In The Beginning...

In the beginning there was a family of six.... Autumn (me), Andrew (my husband), Angelo and Jasper (our sons), and Dulci and Tempi (our daughters). We have decided to pick up and move to Soldotna, Alaska. We are ready for a change, a big change. We are saying goodbye to mortgages, credit cards, "normal" jobs, and "normal" life. We are taking my parents along for the ride. Why Alaska???? one might ask. "Well", I say, "Why not?" Alaska is beautiful! If you don't believe me, look at the picture above. That is Mt. Redoubt, a volcano, that can be seen from our new street. I took that photo in August while visiting Alaska for the first time. WHAT? Yes, I have only been to Alaska once, for two weeks, and my parents (Jeff and Beverley) have never been there at all. This is our story....

Unhappy with what one would call "normal life", my husband and I started discussing a move. We agreed that we wanted to get away from it all. We considered Tennessee, Montana, and even as close as the mountain area of NC. None of those options, however, seemed to fit. I said, Alaska, as somewhat of a joke to start, and Andrew got really excited. "Would you really move there? I mean, really??? The cold, the dark, the bears (I have had a lifetime phobia of bears)?" He asked. "Sure", I replied, " If there was really a way to move there, I would go. I mean, not to the North Pole, or Barrow, or anything that extreme, but yeah, I've always thought I would like to live there".

And so it began. Countless hours of research. We became obsessed. Online articles, books, tv shows, movies, anything with Alaska or about Alaska and we were all over it. Once we saw that it was possible, and not as extreme as the general public thinks, we were hooked. There were a couple of problems though. One, we had never even been there. We can't seriously consider moving someplace we have never even visited. So just for the heck of it, I looked into a trip there to check things out. It was a sign..... a cheap cruise, encompassing the weeks around Andrew's 31st birthday. We talked to my parents and told them our crazy idea of moving, how we would have to go on this trip to verify that we could really live there, and that we wanted them to come along. They thought we were nuts.... but only for a few days. Soon enough they had decided. They were coming too. We met at a park, let the kids play, and got down to business. We decided that in order to know if it were really possible, we would have to go there and check things out, the town, some properties, meet some people, get the feel of the place, see if we really belonged there. We told them about the cheap cruise we had found but the kicker was that we couldn't afford for everyone to go, it was a two week long trip, and the babies (Tempi and Jasper) had never been away from us at all and Jasper was still breastfeeding. They agreed to watch the kids so that we could find a new home. Everyone knew that once this was booked, there was kind of no turning back. It was a lot of money towards a dream that we were gonna have to make our reality. Everyone was in agreement. It was gonna happen. The trip was booked.