Winter Plays, Ski Races, and Grayson goes to Jail

It's hard to justify spending time in a theater in Alaska during our short summertime, but watching a play at one of our local drama theaters in the wintertime is a great way to spend an evening. Here, Jolene and Grayson catch a selfie at the local showing of "Newsies".


Grayson said it was his favorite that he's seen so far, and we've been to quite a few. I stayed home this time, since I am still on crutches, and Landon stayed with me as he's nursing a sore hamstring from racing in X-country skiing this weekend.




We haven't posted our super wolf blood lunar eclipse photos yet, so here's one we took with the smaller camera. Jolene's larger camera has some we haven't downloaded yet. Within the last year, we've watched a very active meteor shower, crazy bright northern lights, and now the eclipse, all visible from the back deck.


Landon won the boys Anchorage Skiathlon open division skate ski race on Saturday, coming in first out of 15 racers!


The unique medals they handed out were made from birch tree cross sections.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Grayson spent Saturday as a judge for our church's Chilly Willy competition.


He has a natural talent for judging all kinds of foods.


And it gave him a chance to sport his Texas cowboy hat and boots!


But he ended up in jail. This time it was for wearing his hat at the dinner table (because he didn't want to take it off)! What a rebel!


Landon has been giving various BPA presentations around the area. He's the State President for Alaska BPA this year, and will be attending the National Leadership Conference in Anaheim, CA later this year.


Some leftover pics from December. Before Christmas we went to a local showing of "Miracle on 34th Street", which was a great performance.


Grayson had considered trying out, but decided not to, but some of his friends were the children characters in the play.


Even further back, in early December, here's us watching the Army-Navy game. At that time we still had no tv's due to the earthquake, so we streamed the game on the only device we could, which was our iMac (which itself has a cracked screen due the earthquake, but it worked - kinda). Luckily, we didn't miss much this year, as it seems Navy is still giving Army some wins so that the Army folks don't feel too bad about themselves ;)


At the 2 week point after surgery, I traded my plaster cast for a fiberglass one. I'll be in a cast for about ~5 weeks it looks like, before I can start to move the foot.....then another month or so before I can put full weight on it. Longer rehab than expected, but I guess I don't heal as fast as I used to.


Grayson's robotics team won their regionals and went to State, but unfortunately at State they didn't qualify for nationals this year. Maybe next year.

My Crutches Have Snow Spikes!

I had ankle surgery last week to reconstruct my left ankle. To help me get around the snow and ice, my crutches came equipped with deployable snow spikes!


Swing the spikes down into place, and I'm suddenly still mobile outdoors in the Alaska winter landscape.


I can't pinpoint the injury, but it started about 8 years ago, and then degenerated from there. The surgeon couldn't repair my torn peroneus brevis tendon, and had to graft another tendon in its place. He also performed a brostrom repair of several nearby damaged ligaments, and installed something called an internal brace to tighten up the ankle joint. Nearly 3 hours of surgery, and it will be 6 weeks on crutches before I can put weight on it again. Lots of rehab in my future, but glad that I had the opportunity to get this troubled ankle fixed. Already eager to get this annoying cast off, though!


Before November's earthquake, I took a few pics of the fresh snow and frost around the house and on the Hay Flats.


Mamma moose and calf on the flats.


Sunrise, taken just a handful of days before the earthquake would knock this retaining wall down.


Landon's apple tree. The moose have already munched on it quite a bit since I took this picture.


Dino and Heide, enjoying the snow.


For his Spanish class, Landon had to make a pinata, he chose a Llama. Here he just finished applying the paper mache.


All finished, and turning it in.


Grayson's robotics team won their regional last weekend, and will head to the state competition next weekend to see who gets to go to nationals. Their project is 'Spacefit', a set of workout equipment designed for astronauts in a zero-g environment.


We didn't have the tree up yet when the earthquake hit, thankfully, and it took us a while to get it put up. But we eventually did.


Christmas morning, ready to open gifts.


Dino always spends Christmas with us inside, but he's mostly an outside dog since we moved back to Alaska.


Bull moose grazes in the flats.


More fresh snow on the deck.




We had our typical cold spell last week. It hit -17F as the low.


During these cold snaps, we get to see several unique weather phenomena. I don't know the name of this one, but it happens over the Hay Flats every year at around -15F. Moisture from the distant Palmer Sough and Matanuska/Knik Rivers form these eerie clouds near the ground. Looks like something out of an H.G. Wells story to me.


After a day or two at these temps, hoarfrost forms on the tree branches, giving them the look of being full of white leaves.


No matter how well you think you've cleared the spider webs off the house each Fall, the hoarfrost let's you know there's always room for improvement.


This door in our garage always forms this frost on the inside during these cold spells. It's a good indicator that we've fallen below -10F. But his year, due to the earthquake cracking some of our window casings and separating seals, we have this type of frost on nearly every window.


Dino gets pushed out of his doghouse at these temps, and Heidi moves in.


But with each aftershock, he retreats back inside with the cat.


At night, they sleep in the garage, and stay huddled up together there as well.


Speaking of aftershocks, here's our favorite meme over the last month or so. We're closing in on 7,000 aftershocks since the Nov 30th earthquake. Most are below a 3, and not easily felt. But we've had several hundred above that, and we've felt each one of those. Some are big enough to still knock things back down. "Luckily", the main shock broke all our breakable stuff already, so the aftershocks are just weighing on frayed nerves. We had a magnitude 5.0 aftershock just a few days ago, and the USGS predicts a 20% chance of a magnitude 6 aftershock over the next year. So we won't be replacing anything breakable for a while. Meanwhile, we're working hard to get repairs done to the structure as fast as can be, and have been working closely with our insurance company to get all the damage into the claim.


Netflix, are you mocking me?