August

During August we only saw a few days of sun- it was pretty daunting because we knew that it was our last chance for warm weather before winter. August was pretty uneventful other than me selling my Envoy to buy a Toyota Tacoma and that we moved to an apartment that is closer to the army base. Below are some random pictures of other things that we did events and a video of a concert at the Alaska state fair (I really liked the venue).

Kayaking the mighty Campbell Creek which runs through Anchorage. It was small but I'll take what I can get.

Taking a shortcut home on my ride home from school to our new apartment. This puddle was allot deeper than anticipated.

We saw Chevelle at the  Alaska State fair. The venue was so cool that I took a 360 video tour  as shown below.

July

Near the end of July I was able to show my parents the ropes in Anchorage for a week. The first few days that they came up a Moose and her calf hung out in our front yard. During their stay we went on several hikes made a Belgian friend (who spent a few days with us), fished salmon, saw the sights, had a dinner cruise in Seward and played ping pong. Unfortunately, Daniela had to work that whole week but we had a great time anyways.

Men only fishing trip on the Campbell Creek in Anchorage.

Cool Glacier in Portage that we hike to and then on.

My parents at a cool little spot on the way to Seward.

Dinner Cruise on the way to Fox island with my parents.

the

June

Our trip to Mexico was great, but it cut into my first week of school. I had to drop my classes and decided to dedicate my time to preparing for the MCAT. During this time, Daniela and I finally ventured south of anchorage to see the city of Seward and Homer. While in Seward we went to the sea wildlife center, went on a glacier hike and found an awesome hike through the woods. In Homer we went on a short cruise to have dinner on a private island.

Outside the sea and wildlife center.

Our fairy tale hike along the coast in Seward.

Our cruise from Homer to a small island for dinner.

Island....

My Summer Vacation...May

To kick off our summer we went  on an eight day trip to Mexico City with two close friends, Jonny and Diana. We stayed with Diana's family in a neighborhood built around Diego Rivera's house. We took buses and the subway everywhere and saw the real sights of Mexico. Some of the highlights of our trip were: The Teotihuacan pyramids, the palace of chapultapec, the LDS temple, a lucha libre match and the Zocalo. But really the biggest highlight was simply walking around, taking in the culture and eating street vendor food. We had an awesome time there with our friends, but returned home exhausted. Before we left for Mexico Alaska was in a period called "Break-up" this is when the snow/ice is melting. During this time all the plants are still dead and there is a film of dirt covering everything. Up until this point Alaska had been somewhat ugly. Mexico city had very poor air quality which would turn our boogers, and probably lungs, black. When we returned from Mexico Alaska was officially in summer mode- the vegetation was out of control, the streets had been cleaned, the temperature was perfect and the air was so fresh. It was like walking into a new world, we didn't recognize the city we left only a week ago.

The pyramids had a very, very interesting history.... you can look it up.

This was the Lucha Libre match. In the middle are jonny and diana (Daniela and I on the right).

The is the rooftop of the house that we stayed in.

Approaching Finals

Hard to believe, but finals week is just two short weeks away and I'll have one more semester under my belt. I think that it makes six total. Daniela has been busier than normal with the army, two weeks ago she was in charge of a training and did not get home until about seven pm all week. This past week she was almost sent to Japan to help with the contamination sites two separate times; in each case it was determined that she has too many responsibilities to leave. They actually ended up sending her adviser and now she has even more responsibilities.

How many lanes can you see? There are four.

Just because the roads are not covered in ice and snow does not mean that its any less scary to drive. They use sand instead of salt on the roads and the ice never really melts, so the cars drive the same paths and it creates rutts in the road and removes the paint. Its just as scary to drive now because you can't tell where the lanes are.

Oh yeah... thats what the sun looks like.

Today we had a high of 35 and roughly 11 hours of sunlight. It seriously felt like t shirt weather after enduring this past winter. This past two weeks Anchorage celebrated a yearly festival known as the "fur rendezvous." During this time they have a bunch of different activities. Last week we went to watch a k-5 costume run and then looked at a bunch of ice sculptures and played around on an ice rink in the middle of it all.

There was an outdoor ice rink with these types of sculptures all around it.

 This weekend we went to see the running of the reindeer. This event is supposed to be like the running of the bulls except that the reindeer were fairly small and they were more afraid of the runners than the runners of the reindeer. Afterward we had some excellent street vendor hot dogs and went to the carnival to ride the gravitron. Also there was a snowboarding/skiing competition on this huge, home-made looking, ramp.

THE GRAVITRON! I hadn't seen one of these since the reams in Magna had a carnival in their parking lot. 

For Daniela's birthday we had some friends over for lunch, had some of my specially made cake and watched a movie. It was a nice quiet afternoon.
In other news, I'm starting week 8 of P90X. I'm seeing some good results, but I kind of fell in my eating habits. I've been playing basketball on monday mornings with some people from my ward and on saturday mornings with a group of polynesians. In all, its been good times all around.

February Fantastico!

In reality, this post entails our misadventures since Daniela returned from her arctic training. A few weekends ago we went to our local ski resort called Hilltop. The resort really isnt much, but its only a few minutes away and is pretty cheap. 

Daniela preparing to shred the mighty hilltop.

Valentines Day was awesome! I was at school until 4:00 and Daniela got her wisdom teeth taken out... i mean wisdom tooth taken out. Needless to say it was a nonstop party. Luckily I was able to sneak Daniela's gifts home so that they would be there when she got home.

Flowers, candy  and Step Up 3D. All the ingredients to attain a girls heart.

