Merry Christmas!

Since we have been out on our own for the last few years we have tried to continue some of our favorite traditions...

like a huge pot of home-made chicken noodle soup for Christmas eve dinner...

and dipped chocolates/nuts, buckeye balls...

chocolate pie, pumpkin cake and of course egg nog.

We had a wonderful quiet Christmas with just the two of us, but we wish we were back home with our loving families... Hopefully next year.

It's time for Christmas!

Tracie wanted to go cut down a Christmas tree this year, but with our busy work schedules, and the fact that there is only about 5 hours of day light during the middle of each day, we decided it was easier to just buy one. But, instead of going to Home Depot, like we did last year, we bought one from a local man on the side of the road.

It is the perfect little tree, though our 2 strands of lights and 5 ornaments barely cover it! But we are ready for Christmas!

Work Christmas Parties

Every year Dr. Johnson has a Christmas party at his house. Everyone that goes is supposed to take a wrapped gift for the gift exchange, and we usually eat a bunch of crab. This year was the same, minus the crab (a co-worker has an allergy to it).

Michelle, Jenn, and Tracie

Posing for a Christmas Card Picture

The next week we went to Dr. Nielsen's Christmas Party. We met at the office, where we got in the Hummer Limo that took us to his house for appetizers.

Jessica, Tateum, and Tracie

Sweet Ride

Dr. Nielsen finished building his house this last year, so he wanted to show it off. We were very impressed. Indoor basketball court and climbing wall, indoor pool and sauna... we could have stayed and played all night.

John testing out the wall

Instead, we rode to Sullivan's Steak House and had a very good meal, did a gift exchange and then ended up back at the office. It was a long, but fun night!

Most of the group!

Thanksgiving

We realize it is almost Christmas, but we had some requests to post what we did for Thanksgiving (and to put more pictures of Tracie's belly on). We volunteered to make homemade root beer for a get together the weekend before and for Thanksgiving dinner. The Saturday night before we went to, or called, just about every store in Anchorage to see if they had dry ice and root beer extract. We found one store that had dry ice, so we rushed over there before they closed and bought $20 worth. Then we still had to get the flavoring... not one of the 6 stores we tried had it. So we weren't able to make the root beer for the get together. Pretty lame. We finally found root beer extract at Natural Pantry, but not until Monday, so we just kept the dry ice on the porch in the freezing temperatures for a few days until Thanksgiving. Thursday came, Tracie had made pies, John mixed up the root beer and we were ready to go, but when John grabbed the bag of dry ice from the porch....it was empty! It had evaporated (actually sublimated), leaving a bag of paper. Lame. Luckily, the one store that carried it was staying open until 3:00pm, so we hurried before it closed to buy more. And then it all worked out ok, and turned out delicious, but we definitely learned that making homemade rootbeer, in Alaska in the middle of the winter, is not an easy process!

now that this book is done, hopefully we will be regular about blogging

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This is what we have been doing for the last 2 1/2 years...

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Three Years Later....

It's true, we finally got our own internet! We figured with having a baby, John doing his last semester of online classes, and more home time (once the baby comes), we should probably break down and buy some internet. It still is the cheapest internet available, so don't expect daily blogs, but we will try to be better about keeping everyone updated- and post lots of pictures!