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TodaysMama (link to: http://bit.ly/tmwishlist) and GameStop (link to: http://bit.ly/gamestop10) are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.


1. What is your holiday wish for your family?

My holiday wish for my family is for them to truly appreciate each other and love each other for who they are. That it is ok to be different. That the family is the most important thing here on earth!

2. What is your Christmas morning / Hanukkah Nightly tradition?
The very first thing we do Christmas morning is line up in the hallway and get our pictures taken in our Christmas jammies.

3. If you could ask Santa for one, completely decadent wish for yourself, what would it be?
I would ask Santa for plane tickets for all of my family and friends so they can see our new home in Alaska. Especially since not many of them can afford to fly up here to see us.

4. How do you make the holidays special without spending any money?
We make it special by playing games with each other and listening to Christmas Music.

5. What games did you play with your family growing up?

I played a lot of card games like go fish, war, and hearts. I also played chess a lot.

6. What holiday tradition have you carried on from your own childhood?
Growing up my parents didn't buy sugared cereal for us very often. I think it was because it cost more money. Anyway they would buy us our very own box of sugar cereal for Christmas morning breakfast. I still do that with my children.

7. Where would you go for a Christmas/Hanukkah-away-from-home trip?

My daughter and I joke that we would spend a white Christmas on the white beach's of Hawaii.

8. Check out GameStop (link to: http://bit.ly/gamestop10) and tell us, what are the three top items on your GameStop Wish List this year?

On my wish list would be a Nintendo DSI, Mario Galaxy 2, and Wii Fit plus

Journal entry. What was your family traditions to celebrate Thanksgiving? What was a typical meal like?

We had one major tradition for Thanksgiving. It started as far back as I can remember and it stopped shortly after I moved out of the house. Anytime that we had a guest over for Thanksgiving dinner they too had to participate. My mom would write our names on an envelope and we give us each pieces of paper. We would then write something nice or something we were Thankful about everyone! We did this even before we could write. We would either draw a picture for each person or someone would write down what we would say. After Thanksgiving dinner was finished we would stay around the table and take turns reading our envelopes which were stuffed with nice things about us. As we got older we filled out the papers begrudgingly. The first year out of the house I received in the mail an envelope for Nate and I with our Thankful notes on it. That was the last time that I got one. It was a great tradition and I am sad to see it go. Maybe I will do it next year for the family.
A traditional Thanksgiving meal growing up consisted of Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and yummy potatoes, green salad, rolls, green jello, deviled eggs, and baked beans. For dessert there usually was a pecan pie, a cherry pie, and on occasion a pumpkin pie.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Although I think the day should be called Gluttony day so we could say to each other "Happy Gluttony Day! Eat your heart out. Don't forget to unbutton your pants or better yet just wear sweats to dinner and skip button altogether." Doesn't that sound so much better?

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day. ~Irv Kupcinet

As always my heart is full of things to be grateful for. The Lord has blessed me with may wonderful blessings. I am thankful for..

Nate, Natalie, Nichole,Tyler, and Ella. And all of my other family members. I am thankful for the friends that I have acquired throughout my life and how much they teach me. I am thankful for our new home in Alaska. I am thankful for Nate's job. I am thankful for eyes so that I can see my kids smiles and my ears so that I can hear their laughter. I am thankful for the Jesus Christ and the Atoning sacrifice that he did for each of us. I am thankful for so much more and have been blessed with things that are so personal from a loving Father in Heaven. And for that I thank Him.

This year for Thanksgiving we went to The Hansen's house. Since we had just arrived the day before they were kind enough to not have me cook anything (which is good because really I don't have many pans to cook with). We woke up to snow and lots of it. It snowed the entire day. We went over to help cook around 11 o'clock. We did a lot of visiting, a lot of laughing, and a lot of cooking. The kids seeing the snow were so excited to start to build a snow man although it wasn't quite snow man making snow they did give it a good try. Ella ended up crying when it just fell apart on her. I caught Tyler and Isaac trying to catch the snow on their tongues.I know you can't really tell what is going on in this picture. It's way too blurry. Dax, JoLynn's middle boy is being spun around in a circle playing airplane with Nate. Nate did it one time and from then on Dax was following him around saying "One more" and I think Nate did "One more" about 30 times.And Nichole got to hold Evan and cuddle with him. Natalie went to hold him and he started fussing so she went and gave him to Nichole and he calmed right down. All of JoLynn boys are such cute little guys. They were constantly making me laugh.Our Thanksgiving feast was so wonderful. It consisted of smoked turkey, 2 different kinds of artisan bread, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, lemon jello, potatoes, sweet potato ravioli, yams with Carmel sauce, stuffing, and olives. JoLynn also made a wonderful slushy drink. For dessert there was baklava, pumpkin pie, and apple pie. It was wonderful.

