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It cannot be Memorial Day next weekend…

The last 5-6 months have been a whirlwind. Starting a new job right before Christmas and having a 15-credit load at college didn’t leave much time for a great deal of downtime, yet looking back I also took three LIFE classes at Eden seminary, flew back up to Alaska to help run tech for Cama-i, moved to a new house, and had two or three weekends in Iowa. Now that college has been finished for a couple of weeks and we’re settled in to our new house, it’s nice to have some time to relax for a little given the upcoming summer plans.

Heading back to Alaska for Cama-i was somewhat weird. Everything was familiar and hadn’t changed, and it was great to catch up with friends again and be a part of running Cama-i. The traveling to and from wasn’t so great, but it was nice to fly Alaska Air all the way from St Louis. And, and having been back in Alaska for literally 5 minutes, I was sat in the bar (of course!) having an Alaskan Amber when Iditarod champion John Baker walked by

Bethany and I moved at the start of the month to a new house still within Maplewood, and we’re pretty much settled in now. The back yard is a little bigger and Kenai seems to like it, and we’re also 5 minutes from the dog park which is great too. Ace seems a lot happier with extra places to explore in this house and a lot more windows to look out of.

Work at SLUH has been going good, again, starting to get settled in, be able to find my way around, and know most of the people working there. It’s a nice place to work, with the atmosphere being pretty laid back and open most of the time. Wednesday evening was nice with the end of year staff which was held on Windows on Washington, a pretty smart banquet area overlooking Washington Avenue in downtown St Louis.

It’s only a month until we get married, and I’m really looking forward to having family around for a little while. We’re also heading back to England for our honeymoon the first week which we’re both really looking forward to. Trying to cram everything in to an 8-9 trip will be pushing it a little to much, but I’m sure it will be great.

Well, guess we made to our 1st anniversary Much like last year, there’s been awful snow storms leading up today too! But, our cake saved in the freezer from our reception last year stayed pretty good and is definately edible.

I’m making curry this afternoon since we got chicken in from Bethel on Friday which we’re looking forward to, and Kat made waffles for breakfast which was nice. Plus, after looking over our taxes yesterday since our W2′s arrived, we’re due a really nice refund so I filed it right away

Not quite sure what had spurred it on, but Kat decided that she’d like to make a donation to the WWF (no, not the wrestling people!). I’d been joking for months that I wanted a polar bear so we figured that’s what we’d go for:

It’s more of a symbolic adoption in reference to a monetary donation rather than actually adopting a particular bear (that writes you a letter twice a year like some adopt-a-dog schemes…). Is still pretty cool though, with over a dozen different types of animals they have on this scheme, and all for a good cause too

But, we finally got the official marriage licence through the mail today which means I can send off all the forms for adjustment of status to the immigration department. Was getting a little worried as my fiance visa expires on March 21st, at which point I technically have no legal right (from an immigration of point) to stay in the country unless I’ve filed for adjustment of status. Sending the forms off tomorrow gives 10 days or so for them to reach the Chicago processing center, but at least I will have actually filed them within 90 days of arrival even if they’re unlikely to do much with them for a while.

Hopefully there won’t be any problems and I’ll get a receipt notification back by the time we leave for the lower 48 at the end of May, as I’ll need some proof I’ve filed for the adjustment of status incase I get stopped by immigration at one of the airports. Would be nice if the employment authorisation document is approved by the end of May too so that I can apply for a social security card whilst in Anchorage, as otherwise it would mean waiting until Christmas. All totaled, is another good use of $575

For anyone looking at getting married in the Lake Tahoe area, and given the number of wedding companies set up for the area it seems quite a lot, avoid using A Tahoe Wedding to Remember. We first got in touch with them back in January 2006 to start planning the wedding which was due to take place last June. They seemed very polite, took a $350 deposit and arranged for the marriage licence. After the delays with the visa last summer we got in touch around April time (well within the 30-day limit before the ceremony was due to take place) , explained the problems and they fully understood since they’d dealt with marriages based around visa issuance before – they simply asked us to let them know once we had things all sorted with the visa.

Having contacted them yesterday to arrange for the ceremony to take place this coming June, we were told by Christine Beatleston, whom the actual business licence for A Tahoe Wedding to Remember is registered to, that our details had been deleted as they assumed everything was off since we hadn’t been in touch since. Asking why they’d simply deleted our details and kept the money without so much as a courtesy phone call or e-mail, a very rude response came back asking us why we were surprised they’d deleted us considering we first booked a wedding in February 2006 and it was now January 2007? Is this common customer service and business practice in California? Do they treat all their clients like this and have a complete lack of common sense and ability to send an e-mail themselves asking for an update on the situation? I’m sure other couples may have received excellent service and their ceremony was perfect, but it seems unless everything is flawless and doesn’t require A Tahoe Wedding to Remember to perform any additional work, you’ll be treated terribly.

