I Love Modern Technology!

Since Branden left to Afghanistan I have been able to talk to him almost everyday, and sometimes twice a day! We just recently figured out that he could do skype, (which for those of you who don't know what it is...it is a website that lets you talk to anyone in the world for free as long as you both have downloaded skype. Pretty much you can talk to them through your computer to their computer and if you both have web cams you can also see each other as you are talking, it is pretty cool!) It definately makes him being gone a little easier! Here is a picture I took of Branden the other day through the web cam (sorry it is a little blurry the web cams aren't perfect). It is so nice to see his face erveryday! I miss him sooo much!

The Best and Worst Week of my Life

Branden and I got sealed in the Anchorage Alaska temple last week on March 4th. It was an amazing experience, and we are so thankful that we were able to get sealed before Branden went to Afghanistan. Also, we were lucky enough that Branden's parents and my mom were able to fly up here to go to the temple with us! We are truely blessed to have such good parents to fly up on such short notice regardless of how expensive the tickets were, they truely support us in all we do and we appreciate it so much! We were also surprised that there were so many of our friends from our ward that came to our sealing as well, thankyou everyone for coming!

Here is a picture of the Anchorage temple when we first got up here in August or September. It is fairly small, but it is gorgeous!
We didn't have much time to sight see while our parents were in town, but we did a little, here we are near Arctic Valley, a ski resort, there is a beautiful view of the whole Anchorage area.

We also drove down to Girdwood and Whittier which would have been amazing in the summer, but the whole town was closed for the winter! We even payed 12 dollars to go through a tunnel to get there, and all that was there was a ghost town! and then, on the way back there was a horrible accident and we got stuck in traffic for two hours! It still was a beautiful drive despite all of the obstacles. We ate a big meal at Golden Corral after the long drive and being stuck forever, we were all starving!

Another one of the nights we went bowling on base, it is really cheap and fun!

Here is me and my mom

Branden

Elden

and Sheri

And then on Saturday I had to do the hardest thing I have ever done, I had to say bye for a year to my best friend, my other half, my love. I am so proud of him, he is a true soldier and just has a passion to serve our country. I know it is going to be SO hard on both of us, but this is his calling in life, and I support him 100%. I just can't wait til he comes back, and we can be together again! And we can start a family!


Having family here when Branden left definately made it a lot easier. I still don't think it has set in yet that he is gone.
I didn't want to let go of him!

I love you Branden! I will miss you more than anything in the world!

Valentines Day and such

On Valentines Day we went to Golden Corral for dinner, not our first choice but everywhere was so packed we finally just settled. It was actually really good... a little bit of everything! We saw one of the missionaries there that used to be assigned to our ward and he told us that he just got done saying to the other missionaries "who would bring a date here for Valentines Day?" and then he saw us! We got a good laugh out of it! Anyways, we won a free stay in a hotel in anchorage when we first got up here so we used it Valentines night. It was nice to get away for a night, we got in the hot tub and had a good continental breakfast in the morning. Branden got me a cool crackle vase with flowers, a cute heart candy dish, and a card! He always puts a lot of thought into gifts, I loved it! I got him a nintendo DS game that he wanted, not a very thoughtful gift, but that's what he wanted and he has been playing it non-stop since I gave it to him! I also made some cute Valentines cookies! Yum!

So, this has been my latest project, I bought these metal wall hangings at Target a couple of months ago and I have been contemplating what I should do with them for a while and I finally came up with an idea. The metal wall hangings used to be silver and are now black. I covered two 16" X 16" boards with red fabric and then mounted the metal wall hangings on the baords, and then put white watercolor paper behind the metal to make the design stand out. Here is them in our room as well as a close up. They turned out exactly how I wanted them to and I love them! I love being ceative and now I need another project to work on while my creative wheels are still turning! Oh, I finally dyed my hair and got rid of my 3 inches of grow out. I decided to go dark this time, it is just too hard to keep up on the blond highlights. Getting your hair done up here is so exspensive I just went to Walmart, and I was pleasantly surprised on how well it turned out.

This is just a pic of me and Brand at his company's pre-deployment dinner. Good thing we don't drink, we heard later on that after we left the party a few of the high ranking dudes got in a physical fight. So stupid, they were all getting drunk and being immature. Anyways, we had fun in our own way, playing rock band and fake poker with some friends.

Hope you all had a good Valentines Day! We miss you! Love, Branden and Melissa

Ready?...Or Not?

So Branden is or was or i don't know!... supposed to be deploying soon, but his feet have been injured since he tried out for special forces in June last year. He has plantar faciitis which has something to do with the ligamnets in his feet and it just takes a long time to heal, so he has been on a medical profile since September which was supposed to keep him from deploying but because they need soldiers so bad they said they were going to deploy him anyways. Well now they put him on rear detatchment which means he will stay back and deploy a little later than everyone else, but I'm not believing anything until everyone deploys and he doesn't. I have had my emotions screwed with enough! Here is a picture of Branden at NTC, the pre-deployment traing in California that he went to in November.

They had the deployment ceremony for Branden's brigade last week. In the picture below they put the brigade flag away in a bag, and take it out when they get to Afghanistan.

I can't believe how many soldiers were there! There are about 4000 deploying.

Sarah Palin spoke at the ceremony, I was so excited to see her in person!