In other news we've been busy with school and work, we finally have one month of food storage, we've been hanging out with the other biracial couple in our branch and have been enjoying life. Here is something a little more interesting: last summer I could not find any huckleberry soda in all of Jackson Hole (this is the Jackson Hole brand ) but just this week we discovered it in our local Fred Meyers.

Ahhhhhh Huckleberry Soda

Anyways, we'll talk to you later blog.

Sub-Arctic Temperatures

Daniela after a 5K on snowshoes

Daniela beside the thermal shelter she helped build and had to sleep in.

Cross country skiing in Black Rapids, Alaska.

From the 4-17 of January Daniela went to a cold weather training near Fairbanks, Alaska.  As you can tell it was super cold.  The worst temperature she endured was -25 plus the wind chill which makes it feel like -40.  Jack spent this time preparing for school and he spent a nice day at Alyeska snowboarding.

Alyeska

 

New Year

Behold the avocado shake! A very smooth drink, but you can't drink too much.

For new years we, went out to eat at an excellent thai restaurant and watched a few movies. At the thai restaurant we were introduced to an enticing new refreshment: avocado shake.

Its a Celebration!

The Ayres clan with gramps and cousin Josh out shotgun shooting.

Notice how comfortable this trained killer handles a  Glock 9 mm

On December 17th Daniela and I made the long flight south back to Salt Lake City to spend Christmas. I guess that we have acclimatized to Alaska because we were surprised by how warm it was in Salt Lake; I'd forgotten that snow turns into slush. During our short vacation we visited friends, went shotgun shooting and had a traditional Kennington family Christmas.

Winter Wonderland

This trail is off limits during the summer due to high bear traffic

There are various trails throughout Anchorage for cross country skiing; it is one of the few places with groomed public trails. Last Saturday Daniela and I rented some cross country skis to give it a try, we both agree that mastering the correct technique is much harder than it looks and ended up sticking with the middle age woman technique of keeping skis planted and going straight. We asked a few locals about a loop for begginers that would take about an hour... 2 1/2 hours later we made it to the wrong parking lot, when we asked someone else how to get to the correct lot she said that it would would take about 30 mins... so we hitched a ride back. ha ha.
It was very pretty, we went through a section that is closed off during the summer because it is grizz territory; it was gorgeous. Near the end of our time we saw our first live moose here in Alaska, I wanted to take a picture but it was close enough that my better judgement, Daniela, persuaded me to keep going.
If you look at the bottom right corner of the picture you'll notice some really fat bike tires; they are about 4" wide and are used for winter mountain biking. pretty cool.

Thanksgiving

Daniela making raspberry Italian soda

 

Deep frying turkey in the snow, in our driveway

For our first exclusive Thanksgiving in Alaska we decided to switch things up a bit: we chose a Louisiana deep fried cajun recipe, I injected the turkey and let it marinate over night and then deep fried it for 1 hour. I thought that it would be really quick, but it took an hour and a half to heat up the oil and then the teperature dropped a hundred degrees once we added the turkey- it said to cook it for 36 mins, but the oil was not hot enough. The turkey was amazing! We also had dinner rolls, olives, corn, oven red potatoes, mom's fruit salad, and raspberry pie.
We were invited over by three different families for dinner but we politely refused; we spent the day, and most of the weekend, watching movies and being lazy. No black Friday for us just a nice, relaxing weekend.

Life in the arctic valley

We are getting pretty close to our first wildlife sighting; Sunday morning we found moose dropping all over our side walk. By the time we got back from church there was another pile. Today we heard some suspicious noises coming from the woods; we wanted to check it out, but the risk of being trampled is currently high.
We experienced our first "ice rain" today; Alaska roads are constantly icy, they don't lay salt on the roads but instead lay sand/gravel. Imagine the whole road being black ice; thats normal, but with the rain last night and this morning there was a sheet of ice over absolutely everything.

It looks like a clear truck bed liner over the whole vehicle

Many drivers are idiots and cars filled up the ditches. Daniela, was caught in traffic on the way to the base for almost an hour; when she got there they announced that the base was closed due to driving conditions. The university of Alaska was also closed. Walking out to the car, even the packed snow was like uneven ice. Daniela is lucky enough to have the garage so that she did not have to shave the ice off the car- as for the envoy, different story.

Mt Baldy

Highest point in all of Eagle

 Moon rising to the east

 

Pristine view of the city below

Sunset to the west of us

Today we went on a nice hike up Mount Baldy; it is about 10 miles north of Anchorage. The hike was surprisingly hard, it was a pretty direct route straight up the mountain on snow. It was well worth the effort, right as we made it to the top, to the east side of the ridge, we had the view of the sun setting over the ocean; on the other side of the ridge the moon was out. Either view had spectacular colors- not well portrayed by our camera phones.

Finding shelter

We arrived in Anchorage, AK on October 20, 2010 Daniela's plane landed at 1:20 pm and Jacks at 12:40 pm. The first few weeks we traveled all around Anchorage to find an apartment, our desired sq footage and original budget went up after seeing the first few places and we decided that we'd need a garage or car port. after seeing about 12 places we signed for the lowest level of a large house apt. We signed and paid a hefty deposit and had to wait one week to move in (Nov 1).
When we called the moving company to have our stuff shipped that day, but the soonest that he could get us in was on the 2nd- we were anxious but accepted the wait. On Nov 2 we woke up early to meet the movers, signed out of our hotel and at 9 am, an hour late, the moving van showed up. He took out four boxes and a pull up bar; when we called to have our "household goods" sent, they sent us Daniela's stuff from Missouri. We had to call a different moving company and they were able to bring the rest of our stuff two days later. It was disappointing and we didn't sleep well on our blow up mattress, but once everything arrived it didn't matter because we've finally moved out of the slums of West Valley... to the slums of Anchorage.