The Things I Now Know

Mosquitos: I had NO idea there would be mosquitos in Alaska. Moose? Yes. Bears? Yes. Fish? Yes. Mosquitos? Heck no. It's not just a few either, they are huge and they are many. Extremely annoying to be soaked in Off! whenever we go outside. A couple weeks ago I had Bryn on my lap during church, it just barely started, and I noticed her forearm was super swollen and red. It looked the same way on her other arm, but just above her elbow. Nasty mosquito bites.

Earthquakes: So I have never experienced an earthquake that I've felt before moving here. But several weeks ago, at 7:02 a.m. I was sitting in the living room nursing Kelsey when all of the sudden our house was totally shaking! The glass objects on the top shelf were rattling, some falling off. It totally freaked me out. Kenny was running behind getting to work and he stood in the hallway and we just looked at each other, like a freaky moment frozen in time. For some reason I couldn't understand what was going on, like my mind never registered, "earthquake". So I just sat there, terrified, wondering why it wouldn't stop. But it did stop, and it was pretty cool. Kenny has this cool earthquake tracker thing online that he keeps up with. We get a lot of them here, but that was by far the strongest one I've felt. Now I can't remember what it was on the scale, maybe 4.8?

Lights: In the Book of Mormon when it's talking about the sign of Christ's birth and there is a day and a night and a day, as if there were no night because it's light the whole time? Well, that was always hard for me to imagine before. But now that's a perfect explanation of every day and every night here in Alaska. It's pretty cool. I just wish it would last longer in the year :).
Also on lights, the northern lights. I don't think I ever mentioned it, but we TOTALLY SAW THEM! It was when my sister Laura was here, right after Kelsey was born. I want to say it was on March 9th. It was pretty dang cool and surreal. We watched them right from our living room window. That's probably the only part of the winter I'm looking forward to.