On a different note...

Redoubt Volcano

So this volcano is supposed to errupt some time soon...who knows when, but everyone up here is freaking out and buying emergency supplies like crazy like water, dust masks, protective eye wear, flashlights, propane, and etc. When it errupts everything is going to shut down for a while until all of the dust settles because you can't even drive anywhere because the dust gets in your engine and clogs it. It also can get in the water and shut off the power too. The volcano is only 100 miles from where we live! I never thought I would be in danger of a volcano, but we've been trying to stock up on some stuff. I don't know really how much to worry, but the picture sure looks creepy! And better to be over-prepared, than under-prepared! I got the picture from http://www.avo.alaska.edu/ if you are interested in keeping up on the current status check it out, I find it quite interesting!

The Past Few Weeks....

This is the first Christmas ever that I have not been with family which was really hard, we miss everyone so much. I'm glad that we at least got to spend Christmas with each other, its sad to think Branden will not be here next Christmas though. We also are greatful for all of the friends we have met up here that we got to spend the holidays with, I don't know what we would do with out them! They are like family now!

Here we are on Christmas Eve playing Zarahemla as usual! I'm telling you this game is addicting! We have so much fun hanging out with Ryan, Dawn and Britton. Especially when we can get the boys away from the X Box! They are addicted to that too!

This Christmas Branden got a bunch of video games so he won't be bored in Afghanistan along with some of his favorites such as easy cheese, sunflower seeds, coke, and sour patch kids, and a photo album with pistures of us and family to take with him, and I got a bunch of random things like a piano book, cd, bini, pj's, a blender, and etc, (please ignore how nasty I look in these pics, I clearly was not ready for the day) and we got a bunch of board games which is our new favorite thing to do since we can't go outside really. Branden was so excited to get the board game Zarahemla, which we have been playing non-stop with the Davis' since we met them! He also made me breakfast, pancakes and orange julius... my favorite! He's so good to me!

Christmas Morning!

Branden's friend Pete and his girfriend Kristen stayed with us for a few weeks during the holidays which made it a lot less lonely! She flew in from Georgia to visit Pete before he deploys, we wish she could have stayed it was fun having her here! There was never a dull moment with Pete around either... as you can tell!

This year for Christmas we all decided that we did not want to cook so we went to the chow hall for lunch/dinner which was actually pretty good! We might make it a tradition! No cooking or clean up! We spent the rest of the day playing games with everyone.

My visiting teacher gave us tickets to an Alaska Aces hockey game which her husband got free from his work so our friends The Davis' bought tickets and came along with us. The seats were pretty good, but the fights were the best! They lost but it was still fun, even though we were all completly numb walking to and from the car.

Alaska and I have a love hate relationship so far... I love how beautiful it is here, but -24 degrees just hurts... and it freezes your nose hair and lungs when you breathe!

So, Branden got a small raise and that is how he justified buying this.....

Which now takes up the other half of our garage. He loves Double Shot.... and so do the missionaries!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Christmas is almost here!

Here are a few pics of our house at Christmas, I just love Christmas and everything about it! The lights, the decorations, the snow, the smells, the music, and especially being with family which unfortunately we can not do this year... at least we have each other!

These are some glass wall hangings that I made in my kiln, I made the snowman and the tree about two years ago and I just barely finished the Santa after bringing my kiln on the plane with me from Utah because I forgot it when we moved up here! After all that I accidently broke my kiln and had to order a new part for it, what a pain!

Well, last of all here is a picture of our duplex. It's not the cutest place, but most of the houses in Alaska are ugly.... the inside is much nicer and I try to make it look cute! The snowman and penguins are just a couple of decorations I had to have this year, I just thought they were so cute! I also tried to do as many christmas lights as I could this year, but hopefully I can add more next year and put them up before it gets too cold! They make me happy.

We will miss everyone! I hope you all have a Happy Holiday!

MeRrY ChRiStMaS! ~LoVe BrAnDeN aNd MeLiSsA

A Bittersweet Thanksgiving...Again

So, this is the second Thanksgiving in a row that Branden I have not been able to spend together, and we won't be together next year either. I'm glad that I was able to fly home and be with family but I wish Branden was here, he didn't even get a Thanksgiving dinner and he just wanted to be here with all of his family and me! Well, that's military life for ya. At least we will be able to spend Christmas together with just the two of us because we won't be together next Christmas. Anyways, enough whining I still had a wonderful Thanksgiving with TONS of food! Here is the first Thanksgiving dinner I went to with the Jones Family, I had to put both of these pictures because my aunt Cheryl is in one and my Grandma Jackie is in the other. The Dinner was really good!

This is me and my cousin Melanie, we both love to play the piano (she is a lot better than me and has won multiple piano competitions) we love hanging out when we can!

This is our nephew Matthew who was the photographer for the day he took all of the pictures below as well of this one of his self! I thought it was pretty funny... he wanted to make sure that we didn't forget what anybody or anything looked like while we are in Alaska! Including his toy airplane!

The is the second Thanksgiving dinner I went to with the Binghams. It was amazing as well as the gormet breakfast we had earlier in the day! Branden's mom is wonder woman, I don't know how she does it all, but everything was so good including the eleven pies she made!! I am so greatful for such a wonderful family and husband, I don't know what I'd do without them!