Several online friends have asked us how we ended up here, in Juneau, Alaska, so I will attempt to tell the story.   God brought us here in summer of 2005 .

Nathan is a computer programmer, and was always able to get better jobs in California than our home area of south central Texas.   He had finished a contract in Los Angeles, we moved back to our house in Texas, and I was working full-time as an agency nurse, since Nathan was "between jobs", ie. unemployed.   We had visited his uncle on the Kenai peninsula in 1996, and we really liked it.  Nathan had always wanted to live in Alaska, but I always managed to talk him out of pursuing that dream, since it was way too unrealistic, its "cold and dark up there," and I didn't want to live 2000 miles from family.   But your priorities change when you are working 12 hour night shifts, trying to homeschool, and have a husband who is getting discouraged with job opportunities that are just not there.    Although he didn't need my permission, he had never pursued it because he knew I really wanted to keep living on the home ranch.  However, I finally said, "ok, if you really want to live in Alaska, go for it."   I put in in God's hands, and let Him decide where He wanted us (ok, so I always struggle with letting go and letting God - its not an easy thing to put your life in God's palms, although that is always the best place to be).

Once Nathan started looking for jobs in Alaska, he realized that many of them only considered local residents.  He almost took a job on a fishing boat, just to get to Alaska so he could call himself a local resident.  On a whim, he put his resume on an Alaskan website, and within days got a call from the owner of the company he now works for.   We hadn't really even considered Juneau, always assumed if we moved to Alaska it would be Anchorage, but God wanted us here, and there was a job opportunity in Juneau that fit Nathan's skill level (plus job skills that Nathan assured them he could learn - - and has done an amazing job doing of course).   So within a couple weeks, Nathan drove up to Bellingham, took the ferry to Juneau, and started his new job.   We followed end of July by plane with our maximum luggage allowance in forms of gigantic boxes and carry-on luggage that drew dirty looks by fellow travelers.

So here we are, and although sometimes the overcast days, rain, showers, sprinklings, mistings, and blowing precipitation get us down, the sun always comes out at some point and we have this absolutely incredible day that just blows our socks off, and we can't imagine living anywhere else.