I know there is a rumor going around that we are moving.......well the rumors are true! On July 7th Steve and I are moving to Anchorage, Alaska. Why Alaska!? Steve's older brother James and his wife Sarah live there and James can get Steve a job at the Alaska railroad as an electrician where James works as a conductor. Can't Steve get a job in New Hampshire!? No, We have looked while he was in school and since he graduated and apparently no one is hiring an electrician. Doesn't Steve have a job!? Yes, but he is working at the same job he had since he was 17 and he doesn't wan't to work there forever and it doesn't pay well enough for a young married couple who want to get a house and have kids one day. Can't you get a job and help him out and so you can stay!? Yes and no. I am trying to finish my sign language degree and I can't work and go to school at the same time because of my nerve disease, it will overwhelm my body too much. (I am planning on finishing my degree in Alaska so don't worry.) How are you going to get to there!? We bought a truck and are going to get a closed trailer and drive. Drive!? Are you crazy!? How long is it going to take to drive!? Well we are crazy I guess. It will take us about 2 weeks,We are leaving July 7th and will get to Alaska July 23rd-24th (Good birthday for me which is the 23rd). We will camp or sleep in hotels along the way and are going to take our time to take in the sites. So there you have it. We have prayed about it and we feel that Alaska is the place we need to be right now. I don't know what else to say about Alaska and the move so if you have any other questions ask us. We haven't blogged for a while because of getting things ready for the move and we are still helping Steve's parents do things around the house such as the kitchen and building a deck and of course it has to be done by the time we leave. Steve is pretty handy to have around. Will try to update you all on here more often. We will try to blog on the way but if we can't we will blog when we get to Alaska. That is all for now!
-Kierra
P.S.
For those of you who don't get the title reference or do.Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3tAJS0wpRY
Friday, May 27, 2016
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Painting,holidays,school and clubs!
Sorry we haven't been writing on here for a while stuff has been crazy! Here is why.
We were painting my in laws kitchen cabinets (Steven will blog about that later) and we were on a time crunch for that.
Holidays! For Halloween we carved pumpkins and dressed up as a cowboy and a cowgirl while we passed out candy,here are some pictures from Halloween.
So moving on to Christmas! We spent the morning with Steven's parents and in the afternoon went to my parents house. My Grandma Lewis and my Aunt Shelly came up to visit from Salt Lake City,Utah. It was nice to visit with family and see my Grandma and aunt again. Also my mother in law made us some pajama pants. (yes we are nerds)
We were painting my in laws kitchen cabinets (Steven will blog about that later) and we were on a time crunch for that.
Holidays! For Halloween we carved pumpkins and dressed up as a cowboy and a cowgirl while we passed out candy,here are some pictures from Halloween.
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| Cowboy Steven. |
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| Cowboy Kierra. |
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| Our pumpkins. Mine is the face ans Steven did the Tardis. Yes we are Doctor Who nerds. |
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| Our pajama pants. Mine are the Tardis (blue ones) and Stevens are the Daleks (brown ones) |
School! Steven in two weeks is going to start his LAST semester! Yay!! He gets to graduate sometime after May! So if you need any electrical work done on your house call Steven! haha
Clubs! Steven is in a Model railroad club doing his train thing, he loves it, he goes when he isn't working and when we aren't too busy with other things. I am planning on joining a book club that some ladies from our church put on. I was planning to start going a while ago but I was busy with school,work and all that fun stuff. So hopefully I will be able to start going to that.
One last thing before I close. One of Stevens companions form his mission will be coming to visit us in a couple weeks! Steven is excited to see him again and I am excited to meet him. Steven will probably blog about that also after he leaves.