Thank you so much Andrew and JoLynn for having us over to your house for an amazing dinner.

The next day we were invited to have Thanksgiving dinner over at my friend Mindy's house. Her husband had to work on Thanksgiving day so they had theirs the day after. So we went to Thanksgiving dinner round two. It was great to see Mindy again after so long. I wasn't able to take any pictures because my camera battery died. Which was very unfortunate. For that dinner we had Deep fried Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, yams, olives, rolls, stuffed mushrooms, water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, pretzel jello salad, and a green salad. After dinner we watched The 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie and then had dessert. There was fudge, apple pie, and a apple and snickers dessert. It was delicious. I think that I gained 50 pounds between the two meals.

Ella and Jocelynn played together like they haven't missed a day seeing each other which was really nice. I can't believe how big her kids have gotten. All of them are so adorable. And Coltyn is one of the happiest babies I have ever seen.

I am so blessed that I moved to Alaska and already knew several people there. I am even more blessed to have my friends open up their doors to my family for their Thanksgiving meals. Thank you Hansen and Ellison families. You are loved.

The rest of our trip to Anchorage.

It is so nice to not be cramped into the teeny tiny quarters on the ferry and we really enjoyed our huge hotel room our first night in Haines, Alaska. Nate went to the front of the hotel and asked where the best place to eat in town was. The answer "The Lighthouse". We quickly learned that is just about the only restaurant in town as well. We all went there to eat and it cost us an arm and a leg. Between us we got 3 hamburgers with fries, a shrimp quesadilla with fries, and 2 pizza's and 6 drinks. It only cost us 80.00 without a tip. I couldn't believe it. Nate decided that we needed to get on the road early so we could have as much sunlight as we could. We left Haines at 7:30 in the morning. We stopped at the gas station for breakfast (I know but in all reality that was all there was to eat). We headed on our way.

We drove through a bald eagle preservation and as we were doing it Nate said "All I want to see in Alaska is a moose, a bear, and a bald eagle. Look there is a bald eagle." I just laughed at him because he thought he saw a whale (before he did actually see a whale) but the whale turned out to be a rock. But sure enough I looked up and saw an Eagle. Then another and another. They were spread out and sporadic but we saw a few. Then we drove another 2 miles and we saw them all over the place. One tree had at least 10 of them in it.We stopped to get a good picture of one (with my good camera) and got out of the car and the eagle flew away right over our heads. Soon we saw so many we stopped counting. In all we saw over 100 eagles in a 4 mile drive.We drove for another hour or so and we were at the Canadian border. We had to go through customs which I thought was super lax. We showed them our passports and the dogs records and they let us go. We had heard that the roads on the Canada side were snowy but really well kept up. We were told lies. The roads were horrible. We went at a snail pace. We stopped at lunch time to get gas and lunch and while at the gas station we ran into a lady that was headed to our final destination which was Tok and she asked us if we wanted to kinda stay together so if something happened to one of us the other would be close by. Of course that sounded like a great idea. We all went to the same restaurant and then headed out. I had some great food at the restaurant but once again I paid a lot of money for such a small amount of food. But the Bacon and Potato soup and Veggie Sandwich was just what I needed.We paid for our gas in liters. Gas was $1.17 a liter in other words over 4 bucks a gallon of gas.This was part of our drive. The mountains are HUGE! I grew up in Utah so I am used to some mountains but, the mountains in Utah just seem small compared to the mountains we saw in Canada.After some very slow going we finally made it back to the states. I must say that going back into the United States was just as easy as going into Canada. Of course we are American citizens so they probably didn't check us out so much. Even after we made it back to the states we had to drive 2 more hours to Tok for the night. After 11 hours, yes I said 11 hours we made it to Tok. We heard that Fast Eddy's was the place to eat in Tok. Which was awfully convenient because that was in the parking lot of our hotel for the night. It was great to streach our legs and walk around for a bit. But, once again we wanted to have as much sunlight as we could so we started our trip early, early in the morning. We also didn't have anywhere to stop for breakfast so we had gas station food again for breakfast. yum. As the sun came up we were greeted with some beautiful scenery staring back at us. The days on the road were kinda gloomy so the pictures reflect that and of course the beauty of it is lost in a photo.I frequently read to Nate as he drives and while I was reading early in the morning to him and he was driving on snowy roads he yells "Holy Crap" and slams on his breaks. I thought for a moment that another car was spinning out in front of us or something and I may of missed a beat or two of my heart. Come to find out Nate had just saw a herd of Caribou on the side of the road and was super excited. By the time we turned back to see them they had ran off.I did pull out my good camera to take may pictures although I haven't pulled them off of that camera so you get my small one and may of the pictures were taken through the window of the car so they aren't the best. But this picture below is a picture of a glacier.The beauty of Alaska has already amazed me. Some of the time we couldn't see the tops of the mountains because they were up in the clouds. It was so beautiful and I am thrilled to know that I am going to have a white Christmas this year.

