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."

Moving to Alaska: Day 10

Northern Rockies Lodge, Muncho Lake, British Columbia, Canada to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada
Miles traveled: 437
Total miles traveled: 1983

There is absolutely NOTHING else anywhere near the Northern Rockies Lodge, and they know it! After we woke up and packed up we took a look at the restaurant menu and decided breakfast wasn't worth THAT much. A bowl of cereal was almost $6 and that didn't include the milk. We had granola bars, juice boxes, and water bottles in the car. So we agreed to skip breakfast, get on the road and eat a big lunch in Watson Lake. By cutting breakfast out we ended up getting a much earlier start than we had planned, which was very nice.

Muncho Lake was absolutely beautiful. The cloudy skies didn't allow for a great picture of the dazzling green of the water. We spend a few minutes enjoying the lake and then we were on our way.

There is lots of wildlife to be seen along the highway. One animal we were hoping to see was the Wood Bison. Just outside Muncho Lake we got our wish. First we saw this big guy on one side of a two lane bridge. It was both amazing and intimidating to see such a large animal up close.
On the other side of the bridge and a little way up the road we found this group of Wood Bison sunning themselves in a large, open, grassy area. We pulled off the road and took several pictures, a video, and made sure the boys got to take a good look at the herd.
Watson Lake is home to the famous Sign Post Forest. The sign post forest has been in existence since the Alcan was being build. Story goes that in 1942, during the construction of the highway, a homesick construction worker put up a sign showing how many miles to his home town. Many other people followed suit and so the forest began.

It's pretty amazing to look at. There are population signs, welcome signs, license plates and other forms of signage from all over the world. The boys ran around checking out all the cool things and looking for familiar signs. It was a nice stop to stretch our legs and burn of some energy.

Another view of the signpost forest. The place was immense and quite interesting. If we'd had more time we might have taken a closer look. However we were wasting no time so after a brief investigation we were off to gas up and hit the road.

Now keep in mind we have now been in Canada for almost 10 days. We've been filling up on gas daily, staying in hotels all over Canada, eating out and shopping. Most, if not all, of this spending had been done one one credit card. We hadn't had any problems at all until Watson Lake. When I went inside the convenience store to pay for our gas the card was denied. We figured it was because of the unusual activity, although we were all a little surprised it had taken this long to happen. The real problem was that the lady in the store was not at all patient or understanding of the situation. In fact she was down right rude. We paid with a different card and left quickly.

After leaving Watson Lake we made very few stops, mostly because there was NO PLACE to stop, on our way to Whitehorse. By the time we arrived in Whitehorse the excitement and anticipation of reaching Fairbanks tomorrow was almost unbearable. We were all ready to be done with the driving, done with hotels, done with eating out and off the road. ONE more day and we would be DONE!

Catch up on Parts 1 - 9 of our Adventure to Alaska
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

Hungry Eyes

The title says it all, those are some hungry eyes! A couple of weeks ago Jonathan and I were making cookies for his class, and having an impromptu lesson on fractions. When I lifted the mixer to put the chocolate chips I caught him looking at the mixing beater with the hungry eyes. He did have the self control to only stare longingly and not actually lick the beater.

While we were making the cookies we had a talk about fractions and I was astounded at just how much he really understands about how fractions work. He knew exactly how many quarters would be in 2 1/4 cups. He was also able to break it into halves and quarters. Each measured ingredient he was able to talk about in at least two ways. He's in the first grade! I'm pretty sure I was in fifth or sixth grade before I understood fractions.

Sleepy Jason

Remember the other day when I said Jason can sleep anywhere in any position. Well I wasn't kidding.This is how we found him the other night. I went in to check on him before I went to bed and found him basically standing on the floor slumped over his bed. Of course I had to snap a quick pic as proof before I moved him. When I showed him the picture the next morning he said, "Wow mom I'm a silly sleeper boy!" Yes love, yes you are!