Anyway! Sorry if all that was a lot to take in and all jumbled together but that has been our busy couple of months. We will try to blog more regularly and update you all on things as soon as we can.Talk to you later and soon! ( We hope)
Sunday, October 25, 2015
The Big Apple
My dad grew up near near New York City, and my grandparents still live there, and it's not really that far away from southern New Hampshire, so I've been going there fairly regularly all my life. Kierra, however, had never been there before, so last summer, before we got married, we took the train down there so she could meet my grandparents. We went again in May, again by rail. Last weekend, we decided to go visit again, but this time we drove. There are two ways to drive down there. One way is to drive across Massachusetts and Connecticut, through the Bronx and Queens, and out onto Long Island. The second way is to drive south to New London CT, and take the ferry to the eastern point of Long Island, and drive west from there. The second way takes a little longer, but since it avoids New York City, it is a much nicer drive. We decided to take the ferry.
We drove down on Friday, and the weather was very nice. It was windy, so the water was a little choppy, but not too bad. We had a nice voyage across the Long Island Sound aboard the Susan Anne, arriving on time at Orient Point. After getting off the ferry, we drove to Greenport. The Long Island Railroad was originally chartered to serve as a link on the route between New York and Boston. At the time, southern Connecticut was considered impassible by rail, because of the hills and wide rivers. The solution was to build a railroad to the eastern end of Long Island, and run a ferry to New London, where people could get on a train to Boston. The railroad line ends on a ferry dock in downtown Greenport, where the Cross Sound Ferries once tied up. However, before the Long Island Railroad was even finished, another railroad was built across southern Connecticut, and the Long Island was never really used as a link on the route to Boston. The railroad was still completed, and now there is a small railroad museum in Greenport, which was visited. From there we drove to Riverhead, where there is a much larger railroad museum. From there we drove to my grandparents' house, arriving in the late afternoon.
On Saturday we went into the city. We took a morning train into Penn Station, and took the subway up to Central Park. We wanted to see Cleopatra's Needle, which is in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is an ancient Egyptian obelisk, around 3,500 years old. It actually has nothing to do with Cleopatra, as it was already over 1,000 years old in her time. Someone gave it that nickname when it was moved to New York, and it stuck. There is an identical obelisk in London, a similar one in Paris, and another identical to the one in Paris is still in Egypt.
After seeing the obelisk, we walked through Central Park. We stopped at the Turtle Pond and watched some of the turtles swimming lazily in the water. We walked over to Belvedere Castle, which is a weather observatory that resembles a castle. We stopped at a street vendor and got some large soft pretzels for lunch. We left the park at Columbus Circle, and walked a few blocks up Broadway to see the LDS temple in Manhattan. After visiting the temple, we got back on the subway.
We got off the subway at the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn. We walked a couple blocks from there to the New York Transit Museum, which I had wanted to visit for a long time, but had never been able to. The museum was very interesting. It explained how the subway tunnels were dug and the dangerous conditions the workers faced. It talked about how the transit authority responded to recent disasters, including the attacks on September 11th, the snowstorm in 2010, and Hurricane Sandy. The museum is located in an old subway station, and is still connected to the subway network. The station houses a fleet of old transit cars, some dating back to the Brooklyn Elevated Railway, before subway tunnels were dug and steam trains ran on elevated structures above the streets. The transit authority restored all of the cars in their own shops at Coney Island, and they are all in operating condition. The museum occasionally runs excursions with them out in the subway network.
After the transit museum, we got back on the subway and went back to Penn Station, where we got the next train back to Mineola. We spent Sunday with my grandparents, and drove back on Monday. Again, we drove out to eastern Long Island and took the ferry. We happened to get the same ferry, the Susan Anne, on the voyage back to Connecticut. If it were possible, the weather was even better than the previous voyage. The sky was a spectacular shade of blue, and the seas were perfectly calm. There was no haze whatsoever. The voyage, as usual, was too short. After getting off the ferry in New London, we got some lunch and drove to the Submarine Museum, at the naval base in nearby Groton. The museum houses the Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine ever built. The Nautilus is famous not only for being the first nuclear submarine, but also for crossing beneath the polar ice cap, and for circling the globe underwater the entire time. She has been converted into a museum, showing what life on board a submarine is like. The movies always show the insides of submarines as very cramped, but they are far more cramped than you see on the screen. I cannot imagine living in such a small space with so many people without so much as a window to look out of for months at a time.
