuckles. Make a fist out of their hand and stick up their thumb like you're giving a thumbs up and the thumb is the turtles head and the knuckles are it's body. With older children you can just tell them to make a fist and after you paint it just tell them to set it on the paper. But with babies it is a little harder. Babies do not like making fists for some reason, at least all the babies I've taken care of. So and easier way to do it with babies is just paint those knuckles and the head and don't make their hand into a fist, just set their hand upside down on the paper, and as long as you didn't get any paint on the other knuckles you can't even tell! So try them! Let me know how it goes! 

Happy Birthday Mom!

So Sunday the 30th of August was my mom's birthday! My brother and I surprised her with tickets to see David Archuletta in concert at the fair on Friday. I got a ticket for me to go with her and Matthew bought her ticket. It was so much fun! It was good music, there were funny people all around us and it was just nice spending time just me and my mom. I love my mom, she means so much to me. 

Yesterday for her actual birthday we went over to their house and helped my dad make an amazing dinner! We had steak shish-ka-bobs with peppers and pinapples and onions on them, salad, BBQ chicken, rice, fruit dipped in chocolate, strawberry short cake! It lasted all night! We played games and sat in the living room and talked. It was very nice having family all together. Mom I hope you had a wonderful birthday!

Day Care

So it's finally done! I've started my day care! I'm still in the process of getting liscenced (the state takes forever) but I have my first child! He's 7 months and so cute! I've been having fun with him. I have a new appriciation for stay at home moms though...staying home all day gets pretty boring! When I have my own kids I am definatly going to be heading off to the grandma Wendy and grandma Ant's home a lot! My hours are 6:30 am till 3:00 pm so if you know anyone let me know. I'm mostly looking for moms or dads working with the school district because then they will be off when Jake is off and because of the hours I am open. 

We climbed the butte the other day, I didn't take any pictures though I forgot my camera so I thought I would put an old picture of climbing the butte. This was taken before Jake and I were dating, we just liked each other. 2006.

Continued from Internet!

More things we did this summer... We went boating with my parents and Matthew and Gabby....We got a trash service!! That was pretty exciting, although we never can remember to actually put it out for them to come get, i guess half the time we remember half the time we forget....we had a our one year aniversary!! can you believe it! one year! it' crazy, Jake (along with Shaphan and Autumn) made an amazing dinner for us after he sent me to the spa! it was a perfect day. we ate the top of our cake from the wedding, thanks to who ever boxed it up for us :).....I had my 21st birthday, my cousin was in town so we had a double birthday!....Jake and i were wrestling and he pinned me down and was going to give me a hicky on my fore head, so i head butt him and split his lip....we had a cook out, even though it was in our own yard, it was nice just the two of us.....

INTERNET!!

We have the internet hooked up to our house now! Jake just couldn't stand it, he felt so disconected from the world because we don't have TV or land line phone or internet or the paper! So he broke down and finally said we are getting the internet!! We hated going over to our parents' house to use it because when we went there we wanted to spend time with them not on the computer. So yay i finally get to start blogging again!

here's a recap of things that have happened....

Our house is Blue! Jake and i had fun with Autumn one night and took some pretty random pictures, Jake is the washer, i'm the dryer..We went to Fairbanks to see family and just get away this summer, that was fun. That picture is me and my cousin Randy.

Lights!

Jeremiah came up for his spring break last week, we had a lot of family get-togethers while he was here. It was nice having him here, it's weird when he's gone. We had to take him by the house monday night before we all had dinner together, and of course his friend came along too...I don't know how those two aren't sick of each other!? 

Jeremiah gets into his stories...he's got to act them out haha

coolest lights ever over Jeremiah's head

Josie was asking what that hole in the wall was...it's the ventalation system, i forget what it's called.

Our counter tops will be the same as in the bathroom, this ws before the toilet and the sink were in.

