December thus far . . .

December thus far . . .

I know yet again it has been a LONG time since my last post.  Life continues to be LIFE!

Since the last time I wrote, there really isn’t too much new.  So this one will be mostly pictures.

Holiday times have been a little bit harder than I thought; more for me than for Jason.  I very much miss all my friends and family.  We are very blessed to have each other though, our congregation, and of course our puppy!  We definitely pray the winter goes quickly, and that friends and family may be able to come up soon.  My younger sister, Kimberly, plans to come up with College Choir from MLC in February.  They won’t be able to make it all the way up here, we will have to go down to them in Anchorage.  It will be amazing to have her in the state.  Anyone is welcome ANYTIME!  We know it is a HUGE expensive trip, but our door is always open.

Temperatures have been up and down.  Today, high of 45 degrees! Crazy.  Warmer than Manitowoc, WI.  The bad thing is this is when the roads get very bad.  They become a sheet of ice; so we will see what tomorrow brings.

Finley is about 45 pounds and almost 6 months old (Dec. 19) and is doing great!  The pictures will show what he’s been up to!

Church work continues to go well.  Jason is VERY busy with two sermons a week and lots of other work to be done.  He is learning how to balance his time wisely.  It is a learning experience for all of us.  I continue to teach Sunday school and play organ occasionally.  We have started Advent services here at Syndoulos.  They haven’t had Wednesday night services for quite a few years, so it was neat to get them going again.  We had quite a good turnout for our first service, as well as our soup and sandwich meal.  God is good! 

Friday night we went to a UAF (University of Alaska Fairbanks) Nanook hockey game.  It was so much fun!  WE got free tickets from a church member.  We hope to continue to go to things like this.  Fairbanks is a very busy city, with a HUGE arts program!  There is always so much to see and do through the long winter.  We are looking forward to experiencing many new things.  We are in search of cross country skis and boats so that we can start trying out all the beautiful trails. 

December 21^st brings the SHORTEST day of the year!  We are almost there!  From there, it turns around and we start gaining sunlight and minutes back.  4 hours and 26 minutes of sunlight today :(

Enjoy the pictures!

 Fairbanks at -30 when the smoke from buildings can't even go straight up, because it's too cold.  It goes up and then horizontal across Fairbanks.

Some members gave us this awesome big tree that they got from the transfer site (a nice name for the dump where people toss stuff they don't want), but actually people get rid of really nice stuff.  Beautiful tree.  Finley had just spend 4 hours playing with 4 kids, and was completely wore out, but of course had to sleep right by us.

Later he got to chew apart a Christmas Light box.

He still wants to fit under the furniture, but can't anymore.

Our stuffed peppers Jason made last night. yum!!

Our baby!  I made him look like that.

His first bath at 2 months.

His 4th or 5th bath!  He's getting so big.

Shaking it out!

Our crimpy puppy.

Going a little crazy with the towel after bath.

This is an old picture from two weeks ago when it was so cold.  One of my past students smurf that she sent and that I'm getting pictures with. 

Done tree

Lit tree!