artwork/illustrations

the journey home//

sadly, our adventure in alaska had to come to an end, and we had to come back to utah for school. so we enjoyed our last week of work and had fun with our friends being up there with us. oh! and just before leaving something crazy happened... we found ourselves a new toy... something that we've always wanted and couldn't pass up. we found ourselves a real alaskan jeep wrangler ;) ha! so now instead of having to deal with taking one car on the 6 hour ferry ride to canada and 30 hour drive back to utah, we had TWO cars to worry about. buuuut luckily for us, our friends saved our hineys and drove it home for us! (bless their hearts; could you imagine a 30 hour drive BY YOURSELF?! how boring.) so off we went! we paraded our way home as if we were a circus haha. had our cars full of all our things, and camped in them whenever we got tired. we drove through banff national park in canada, and MY OH MY lake louise sure is a beaut! on the way up the whole thing was frozen over, so it was awesome to see her melted in all of her turquoise blue glory. we also went to glacier national park in montana, and drove the length of 'going to the sun' road! it was beautiful!... until we got covered in a giant cloud of fog, and couldn't see anything.. haha! it was fun while it lasted though ;) then home to the land of utah! feels good to be home, but we still miss alaska every day!

her name is aurora ;)

lake louise... see what i mean? SO GOOD. 

so. much. fog.

coolest carvings that we found along the way!!! look at those beards! 

bandits in AK//

during our last week in Alaska, we were lucky enough to have our best friends Wyatt and Zach come up and visit us! after all, what kind of alaska adventure would it be without those two??! while they were visiting, we spent our time fishing, zip-lining, hiking, scootering, camping, and just having a grand old time! on our last night there, we decided to hike Deer Mountain, the tallest peak in Ketchikan, and camp in the little cabin that was so conveniently built on top of it. the hike was probably one of the most beautiful i've ever done before. i just don't think you can beat an ocean view from atop the mountains, really. you can't really beat the company of good friends either, am i right? we loved having them there. and now, some pics to celebrate!

work in AK//

since being back from Alaska, we've had a ton of people asking us exactly what it was we were doing there this summer. it's kind of a hard job to explain, working at a fishing lodge. so we tried to take some good pictures that might help explain a little better just what we did all summer long! so nope, still not done posting fish pictures ;)

this is the dock we worked on all summer! 

we would catch boats that were coming in to drop off fish for processing, and then we would hang the fish up for the people who wanted pictures

the fish would then get put into totes and tagged for cutting

then the boys would filet the fish! this is the main job that josh was doing all summer. cutting thousands of pounds of fish a day! 

look at that form ;)

this is one of four filets that comes off of a halibut! (this one was super big). but after this they would cut these long filets into smaller portion sized pieces.

once the cutters were done with an order,  they would send these totes full of the cut fish into the processing room where me and most of the other girls were

from there we would dump those huge totes into the sink and wash and separate the fish, put them into labeled bags, and onto racks to go into the freezer!

there's a sink full of halibut for ya! yum, right? ;)

once the fish was frozen (each rack took about 2 hours) we would pull it out of the freezer, and start boxing it up that night to ship out the next day

the assembly line of boxing the fish...

labels getting put on the boxes

and a pretty crappy (sorry) pano of the boxing process!

orders all boxed up, stacked to the ceiling, waiting to be hauled to the freezer

and last but not least, at the end of boxing, the boys would have to haul all the boxes up this ramp, and across the street to the freezer to be shipped out the next day! lucky boys ;)

that's pretty much the simplified version of our job this summer! basically we just played with fish the whole time ;). anyways, hope that gives you somewhat of an idea of what we were up to, and in case you were wondering, YES we did love it. even the fishy work! sure the work got hard and it made for long days but we loved every second of being there! can't wait to go back.

one year anni//

one year??! time goes by so fast. this past year has definitely been the funnest, happiest, most adventurous year of both of our lives! we have gone so many places, seen so much, and accomplished so many things together. i'm so grateful to be married to josh, he's definitely my better half. i've been so blessed to have him by my side constantly supporting everything i do and making me feel like i'm the greatest person ever. life would be so dull without this one, and i'm sure grateful to have this handsome man forever. for our anniversary, we went on a float plane to the misty fjords! sounds like a funny name, but it's actually one of the defining natural monuments in alaska. there's no other place quite like it in the entire world. a 'fjord' is a deep inlet of ocean water surrounded by extremely high cliffs that were carved out by glaciers. it's hard to explain, but you'll see in the pictures. it was truly one of the most beautiful natural sights we have ever seen. our plane was only a small speck compared to the mountains and cliffs that we flew through. our pilot even landed the float plane down inside one of the narrow fjords and let us get out to take pictures and feel the water! the whole experience was just beyond expression, and probably our favorite thing we've been able to do here in alaska. such an incredible memory that we'll never forget!