BUSY BUSY BUSY!

Wow! It's been a long time since we updated our blog. So much has been going on in our lives! Here are some updates:

Scott is finally in his last semester of college. He will graduate with his BA in management this May and then retire from the Air Force June 19th! We are planning a huge celebration for his retirement and both his parents and mine are flying up to join us. Scott is in the process of building his resume and figuring out what his next career will be.

I (Julie) have been very busy being a Mom to a beautiful and extremely active 3 year old. I've also been heading up Kaylee's GRAD BASH. A bunch of us senior parents have come together and done some fundraising so her senior class of 70 students can have a wild and crazy all-night lock-in at the base gym. Kaylee has applied to the University of Fairbanks and will be leaving home to live in the dorms this September. At least she'll only be about 20 miles away :).

Jackie moved to North Pole High School after Christmas (she was going to a much small high school on the base). She has transitioned very well and has some fantastic teachers. After over 2 1/2 years, she finally got her braces off! She looks beautiful!!

Jonathan is growing like a weed and talking full sentences now. He actually talks almost as much as I do, so you can only imagine how hard it is for anyone else in the family to get a word in :). He still loves to pretend he's flying. He got a toy helicopter that shoots out disks from the front of it for Valentine's Day. He has become quite the marksman. Scott told me last night that he's looking forward to getting himself and Jonathan Nerf guns..........I don't know if I'm quite as excited.

My Grandpa went to Heaven in January, and I was able to fly home to Seattle for the funeral. It was a beautiful service in his Catholic church followed by a military funeral at the Veteran's Cemetery. He was in the Navy during WWII, and they had the Navy honor guard there with the 21 gun salute and everything. It was beautiful.

We have about 8 more weeks of snow on the ground before the long-awaited spring break-up hits. We call it break-up because the ice starts to melt and break up. It's very messy but is a sign that our beautiful Fairbanks summer is on the way. We survived a terrible cold snap at the end of December/beginning of January where we had temps between -40 and -52 for two weeks straight. We had ice build-up on the inside of our doors and windows and even had to use a hairdryer to thaw out the door locks from the inside because they were frozen! That was a long two weeks! Today it's about 3 degrees above 0 and Scott & some buddies went ice fishing for the day.

Stay strong in the Lord, and I will talk to you again soon.