Beth was pointing out how strange it must be to live in a place where all the big shops are souvenir shops of you. We continue to be amazed by how quiet it is here, even when it’s loud, it isn’t.

We rode back around 1pm and you know, for someone who rode a bike for two years, I am so out of shape, I couldn’t get up a small hill, seriously small!

Anyways, the highlight was actually our trip to the cabin. It was about a two hour drive, but along the way we stopped by a lake to watch beluga whales! We love it here!

I am posting from my iPhone so I can’t post any pix, but we will as soon as we are back in civilization.

We visited the Alaska Native Heritage Center where we saw a baby moose, I was hoping to see the mother or the father around, but we didn’t. The Heritage Center was fun, we sat through a group of native Alaskan dancers who taught us about their dances and songs.

The center is small, so we had a chance to walk through the entire center in just under an hour. I was fascinated by the way the natives lived. The homes looked like something right out of the Shire from the “Lord of the Rings.”

After a nap (for a lot longer than we expected), we took a bike ride over to the “Bear Tooth Grill”—Mexican food with an Alaskan twist. I had, probably the best burger ever—Rosemary grilled burger. Beth had a mushroom, spinich enchilada plate. We left the restaurant at almost 10pm and it was still light outside. It took us a bit to ride back to the bed & breakfast and by the time we got home it was already dark, but I am loving these long days.

Tomorrow, we leave for the lodge. We’re excited!

We left L.A. at about 9am and after a layover in Las Vegas—where I won $25 playing .05 slot machines— we were on our way to Anchorage.

We landed about 4:00pm in Anchorage and after a short cab ride we arrived at the little bed & breakfast that Beth found. It’s fabulous!

We really didn’t wait long to check out the town. We took a walk to downtown through the mall and ended up at Uncle Joes Pizzeria which was about a mile and a half away.

So far, we LOVE it! I am particularly fond of how green it is here and that there are NO palm trees—just like in Seattle. It doesn’t get dark until really late. 9:30 - 10:00 pm you can still be outside with enough light to think it’s 5 or 6pm. As someone who needs very little sleep, I LOVE IT

This has got to be a personal record for the least and fastest packed vacation Beth and I have been to together. We have one back to check in between the two of us and one carry on each. Not bad for two people who usually carry more than they should because we can’t make a desicion about what to take to save our lives. We’re excited! Never been to Alaska before, and we joke about deciding to move there. The flight leaves in 4 hours and we’re just getting up now. Yey!

We are leaving on a Sunday in late August and staying 2 nights at the Anchorage Walkabout B&B. htttp://anchoragewalkabout.com  It will provide a full breakfast and free bikes to borrow.  (Marty is very excited about this perk.)  Then, we are off to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge for river rafting and hiking and sitting around in nature.  http://alaskawildland.com  On the 4th and last day, we get to take a 6 hour glacier cruise and trip on the railroad back to Anchorage.  Then another to days at the B&B.  We are excited.  Alaska was our orginal honeymoon plan, but was postponed.

Since our anniversay is on Sunday and out trip is in August, we are going to a dinner theater and overnight on the Queen Mary.  (Well, if they ever answer their phone, anyway.)

We are also planning a trip to Salt Lake City for Christmas, and now Mary wants to go to Hawaii.  How fun, (and expensive) it is to be married.

But, I am so glad for the summer. I get to go to the dentist and the women’s doctor.

Then, I get to enjoy the summer. My friend Nam is getting married, and then I get to celebrate my 1 year wedding anniversary. In August is my birthday and our anniversary trip to Alaska. We also plan to visit my family in San Jose a couple times. Marty is taking his last math classes and I am going to a couple weeks of Art training for school. Maybe some Science training too. Really I look forward to watching tv all day and staying up late on Sundays to watch The Next Food Network Star at Marty’s mom’s house. Yea!

Happy Vacation!

All the vacations are over. Tomorrow, I have a field trip at school, then tutoring, then rush home and to art class until 10:00. The last time I did this I got sick, but I’ve had 3 week without all of those things at once, and I think I am ready to go again. I’ll let you know how my mid-term portfolio review goes. (I think it’s good.)

We took a trip to San Diego over Easter weekend.  We were feeling the drain of work and school and time going on and on and on.  It was wonderful.  Manuel didn’t even bring his computer.  He was going to leave his iphone home too, but good thing he didn’t, we used it to navigate everywhere, (including to the auto parts store after my rear view mirror fell of).

It was so wonderful to have no worries, except if we were eating too many Pringles and donuts.  We went to a science museum at Balboa Park and played like little kids.  We woke up in the morning and went to the hot tub, and then swimming, then out to lunch.

Manuel loves me.  I can tell.  It was wonderful to experience it in that total  undistracted all-attention-on-me way for a weekend.

The question would always come up “what do you look like?”, but as much as you described yourself, there was always the follow up question “what celebrity do you look like most?”. Well I am happy to share that I can now answer that question.

Thanks to MyHeritage I now know that I look like these celebraties:

Seriously! look at the list of names of the one I resemble the most is Mao Zedong the communist leader.
I don’t know what to say!

For me this thanksgiving marked the beginning of the holiday season, and this time the season is going to be full of “first time” events for me and Beth. We will have the first thanksgiving dinner as a family, the first family Christmas, the first New Year ’s celebration as Romeros’. Yes, this year we will have plenty of reasons to be thankful for, but we will be particularly thankful for a peculiar experience we had with a kitten.

We named him Moses. We found him in the middle of the street on thanksgiving weekend. Tiny and helpless, he was at the mercy of anyone who would have enough compassion to take him in or take him out. He wasn’t the cutest kitten, his face was dirty, his breath smelled a little bit funny, he was a bit too skinny for his size and his eyelids would seal shut with all the dried slimy build up in his eyes. But we took him home and grew very fond of the little guy very quickly. For the next couple of nights Beth and I found ourselves praying for a way to keep him or a good home — mostly for a way to keep him. On our own the best we could come up with was a trip to the city’s animal shelter where Moses would surely end up being euthanized.

So what was it about this little kitten that tucked at our heart’s strings so much? I think in part it was because Bethie and I were involved in caring for something/someone other than ourselves together, but for me Moses became a little symbol of how easy its become to do away with what we no longer want. We give away what we think is old, or ugly or what we have little use for, an old coat, an old friend or a helpless kitten.

So often I have felt very much like this little kitten — unwanted and uncared for. I think that for this reason I wanted to care for little Moses so very much. You see the fact is that in one way or another we all take turns feeling like “the least of these“, unwanted and uncared for. Moses reminded me of what it has been like to be at the complete mercy of someone else when my turn has come.

In the end God helped us find a home for Moses, in a very unlikely place — our Dentist’s office. I doubt that Moses will go on to part any bowls of water let alone a sea, but we will remember him nonetheless.