Thankfully we had a much better response from the minister of the Moravian church up here who bent over backwards to arrange things for us, so we’re not left in a situation where we were planning on having our actual marriage ceremony in Tahoe. Regardless of whether A Tahoe Wedding to Remember refund our money, which looks unlikely given the complete lack of manners already displayed, we’re not going ahead with having them perform a barbqeue let alone anything else.

Now that I’ve managed to rummage through some other people’s cameras, have got together a decent colletion of photos. Considering Kat and I had given our cameras to a couple of groups of kids, they ended up taking some decent photos, though a lot of them were simply of their friends!

There’s still a few other camers I’ll be downloading photos from, and then I’ll put together a CD of high-resolution photos to send out to people. These two were some of our photographers, and certainly worked out cheaper than paying a professional photographer. Sure we’ll end up with some good photos from Lake Tahoe in the summer too.

Katie did a really good job on the wedding cake, as did Wanita and the other helpers with decorations. Glad they convinced us to go for a traditional 3-tier cake, and the top part is now wrapped up in the freezer ready for our 1st wedding anniversary.

Having gone for a traditional pot luck too whereby the guests all bring a dish to share, there was a mountain of food for people to pick + choose from, creating quite a queue at times! That said, the entire table was cleared by the end of the night!

There were about half a dozen large tables around the gym, and at times you had to remember you were actually in a school gym rather than a hotel ballroom or similar! Our table got swamped by kids wanting to sit with us, but so long as they had food on their plates they were no bother!

The rest of the photos (around 30 or so) of the reception can be found in my photo gallery, along the other photos from the actual wedding ceremony. They’re probably better if anyone’s wanting to print them off too:

• Photos from the wedding ceremony
• Photos from the wedding reception

Is still feeling pretty weird being refered to as Mr + Mrs Foulds, or people jokingly asking where my wife is! We did get a load of congratulations cards through the mail today which was really nice, and there doesn’t seem to be any complicated in the forms we need to send off to the immigration department. The change of weather on Saturday that allowed Lincoln to fly back into the village has just kept on going, with temperatures up around 42F (6C), although 40-50mph winds are making things fun to walk around in!

Think we’ve just about recovered from yesterday now! Even though the wedding ceremony went by really quickly, and the reception only lasted a couple of hours, still seemed like a very long day. But, the reception at the school was cool – lots of people turned up bringing all sorts of different food dishes and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

It gave the kids from school a chance to get involved (and stuff their face with food!), and rather than Kat + I going round taking photos, we gave our cameras to a couple of groups of kids and let them play around. Although some of them were a right mess with people missing heads or the classic ‘finger over the lense’, we got about 35-40 good ones I was looking over this morning.

A lot of the teachers were taking photos too which should turn out a bit better, so I’ll start stealing them off their cameras and uploading them over the next few days. Was a shame quite a lot of people were sick and hadn’t made it though as there’s an illness going round the past week, so even the people up here will be wanting to see the photos

I’m glad Katie convinced us to go with the proper 3-tier wedding cake idea as it looked awesome – hopefully someone managed to get a decent photo of it! I hadn’t heard of the tradition of keeping the very top part of the cake and eating a piece to celebrate your 1st wedding anniversary so it must be an American thing I guess. Wasn’t much of it left at the end of the night, and pretty much all the food had disappeared with so many people there! Also glad we had a traditional pot luck too so that we didn’t have to prepare all the food ourselves.

Still feels kinda weird being a married man now though! Think it’s more wearing the wedding ring though as I’m not used to wearing a ring on that hand. Kat keeps giggling sometimes about too, and is finding it weird being called ‘Mrs Foulds’ now!

Next step is getting another round of forms sent in to the immigration department to grant permanent residency. Hopefully won’t be as much of an issue as getting the visa (which took a year!), and am also hoping there won’t be a problem travelling around in the summer if the green card doesn’t arrive by the end of May.