Cabinetts!! yay!!

hope you enjoy the pictures! 

the STUFF that goes inside

Cabinets, lights, fridge, sink, stove, trim, microwave, dishwasher, door handels, locks and much, much more! We went over to the house and all of a sudden everything you could possibly need to go inside of a home was in our home! just not put together or set up or anything! just sitting there, but still! we were really excited! 

We tried to peek inside of the boxes to find out what everything looked like!
On Saturday night some couples from our church bought a table at the NRA banquet. It was fun, a waste of money though because it seemed like the only people who won anything were the people who were members of the NRA...so i won in a silent auction a braclett and Jake won a gun cleaning kit...waste of money but still fun...it wouldn't have been worth it at all if the other three couples from our church weren't there. And yes, dispite my father's hatred for cowboys, i did dress up a little  :)

Alaskan winters are too long!

Alaskan winters are too long! So we like to mix it up a bit...we have random parties, wear flip flops and shorts even though we're freezing, drive like we can't see the ice and get mad at people when they do see the ice haha, just stupid things that everyone who lives in Alaska has to do to keep their sanity! For example...I walked into Fred Meyer to deposit my check in the Alaska USA credit union there..While standing in a really long line the manager of the branch walks around challenging people to a basket ball contest. Who ever got to 21 first won! So I watched probably 4 people play, and lose. Wheather you win or lose you got to enter this contest and a water bottle. People were watching, laughing, taking pictures, asking what they were doing..so I had my camera in my purse and I thought, I'm going to take a picture of the next person to play that game cause this is hilarious. So I waited and waited my turn in line then finally I was done at the bank so i went over to where they were playing basket ball and i was thinking, I'm not just going to take someones picture, I'm going to play! So I got the lady who played before me to take pictures and I'm not kidding I toally won! He was like one point behind me the whole time so it wasn't like I was blowing him away...It was so much fun though we were laughing and eggin each other on and then he got beat, by a girl haha. It was great. I just had to share with you all the times in our lives when we can just forget that people might be making fun of us, forget that you really don't know how to play basket ball and just have a great time in front of everyone wishing they had the guts to do it too.

Video of our home!

I took this the other day, it's brief, i didn't show the pantry or outside or in the walk in closet..it's not long. anyways hope you enjoy! let me know what you think!!

News

Jake is taking 3 classes this semester in college. Sunday afternoon we decided we were going to clean the house real good. I made baccon and eggs and biskits when we got home from church. While we were eating it Jake looks up and says "oh no! I forgot to turn in my paper friday!" And yes, it is due today and it's on the computer at Palmer Middle School....So he has to call the principle to get the code to turn off the alarm system then rush over to the school to finish his paper for his homework and send it by tonight! Just thought you'd like to hear how a normal day in the life of being married to Jacob Collins is...haha

So our house is really coming along! 

I realized I haven't put a picture of the back of our house! 

uhh Gabby is so sweet. She's getting so tall too! she's not a baby anymore...She fell asleep on Jake while he was reading her a book. We watched her that day and she didn't get a nap because i didn't want her to have to take a nap as soon as she came! so we just played, but by the time bed time came around she was SO tired. She's never fallen asleep while reading a story!

look at our cute little snowy home. I can't wait to move in! It already feels like home to us. They have all the doors and windows in, the roof on and we're ready to roll!

Gabby is so cute with Syrus (no idea how to spell his name) And yes mother and mother in law it's ok to put a picture of them because i know exactly who is looking at my blog now that it's set to private! haha love you guys

This is the closet next to the door, i love the door!

aww i love it! I can't wait to have people over, invite yourselves if it takes too long for me to ask!

The roof...

Well, they started the roof! the tresses (not sure how to spell that) are up and pliwood on half of the roof. it's really coming along isn't it!

the celings will be high! i was happy to hear that!
Our kitty LOVES Jake's Palmer jacket! It is so funny, if it's on the floor, on the table, on the chair, she is on it! I thought this was hilrious when I saw her little tail peeking out between Jake's Palmer Moose coat that she loves so much and his other black coat! Maybe she wants Jake to like her? haha she's so cute...