After visiting the Submarine Museum, we drove back home to Nashua.
We drove down on Friday, and the weather was very nice. It was windy, so the water was a little choppy, but not too bad. We had a nice voyage across the Long Island Sound aboard the Susan Anne, arriving on time at Orient Point. After getting off the ferry, we drove to Greenport. The Long Island Railroad was originally chartered to serve as a link on the route between New York and Boston. At the time, southern Connecticut was considered impassible by rail, because of the hills and wide rivers. The solution was to build a railroad to the eastern end of Long Island, and run a ferry to New London, where people could get on a train to Boston. The railroad line ends on a ferry dock in downtown Greenport, where the Cross Sound Ferries once tied up. However, before the Long Island Railroad was even finished, another railroad was built across southern Connecticut, and the Long Island was never really used as a link on the route to Boston. The railroad was still completed, and now there is a small railroad museum in Greenport, which was visited. From there we drove to Riverhead, where there is a much larger railroad museum. From there we drove to my grandparents' house, arriving in the late afternoon.
On Saturday we went into the city. We took a morning train into Penn Station, and took the subway up to Central Park. We wanted to see Cleopatra's Needle, which is in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is an ancient Egyptian obelisk, around 3,500 years old. It actually has nothing to do with Cleopatra, as it was already over 1,000 years old in her time. Someone gave it that nickname when it was moved to New York, and it stuck. There is an identical obelisk in London, a similar one in Paris, and another identical to the one in Paris is still in Egypt.
After seeing the obelisk, we walked through Central Park. We stopped at the Turtle Pond and watched some of the turtles swimming lazily in the water. We walked over to Belvedere Castle, which is a weather observatory that resembles a castle. We stopped at a street vendor and got some large soft pretzels for lunch. We left the park at Columbus Circle, and walked a few blocks up Broadway to see the LDS temple in Manhattan. After visiting the temple, we got back on the subway.
We got off the subway at the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn. We walked a couple blocks from there to the New York Transit Museum, which I had wanted to visit for a long time, but had never been able to. The museum was very interesting. It explained how the subway tunnels were dug and the dangerous conditions the workers faced. It talked about how the transit authority responded to recent disasters, including the attacks on September 11th, the snowstorm in 2010, and Hurricane Sandy. The museum is located in an old subway station, and is still connected to the subway network. The station houses a fleet of old transit cars, some dating back to the Brooklyn Elevated Railway, before subway tunnels were dug and steam trains ran on elevated structures above the streets. The transit authority restored all of the cars in their own shops at Coney Island, and they are all in operating condition. The museum occasionally runs excursions with them out in the subway network.
After the transit museum, we got back on the subway and went back to Penn Station, where we got the next train back to Mineola. We spent Sunday with my grandparents, and drove back on Monday. Again, we drove out to eastern Long Island and took the ferry. We happened to get the same ferry, the Susan Anne, on the voyage back to Connecticut. If it were possible, the weather was even better than the previous voyage. The sky was a spectacular shade of blue, and the seas were perfectly calm. There was no haze whatsoever. The voyage, as usual, was too short. After getting off the ferry in New London, we got some lunch and drove to the Submarine Museum, at the naval base in nearby Groton. The museum houses the Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine ever built. The Nautilus is famous not only for being the first nuclear submarine, but also for crossing beneath the polar ice cap, and for circling the globe underwater the entire time. She has been converted into a museum, showing what life on board a submarine is like. The movies always show the insides of submarines as very cramped, but they are far more cramped than you see on the screen. I cannot imagine living in such a small space with so many people without so much as a window to look out of for months at a time.
After visiting the Submarine Museum, we drove back home to Nashua.
