Best quote of the day. . .

"Let's play 'I spy the guy with the red light sabers.'"  --said by the kid sitting in the row in front of me as we were waiting to taxi away from the gate in Seattle.

Christmas 2009

I'm sitting in the Anchorage airport, unsuccessfully trying to fill 8 hours of layover.  I'm on my way back to Elim after a trip home.

(Home is such a relative term.  Boise will always be home because that's where I grew up, that's where my family lives, that's the very definition of familiar and safe.  Camp is home for many different reasons.  Elim is home because that's where I live now.  But I digress. . .)

I started the trip with almost 30 hours of travel to get from Elim to Portland.  Long trip, but no red-eye flights and no overnighting in an airport.  (I spent a night in a hotel in Nome instead.)  I decided that I wasn't going to stress about it, but just take whatever life decided to throw at me.  Luckily, life didn't decide to test me on that point, and all the flights went smoothly.  I spent a wonderful day in Portland with a good friend before finally flying home to Boise.  By the time I arrived at my final destination, I had been traveling for over 50 hours. 

The next few days until Christmas were a blur of activity, most of it involving unhealthy food.  I threw the diet out the window and resolved to enjoy food for the holiday season.  I'll get back on the wagon in January. :-)  My sister and I baked waaaaaay too many cookies (we were actually told to cut our volume in half for next year). 

What you don't see is the 3 other kinds of cookies and the 3 gingerbread houses that we were also making that day.  You also don't see the stress that it was causing Mom, who was attempting to make pies at the same time. :-)

Christmas came and went, highly anticipated but ending with a let-down, as usual.  What I really want for Christmas can't be wrapped and put under the tree.  Santa can't bring it in his sled.  To be married and have a family of my own is something that I especially longed for this holiday season, but it's a desire that is a long way from being fulfilled.  That's not to say that I didn't enjoy being with my family, though:

Note the matching pajama pants. :-)

Yes, I got my little brother a marshmallow gun for Christmas. 

After we convinced the dog to come out of the bedroom where she was hiding from aforementioned marshmallow gun, she decided to sit on Vicki's lap.

A couple of days after Christmas, we headed up to Baker for our annual ski trip at Anthony Lakes.  I can't downhill ski to save my life, but they have a nice little nordic area for crazy cross-country types like myself to explore.  It was a lot of fun, but resulted in popped blisters and raw skin that will continue to give me trouble for awhile. 

Gunsight Trail runs along the base of its namesake, Gunsight Mountain.

Yeah, I skied UP that.  Several times, in fact.

That's her "angry face."  She wasn't too happy with me for taking her picture.

But she was really too tired to care.

After we got home from that trip, it was mass chaos (or at least felt like it) as I tried to do laundry, clean my room, and make sure I had everything I needed to come back to Alaska for 5 more months.  I hate good-byes and I've said more of them lately than I care to count.  There are times when moving back to the Pacific Northwest sounds like a very good idea, times when I question whether all the travel and good-byes are worth it, times when I start to wonder about my future.  But I know from past experience that the question "Is it worth it?" will be answered with a resounding yes when my kids start trickling into my classroom on Monday morning.  It will be a resounding yes as they overflow with excitement, telling me about what they did over break.  It will be a resounding yes as they make me laugh with their fun, innocent comments.  I still wonder about the future (think back to my unfulfilled Christmas wish), but for now, my future is in this cold, dark state that is nonetheless filled with joyful moments.