Our Christmas Pics

Sorry it has taken so long to post these, but I left my camera at a friend's house. When she brought it to church on Sunday, I left it there, too. It is really amazing to be a blonde. I got it back today and here are our latest pictures. There isn't many, but it is all we have.

All our presents waiting to be opened!

Christmas morning

My presents! Our landlords gave us the sign.

Allen's presents.......yes, I love the shirt!

Our landlord's decorated our snowman! Isn't he cute!!!!!

Us standing with our decorators. :)

Us at our Church gathering on Sunday.

Sunrise just beginning

The Matanuska River in Winter

 

Merry Christmas!

     Sorry it has been so long since I posted. I know some of you are wondering how we are. Allen come home last week and we have been busy with all the holiday stuff and I haven't had time to post, especially since Allen is always on when I remember to.

     Our Christmas was wonderful! We braved the post office line and got our holiday packages. The Palmer post office is the busiest post office I have ever seen! There is always a huge line, and the last three times we went there, we waited for thirty minutes. Anyway, we got our packages without pulling our hair out or being rude to the obnoxious person you always get stuck behind, and got to open them bright and early Christmas morning. Even though I am not a home anymore, I still felt like a kid. Not from the excitement, but the fact that Allen took great pleasure in making me wait to open my presents. He declared that he had to eat first, which he took his good ole time doing, and then that patience was a virtue and he felt it was his responsibility to teach me that virtue! Why husbands take such delight in picking on their wives, I will never know. He finally let me open my gifts and they were all wonderful! Both of us were very excited about them. Thank you all!

     Well, for Christmas day we went to Josh and Ami's house for dinner. They are a couple we have met at church that doesn't have family up here, so they invited us over so we could be alone together. :) They are close to Allen's age and they have four children. It was so much fun! We had an amazing Christmas dinner with all the trimmings and then we went sledding! Of course it was dark (this is Alaska) but that just added to the excitement! It was snowing (yes.....my first white Christmas!) so as you raced down the hill your froze and as you climbed up the hill you burned up. The funny thing that happened to me was that all the little fly-away hairs that I had sticking out of my hat........they froze! It was so funny, I had to think of Cool Runnings (the movie). Ami was quick to tell my not to touch them though cause they were very brittle and would break. She said that is the way to have an Alaskan hair cut ; wash your hair, walk outside, then break it to the correct length. lol

     After sledding, we went inside for desert and then watched "It's a Wonderful Life". I know that my family back home watched it without me, and since I can't remember a Christmas where I didn't watch it, I wasn't going to skip this year. It is a great movie and I always get something new out of it every time. And that is how our Christmas went!

     Allen has found some really neat web sites since he has been home and I figured I would share them with y'all:

This is the Aurora Forecast: http://www.gedds.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/

And this tells you of all the latest earth quakes: http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/Seis/recenteqs_sub/index.html

 

I am not sure if y'all know that Alaska has lots of earth quakes! It is in the Pacific's "Ring of Fire" and so we even have active volcanoes along with all the seismic activity. Here are some awesome facts about Alaska:

-It has one fifth the land mass of the entire continental U.S. 586,000 sq miles

-33,000 miles if coast line

-19 mountain peaks over 14,000 ft.

-3 million lakes larger than 20 acres!

-Has more than half the world's glaciers; 100,000 glaciers that cover 30,000 sq miles. Malaspina, 850 sq miles is the largest and roughly the size of Rhode Island.

-Highest mountain in the US Mt. McKinley; 20,320 ft.

-70 or more active volcanoes

-Has approximately 50 quakes each year that register over 5 on the Richter scale; over 22,000 total a year :)

-Shortest day Dec. 21 (winter solstice)- 5.28 hours of sunlight (Anchorage)

-Longest day June 21 (summer solstice)- 19.21 hours (Anchorage)

-In Barrow, the sun rises May 10th and sets August 2nd (84 days of constant light). Then it will set on November 18th and not rise till January 24th (67 days of darkness)

 

BTW- I left my camera at Ami's so picture will be posted later.

Colony Christmas Fun!

