Snow Machines

Carter

The snow was really deep.  Our little Enticers got stuck occasionally. Ethan is waiting for Carter to come help him lift the back end out of the deep part.

It was so fun to see the boys working together out there.

Here comes Ethan!

Can you see Olivia?  Oh there she is her giant yellow helmet!

It wouldn't be the New Year without fireworks!

Here I am with my buddy Heather!  Our other friend, Kim, who was our host, stayed in the cabin to watch the fireworks.

Here is most of the gang that was there for New years.  6 adults and 14 children.  Most of these kids were teenagers and so fun with our little ones.  They were awesome.  The boys even slept in the cold attic of the cabin for us!  Thanks boys!

This is what we are snow machining on.  A frozen lake.  Here is a shot of under the dock where the snow isn't packed on.  It was pretty cool!

OK those were obviously videos of the lake we were on. This lake is owned by our friend's family.  Like it is an original homestead site from back in the day.  If you are looking on a map we were just west of BIG LAKE, about an hour from our house.  Now let me tell you about BIG LAKE and the ice.  We took our machines over the land to check out Big Lake.  It was so cool.  The lake really is gigantic.  Not Great Lakes gigantic but certainly Utah Lake or Oneida Lake gigantic.  In the winter Big Lake plows roads and grates the ice on the lake to make roads you can drive on!  Like with your car.  Snow machines stay off the ice roads and zoom in the open spaces.  It was crazy! The town of Big Lake (named after, well, the Lake!) names the ice roads and cuts  the same ones every year. We went out to this island that has a restaurant on it.  You can only reach this restaurant by boat in the summer or snow machine in the winter.  There were tons of homes on the island too and cabins all along the shore of the lake.   I didn't bring my camera for that part of the trip and I am totally kicking myself now.  We are hoping to go over Martin Luther King day and I will for sure get pictures then.

Here is our host and buddy and snow machine extraordinaire, Skeet, along with JaDee and Nate.

Ethan gets ready to take his ole Mom out for a spin!

It's Christmas Time!

 Here are a few of the highlights of our Holidays.  I can't believe how fast everything seemed to go this year.  I still have my tree up and plan on leaving it up until January 6, in honor of the Epiphany, or that is at least the story I am using to justify my procrastination.  Monica's mom always left their tree up until then, and I think she has a good thing going. Some years we make it that long some we don't.  I have a pretty tight schedule until Thursday, so I figure the Epiphany gets honored this year!

I made this quilt for my mom.

Olivia told Santa all about her big purple ball that popped and probably a few other things too!

Ethan also got to sit on Santa's lap

Carter tried really hard not to look embarrassed.  Inside the present is the book he got from the school book order.  He brought it home and them lost it. Good thing Santa found it to give back at JaDee's work party! That Santa is so smart!

Ward Christmas program with girls dressed as angels.  Ben and Katie might recognize Olivia's dress from the flower girl at their wedding!

On the way down the driveway to the ward Christmas party, Ethan tells me he needs a wise man costume.  I told him he was too late to tell me that now.  He would just have to be a wise man in regular clothes.  Of course there were extra costumes when we got to the church, thus thwarting my efforts to teach my son a lesson, and instead just made me look like a slacker mom.

Oh Christmas Tree! 

Oh Snow Machine!  Here we have our 3 new snow machines that we bought for a grand total of $750.  JaDee bought all of them in not running condition.  Then he and our good friend Brian got them running, touched up the paint, made a new windshield and hid them from our kids.  See Brian is the dad of 2 of Carter's good friends.  They were awesome at keeping up the charade that they were just a hobby of their own dad's and not Carter's Christmas present.  

Bleary eyed on Christmas morn.  Olivia got one of those pillow pets and no one got new Jammie's, in case those old Walk for Bridger T-SHIRTS weren't a dead give away.  I was going to make some, but ran out of time.

Olivia's big present this year was from Grandma.  She sent her the horse trailer/camper. She hasn't stopped playing with it!

This is my chandelier!  It replaced the old 1980s brass thing in our front entry.  We got it at Restoration Hardware.  Turns out JaDee loves to shop for light fixtures and I love this one.  It was all I got for Christmas....or was it?  I told you that Santa is a tricky fellow;)

Ski/Snowmachine goggles. Um Livs, they are upside down.

Remember how I told you Santa was tricky.  I have had my eye on this bag from Ellington for several months.  When I found out that my favorite store in Eagle River started carrying their bags,Santa special ordered this for me. JaDee was even um, impressed with Santa's craftiness!

They even came with red bows!

