Merry Christmas Eve!

A Morning of Fun

Paul decided that Daniel needed to start practicing target shooting and came up with the brilliant idea to have Daniel shoot at targets with a water gun. The fun that ensued was priceless. They started out shooting at the targets but that quickly went to shooting all over the house. Even Mom joined in at one point. Daniel's laughter was so precious! Of course today he had been driving me crazy wanting to do it again.

I didn't get into the M&M's I promise!

A picture is worth a thousand words. These pics are from a week or two ago but were on Paul's camera so I forgot about them.

Ice Fog?

For the past week we have been socked in with fog and I have seen a phenomenon that I have never seen before. Fog being a cloud, is very moist and as it is so cold here in Alaska the fog actually freezes resulting in this-

This is the airport where Paul works.

Drive Home

Below right behind the road barriers is the ocean. Not that you can see it.

 

This is one of the lights that signals the plane that they can land. Paul said that while he was taking it a huge plane flew in to land directly overhead and he couldn't see it at all. That's how thick the fog is.

Operation Doughnuts

In my family, growing up we made doughnuts every year for Christmas time, New Year's Eve and every time we got snowed in. (If I did that here I would never  lack for doughnuts at least half of the year.) I decided that today was the day for doughnuts. Above is a picture of the fried doughnuts. Below is the finished product with powdered sugar. That is my favorite way to eat these particular doughnuts. Technically these are "spudnuts" not doughnuts as they are made with potatoes. The recipe comes from the town I grew up in, in southern UT and was used at fund raising bazaars and etc. I'm not sure who my Mom had to bribe to get the recipe but I'm glad she did as these are SO good! I made the small recipe here, (the large one makes at least double this amount and I'm kind of wishing I had made the large batch as I have several plates of doughnuts for friends and I'm not sure I have enough for me! :-) I started the dough early this morning and fried them up while the kids were asleep. Hurray for naps as I wasn't sure how I was going to do it if they didn't take naps.

Paul Jumping from an Airplane

Paul coming down

 

Yeah, I try not to think about it too much, but Paul loves jumping out of airplanes and helicopters. This is from his drill weekend last weekend when they were jumping out of a C-23 Sherpa airplane.

Images of Alaska from Paul's drive home today

You really don't see how much snow we have with these (about a foot) but you do see the heavy frost that we have had. This frost hasn't been melting. It looks kind of desolate and cold but Anchorage is really a big city but very close to the wilderness.