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| The ferry terminal is right next to the train station in downtown New London CT. |
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| Downtown New London, seen from the stern of the departing Susan Anne. |
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| The end of the railroad line at the ferry dock in Greenport. |
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| An old steam engine on display at the museum in Riverhead. |
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| The lineup of coaches at the museum in Riverhead. |
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| Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park. |
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| Belvedere Castle and the Turtle Pond in Central Park. |
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| A turtle swimming in the Turtle Pond in Central Park. |
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| In Central Park, it's easy to forget that you are in the biggest city in the United States. |
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| Some geese landing on The Lake in Central Park. |
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| The lineup of old subway cars at the transit museum. |
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| Plum Gut Light and New London at Orient Point, with Connecticut in the background. |
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| New London approaching Orient Point. |
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| Cape Henlopen on the Thames River in New London. This ferry was originally built to bring military vehicles to Europe as part of the Normandy invasion on D-Day. After the war, she was refurbished to serve as a ferry, and operated in New Jersey before coming to the Long Island Sound. |
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| Nautilus at the submarine museum in Groton, CT. It was too cramped inside the submarine to take a photos of the interior. |
Sunday, October 11, 2015
1 Down, Forever To Go!
Today marks our one year wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we went to dinner last night at the Peddler's Daughter, the Irish pub in downtown Nashua. The food was excellent.
First, we thought we would share some of the photos from our wedding. We were married in the LDS temple near Boston, and the reception was in Laconia, where my family is from. My cousin Ann-Mariah took the photos for us, and she did a great job.
We kept the top of the cake in our freezer, and this morning we did the one year cake ceremony, or "poisoned by cake," as my dad likes to call it. My aunt Ursula was kind enough to make the cake for us. Most wedding cake looks great but tastes bad, but ours tasted as good as it looked. A year later, it was still good.
We had dated for over four years before we got married, so we thought we knew each other pretty well. A year later, here are a few of the things we've learned about each other:
This past year has been amazing, and we can't wait to see what the next years bring!
First, we thought we would share some of the photos from our wedding. We were married in the LDS temple near Boston, and the reception was in Laconia, where my family is from. My cousin Ann-Mariah took the photos for us, and she did a great job.
We kept the top of the cake in our freezer, and this morning we did the one year cake ceremony, or "poisoned by cake," as my dad likes to call it. My aunt Ursula was kind enough to make the cake for us. Most wedding cake looks great but tastes bad, but ours tasted as good as it looked. A year later, it was still good.
We had dated for over four years before we got married, so we thought we knew each other pretty well. A year later, here are a few of the things we've learned about each other:
- Steven snores.
- When I have a bad dream, I try to run away...and I end up kicking Steven...oops!
- Neither of us likes it when things get disorganized.
- We are both pretty patient, and don't get upset easily.
- We prefer to cook and do chores together, rather than assign which of us does what.
- Steven had never been to a county fair before...we fixed that!
- We are still just as happy today as we were a year ago.
This past year has been amazing, and we can't wait to see what the next years bring!
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
A Trip To Vermont
About a week and a half ago, we drove up to Vermont for a day trip. The plan was to ride the Lake Champlain ferry. There are three ferry crossing on the lake, and the longest one closed down for the season last weekend. Since we were just going for the ride, we took the longest crossing, which goes from Burlington, Vermont to Port Kent, New York.
On the drive up, we stopped in Montpelier for gas, and we decided to check the Amtrak schedule, to see when the Vermonter arrived in Montpelier, since the station was nearby. As luck would have it, the southbound was due in Montpelier in 20 minutes, so after filling up the car, we drove over to the train station to watch it go by. It was right on time.
We continued the drive to Burlington, and got in line for the next ferry. We were hoping to ride the Adirondack, which is the oldest vessel in the fleet. It has been in service on various ferry crossings on the east coast since 1913, arriving on Lake Champlain in 1954. Unfortunately, the Adirondack was not operating that day, so instead we rode the Champlain, which has been in service since 1930.
