God Bless Us, Every One

We took a trip to the local performing arts theater on Saturday to see "A Christmas Carol".  The Holidays are a good time to get out and see a play.


Stopping for a picture at the theater.


The ghost of Christmas Past showing Ebenezer Scrooge events from his past.


The Ghost of Christmas Present talking with Ebenezer Scrooge (back, center) while the town folk move about.


The ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, showing Scrooge the future at Bob Cratchit's house.


Tiny Tim, front and center for the ovation.


We downed a quick pizza at a new restaurant in town prior to the play.  Good pizza.


Grayson took the opportunity at intermission to add to his pictures of local stars of "Moose the Movie", this time with Ranger Mike from the movie.


Another pretty day on the hay flats.


The high winds blew away most of our snow, but there's still enough to make it feel like the Holidays.  Grayson brought home a cold from school last week, and spread it around the family this weekend, so today we spent a slow day at home to recover.

A Wintry-White Thanksgiving

Between the snow on the ground and the frost on the trees, our Thanksgiving view resembled the lair of the snow miser.

Jolene ran an early morning Turkey Trot race, and then spent the rest of the day cooking a magnificent feast.  We had another teacher Jolene had worked with over for dinner, and stuffed ourselves with turkey and dressing.


The fog has been persistent this year, Sometimes you can watch the fog bank roll in (or out) across the hayflats.  I caught this picture after it rolled out and formed wave tops across the top of the fog bank framing the bottom of the mountains.


This moose enjoyed the cover the fog provided, and took a stroll in the low visibility below the bluff. We've had more wind storms than usual, but they haven't lasted as long as expected.  Previously, you could count on a strong blowdown from the glacier hitting you with three days of 50-80 mph winds, but this year they only seem to last for a night at a time, but there's been more of them than usual - so I guess it all evens out.






The wind swept yard provides slick conditions and makes sledding a favorite past-time for the boys.


Of course, eventually one of them will tire of sledding and find the best opportunity to start a snowball fight (which is a challenge with dry cold snow that doesn't pack well).


Snowball fight - direct hit.


Instant retaliation.  Landon might be bigger, but Grayson is determined.



Dino feels at home in a world of snow and ice, once again.  This weeks' low temps have been around zero, occasionally dipping into the negatives, but about average for the most part.  Next week is forecast to warm up into the 20's, and maybe even 30 for a day or two.  Hopefully it won't get above freezing, or else we'll have some ice to deal with each morning.


After the boys finish sledding, we warmed up with some hot chocolate, and then it was time to put up the tree.






They had all the ornaments added onto the tree by dark.  We're down to just over 6 hours of daylight each day, and over the next month we'll dip down to a minimum of about 4.5 hours of daylight each day, before we start to gain light again in late December.

We finally got most of our pictures hung this weekend, but we left quite a bit of room on the walls for new items that we happen across over the next year or so.  Many of the pictures we've carried with us on our 11 moves have been retired to storage in boxes in the crawl space - - maybe one day we'll find a place for a cabin and hang some of them there.  For now we have spare wall space, and look forward to shopping around patiently for some unique items to piece together. We have no plans to move, so we have plenty of time to slowly piece it all together.

"Warm" Alaska Halloween

Our past Halloweens from when we were here in Alaska before usually were characterized by snow and bitter cold. So cold the boys would normally have to cover their costumes in snow pants and heavy coats, and then only make it to a couple of houses to trick or treat before deciding to come home and just eat our own candy.  But this year was snowless, and relatively warm.


Grayson borrowed one of my flight suits from 12 years ago, when I was in VX-23.


He was ready to go well before Landon was.


Dino was actually the first one ready to go (but he didn't get any candy).


He might of had the best costume though, the Red Baron.




They only trick or treat'd around our neighborhood, but collected a ton of candy, much of which is still sitting in our kitchen three weeks later!  But they enjoyed a 'warm' Alaskan Halloween.

Winter is Coming!!!

Got to find other things to occupy our time as the snow builds and temperature falls.  Here Jolene and Grayson learned to paint the Northern Lights.






A few pictures of 'before the snow'.  The snow starting falling a little late this year, but it did come finally.






And now that we have some snow, all feels right.


With snow on the ground, it's time for sledding, and drinking hot chocolate.






Winter also brings some creative thinking for things to do.  Here Landon and Grayson provide us a presentation to convince us to buy another xbox game (it worked).


Lights have to go up before the snow comes, so might as well turn them on and get ready for the holidays!

50th Wedding Anniversary in Alaska is 'The Halibut Anniversary'!

We have plenty of gold in our state history as well, but nowadays, halibut makes the best 50th Wedding Anniversary gift.  We took Pappy and Grammy out halibut fishing for their 50th.

We did good.

And then there was the processing, here with the counter full of about only half of our halibut catch. Some of those fillets are bigger than most whole fish I have caught.

Lots of work to get it all bagged and sealed.

The fishing was the fun part.

Pappy and Grammy caught the biggest two.

Grayson's haul.

Pappy's big catch.

It was kind of heavy, I guess!

Heavy enough to need some help holding it up for the picture (that's a lot of halibut!)

Jolene's catch.

Boys, chillin'.

My catch.

After I finally limited (took me a while this time), then we went trolling for coho salmon.

And did well there too.

Big silver salmon.

Grayson hooked into a nice one.

Jolene too.


I missed the picture of Landon's halibut, but got one of his big salmon.

Lots of salmon and halibut for the freezer(s).

We were welcomed back to the dock by a sea otter (over Landon's shoulder off the dock.)

He kept them entertained while we unloaded the fish.

The otter poses for a picutre.

No puffin!

The bird sanctuary at the sea life center in Seward.

Dave!!

Mt Marathon in the background.

Watching the seals.

The real Dave!

We have a baby orphaned walrus at the sea life center, and we watched them feed it lunch.

Seward is our favorite vacation spot in Alaska, and we always enjoy our trips there each Summer.