We finally pulled into Anchorage around 2:30 that afternoon. In all that trip took us 7 and a half hours. I must say that 3 days on the ferry is not bad at all compared to all that time cramped into a minivan. At least on the ferry we weren't driving on yucky roads and we could get up and walk around whenever we wanted to.

After we arrived in Anchorage we checked into TLF and found out they didn't have space for our dog. We called 10 places before we found someone who would take her for us. Then we went to THE pizza place to eat in Anchorage called The Moose Tooth. And it was yum-my. Worth every penny. Then we went and saw JoLynn and Andrew just to say hi and see how things were going. We came back to our place here on base and crashed for the night.

I can't wait until life gets into a normal routine. This being without my stuff just sucks. But it shouldn't be too much longer.

Beware lots of pictures

Oh Internet how I have missed you. Just wanted to start with that. Where was I oh yeah about to embark on my 3rd leg of the journey. The part that I was worried most about. The FERRY. I was worried about the ferry because I knew that we were going to be in small quarters. I knew that we would have nothing to do. I knew that we were going to have 4 kids in small quarters with nothing to do. We arrived at the dock about 12:30 on Friday to check in and see what the ferry and everything was going to be like. We were told that we had to be in line by 3:00 p.m. So we left and ran some errands. We went to the bookstore ( you know how I love my books), then to the grocery store (you know how I love my groceries) and then we went to this cute little restaurant for lunch (you know how I love my lunch). The lunch was really good. Kinda pricey but yummy. It was gloomy outside and it really felt like a soup day so we went and almost all of us (not Tyler but if you know Tyler's eating habit and how picky he is you would not be surprised at all) got some very tasty clam chowder that came with some very tasty bread. (side note: Tyler did try the clam chowder and liked it alot). Then we walked around the boat terminal and then at 2:40 got in line for the ferry. I am unsure why they told us to be in line by 3. We didn't even see any personnel to line us onto the ferry until after 4. And most sadly enough we didn't actually get onto the ferry until 5:30. It took forever. Needless to say 3 hours of just sitting in a minivan with 4 kids and a dog needing to go to the bathroom isn't fun AT ALL! When we loaded into the ferry (finally) I was surprised to see how they packed all of the cars in. I was thinking it was like a parking lot under the ferry but I was wrong. It was like you were going under a 2 lane tunnel but instead of 2 cars across there is 3. The traffic is bumper to bumper and you are at a stop. Yep that is what it is like parking your car under there. Nate was soooo close to the side of the ship he had to climb over to my side to get out. After we unloaded everything from the car (that is everything but the dog, no literally we couldn't take the dog with us out of the car) we headed up to our room to see just what it was like. The rooms weren't so bad. They were 2 sets of bunk beds with about 4 feet in between them. There was a sink, a very small closet, and a bathroom (think airplane toilet) that came with a shower (think cramped hospital shower) and they you have it. We were expecting 2 of the kids to sleep on the floor every night but they all slept together in the two empty beds. Which was nice for them. I slept on my own bed and Nate his (and by the way my hip and shoulder on the opposite sides of my body ache from that bed that is why I am writing this at midnight the first day back on land. I just can't sleep). After we got all situated we cruised around the ferry to see what it was like and eventually went to the dining room to eat our dinner. We had planned on eating only 1 meal on the ferry a day because it was super pricey so we got a cooler and packed in food for breakfast and lunch/dinner everyday. The food on the ferry was typical cafeteria food. My favorite I got was chicken and fries. They had these potatoes that were almost the worst thing I have ever tasted. They tasted like someone put half pepper and half cigarette ash into the potatoes. D-I-S-C-U-S-T-I-N-G. We were about to settle in for the night when it was time for Nate to take Pretzel out to go potty for the night. You have to clean up all of your dogs messes on the ferry even there pee so I was extra thankful that Nate was going to take care of the dog. Only problem is... Pretzel wouldn't go on the cement. She waited about 35 hours to go to the bathroom when we stopped at our first port. Poor dog peed 3 times and pooped twice. I felt so bad for her having to hold it that long and at the same time was very thankful she didn't go in her kennel because that would of just been a huge mess.

