trip to st louis

two weeks ago shawn and i went down to st louis, missouri to pick up my car. since we were coming from alaska (and i think they do this with all overseas tours) they will ship one car to the nearest port to your new base. so we drove one of our cars down (shawn's) and we shipped my car. it's seems a little silly to say it, but i really missed my car! for some reason it symbolizes freedom and everything that i love, so i was really ready to go and pick it up. i was a bit worried that they would've only shipped it to seattle, which would've meant going all the way back west and driving the same road again to north dakota. luckily, they shipped it to st louis and paid for me and shawn to go and pick it up. we ended up taking the amtrak down - it was great! i've never taken a train in the united states so i was interested to see how it differed from other places that i've been. we didn't get a cabin, so stayed in the public seating cars the whole 26 hour train ride down.
here's a pic of me on the train, towards the end of the ride, with shawn studying for his big upcoming promotional test in the background.
we got into st louis around 11 or so at night. we looked around for a place to stay but all the places right around the train station were really expensive hotels. because we didn't want to wander around a busy, unfamiliar city in the near midnight we ended up staying at the sheraton. wow! the rooms were beautiful! a huge downside of staying there is that they want to charge you for everything. most hotels now have wireless internet as a courtesy but not the sheraton. they wanted to charge us $5 for 2 hours. ridiculous! and no free breakfast. the restraunt was ridiculously expensive for basic foods so we didn't eat there. and we made the receptionist look up everything for us on her computer instead of us paying $5 to look up directions. i also did a bit of long distance internet searching through calling various members of my family and having them look things up. thank you all, i couldn't be as travel savvy without you! :)
here's st louis!
while there we went to see the massive gateway arch. for some reason i thought that this was a random sports thing and so i wasn't too excited to go and see it. but shawn convinced me and i found out that it was a national park and the arch was to commemorate the westward movement in our american history. cool! the grounds were beautiful and the day was sunny and warm.
we decided to take the little ride up to the top of the arch. i'm so glad that i have my national park pass! it's 630 feet to the top and we got to ride in these cool space capsules to get there. each capsule seats 5 people and on the way up we were the only people in our capsule. which was good. shawn can get a little claustrophobic and so when he realized that we had to be trapped in these things for four minutes he started to get a little panicky. below is a picture of his face when he had that realization. just a bit worried...
luckily, when the door closed there was a little window that we could see out of and that made him much at ease. and here's me, all ready to go in my space suit jacket. well... it's not really a space suit jacket, it just looks as if it could be.
and since i know you're dying to ask me this question, i don't get claustrophobic. if you ask shawn about me he'll say that i do get claustrophobic. i don't mind being in small spaces with no window. but i do mind having my body or body part pinned or held firmly. if i shook someone's hand and that person would not let go of my hand, i just might have a panic attack. or if someone held me in too firm of a hug... but i really don't view that as claustrophobic, it's something else that i just don't know the name of...
and here's shawn looking down on all the little peons below. 630 feet make those people look minuscule!
at the bottom of the arch there's a great museum that tracks the westward movement. i'm such a museum nut and love to educated myself as much as i can about anything and everything. they had a bunch of quotes all over the walls. some of them were absolutely heart breaking, mostly from things that were done to the native americans and how their views were treated as nothing. here's one: "what! sell land! as well sell air and water. the great spirit gave them in common to all, the air to breathe, the water to drink, and the land to live upon." -Tecumseh. how touching is that? it is pretty ridiculous that these things that you'd think would be human rights to have and to share are bought and sold and selfishly guarded. too bad so many people don't respect the earth enough that we could ever move to the point where we'd all share and live in it alike. below is another quote that i like:
and here's shawn with the gateway arch in the background.
shawn was pretty excited to see the st louis cardinals stadium and so we just had to go to a game. it was my first big baseball game. when i was little i'd go to my dad's city league games, and i'd go to my brother and sisters games, but those aren't really fan based. it was crazy how many people go to these pro games! i was shocked! we got our tickets from some random guy on a corner in town and so saved a few bucks. that left us just enough to purchase a peanut shell to split between both of us. just kidding! we actually got some fries and we made sure to get a bottle of water before we walked in the gate to the stadium. food is soooooooo expensive there! all in all it was a great new experience.
when we got back to minot, north dakota, our rental house was ready for us to move into. i'll make sure to post some pictures of it when we get our things unpacked and looking nice. pictures of boxes never did it for me... for mother's day eve shawn got me a bouquet of flowers and a dairy queen cake. he really does have a soft spot for those cakes and now i understand why. in the middle of the cake are little crumbly chocolate things on a pudding-like layer. yum! and no, i'm not making an announcement. i am a future mother and a kind-of-mother (other words known as a loving aunt) to all my nieces and nephews, and we have a dog - so i deserve those flowers and that cake! :) it was wonderful! thank you, shawn!

family dinner

on the last sunday before me and shawn left to move down to north dakota, my family got together for a farewell dinner. it was also to celebrate the birthday's of my sister, carolyn, and brother-in-law, curtis. my mother is an amazing chef and she made us all indian food. it was fantastic!
here's some of the toppings to go on the chicken curry.

here's my wonderful father and mother contemplating what to eat first.
this is catheryn townsend.
hannah deKay.
keith bundy.
cayden townsend.
cassidy townsend.
winnie deKay.rachel bundy.
jennifer and thomas bundy.
tyson bundy.
ma and pa kettle.
bethany and robert deKay. (i thought i had a better one of you two, but i didn't.)
shawn robson.
catheryn and carolyn townsend.
curtis townsend.
sarah and chris davenport live in colorado and jonathon deKay is in uraguay. other than that this is my wonderful, stupendous, loving family! i love you all!

