Christmas Vacation!

So, I had great intentions of posting about my Christmas break as it occurred, but my parents still have dial-up (sloooow) and it only works on one computer and there were 6 people sharing that one computer. Needless to say, my great intentions were shot down.

So, here is the abbreviated Christmas break. If you want details, let me know :-)

The trip down to Boise was uneventful. I was a tad concerned about the weather (on the verge of a panic attack for the better part of 3 days), but all of my flights were on-time or early. Even my Seattle flight. I flew into, and then out of, Seattle on Saturday morning (the 20th). That afternoon, Alaska Airlines started to cancel just about all of their flights in Seattle and Portland. God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good. The craziest part was that it got colder as I got farther south. It was 32 degrees and raining when I left Elim, and it was around 20 and on the verge of snow when I finally got to Boise.

Vicki and I started baking that day. We made a few messes, made some good cookies, and mostly just had fun. We also went out and had some fun in the snow. We made a snow-woman and had a couple of snowball fights. The week continued on. Vicki and I found the raddest matching pajama pants ever and wore them on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I got to hang out with a couple of good friends that I hadn't seen recently.

In the week after Christmas, we took a family trip to Oregon - staying in Baker and skiing at Anthony Lakes for a couple of days. The first day was a bust. We got up the mountain, but the wind was blowing snow so hard at the base that visibility was close to zero. I don't even want to imagine what it was like at the top of the mountain! We turned around and went back to Baker. We spent the day playing Yahtzee, reading, and trying to stay warm. The second day was beautiful. I was miserable. I think I must be getting old or something. Going down the ski hill was torture on my ankles, and I couldn't figure out why. I tried tightening my boots; I tried loosening my boots; nothing worked. And then my knees started aching and my toes went completely numb. At that point, I decided it wasn't worth it. Well, after lunch, my dad (he's not real into the whole skiing thing, either) and I decided to walk over to the Nordic Center (cross-country skiing), just to check it out. I ended up renting cross-country skis and skied 4 miles in a couple of hours. I'm not a downhill skier, but I love cross-country skiing.

The trip back up to Alaska was about as uneventful as coming down. I had the pleasure of a 10 hour layover in Anchorage. That meant I had 10 hours of downtime. I was so bored. So very bored. I was very glad when we finally loaded up for the trip to Nome. All flights were "on-time" (but I don't think any of them actually loaded or left on-time). I'm just thankful I didn't get stuck somewhere. I was hearing horror stories about people spending days in Sea-Tac. God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.

If you want to see the pictures from the break, let me know and I'll send you a link.