Sunshine!

Since we live relatively near the Arctic Circle, (it is only 500 miles or so to the north of us! )we get a big fluctuation in sunlight between summer and winter! During the summer, I normally don't see DARK. We have about 19 1/2 hours of daylight at the summer solstice. When the sun goes down in the north/northwest, it doesn't go very far below the horizon, and comes up in the north/northeast. On the flip side of that, at the winter solstice we have about 5 1/2 hours of daylight. We also have some tall mountains around us. They do a great job of blocking the sun during the winter! Because of this, we don't get sun shinning in the house from the end of Nov until mid-Jan.

This picture is from Jan 20 at about 11am. The sun has finally risen high enough to peek thru the valley!!

This is so very exciting when it happens! I love winter! The snow, the Christmas lights on trees with snow all around, even driving in the snow! The cold, not so much! The bone-chilling cold that is! I love that the sun shines in-doors. So when that happens, it is worthy of photos!

So, when it does shine in the house again, it may only be for about 5 minutes, but it gains a minute or so each day.

Eagle River High School JROTC drill Competition

Yesterday Eagle River High School hosted its 1st drill competition! This is a tremendous undertaking. Lots of behind the scenes work to be done. Mark's job was to help with setup of the different class rooms for each of the participating teams to use thru out the day. Then during the day he was doing lots of other jobs! I caught up with him at about 10:45 doing one of his assignments!!

This is the Eagle River 1st year Color Guard Team. Mark was taping them.

Holidays 2009

This year Jeff, Emily, George and I went to see Santa at his house at the North Pole. It was just a little cold there.......Of course, his sleigh was out front, so we had to try it out!

It is really great that Santa and Mrs Claus open their house to the public during the Christmas season. They have all kinds of great Christmas decorations and tree ornaments, and of course Santa was busy with the kids that came by. He was really great listening to what they wanted under the tree. I even got a glimpse of the Naughty-Nice list!

Jeff was very excited to be at Santa's house!

Emily was too!

We made a side trip to see the pipeline that runs near North Pole. It carries the oil from Prudhoe Bay, AK to Valdez, AK. The pipeline does not run in straight line, but makes bends every few hundred feet. This is to keep the oil from going to fast in the pipe and getting hot. It wouldn't be a good thing to have the pipe thaw out the permafrost!

George flew to Seattle on Christmas Eve to bring David back up of Chirstmas. I did last minute shopping. I plan on never doing that again! The store was crowded!!!

Mark opening a gift on Christmas morning! Everyone got some cool stuff! We must have been on the Nice list!

The next day I flew to Seattle to ride back to Anchorage with Sarah, Courtney, and Alex. Matt couldn't make it this trip , but we are hoping he can come up sometime! While Sarah and the kids were here, George, Mark, Jeff, and Emily took Courtney and Alex sledding at Emily's school. There is an awesome hill to slide down! All of the kids had a great time!

George, Jeff, David, and Alex were doing some boy bonding....George was telling Alex about some stuff his mom did when she was younger. Alex just could not get his mind around the idea of Sarah being little! So George asked Alex where his mom came from.....Alex said, "My dad made her." HHmmmmmm

This is Jeff in front of 'his' plane. Ever since the kids have been little George has had the kids 'adopt' a plane at Lake Hood in Anchorage. So we have photos of them over the years with their plane . This is the most recent!

David is out braving the cold and the snow! You can sure tell who lives in the cold and snow, and who doesn't!!

While the boys were out bonding, they came upon this moose. He was walking from one house to another, and even tried to 'get in a car'. Not really, but some of the pictures look like he is up to something shady!

We took everyone skating.

The ice rink has these awesome skating helpers! Great for the kids and parents!

Courtney and Alex wanted to keep going! I discovered that the faster you go when helping the kids to skate, the less they fall and the more fun they have!

Jeff had a turn around the rink with Alex

Then Emily had her turn!

Some of us needed to rest between circuts!