Every year in Palmer they have the Colony Christmas Celebration. My landlords were kind enough to let me tag along with them this year. The whole town takes part in this, cause when you are stuck in Alaska you have to have something to entertain you. We went to the pancake breakfast at the Salvation Army, then we went to all the craft bazaars. The bazaars were all over town in five different buildings. We also went to a few stores to get the trivia answers (which are hidden all over town), but we went home cause the kids were getting a little tired. I was glad we did, cause I ended up going to Sears to buy a winter coat and a good pair of boots.

The biggest fun of Colony Christmas is the parade, yes, you heard right. We showed up a 5:00 PM (btw, it is completely dark by then) and got to watch the parade. It lasted about an hour and you'll never guess how cold it was............ -7! Would you believe that little miss Catherine stood there the whole time! Not only that, but I even stood outside for the fireworks! I can hardly believe it myself, but it is true. My nose was frozen, I couldn't feel my toes, and my face ached but I did it. I now know what it is like to have your nose crunch (ask someone from up north to explain this one) and just how wonderful hand warmers are. The locals taught me a few tricks, like how to hold your hands just right, which I can not divulge except to my fellow Alaskans. Anyway, I had a blast and feel as though my adventure up here may not be as bad as I once thought. I was told that if I could handle tonight, I could handle it all. I figured I would share this picture with yall. As you can see, my nose was frozen. That was the worst part of it all. Enjoy the pic. :)

These are my landlord's daughters. The smoke that you see in the picture, is actually steam. The photographer exhaled as he took the pic.

 

By the way, how do yall like the coat? :)

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I guess my mind has been elsewhere. A lot has happened since Allen went up to the slope. I drove to WalMart by myself on Saturday morning. Go Me! My two big purchases were a Futon, which I successfully put together by myself, and a polka-dot shower curtain. Many of you may not know my decorating dilema. I am a earth-tone person, I like greens, Burgundies, neutrals, etc. Well, my apartment is blue. Blue carpet, slate blue counters, and blue tile. Now, it isn't that I don't like blue, I do like it; it's just that I am not naturally drawn to it. So, I am at a loss in terms of decorating my apartment. The bathroom, however, is painted a very pale mint green. I was really worried about this cause there isn't much that can go with that (as well as the light colored wood cabinets). My worries were over when I found my beloved shower curtain at WalMart! It is perfect and I have great plans for accessories.

I went to a fight on Saturday night and hockey game broke out (ha ha....bad joke I know but I couldn't resist) I went with my landlords to see the Anchorage Aces beat the California Condors. It was interesting and I think I could grow to like the sport if I understood what was going on. It isn't as cool as football, but it is still a very intense game.

I did go to church on Sunday, but won't go into any details on that. It wasn't the type of church Allen and I are looking for. There was some doctrine issues that we just wouldn't be able to support. Needless to say though, I was getting kinda discouraged. I am all alone, no friends, no husband, and no church or fellowship. I was doing OK til I talked to Allen, who, by the way, got stuck on night shift again. He was really blah, as he is still trying to get his days straight, and he was even more blah than me. I don't know about you other wives out there but when my husband gets in one of those moods, I can't help but feel the same.....just cause he does. I decided that I had to start praying specifically for friendship and fellowship in Alaska. So I did. :)

The next day, I went to the post office after lunch. As I walked in, I noticed these two girls in line with coverings on. They had their hair hanging down so I knew that they were Christians (the Jews that cover up here have to cover all their hair) Anyway, I kinda waited around for them to finish when all of a sudden this grown man approaches me. He asked me where I went to church. (odd, huh) I explained how my husband and I had just moved into the area and were looking for a fellowship, etc. He introduced himself and said that those were his daughters in there and that he noticed my covering and wanted to meet me. He and his family home church with a few other families in the area! Can you believe it! He invited me to come next Sunday and I am excited beyond excited that I won't have to go randomly choosing churches again. I laughed as I told him how I was praying the night before for God to send someone, and I how I didn't expect him to answer me so quickly. But, we serve and awesome God who hears his children and praise the Lord He will never leave us or forsake us! even in Alaska!

