Sunset

December 31, 2011
3:00 pmAs of December 21 we are finally on the gaining end of daylight. 4 minutes a day doesn't seem like much but believe me it makes a HUGE difference. Before break the sun was down by the time I went out for afternoon duty at 3:30. Now when I head out the sun is still just above the horizon. Its AMAZING! Spring is on its way. Something I have to keep reminding myself of while its -30 outside. This picture was taken by my mother-in-law, who LOVES sunsets, during her visit.

Christmas Card Picture

This year I decided I wanted to showcase Alaska's cold weather on our Christmas card. So on one very cold day, though not the coldest we have had, we parked at a near by coffee shop and headed to the University of Alaska Fairbanks sign. The walk was less than 1/4 of a mile but at these temperatures cold gets cold fast. All 5 of us, my mom went with us to take the picture, were pretty cold by the time we got there. We had time to snap two pictures and then we needed to head back. The boys were starting to complain very loudly. The first picture we took turned out really good. This actually ended up being our Christmas card picture. And before you worry we had hats and hoods we just took them off for the picture. We wanted to make sure people could see our happy faces!
The expression on Jonathan's face sums up how we were all feeling. We were cold and really ready to head back and warm up.

So Merry (late) Christmas from the Broughs!

A Brough Family Vacation

In September my in-laws decided that they wanted to come visit for Christmas. December is not exactly the ideal month to make your first ever trip to Alaska. In fact I'm pretty sure it's the exact opposite of ideal, especially if you're coming from a warmer climate like Portland, Oregon. Never the less up my in-laws came. They arrived on December 26 were greeted by a balmy -10. No seriously it was balmy. After several weeks of -35 and colder in November anything above -15 now feels warm. Its weird I know but that's life in Alaska. While they were here they actually got to experience both -42 and how warm -20 feels afterward.

I had to chuckle a little when I saw my mother-in-law all bundled up at -15. We were total opposites; she was as covered as she could get and I'd forgotten to put on gloves because it felt warm. Too funny!

After a quick stop for dinner we headed home for Christmas Round 2. In addition to gifts from the grandparents we had also saved all our gifts for each other to open that evening. We had a great time sharing stories, opening gifts, and watching the kids playing with their new toys. I even took advantage of another camera in the house and got out from behind mine. Turns out I can be rather silly when allowed to appear in front of the camera, as you'll see later.

Jonathan absolutely knocked it out of the park with his choice of gift for his brother. After spending several hours shopping and agonizing over the options Jonathan very thoughtfully chose to get his brother a doctor kit.
As you can tell from the look on Jason's face he was absolutely THRILLED with his gift. He immediately opened the box, put everything in the dr. bag and got a stuffed animal to examine.
Apparently Cody, Jason's special bear, needed his ears checked. What can I say, you play what you know. Since October Jason has had 5 ear infections and ended up getting tubes a few days ago. But I digress.

Jonathan only asked for one thing for Christmas this year. He desperately wanted the Siddeley Lego set from Cars 2. You can only imagine his disappointment when it didn't show up on Christmas day at AG and Granddad's. He got a lot of cool stuff that he really liked but was bummed there was no big Lego set.
Needless to say he was pretty darn excited when it showed up under our Christmas tree. He had a great time building the set and has had even more fun flying Siddeley through our house.
See I told you I get a little silly when I get in front of the camera. I have no idea what is happening here but apparently it warranted a goofy smile.

Oh that's a nice one!

We had a great Christmas. Dan got me a board game I've wanted for a really long time. I gave Dan a CD he's wanted for a long time and a Star Wars shirt. My in-laws LOVED the photo book I put together of our trip to see them this past summer.

And once the kids were bedded the adults stayed up way too late playing board games, card games and Wii Bowling. It was a great day!

Quick Christmas

Ok, we are 2+ weeks removed from Christmas. A new year has started, school has started so I feel a little silly posting about Christmas but with company in town I just didn't have time to post. So as silly as it feels I'm doing a quick post about our Christmas.

The boys put out milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve. Jonathan was quite concerned that Santa wouldn't like the cookies because they weren't frosted. We assured him that Santa likes any cookies. Jason also made reindeer food at daycare which we put out for Santa to take to the reindeer.

Jason was super excited to see his stocking. The first thing he noticed was a Lama Lama plush from the Lama Lama stories. He was pretty excited, although Lama Lama has not yet been invited to cuddle at bedtime. He watches from the teddy net above. Santa totally spoiled the boys. Jason got candy and toys and games and books and puzzles. He was one happy camper.

Jonathan was very pleased when he saw his stocking. He loves the Skippy Jon Jones books, if you haven't read them you totally should, so he was pretty excited to see Skippy peaking out from his stocking. His excitement grew when he discovered Skippy was a puppet. Jonathan got candy and toys and games and books and work books and a paper airplane making kit.

Mom mom always fills stockings for Dan and me with some little fun items that we want or need. I got some cool sharpies, a crock-pot recipe magazine, makeup, candy, and some other stuff. Dan got batteries, shave gel, grading pens and a variety of other things.