After the ferry ride, we got some lunch in Burlington and headed south again. It was a lot of driving, but it was a very enjoyable trip. So without any further ado, here are a few photos! (Click on any of them to see a larger version).
On the drive up, we stopped in Montpelier for gas, and we decided to check the Amtrak schedule, to see when the Vermonter arrived in Montpelier, since the station was nearby. As luck would have it, the southbound was due in Montpelier in 20 minutes, so after filling up the car, we drove over to the train station to watch it go by. It was right on time.
We continued the drive to Burlington, and got in line for the next ferry. We were hoping to ride the Adirondack, which is the oldest vessel in the fleet. It has been in service on various ferry crossings on the east coast since 1913, arriving on Lake Champlain in 1954. Unfortunately, the Adirondack was not operating that day, so instead we rode the Champlain, which has been in service since 1930.
After the ferry ride, we got some lunch in Burlington and headed south again. It was a lot of driving, but it was a very enjoyable trip. So without any further ado, here are a few photos! (Click on any of them to see a larger version).
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| Amtrak's southbound Vermonter arriving in Montpelier. |
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| Amtrak's Vermonter loading passengers at Montpelier. |
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| The Champlain ready for boarding at Burlington. |
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| A sailboat tied up at Burlington, with Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains in the background. |
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| The lighthouse at the end of the breakwater in Burlington. |
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| Arriving in Port Kent. |
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| In Port Kent, looking back towards Vermont. |
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| Kierra on the ferry. |
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Welcome!
We've been married for almost a year now, and people keep asking us how we are and what we have been up to lately. We decided maybe it's time to start a blog. Here's a brief biography on each of us and what has been going on over the past year.
Kierra is originally from central New Hampshire, but moved around a bit as a child. Eventually the family found their way back to New Hampshire, where most of her large extended family still lives. Kierra likes to read. She is enrolled at Nashua Community College studying American Sign Language and hopes to be an interpreter.
Steven was born and raised in southern New Hampshire. After high school, he attended school at Lakes Region Community College in Laconia. He went full time his first year there, which required him to move, but he has been going part time since then. He is studying electricity and will hopefully be finishing his degree in the spring.
We met each other when Steven moved to go to school. We are both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we attended the same congregation in Laconia. We both served missions for the church. Kierra served in the media department in the church office building, and Steven served a proselyting mission in the Salt Lake City area. After returning to New Hampshire, we quickly started planning our wedding, and we got married that fall after dating for four and a half years, including the time apart on our missions.
Currently, we are attending college and Steven is working part time at a local grocery store. Because of this, we have been living with Steven's parents since getting married. Hopefully after Steven finishes college we will be able to afford our own place.
We assume that most, if not all, of our readers have been in touch with us over the past year, so we will not try to sum up what he have been doing. Instead, we will just start with what is going on now.
We hope you enjoy the blog!
Kierra is originally from central New Hampshire, but moved around a bit as a child. Eventually the family found their way back to New Hampshire, where most of her large extended family still lives. Kierra likes to read. She is enrolled at Nashua Community College studying American Sign Language and hopes to be an interpreter.
Steven was born and raised in southern New Hampshire. After high school, he attended school at Lakes Region Community College in Laconia. He went full time his first year there, which required him to move, but he has been going part time since then. He is studying electricity and will hopefully be finishing his degree in the spring.
We met each other when Steven moved to go to school. We are both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we attended the same congregation in Laconia. We both served missions for the church. Kierra served in the media department in the church office building, and Steven served a proselyting mission in the Salt Lake City area. After returning to New Hampshire, we quickly started planning our wedding, and we got married that fall after dating for four and a half years, including the time apart on our missions.
Currently, we are attending college and Steven is working part time at a local grocery store. Because of this, we have been living with Steven's parents since getting married. Hopefully after Steven finishes college we will be able to afford our own place.
We assume that most, if not all, of our readers have been in touch with us over the past year, so we will not try to sum up what he have been doing. Instead, we will just start with what is going on now.
We hope you enjoy the blog!
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