Our new baby…

Ok, so we are still waiting on the little boy that is coming in March sometimes, but in the meantime we have another “new baby”. After a couple years of pressuring and nagging Brian to figure out what he wanted to do with his life he finally figured it out about 6 months ago! It took a lot of work (on Brian and his dad’s part) but on December 10, 2008 we became the official owners of Wilderness Way Outfitters, INC.

So you’re all probably wondering what the crap that means…so let me tell you a little bit about it! Wilderness Way is the store that Brian has been working at for the past 3 years since we have been in Alaska. His boss was ready to retire, and so Brian approached him about selling the place to us. The store carries mostly high end outdoor equipment, Brian’s specialty! You can find things like coats, long underwear, cross-country skis, backpacks, water bottles, sunglasses, hiking boots, freeze dried food, water filters, travel guitars, fly fishing gear….and the list could go on. Some of the clothing lines include Mountain Hardware, The North Face, and Patagonia.

If Brian we reading this right now he would probably laugh at my lack of knowledge of the place! It is quite obvious that he is the expert on this whole line of business, but I am slowly learning. I guess my main job will be the bookkeeping and all the fun paperwork that I can do from home.

Brian had me come in last Saturday to try and learn the computer system and get a feel for helping customers, since I will be working there the week of Christmas while we are hopefully (fingers crossed) super busy. Of course wherever I go….there Parker is also. Not for long though. Parker was fired from his second job (first one was Radio Shack when he pooped on me) on Saturday….his first day at the place. He was a holy terror! I can’t figure out if it was because he was sick or because that’s just his stage now, but he was screaming and running around and wrecking the office. There was no place for him to go…so Brian sent us home. Although I didn’t describe all the details of the event, trust me when I say it was quite the experience.

I had the hardest time keeping all this excitement to myself this whole time, but we signed confidentiality documents that didn't let us disclose that any of this was even happening. Sorry....I would have shared sooner if I could have!

A couple really super cool things about the whole deal….first I get to advertise with a whole bunch of new clothes….and the other is that the Outdoor Retailer Show is held every January and August in Salt Lake City. We have to go to meet with all the vendors to do the pre-season ordering so we will get to go visit twice a year for sure and write the whole thing off as a business expense! Sweet! Brian will be coming down this January by himself though…I’ll be 8 months pregnant and we won’t have anyone here to try run the store, so I’ll have to catch it in August.

We have lots of big plans and dreams for the future of our “new baby”, and as time passes I will try and keep you updated with all the fun new changes. In the mean time if you call our house and we answer, “Wilderness Way” it’s because we call forward the phones after hours to our home office.

Oh yeah...It doesn't look like this in Alaska right now...obviously everything is a white and frozen. Hopefully we'll be able to get a picture of us with the store sometime soon! But I wanted you to get an idea of the place!