Merry Christmas!

Dear Friends and Family:

We hope you all are doing well. We miss you! Here is a little bit of what has been going on with us.

 Do we like Alaska? We know this question is coming. Alaska truly is a colder rain forest. It is beautiful and has proved to be an outdoors man/woman's dream. Our favorite places thus far are the many trails that take you from the city to the wilderness or coast. The mountains amaze me, everywhere I turn is picturesque beauty. I like to call it brutal and beautiful. The elements here (especially if you don't like cold) can be harsh...that is if you don't have a nice cosy home and good snow tires. There are many misconceptions when it comes to Alaska, but it keeps this place from getting too crowded...so I don't know if I want to tell you the truth. But I will, because everyone I know should consider moving here, so we have more friends and family to hang out with. Always selfish reasons.

First are the shorter days, we have no problem....that is because we go out in the day light hours every day for the most part and ENJOY the snow. That is we go snow shoeing, skiing, skating, sledding, or many things...like build our own igloo. To like Alaska you should like the outdoors in all kinds of weather, otherwise you will stay inside a lot and become grumpy hermits that only complain and want to visit Hawaii. Alaska will spit you out and send you on your bitter way in that case.

Konrad's likes ice skating until he gets cold, brrr

Katy is a little dare devil on the ice, she loves it , hockey too...this is her being an "ice ballerina"

snow cave we made in our yard

just a little snow for Christmas, he he, what an angel

sledding hill at a park just down the road....we came back to just our tracks again, does anyone go sledding around here?

Were trying to put our neighbors snowmen to shame...but ours could only get this big, we were done.  It's a very girly snowman, even has black bean eyelashes...all for my girly girl. 

The winters here is just as beautiful as the summer. We went to the forest and cut a Christmas tree and listened to the mooses call out to each other. The trees were covered in snow and the sky is amazingly bright when it snows. The snow comes, and it never goes away until "Breakup" in the spring. Have I convinced you yet?

To the grandmas- we have walked by many of moose without any issues, only bears we saw were the ones on our way to Alaska, and the wolves we saw at the zoo here...so the many fears of children being eaten by a large Eagle or other predatory animals are well hm, I guess that could happen just as much as getting shot by a random bullet.

We will feed you yummy food if you visit-
It is not too cold here for food to grow, in fact there are wild varieties of food growing here and you can just go and pick them. This last year we picked many wild blueberries, raspberries, and crow berries, there are several more edible items just outside the door that we will be eating next year (includes salmon). The farms here are rather young, but they grow a wide variety of foods that are very yummy. We also grew a garden and ate from it most of the summer, up until October. So we won't die of starvation when all the grocery stores can't get food up here?? Few glad that isn't an issue. I have never heard of grocery stores running out of food randomly just because you live in Alaska, but heck were covered if that were to happen and won't starve to death.

It is too cold here, very big misconception...too cold, well I am person that is always cold. It doesn't get any colder here then Montana and Idaho....Fairbanks, AK is another story. The summers are in the uppers 60s lower 70s and feel warmer then that when the sun is on you...all day and all night. We have had weather lately above freezing. Last week was above freezing, and we were actually sad....because we couldn't go ice skating.

I haven't even mentioned the wildlife, schooling options, indoor recreation, many events, native culture, and National Parks.

Preschool with the kids, making Ginger Bread House, but we really just ate a lot of sugar  while the walls fell down.

Back to my point, where else can you drive outside of town to see the Aurora and drive back into town to see the fireworks on New Years Eve? We like Alaska...and we know we are going to get the BIG question of whether we like it here or not and whether we are going to stay and to these questions I will say, I miss my friends & family but it will be so much funner for them when they come visit us!!

Parade and fireworks in Palmer, AK, we never have received so much candy during a parade!! The church showed a lot, by a lot I mean rooms full of nativities. They had the rooms decorated so you couldn't tell you were in the typical church building, wow. We like Palmer.

So we ended this year with a big bang, Kacy is presenting his thesis finally to ISU (by the way ISU is ridiculously slow with this process, grrr) and that means Kacy is done with school...unless he decides on a Phd, but that will come later. This means new things in store for us for the next year. We hope that means actually settling down for a bit and enjoying having a real job. Perhaps a home with a guest bedroom, hint. We will see what is in store for this next year, I am excited. That is unless we decide to believe some crazy Mayan people who by the way killed themselves off -I think I want to listen to these smart people- and the world comes to an end along with their calendar...by the way our calendars end every year. That is a great way to end this post.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

We Love You!!