Carter zooming around the circle.  I have to tell you how Aunt CaMee almost ruined Christmas.  See at 8 AM it is still pitch black so we were hoping to hold off of the snow machines until at least the sun came up.  Well, CaMee sent Carter a laser pointer and it was one of the first presents Carter opened.  He went running to the front door with it when I yelled, "Stop!  Wait! Don't go out there.  The neighbors!  Yeah, the neighbors might not like it in their window.  Go our back and uh, shine it in the trees! Yeah, that's it!"
As you can see that even at 9:30 it is still not overly bright out.  That is because we live in a valley and the mountains block that low Arctic sun from us for a few weeks each year.

Upcoming posts include our weekend on these little machines and even some video plus pictures of the new chandelier!  Bet you can't wait!

I'm getting there!

Missing these guys!  But what a great shot from this summer of the first time in 2 years that we have all been together. Right now we are the only ones missing for New Years on the farm.

 Can you spot the 2 sets of identical twins in the picture above?

I know I am behind in posting the Christmas pictures, but dang it we are too busy having fun.

We have been to the Imaginarium.  AWESOME! We had a blast!

We went to H2Oasis, because nothing screams "Winter in Alaska," like a trip to the water park!!  Loved it, and glad we went.  The wave pool was awesome and I wish I had my camera to show you Olivia in her life jacket swimming out in the man made swells that just about drowned me. Thanks for the gift cards to go Grandpa and Grammy!

We are going skiing today at Alyeska!

We are going try out our new snow machines (that's snowmobiles for you Lower 48ers) that we got for Christmas over New Years.  We are headed up to our friend's cabin to snow machine on the same lake that I fell in while we were jet skiing there in September.  Don't worry.  It hasn't been above 0 for like a month up at the cabin. That lake is solid and it is the only place to go without trees in the way.

In the mean time Happy Holidays to all of you and I will get pictures up soon!

Dear Christmas tree

After I painstakingly wrapped every one of your branches in the garage with you lying on your side for 4 hours only to bring you in and stand you up to spend 4 more hours doing the bottom half of you; you would think you would have the courtesy to stay standing up after you were fully decorated. I thought those 8 hours with my freezing hands wrapped in thin gloves were a bonding moment for us.  I guess I misread the signals.

I don't know if you knew this when we chose you from the woods, but when we chopped you down it was to welcome you into our home.  To bring joy and beauty to us this holiday season.  You are my favorite part of the decorations.  Your lights, the strings of red wooden beads that lend you a country chic charm.  Your decade of hand painted ornaments collected year after year.  Your responsibility to showcase every trip we have ever taken since our honeymoon 14 1/2 years ago is nothing to shirk.

So when you and your 15 feet of branches came crashing down and broke 2 large glass hand painted ornaments, Olivia's first Christmas, and a John Deere bulb, I was mad at you.  It took over an hour and a half to get all of those family memories to hang just so from your boughs.  Olivia only put up the sparkly ones and the boys hid all the precious kindergarten paper chains in the back, but it was still a family affair.

Now with JaDee gone and my fear of you doing this again, I can't drag you over to the safety of our 2nd story balcony to re-decorate you.  I may end up climbing our ladder to re hang your beaded garland.  But I am afraid you have lost my trust in being responsible for holding the most treasured ornaments.  Those will not be your job this year.  Those will be passed on to the Mantel and his solid frame.

I am sorry if you were not pleased by being chosen to be part of our family this year.  I am sorry if our ornaments weren't enough for you.  But next time send a note, make a phone call, some warning before you resort to this sort of violence again.

Sincerely,
Nicole

as per your request

Here are the Christmas pictures. I have hesitated posting them because I am a little embarrassed by our Christmas gluttony. I guess we were making up for the hotel Christmas we had last year. Not that it wasn't lovely and full of spoils, it was just so weird.

I was having "gifters remorse" as I was laying out the packages that had been stock piling in the garage pantry since September. I actually had been keeping track of what I bought, but it looked so innocent on paper. In 3-D form, sprawled out on my living room floor, however was another story.

All I kept thinking about was did we really remember the true meaning of Christmas?

As I justified every purchase, I remembered that we had shopped our pantry for 2 food drives, searched for the perfect cosmetics to be delivered to a deserving 17 year old who's name I drew off a tree at Wal-mart, dragged the kids to Nativity displays and a Messiah sing along and a lot of the presents were actually paid for by money sent from the various grandparents, and others sent from uncles, aunts and cousins.

After fretting over the materialism of both myself and my kids for the better part of a week, I read this post last night, shortly before dinner. It lead me to ask the question of my own kids, "What if we didn't have money this year and there was nothing under the tree?"

Carter, who is growing up so fast every day that I feel like I am on the express train to graduation and a goodbye at the doors to the MTC, said, "It'd be OK, Mom. We have a lot of nice stuff all ready."

And Ethan, my sensitive soul who is losing that mischievous little boy quality for a more sedated, calmer version of himself, said, "Yeah, its good as long as we have a house to live in."

Olivia assured me that Santa would come bring us presents anyway









Here we are having Christmas Eve dinner with the Teeples. These guys are a great family and we love doing stuff with them. Christmas afternoon they hosted us, and our other friends, the DeKays and Kellers. We are so blessed to have such great friends! Thanks guys!








