The First Christmas Card 2010

The first Christmas card this year came from my sweet niece Viktoria, who will turn 5 in a few days, and who lives in Hungary.

"Mi is Boldog Karacsonyt Kivanunk, Viki, es Boldog Szuletesnapot!"

I must go now.  Big Moose and Small Moose are butting heads.  Quite literally.

Ice-pocalyps 2010

Fairbanks is iced in. The roads are, quite literally, ice skating rinks. This is not an overstatement: yesterday the whole town came to a halt. Many drivers very optimistically thought their driving skills were solid enough to overcome the challenge, but soon realized there is no driving on this stuff when cars began to slide down backwards on hills, sideways into ditches, and 5 school buses ended up off road. A gravel truck did a 360. Fire trucks slid into fellow drivers. You get the picture.

Things started Monday morning around 7 am, when freezing rain started to drizzle. We were forewarned by the National Weather Service, so when I got up at 6, I obsessively began to look outside at our street. By 8 the street looked as if a Zamboni had licked it into a fine sheen. Overall at least an inch of ice had accumulated in town, more outside. I stopped J from going to work when he was already backing out of the garage, unaware of the quickly deteriorating conditions. When we checked local news and websites we realized that this is the worst ice this town has ever experienced.  These are unseasonably warm temperatures, too but not for long as the temps will drop by a cool 60 degrees by this weekend, and we'll be in -20F -or so say the weather watchers.

School and work are canceled for the rest of the week. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Winter Colors

Sunrise

Winter Eyes

Summer Good Byes