The next day we got up and just hung out in our room until we went into the first port. We were docked there for 5 hours. We went to the market and picked up some treats and got Nate another book to read. It was nice to stretch our legs a little bit. Then we went back onto the boat and then they announced that they were going to show a movie in the movie theater. We went to see Despicable Me. Now don't get me wrong I was very happy to have the day broken up with a movie but it wasn't really a movie theater it was more like a big room with 20 chairs nailed to the floor and there were 2 big screen T.V's to watch it on. When that was over we went back to the room for lunch and then went back to the movie theater to watch the Sorcerers Apprentice. The rest of the day dragged on and on.

On Sunday we got up and did the usual routine. We did wander around the ferry again and went up to the covered solarium and read for a bit. It was very uneventful especially since the movies were the same ones we watched already.

Today we did some more walked around the boat and played lots of cards games. We finally docked in Haines, AK at 2:30 p.m. It didn't take us that long to get off of the ferry which was so surprising because of how long it took to get on it. Although I sound very negative it wasn't really that bad at all. We could of been driving for several hours everyday anyway and would been stuck in a small space with 4 kids and a dog with nothing to do. Plus we did see a whale from a distance which was super cool. And not many people can say they were on a ferry for 3 days! It really was a good experience.

It felt very nice to get off of the ferry. It is especially nice to be able to sit up in bed without ducking first. Oh another crummy thing that happened is that our battery died in the van so until we can get to a Honda dealership (800 miles away) we are without our navigation system, our radio and worse the DVD player.

Outside our ferry the "Malaspia"Tyler and Ella pointing to our final destination of AnchorageElla got her Alaskan Drivers license already. They do everything a little different here in Alaska like let kids drive at age 7.Driving into the ferryI wish you could really tell how close we were parked but it was a tight fit. The ferry held 120 cars.Our 4 berth cabinOur first stop in KitchekanI am the queen of the world.Finally here in Haines AlaskaSee the huge city of Haines. It consists of about 40 buildings.Our hotel room seemed huge compared to our cabin on the ferry. But for reals it was a good sized hotel room.

On the road again.

We left Bend, Oregon today around 9:30 in the morning to start our next leg of the journey to Bellingham, Washington. We woke up in the morning to it snowing. It hadn't stuck to the road yet so we knew we needed to hurry to get on the road. But within an hour the sun was out and the sky was blue.Then we started over the pass by Mt. Hood. There was evidence of snowfall but very little snow on the ground and none on the road.But as we continued our journey up and over the pass there was more and more evidence of snow.Until we hit this. Snow everywhere. And several inches of it sticking to the ground and to the road. I am told I need to suck it up and get used to this look since it will look like this for several months in Alaska. But over the mountains it sure was pretty.Then we hit Portland and we were bombarded with gray skies and lots and lots of rain. It rained for several miles. We never did see the sun after that.The skyline of Seattle was really cool when you are looking down on it. As we drove through Seattle I thought it very appropriate to give my children a brief history of the birth of grunge music by playing them some Nirvana.

We got into Bellingham around 6:30 this evening. Man was I so sick of sitting in the car. I couldn't wait to get out and stretch and not get back in the car but unfortunately when we went to order pizza and found out the wait for delivery was over an hour and a half we had to climb our sore, tired bums back in the car for dinner.

Tomorrow we jump on the ferry for our almost 3 day ride to Haines, AK. I am not hopeful of there being any Internet. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? Keep us in your prayers that all of the kids survive our tight quarters for the next three days.