Some people worry about the weather in terms of will it be raining. We worried about the weather in terms of will the minister be able to fly back into the village after being snowed in in Bethel for two days! Thankfully Lincoln made it and we managed to fix up a couple of snowmobile rides to take us to the church:

Was very weird riding through the village on the back of a snowmobile with Jason driving, and Nick driving Kat! Wearing our wedding gear with big winter jackets and snow boots on just added to it

The church was very pretty, a lot nicer than I was expecting to be honest:

Having spoken with Lincoln before the ceremony, he performed a nice short service without too much religious stuff since we’re not Moravian or all that religious anyways. Felt pretty weird exchanging vows!

The service only lasted around 10 minutes or so, and was really nice without any kids trying to cause problems and get into the church, and there were a good 20 or 30 people from the school which we wanted there, so worked out as being the nice little ceremony we wanted. Lincoln realised he didn’t know my surname, so simply pronounced us Mr + Mrs:

At the end, Elena played some nice music on the piano again as we walked down the aisle to the back of the church, though I don’t think either of us really knew what to do then! But, the guests that followed us down and shook hands as they were leaving:

With the weather fairly warm and not too much wind, we also managed to get a photo outside the church with Lincoln:

Lots of people there were talking photos and Marie had taken all of these for us which turned out really well. Will start going through them over the next few days and upload them into the photo gallery once we’re sorted, but hopefully these will keep you all ticking over.

No, I haven’t got the wedding jitters and done a runner. Would be hard given the fact that it’s been blizzarding quite badly the last 2/3 days and there’s only been a handful of planes making it into the village! We’ve been trying to get things sorted, although we still don’t really have much idea as to what’s going on tomorrow. Seems like everyone is taking care of things, or meant to be, so we could well find nothing is sorted at the church or for the reception!

A couple of the teachers have offered to play bodyguard at the church and all the kids have been told not to bother turning up there, just wait for the reception instead. Don’t really want 100 kids in the church running around, shouting to get your attention, etc. and this is the one thing both Kat + I have insisted on and everyone else has agreed with! The kids would only get bored anyways, so best for them to wait until there’s food, drink and places for them to run around.

Since it’s a pot luck where people bring a dish and quite a few of the teachers have asked what food we’d like, figured we should bring a few dishes ourselves! Baked a couple of loafs of bread earlier today, have some poor-man’s steak in the oven now (mince meat held together with a little flour and crackers almost like a burger, lightly browned, then baked covered in cream of mushroom soup) and have a mountain of rice to cook later on since pretty everyone will eat rice. Kat’s class baked all sorts of cookies + brownies this morning, and a couple of other classes with the younger kids in made pretzels or similar snacks so sounds like a good start.

The weather hasn’t turned out quite as planned with some strong winds and blowing snow but it’s actually pretty warm, hovering around 30F (-1C). Likely to be windy again tomorrow with blowing snow, but hopefully we’ll get a bit of a break and have some sunshine around 3p.m (midnight UK time) when the ceremony will take place. Will try to get a few photos online during/just after the reception so there’ll be stuff there for Sunday, and move through uploading photos other people have taken the start of next week

The whole world and it’s wife seems to be invited anyways, so if yer in the Lower Kuskowim area of Alaska and passing near Tuntutuliak, pop in:

I would say that I created these with my own fair hands, but all I was allowed to do was the cut the paper. To be honest, is probably my limit since I’m not well-known for my artistic or creative skills! They look really good and add a nice little personal touch to things – Kat’s certainly very proud of them!

Frank, the school principal, seem shocked when asked if it was okay to hold the reception in school (the only place big enough in the village basically even though it doesn’t sound all that impressive!). Guess he hadn’t been paying attention over the past year when Kat had been talking about me moving here, or even last Christmas when I was first introduced to him just after we got engaged

Doesn’t look like we’re gonna have little sausage rolls at the reception mind…

So, we’re getting married next Saturday (the 27th)! When we spoke with the minister from the Meravian church he said he could perform the ceremony whenever we wanted, so why wait any longer?

One of the locals, Martina, headed into Bethel over the weekend and was going to pick up some flowers, decorations and some other bits + pieces, and another of the locals is going to put together a wedding cake. There’s also people wanting to help decorate the church and get things sorted for the reception, and usually when there’s some kind of party like this going on, everyone will bring a dish to be served so means we’re not having to prepare all the food ourselves

Hopefully we can keep the actual wedding ceremony at the church fairly small and have the reception open to the whole community as it will be the first white (i.e. non-local) wedding they’ve ever had in Tunt, so they’re wanting to make it into a really big deal. In a way, it’s pretty cool as there’s not going to be many people able to say they got married in an eskimo village in Alaska, but then with so many people wanting to get involved and help out, it’s difficult to actually keep control of what’s happening!