Hi everybody! 

Over the last couple of weeks we've had a little bit of fun in our off-hours.  Last week, to honor the Dunns, who went home day before yesterday, we took them to a hockey game, something none of us had ever done before - the Alaska Aces vs. the Colorado Eagles.  The Eagles won in sudden death overtime, 3 to 2.  We went on a Wednesday so the crowd wasn't the biggest, but the noise was incredible.  I'd hate to go to a playoff game or something like that.  You'd have to turn your hearing aids off or your head would explode.  Anyway, we learned a lot about hockey and had a great time.

From the left - Sis. Dunn (Elder Dunn was taking the photo) Sis. Taylor, Elder Taylor, Sis. Weston, Elder Weston

Not many pictures, this game is too fast and all we had were our phones.

Getting ready for a face-off

Face-off!

These Alaskans are serious about their hockey!  All of the adults in this family are wearing Aces jerseys and they brought their two little children along.  Planned ahead, though.  Both of them had earmuffs to wear to protect their ears.  And they seemed to really enjoy the game!

Here's the job I want.  No, not the guy standing there with the goal net, the Zamboni driver!

On our last post we put up some pics about the snow and ice.  During the last couple of weeks we've had more of both.  It really makes things pretty around here, along with a little dangerous on the highway.  We went to Palmer yesterday for lunch, a Festival of Nativities at the local chapel and a couple of bazaars/craft shows and saw an 18-car pileup on the freeway.  Anyway, here are a couple of photos of the weather.

It is really amazing how the moisture in the air just freezes to the branches of the trees and when you breathe out your breath turns to glitter in the air.

Snow on the mountains, frost on the trees.

One of the elements of life around here is the number of hours of daylight.  In a post after our Halloween-time trip to Barrow, we mentioned that the sunrise in Barrow was at about 11:00 AM and the sunset was about 5:00 PM.  Today, in Anchorage, the sun came up at 10:07 and went down at 3:41 - 5 hours and 34 minutes of daylight.  In Fairbanks it rose at 10:48 and set at 2:41 - 4 hours and 53 minutes of daylight.  In Barrow... none.  They have entered what they refer to up there as "the dark time."  The sun set a couple of weeks ago and won't rise again until spring.

On the way to the office in the morning.  No, we don't go in that early - this was a couple of weeks ago at 8:30 AM.
That extra light in the center is the moon.

This is looking out the window of our apartment at 5:20 PM this afternoon.

We saw this the other morning on the way in to the office. (this was taken a little later)  None of us in the office had ever seen anything like it.  Pretty amazing when you realize that there is a total of about 390 years of experience in the office.

For Thanksgiving this year we had planned on going to the Institute building with the other senior missionary couples.  Instead we ended up being invited to dinner at the Mission Home with President and Sister Robinson.  It was a very nice day.

 

We are just about ready for Christmas.  On Black Friday we put up our tree, a small artificial tree given to us by the Poulsons when they went home.  It is all decorated and lit and we have added a couple of extra things to it.  Candice sent us some ornaments made from real painted eggs. We also received a package from our Bishop's family that contained a gift for each of the 12 days of Christmas.  We just opened our first one today.  Sister Taylor also bought a small Alaskan Nativity scene when we were in North Pole last summer.  It is quite cute with an igloo for the stable, a dog sled for the manger, eskimos for the wise men with a moose, polar bear, Dall sheep and wolf for the animals.

A Spirit Mask ornament.  The face is carved wood.  The "hood" around it is made of Caribou/Reindeer hair.

One of the painted eggs.  Real eggshells!

This is our present for the first day of Christmas - Santa's Hat!  Our thanks to the Ponds!

Tonight we had a special surprise.  The local district decided to do some caroling and stopped by our apartment to sing.  We had them all in for some caramel popcorn and visited with them for a few minutes until it was time for them to head home.  Being able to fellowship with these great young people made a great finish to a great Sabbath Day!