Dan got to open his BIG Christmas present first. Normally this would be saved for last but this present was rather big and taking up too much space in the living room. My dad was sure Dan would know exactly what he was getting the moment he saw the big box but Dan was clueless. He was pretty excited when he saw the DeWalt box and even more excited when he realized it wasn't a used box it was actually what the box said it was, a 10' compound miter saw.
After we made some space in the living room there was room to take our annual family picture in front of the Christmas tree. There were far fewer out-takes this year than there have been in years past. Sometime I'll have to post all the pictures from our first Christmas married until now just to see how we have all changed!

One of my favorite gifts was my new lasagna pan. I fell in love with this cute red and white polka-dotted pan several years ago. This year my mom got it for me. I'm so excited one because its super cute and fun and two because I parted with many of my baking dishes when we moved. I can't wait to use it!
Mom and I were pretty pleased with our wrapping this year and as I sorted though pictures I noticed we took quite a few pictures of our pretty wrapping so I thought I would share one with y'all.

Last but certainly not least were the gifts that my dad had purchased for us all on his own. See Mom does most of the Christmas shopping and just signs Dad's to the packages. But there are a special few that are picked out and purchased by my dad. This year the boys got bunches of movies and we all got
and iPad. I also got a brand new laptop. My laptop was on its way out. I'll spare you the details but it basically wasn't functional anymore and would cost almost as much to fix as a new laptop. I'd lived with a paperweight of a laptop for over a year, hence the lack of blogging, but since I need to take a few online classes this wasn't going to suffice for much longer. I had mentioned this to my dad and he decided I should get a new laptop for Christmas. I was soooo excited!

We had a wonderful Christmas with my family. We are so blessed by them and so blessed that they live 4 short miles away.

Next I'll post about second Christmas with the other grandparents, their first trip to Alaska, and how they liked -40.

Not Quite Soup

If we'd had soup for dinner Jason would have been face down in his soup. Instead he's laid his little head down on the table during dinner. He didn't get a nap and just couldn't handle it any longer. He looked at me and said "I'm tired," then he put his head down and was out.

We were at AG's house for dinner and since Jason was so soundly sleeping we moved him to the bed and the boys ended up spending the night at AG's house. That kid will sleep anywhere!

Break Over

Well it was a wonderful, fun, relaxing, busy and family filled 2 1/2 weeks but today it's back to all things normal. Today we go back to school, back to Tae Kwon Do, back to getting up early, back to making lunches, and back to routine. Break was nice but honestly we need to get back into a normal routine. The kids are starting to go a little crazy not having any "normal" in life. I definitely need to make sure that we have some sort of routine this summer or by the end of 3 months at home we may all be COMPLETELY CRAZY! So here we go head first back to "normal."

We had a wonderful visit with my in-laws and a fantastic Christmas. Santa was very very good to us. I'll blog about all that later, right now four empty lunch boxes are screaming to be filled.

Boots

Four pairs of boots lined up on the stairs waiting for someplace to go.

We are in that season where shoes are indoor shoes and boots get worn every day. I can't remember the last time I saw my kids in any shoes other than boots. I don't even know for sure where Jason's shoes are, his backpack maybe. I was coming up the stairs when I noticed how fun our boots looked, sitting on the stairs, in order from largest to smallest. A winter portrait of a family.

Pajamas

Last night the boys got to open a gift from my mom. She gets them a new pair of Christmas pajamas every year. We opened them last night that way the could enjoy them for the whole week before Christmas. This year's pajamas are Grinch Pajamas from Pottery Barn Kids.
Funny story, right after bath we tried to get Jason to put his pajamas on and he had an absolute meltdown. He absolutely did not want to put on the pajamas because "The Grinch is a scary bad guy and so mean." Every Grinch on the pajamas is smiling and happy but Jason was sure that the Grinch was mean all the time. We finally bribed him into the pajamas and then showed him the last few minutes of the movie to show him the Grinch is a good guy. After that he was fine with his new pajamas.

Christmas Guests

In a 11 short days my in-laws will be joining us for the holidays. They fly up the day after Christmas and leave just after the new year. We've lived in Alaska for a little over a year now and this will be their first trip up here. I've told several of my friends that they are coming and everyone has had a similar response; "Really, in December?"

See December isn't the ideal time to visit Alaska. The days are short and the nights are long and dark. The midnight sun won't be out for months. The temperatures can be sub zero for days on end making it somewhat undesirable to do much outside. I would much rather have first time visitors come in the summer and see how truly beautiful Alaska is but my in-laws didn't want to miss another Christmas with the grandkids, I can respect that, so north they come.

Assuming the weather is corporative I have a few really fun activities planned for their visit. I want to take them to the Winter Ice Park in North Pole. I also think it would be fun all of us to go to the fireworks display that the University has on New Year's Eve. I've never been, mostly due to not wanting to fight crowds, so if we are going to go now seems the time! I also want to take them to the muesum, which isn't dependant on the weather.

Overall I know we will have a great time. We've already had a deep freeze in November and recently the temperatures have been pretty mild. I'm hoping that the weather will wait to bottom out until the day they leave. That way they can say they've experienced -20 but we can still enjoy some of the winter activities.

Kitchen Sleeper

I've said it may times, Jason can sleep ANYWHERE. A few weeks ago he had an ear infection and the way his med times worked he needed to get up at 11pm to take his meds. So one night he came into the kitchen, found the rug, and went back to sleep.I mean how cute is that! I showed him the picture of himself the next morning and he laughed and said, "Funny Jason."