Sleigh Ride!

On the Saturday after Christmas, a bunch of us (20 to be exact) went on a sleigh ride in Chugiak! Everyone met at our house for some chili and cornbread before we ventured out!

This was just some of the jackets and warm gear peeps brought to wear on the ride. Do you notice that Riesling is the protector of all of this gear? (she's in the middle of the back of the couch).

This was the sleigh that we all rode in. They also have smaller sleighs for smaller groups!

This is Trapper John (our driver) and his mighty horses, Dick and Bob. These two Clydesdales pulled all 21 (including Trapper John) of us! Now those are some work horses!

Michael and I anxiously waiting for the ride to start.

Liz, Kevin, and Michael. The third row rocks! :)

Some of the peeps behind us. You had to watch out for those back row peeps. They were trouble! just kidding! :) They were our musical entertainment though!


Michael and I with Dick and Bob!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Events

Our friend, Kate, hosted a fondue party at her home Christmas eve night. This was a really cool idea and a lot of fun. She had cheese, oil, and chocolate as our "dips". There were strawberries, pound cake, halibut, chicken, bread, and veggies as the "dippees". It was all so delicious! :) Yum, yum! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I have no photos of this event.

Christmas Morning!!! I am still like a little kid on Christmas morning! I can barely sleep, I want to get up as early as possible to open all of our gifts! I woke up a few times during the night/early morning and I wouldn't let myself look at the clock. Luckily, Alex, Michael's brother
called us 5 times at 730 AM our time, so then I had an excuse to get Michael out of bed! :)

Woohoo!! Present opening time! :)

I got Michael the Playstation 3 he's been begging for! He was so happy...obviously!

Me on the phone calling some of you family members so that we can open your presents to us! :) heehee

Christmas night we had some friends over for a small, really nice sit down dinner. A lot of our friends up here didn't go home for the holiday either, so it was nice for some of us to spend it together.

WE rented an extra table and chairs so we would have enough places for everyone. We also had to go by how many place settings we actually owned! haha! The dinner was so delicious and everyone did a wonderful job on the foods they all made.

After dinner, we did the hidden pickle game. We have an ornament that is a pickle. Michael hid the pickle somewhere in or on the tree and everyone had to search for it. The winner, Robert, got a gift! We also did a secret santa gift exchange. We drew names and everyone had to buy something for their person. This was a lot of fun and I think everyone enjoyed it! During the rest of the evening, we grazed on leftovers and desserts and vegged out! :) We missed being with all of our families and NC friends, but this was a really nice way to spend Christmas.

Humpy's Board Night!

You know, last year, Michael and I did not know many people up here so our Christmas holiday was pretty low key and pretty much just us (except for Christmas dinner with Linnea and Calvin). This year was completely different! We had stuff going on every night! Wednesday before Christmas, we met a few friends at Humpy's, our favorite restaurant/bar up here. Humpy's has theme nights most nights of the week. Wednesday nights are board nights. If you buy a Pyramid brand beer, you get tickets to to get an entry form to put into the big drawings of the evening. If you buy the Pyramid beer that's on special for the evening, you get two entry forms! They were giving away lift tickets to the local ski resort and a free trip for two for a heliskiing package (heliskiing=jumping out of a helicopter and skiing down the mountain!)! They also had a couple of other prizes they were given away. All and all, this was a pretty fun night. Not too crowded and really laid back.

The only boy in this photo is one of Bryan's friends. He was trying to be funny...which seemed to work judging by this photo! hahaha!

Planet Walk

This past Sunday, a few of my friends and I participated in the local planet walk. A high school student designed this walk. The earth miles between posted planet signs are equivalent to the light years between planets! It's pretty cool! If you walk from Pluto (they know it's not a planet anymore, but they had put the sign up the day before the IAU made this decision) to the sun, it is 11 miles. That was our plan at the beginning of the day...

However, it was cold outside and the snow really sucked to walk in! The snow was somewhat compacted, but we still sank a little bit with each step. We all were just wearing hiking boots or sneakers. We ended up calling it quits after about 6 miles! We were all pretty sore and tired. Damn this old age! The dogs were also getting kind of fed up with the cold! Luckily, Michael was in town doing his Christmas shopping so he came and picked us up! :)

Houses made of Candy and Gingerbread! Yum!

This past weekend, I had some girlfriends over and we made gingerbread houses! The only rules were that no one was allowed to use gingerbread house kits! Hahaha! Amy, the lady in the middle holding a house, was chosen the winner. Our judge was Michael! Some people even tried to cheat...Liz...and put a big NC on the roof of her house to win over the judge. Luckily, Michael totally missed that little detail! haha!