Ethan got his MP3 player. He loves to listen to the Twilight soundtracks, Amazing Grace with bagpipes and the Mormon Tabernacle choir, and Lady Gaga's Just Dance. Quite an eclectic mix, if I do say so myself.

Olivia fell in love with the American Girl doll catalog earlier this year. And she kept wanting "the girl with the llama." That was the 2009 doll of the year, Chrissa. Good thing Santa came through...just look at that face!


Ethan is discovering the TV behind the tree that Santa left.

Don't tell my other kids, but I think Ethan is my cutest on Christmas morning. His face is so expressive.
Me and my new hat. I am into hats this year.

So is Ethan. Again, look at that face!

Carter and the XBox game that he wanted. To go with the XBox Santa got a good deal on. Turns out there are 2 XBox 360's and we got the one that needed a separate external hard drive to play the original XBox games. And with no stores open Christmas day, it was worse than not having batteries for Tickle Me Elmo.

Santa surprised JaDee by fitting all of his presents into one box. He got some new backpacking gear to make his pack lighter and his sleeping on the ground more comfortable. everything in the box weighed less than 5 pounds. And that was a new mess kit, sleep and and a down jacket.


JaDee got me Nie Nie's All is Well necklace. I had completely forgotten that I showed it to him months ago. It was the perfect token for our first year in Alaska. For some people music is what moves them. I too, love music, but it has always been the power of words that give me solace. I have loved the peace that reading these words around my neck throughout the day, has given me.

For all IS well.

videos

The most wonderful time of the year

To answer a few questions about our family pictures: We were outside, it was not a back drop. It had snowed the day before and the trees were perfect. It was about 35 degrees out so of course us Alaskans didn't need coats. The snow was about up to my knees and Olivia needed to be carried. We took a red bench from my room and packed it around to the different places we shot pictures. It took us about 45 minutes to get our shots. For those of you familiar with the area, we were at the Eagle River North Fork state recreation area on the way to the Nature Center.

We saw lots of animal tracks and heard a moose bellowing in the not too far off distance, but no wildlife encounters.

But this weekend we had the most holiday-rific time of all! It started Saturday morning with the boys Christmas piano recital and Olivia's primary Christmas party, both at 10 AM. Luckily we just had to drop Olivia off to her teachers at church and we both made the recital. It was Ethan's first performance. He was thrilled to play on his teacher's cherry red baby grand piano because "It sounds cooler than the smaller black one downstairs."

Olivia had a visit from Santa at her party. "But," she told me. "It wasn't the real Santa. He only comes out on Christmas and its not Christmas yet." Olivia asked for, "The doll withe the llama." Luckily, as one of Santa's helpers, I know that this means the American Girl Doll "Chrissa" and her pet llama.

After the party/recital we went up to Palmer for their annual Colony Christmas celebration. Just like Perry, UT celebrates the 4th of July in a grand way, Palmer uses Christmas as the back drop for their towns celebration. We decided to check out the Nativity display set up at the LDS church house. The building was also hosting performers and our friends little girls were participating in a couple of numbers that their little dance group put on so we decided to go and support them and see what kind of Nativities were set up.

The Church gym in Palmer at the Nativity Display. This is just a taste of the set up that was all over the building for us to enjoy.

I was blown away. There were over 1000 Nativities set up in over 10 rooms of the Church. The decorating was over the top. Complete with rough wood arches, hundreds of yards of butcher paper stone wall murals (that were incredibly well done), yards of fabric swathed the walls and ceilings of each room transforming the scene to a rich and warm backdrop for the literally hundreds of Nativities lovingly set up on display.

We spent over 2 hours taking in all of the Nativities, playing the "I spy" game set up for the kids to look for objects all over the building, and then moved on to see more of Palmer. We saw the ice sculpture garden, and many lights and carolers, but missed the gingerbread house displays, the night time parade, and only glimpsed in on the Orchestra Concert playing holiday music.

Ice sculpture Gardenn at Palmer's Colony Christmas Festival

We had to get back to the much discussed Adult Ward Christmas Party. No kids and many of the 12-18 crowd was asked to serve. So who to babysit? Carter and Ethan forget that Olivia exists so we still need to hire someone to come. And we can't exactly leave a 12 year old girl alone with my 12 year old boy, so we got them a 16 year old boy who has lots of experience with his little nieces.

And the party was fantastic!! A HUGE amount of work was put into a very nice evening.

The end of weekend was wrapped up with a Messiah Sing A Long at the church last night. The amount of "amateur" was incredible and the quality was top notch. A small orchestra and an army of pianists accompanied the soloists and the congregational choir. It was a lot of fun and a awesome way to worship our Savior this time of year.

Yes, the Moncurs are feeling the Christmas spirit!