Christmas Break... Come and Gone!

We’ve been on Christmas Break for the past 10 days or so. Alicia and Tess were both off from school. And I’ve been off from work since the 23rd of December. Tomorrow, both Alicia and I return to our work and school lives. Tess will still be off from school till mid-January. She received notice on the last day of 2011 that she's been officially accepted into the Nursing Program at the University of Alaska-Anchorage.  Her projected graduation date will be May 2015.  Hooray!

Over the course of the Break, we’ve had a really nice time. We went ice skating at both our regular rink in Eagle River and at the Dimond Ice Chalet in Anchorage. The latter is a rink in the middle of a mall.

We wanted to keep our ice skating skills fresh between lesson sessions. Alicia will begin her session at the Alpha level next Saturday. She’s still enjoying the ice. As a matter of fact, Alicia is all about the winter time. This works out well, as we live in a place where winter is the longest season, by far!

As we watched the Rose Parade on TV this morning, I mentioned that we might go to southern California to watch the parade in person one year… Admiring how sunny and green it looked there. Alicia asked if it ever snowed there. I said no… She said she didn’t want to live there!

Some of our other Break activities included a visit to the Anchorage Museum, some bowling, and a movie. Alicia and I went to see "We Bought a Zoo". We both loved it! If you haven’t seen it, you should…

Later in the week, I took the girls and one of Alicia’s friends to H2Oasis, the indoor waterpark in Anchorage. I think the temps outside were hovering close to zero. But inside the waterpark, it’s kept at 84 degrees yearround! The girls had a great time. Then we blow dried our hair completely before heading back outdoors and up the road to the Alaska Zoo.

We met Stephen and some of our friends to view the Zoo Lights. The Alaska Zoo sets up lots of cool light displays which are viewed by walking through the zoo trails. I think we probably would’ve enjoyed the Zoo Lights more had we not been half frozen, despite our numerous layers of long underwear and snowpants. We followed up the rapid tour of the Zoo Lights with a tummy-warming trip to the Arctic Roadrunner for delicious burgers.

On the last day of 2011, Alicia and I tried our hand at making homemade marshmallows. We are hooked! They are super yummy! We brought some of them to a New Year’s Day Sledding Party to add to our hot cocoa and just to munch straight out of the bag. We’ve put them through a round of tests including roasting, cocoa dunking, and raw consumption. We still need to test them as chocolate-dipped, in s’more creation, and inside rice cereal treats. I’m sure they won’t disappoint!
Over the Christmas Break we accumulated a bunch of snow and lost a bunch of degrees on the thermometer. We’re still in the negative degrees as we head into the New Year. But, if there’s one thing living in Alaska has taught us, it’s that you can’t let the weather outdoors get in the way of you living your life. We just roll with the punches and take a glance at the thermometer and precipitation situation before deciding how many layers are necessary as we head out the door…