From Surfboards to Snowboards...

Yesterday we finally found out our next duty station....Fort Richardson, Alaska!!!!! (outside of Anchorage) About a month ago we were given "the list"...there were 25 choices that we had to rank in order of our preference. Right off the bat, the list was cut in half for positions that are deploying this summer. And of the other options nothing excited us....5 positions were for Korea and the handful of others included Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia AND Alaska. We ranked them and crossed our fingers for a month. I was mentally preparing myself for Korea just in case we were one of the lucky 5. I think we are happy about the Alaska pick. We have been online non-stop looking to learn more about the area. Leevi has been plugging away about information on his job and the post and I've been more concerned about the climate, preschools, and housing. Leevi is pretty excited about the job description...we don't know specifics yet, but it looks like he will be working at the police station on post. We've decided to live on post at least for the first of the three years we are there until we get to know the area and take advantage of living so close to his work.

This is our potential housing layout...we think the girls will share a room and have the other room as a guest room/office.

And while researching the weather I found this cool feature on weather.com. It lets you compare the temperatures of two areas. If you click on it, it should enlarge to show you Hawaii's year round climate of the mid-80's to Alaska's hot summers of 65!!!!!

We have heard great things about Alaska and Fort Richardson, so we are excited. And although we will be freezing our rear-ends off, at least the scenery will be just as gorgeous as Hawaii. A friend of ours made a joke about us having a pet moose named George, which Hailey thought was hysterical!!! She's excited about seeing a moose (but she will name her Princess) and of course loves the idea of SNOW!!!!! She did make a comment about the babies (that I watch) will have a long way to come each day...poor thing! :( It's definitely going to be tough saying goodbye. It hasn't hit me yet...we're too caught up in the planning and adventure of a new place, but I know leaving this paradise and the friends we've made over the last 7 years is going to be hard to say the least!

As a final note I wanted to add the sunrise/sunset times throughout the year in Alaska....typically during the winter the sun rises around 10am and sets around 4pm and during the summer it will rise around 4am and not set until almost midnight!