My Alaskan Driving Experience

This morning around 3:30am Allen and I left for the airport. Everything went well, no traffic, no ice (yippee), and I had a chance to make a few phone calls. Anchorage, however, was a bit colder and still had ice on the road ways. But, we made it to the airport, hit all green lights, and Allen got off without a hitch. Then........I got in the driver's seat. Ok, I went slow and was very cautious. I hit all green lights being one of the only cars on the road. I got caught at one red light.......I say caught. I slid through it. The ice had other plans for my Yukon and a full and complete stop wasn't it. I hit the brake, and the ABS kicked in. I kept going, and going, and going. There was another car at the light and once they saw I was going to stop (just not behind the white line) they hit the gas and sped past before I T-boned them. I am sure the look on my face gave them something to talk about for the rest of the day. After the terror was over, I had to laugh. I have never been in a situation like that, with the exception of my mud-bogging experience with Jolene. Anyway, I made it out of the city and all its ice. Then, I had a whole different trial.

You see, right now there are no lines on the road as they are covered with salt or dirty snow. The way you drive is in the ruts that are visible, no matter what lane, if it is a lane. Allen and I are still wondering if some of the roads in town are two lanes or one as we can't see the lines. And of course there are no reflectors either. So, you can imagine how easy it was for me to drive home in the pitch black dark.......petrifying. But, God is good and sent other cars when I needed them to see how the road went and I made it home safe. I know that most people wouldn't have a problem, but my wonderful eyes don't get along with all the headlights and I have a problem with my depth perception. However, that experience is over and it one I will look back on and shiver. lol

So now I am making up for my crummy day. Coffee, chocolate, and Pride and Prejudice! That's six ours of comfort doing some cross stitching and laughing at all of Mrs. Bennett's ridiculous comments.

Ohh, Allen made it to the slope just fine but got put on night shift again. It actually works better for us in terms of communication, since the shifts are 5:30-5:30. He can call before he goes to work, which will be 5:30pm instead of am.

Hope everybody is doing well and has a great weekend!

Last day with my husband : (

Well, today is a bittersweet time. Allen leaves for the slope tomorrow and today was our last day together for two weeks. We went sight seeing again (Allen's favorite thing to do) and went and picked up some last minute stuff in town. He played his flight simulator for along time, mastering the ever so hard carrier landing in a Hornet, then hogged the computer for a while playing on the Internet. I am getting kinda nervous about all this now, but I know I'll be able to handle it. The thing I am really worried about is the driving by myself. We have to leave around 3:30 in the morning to get him to the airport. That puts me driving home around 4:00am! Needless to say I am not exactly comfortable with that. But, I'll just say a prayer and take it slow. There shouldn't be that many people on the road that early so I won't have to worry about traffic or sliding into somebody. I think my biggest worry should be moose, but they still haven't come down off the mountains yet. I know that I'll be fine so nobody needs to worry back home. By the time y'all read this I'll already be back! : )

Since I have to get up so early, I'm going to cut it short.
TTYL

My first post

I hope that everyone is doing well down in the lower 48! We are fine up here in the last frontier. We are all settled in our new little apartment and are very thankful we have it so nice. Our apartment is above a couples garage right outside of Palmer, Ak. It is out in the country in a good neighborhood. Our apartment is only a one bedroom, but it has a nice open living room and kitchen with plenty of counter space! My favorite parts of the apartment are of course the dishwasher, dryer, and tub; these luxeries I have been without in Ga. (We only had a shower....I was able to bathe ya'll)

We purchased a Yukon last week that has 4-wheel drive, something that is a must have up here. It is nice and heavy, which makes me feel a lot more comfortable in all this ice. The only drawback is that the heavier you are, the longer it takes to stop. But, you just have to take it slow and use your head when you drive.

Some of the funny things that I never thought I would experience:

1. We went to open our door at WalMart, and the key wouldn't turn. The moisture in the keyhole had frozen and wouldn't let the lock move. The solution was to go in a buy a lighter and heat your key up really hot, shove it in and let it melt the ice, then pray it will turn.

2. Driving around the other day, the windows started fogging up inside because of the moisture in the vents. Then, the moisture on the window strated to freeze on the inside because the temp outside is around 10. Solution..... we don't know yet.

3. Our landlords mentioned that we would have to move the car tomorrow when he plowed the driveway. We asked him around what time and his reply was, "Well not early morning....probably around daylight" I had to laugh cause it just struck me so funny. Up here, I would be glad to work from sun up to sun down. :) For those of you who don't get the joke, it dosn't get light until around 10

Well, I can't think of anything else to write. I guess I will add more tomorrow.