Merry Christmas!

Here are a few of the highlights:

Max asked for "eyeballs; two" from Santa. Santa delivered. Storm got a duck hunting hat and Kerry got 12 inches of snow!! :):):):) [OK, I tried to move the pictures around and froze this thing up for about 15 minutes...that was fun. The pictures are now staying wherever they happen to be.] We had a wonderful Christmas here in Eagle River; Storm's mom Pat was here with us, which is always fun. They boys went absolutely bananas over their gifts, and so we are all very happy and thankful...and Mom and Dad are very tired. The boys woke up at 0430, "Santa came! Santa came!", they stayed up for about 90 minutes playing with their stocking goodies in their room and then passed out until 0930...which was far more reasonable. Today we went sledding and played in all the fluffy, gorgeous snow. It came up to the dogs chests in some areas....they were sprinting all over the place, having an absolute ball. I took some pictures of all of that, but I will have to find Storm's camera in order to get the pictures loaded on here. I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas; thank you for making ours tons of fun! Much Love from "up here", KM

Holiday Play

Well tonight Nick was Rudolph in the school play. He did a great job and the play was pretty entertaining. He told me yesterday that he was nervous about being on the stage in front of all the adults. I told him not to worry that was completely normal, in fact being on stage would make a lot of the adults nervous too. That made him laugh. Here's a little piece of the video, Max was on my lap during the filming, hence the shaky hand. Storm

December Sunrise

Hello everyone, not a lot new going on but I have a few pics you might like. I went skiing this morning in a place called Arctic Valley which you can basically see straight across the Eagle River from our house. Anyhow we got up there around 0930 and were treated to a beautiful sunrise. We ended up skiing 2 runs in fairly decent snow, not epic but no avalanches either! Either way it was good to be out and getting some exercise. I'll try to get some more pics of the boys this weekend. Take Care, Storm

Skiing!

Well they have now opened all the ski areas so we are off and running for another winter season. This year Nick and Alex are members of a local ski team that meets every Saturday. We'll keep you updated on their progress. Max will get to participate as well, but only when KM or I are there to help him get on the chairlift. His little legs just aren't long enough yet! I posted a picture and short video of the kids skiing at a place called Hillberg which is located on Elmendorf AF base. The video quality sucks, but sometimes you go with what you have. I'll try to do better in the future. The video is Nick, then Alex and Max all trying to go off a 'jump'. They don't actually get airborne but they do go pretty fast. We skied on Sunday 30 Nov for about 5 hours. It was a blast. A few frustrating runs at first for the kids as they adjusted to longer skis and got their balance back, but after that no problems. It should be a fun year.

I've also been doing some backcountry skiing, although its been a less than optimal start to the year. On our second day out I ended up riding an avalanche about 100yds down the hill. That was a bit scary to say the least. Of course I didn't have my camera that day...stupid. But we all emerged unscathed and a lot smarter. The early season snow has been unreal this year, in the past week the Alyeska ski area has received over 10 feet of snow!! Could be an epic year! We'll keep you posted. Storm