I'm Back and Why I Have Not Been Updating…

Sorry to all who have been wondering what has been going on and no updates for over a month. I am going to try to get you all caught up in the next few weeks.
It has been a really busy month. I just completed a three year, full time graduate program at a seminary in Portland. There were a lot of papers to write and projects to complete. Adoption paperwork and processing took up much of the beginning of the semester and school work suffered. And for the last month with trying to get school done, adoption and blogging has suffered. But now I am DONE with school and I can be a bit more focused and less diverged – hopefully ☺
It feels fantastic to be done with school. Sometimes I question why I thought it was a good idea to start the program three years ago…
This will be my first free summer of no school in three years! Looking forward to not having to juggle school and all the summer activities!
I graduated with a Master of Arts in Ministry Leadership from George Fox Seminary in Portland Oregon. As my blog states, I am an Alaskan Girl. So obviously I didn’t commute. It was an online program. It is interesting that when I started the program, I picked it not because it was online, but because the content interested me. Little did I know at the time just how handy being an online program would be. I used to live in Oregon when I started the program and I would always feel bad for my fellow classmates that had to fly in from all over the country for our week of classes each semester. Funny how a year and a half into the program, I became one of them flying in from far, far away. God knew though and likely when He agreed that this would be a good school choice, He knew about my loss of a job and subsequent move to an entirely new state.
It is a fantastic program that is totally portable and other than actually moving to Alaska by way of the Canadian wilderness and trying to stay in wifi range to do schoolwork, it was a seamless transition. It was challenging trying to get used to a new job, a new place and new life while trying to juggle full-time school work, but I made it and I’m done!
Woo Hoo!

Getting my hood placed - I look like I am praying, but I am not.

That's better



Sporting my dragon tail :)


I went down for the hooding and commencement ceremonies last weekend. I was blessed to have several friends from Roseburg come up to celebrate with me. It was a special weekend.



I also celebrated in a curious and perfect kind of way. I fulfilled my lifetime dream of skydiving! An hour after commencement ceremonies, a new masters graduate, I drove over to Mololla Oregon to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. It was indescribable! It was intense, fantastic, crazy, scary and amazing! Better get this out of my system before I become a mom. And I obviously survived…






This was my face for the next several hours after the jump. Apparently it takes adrenaline of that magnitude a while to rub off...

It was totally worth it and I recommend it!