This is Jill, me, and Linnea (left to right). Linnea and I had just finished our houses. Mine is the little flat roof tropical house! It's a house in Key West! "Wasting Away Again in Margaritaville..."

This is Jill's house. She actually baked her own gingerbread to make this house! I tried to use some of it, but mine didn't work out too well so I had to switch to graham crackers.

Yo, yo, yo!

What I do to our dogs with my free time! Haha! Yo!

You can almost always find Riesling sleeping on the back of our couches!

Freedom's scabbed is no longer on her face...now she has this big, bald, pink spot on the side of her face. However, this self mutilation worked because she now is allowed to roam the house when we're not home! She's been awesome! Bracken is still kept in his kennel if we're gone, but we're working on that!

A real blizzard!

So since Monday, the little town Michael and I actually live in has received 18.3 inches of snow and we're expecting a little more through the night! Good grief! Michael shoveled our driveway last night and when we woke up, we probably had about 8 inches already! When I left to go into town this morning, I completely got the Prius stuck...in our driveway!! I had to shovel the snow away from my tires and then put the car into reverse and then drive multiple times to get out of that mess! Crazy! The roads into and out of Anchorage and Wasilla were all HORRIBLE today! To me, this kind of mess called for businesses to be closed. However, we do live in a snowy place that is used to this, so everything remined open! When there's one snowflake in NC, the whole town shuts down. This was really weird to see how "northern" states do it! hahaha!




The first picture is a photo of the giant snowflakes that have been falling (I was using our house as a backdrop so you could see the snowflakes)! It's so beautiful! :)

Crosscountry Skiing in Hatchers Pass

I went crosscountry skiing this weekend in Hatchers Pass, Alaska. This is an area a little north of Palmer. We went snowshoeing in this same general area a few weekends ago. I went with the girl group! Unfortunately, Michael is training in Cali right now, so he wasn't able to go with us. Boo! It was a pretty cool group because it was all of my friends that went! We didn't have any new people join us this time. The picture above is of Kris and me!


The way in was a gradual uphill the ENTIRE way!! I was getting super tired, but I didn't want to complain or whine so I kept going at a super slow pace. Kris had gone snowboarding for the first time the day before and she was super tired too, so she skiied with me pretty much the entire way. Then Liz came back and skiied with us and said she wasn't feeling this anymore (we had already been out for about 2 hours maybe). We kept trying to catch the other girls (Jill, Kate, Amy...who were superhuman out there! They were on a roll!) to tell them we were going to turn around, but we never could catch them! Luckily, Kris' friend, Robert, was there and was literally doing laps around us, so he went and told the femmebots that we would meet them at the car.

So you know how I said this was gradually uphill the whole way? Well, that means it was downhill most of the way down. We didn't realize how steep it had became until we went down! I totally fell on the way down...but don't worry, I fell backwards, so B-Dawg is safe! It was actually pretty funny and then it took me 15 minutes to freaking get up! We all had a good laugh! I think in my little group of 4 that turned around early, we all fell at least once...except Kris! I think she stayed upright!

In the two pictures above, it's Kevin (Liz's boyfriend), Liz, Kris, and me! (and Keno, Liz's dog) I did not bring my two pups because I did not know how they would act when we were going down the hill. I have a hard enough time staying balanced on my own, I did not need any help from my jumping dogs that would think I was playing! Maybe next time!

Winter WORKout

So we got about another 3-5 inches of snow last night and you know what that means??? Time to shovel the driveway...again! I usually don't mind donig this chore since I look at it as my workout! However, I have hurt my back somehow, and this snow shoveling is not really helping matters at all. I'm actually sitting here typing this blog with a heating pad on my back! Anyways, the picture above is one of the views from our driveway. Isn't the sky just amazing? This was taken about 330 PM!



After I have shoveled most of the drive!



This part of the driveway near the road is the most annoying. The dear ol' snow plow people like to push all the nasty road shit into people's driveways. So when you get to this part, it actually takes you almost as long to shovel this little part as it did the rest of whole driveway! So frustrating!


And here's me being oh so happy about having to shovel nasty road crap! Yay!!

New Favorite Activity!!

Cross Country Skiing!! I went one time last year (that was also my first time ever!) and really enjoyed it. Now that we got fresh snow, I got to go again today with my girl group. I had so much fun! I only fell twice and it was in weird spots...not going downhill, but trying to make a turn on a flat spot and then trying to get lined up to go down a hill! What the heck?!?! But going down the hills, I did great! I will pretty much be cross country skiing 4-5 times a week this month!! Whoop whoop! Thank goodness I don't have a job...it would totally impact my social life! ;)