February and March

For two and half weeks in February my sister and her husband took off to Hawaii for two and a half weeks and me and Shawn watched their three kids for them - cassidy, cayden, and catheryn. here's (from left to right) cassidy, winnie (my brother's daughter), and cayden. cayden loves his big sister and wants to do everything with her - including dress up! :)me and shawn took the kids to the first day of fur rondy, the festival in anchorage that kicks off the iditarod sled dog race. this is me at the grand parade...
... and here's shawn and the kids at the parade. cassidy ended up getting pretty cold so towards the end of the parade wasn't having all that great of a time. we went and found a place to have some hot chocolate to warm up and then kept going to some of the events around town. we went to the train station where they had model trains set up where the kids could learn about trains.
and we went to the snow sculptures. i think the judging took place the following day so people were still working on sculpting. below is cassidy and cayden standing in front of a kayaker riding a wave.
and here's catheryn and shawn in the train station. we made sure to wrap her up pretty thickly so that she wouldn't freeze. we did such a good job that she slept almost the whole time we were out and about.
february brought my nephew, keith's, birthday. he is now officially six years old. at his "cousin" party they had paper airplane races and made crazy hats. this is my neice, hannah, with her hat. this was a really crazy hat and very unique so i just had to take a picture. way to go, hannah!
and here's keith with his birthday cake. my sister let him choose any cake he wanted and he chose this one, probably because it came with a play cell phone. he looks a little tuckered out in this pic.
and here's the attendees starting at the bottom, going clockwise: zoey, keith, rachel, cassidy, natalie, bethany, jennifer, sarah, hannah, jeremy and winnie.
here's keith:
i talked to jennifer a few days before keith's party and she mentioned that he had wanted a pinata so i volunteered to make one. here's paco, the mexican chicken. notice the really cool chicken legs made from yarn. when i dropped him up and down with the rope when the kids were swinging at him his legs were flying!
and here's me and thomas at keith's "friend" birthday party. he got to invite two friends to go bowling with him and i came along as well.
here's the bowlers. the one on the left is keith and the one on the right is rachel, his sister. i can't remember the names of the other two, oops!
and that's february and part of march!

January to February

here's the photographic summary of my life starting in january.

for the pic below, my sister was the assistant coach for a volleyball team and they would sometimes have practices right next to my house so i would sometimes watch her kids while she went to practice and they'd stay the night since she'd get home sometime after 9. this is cayden and cassidy, sleeping on the floor in our apartment. carolyn peeked in after she came back from practice and thought that it was so cute that they fell asleep holding each other. awwwhhh! cute!
and here is shawn. right behind my parents house is mt baldy, part of the chugach range. this is a very popular climb in eagle river and it's one that my family does a lot. keeps us all in shape. me and shawn and denali (our dog) and raisin (my parents dog) hiked up here. it was a bit difficult because the snow was no longer snow, but ice. going down was quick and i was very lucky that i had a crampon that i could dig in the snow as i slid down the mountain to slow me down.
and here's me at the top of baldy, squinting in the sun.
i thought this was a cute picture. it's shawn and my nephew, cayden. we were going to the commisary during shawn's lunch from work.
this is winnie, my neice, in front of one of the walls that i painted a tree on in her and her older sister's room. for christmas this past year i drew my parents this picture from a photograph that i took in their yard of a mom and two baby moose.
here's my niece, cassidy, making the assent of... a rock. she just looked like a really hardened mountian climber in this picture even though it is only in my parents yard.
these are some of my nieces and nephews at thomas's 1st birthday party. starting at the bottom left corner and moving clockwise: cassidy, keith, hannah, rachel, and cayden (with my mom and dad in the background).
here's me with the birthday boy himself! one year old!
shawn took me on a surprise date in february and wouldn't tell me anything about it. i got home from work, he told me to get dressed warm and then we drove up to mt baldy's parking lot and he took out a backpack that looked heavy and a bundle of wood. we then hiked up a little ways and he stopped and unpacked his back pack. he was carrying a dutch oven! that's why the back pack looked so heavy! he then proceeded to make me dinner with the anchorage city lights twinkling in the background. it was a quite cold night and i was grateful for that warm food. it was delicious! chicken and beef and onions and peppers with lots of spices. mmmm!!!here's me and shawn with a full stomach and freezing faces!