Taxi Driver

Found this little bit of on-line entertainment amusing. Been a while since you took a Taxi to get around town to do some shopping, or was just wondering what it would be like to be a Taxi Cab driver. Be careful not to spill the cup of coffee or brake to hard. Click here if clicking on the image above doesn't work.

Reindeer Games?!

Ever wonder what Santa and his Reindeer do in the off-season? After a whole year of preparation do they go on vacation or stick around the North Pole? What are the Reindeer Games really all about? Perhaps maybe while you were growing up people wouldn't let you play in neighborhood games. Well this website might hold the answer to all those questions and provide you a chance to resolve those old feelings. If clicking on the image above doesn't take you to the North Pole for the Reindeer Games try clicking here.

Boxing Day

Well today we decided it was time to take down the Christmas tree and other holiday decorations. With a lack of needle retention on the tree and knowing our busy schedules for next week we though it best to get things back to normal. Anyway the tree was pretty much without life and taking up room.

We dug out the boxes from downstairs to begin packaging up the ornaments and lights on the tree. As Pat worked on collecting and wrapping up the ornaments from the tree, I took down some additional lights and garland in the living room. Mean while the cats had a wonderful time inspecting our work in between chasing each other around the house. They made an occasional stop under the tree to get one last drink of water.

We also took some time rearranging and cleaning out part of the storage room downstairs. After dragging the tree outside and tossing it over the hill into the woods we decided to celebrate "Boxing Day" with running a few errands and dinner in town.

What is Boxing Day? click on the words Boxing Day or click here for a brief description.

Christmas Eve Candlelight Service 2005

It took me a while to get this video together for the internet. Here is a 5 minute video of our Christmas Eve Candlelight Service at Calvary Bible Church. What you see in the video is not the whole service nor was I able to capture all of the wonderful preformers that night. Included in the credits at the end of the video is a list of all of the performers that night. The end credits were taken from the program that was passed out to our visitors. I hope it gives you an idea about what it means to be apart of a wonderful church family who loves God. You can view the video by clicking on the image above or by clicking here.

Christmas Gnomes?

On the way to our church Christmas Eve Candlelight Service we decided to give ourselves a little bit of time to drive around town to take a few pictures of several festive light displays. We spotted this house with a wonderfully lit manger scence with supporting appearences from Santa, a few elves as well as couple of reindeer.

We didn't have to go far to find our next light show as directly across the street was another house lit up with splendor. This manger scence not only had appearences from Santa, and his reindeer, but the driveway was being gaurded by a couple of tin men. You'll also notice the Alaskan Christmas theme as there are a couple of walruses and an igoloo mounted on the roof, along with a moose mounted on the back fence.

After turning our vechile around on a cul-de-sac we found these Christmas Gnomes standing watch over a garden spot along the street. This particlar neighborhood was well lit and as we drove away we thought perhaps there was a bit of firendly competion going on. Anyway I'm sure this neighborhood doesn't compare to the Jones in the lower 48 States. Believe it our not, there is a Free The Gnomes website dedicated to stopping the enslavement of these little garden people. The things people come up with. (Click the images to view a larger image.)

Bell Choir Practice

Boy it sure did take a while for me to learn how to post a video to our blog site. Well, it finally made it. You can click on the image to the left or you can click here to view the video. It should open up your media player application to your desktop. I formatted this clip for Windows Media Player. Still have a lot to learn on video blogging. For their first practice this year everyone is doing an absolute wonderful job and I can't wait for opening night Christmas Eve. I'm very proud of Patricia for jumping in and joining the bell choir this year.

The Kingdom of Giving

Opening day of our Christmas play "The Kingdom of Giving" went off very well as the kids and adults out performed themselves before a full house of people. This little 3 act play was written by three of the children within our congregation and directed by one of our elders. The story is about a Kingdom that lost the meaning of Christmas by focusing on getting things from one another, throwing parties, and of course shopping. The people in the Kingdom get wrapped up in the whole process of preparing for the holiday that it creates a number problems for King Majestic. As the King he must make unpopular judgments to protect his subjects - sometimes from each other. Seeing that the King is weary of dealing with such things Miser the Advisor takes advantage of the situation to convince King Majestic to cancel Christmas forever. The situation gets so bad that Miser is having a number of the King's subjects thrown in the dungeon. Meanwhile several of the children, depressed that Christmas has be cancelled, set their hearts on trying to find the true meaning of Christmas. They take this journey in hopes that they can restore Christmas to its proper place within the Kingdom. At the Library they discover some history books that leads they to the Bible. Mrs. Bequite, the librarian, is unable to find a Bible in her collection of books and steers them to Pastor Lost Hisway. After a brief discussion with the Pastor, who rarely reads the Bible in fear of damaging it pages, they learn that Christmas, the church and the Bible are just symbols that the people are good. He trys to sway them that they should just go run play and not trouble their thoughts about such matters. The children are persistent enough that the Pastor lends them his Bible. They soon discover within the Bible the true origins of Christmas and run off to tell the King. When they arrive Miser the Advisor is trying to convince the King to throw another one of his subjects into the dungeon. As soon as the children mention Christmas Miser is determine to have the whole lot taken away by Dungeon Dan. The children make one last heart felt plea by telling the King that the story of Christmas was about another King who tried to protect his people from their sins. This is enough to get King Majestic's attention that he begins to read the Bible to the children thus learning the truth about Christmas. Upon the discovery of the truth he restores the celebration of Christmas throughout the Kingdom. Here are a few photos for you to enjoy.

Here the children are singing one of the songs in the market place.

King Majestic getting some help from Yappy and Snappy.

Miser the Advisor warning Lester the Jester about interrupting with his bad jokes.

The children are singing a song as they just get done with the visit with Pastor Lost Hisway.

King Majestic reading to the children about the true menaing of Christmas from the Bible.

Visitors and members congregate in the kitchen for coffee and cookies at the conclusion of the play.

Rehearsal Night

Tonight was the last rehearsal for our church Christmas play titled The Kingdom of (Getting) Giving. Here we find King Majestic talking with our faithful music director about the details of an up coming scene. All those in attendance were in full dress and excited about getting started.

Here we find two actors, Mizer the Advisor & Dungeon Dan, working especially hard on their script and timing to ensure that certain subjects of the King were locked away for nasty tasting hot chocolate.

Cassie, Patricia and I worked setting up and taking down the stage props for each scene change from one act to another. It was tough trying to get the scenes changed within the 30 seconds the director gave us. Can't wait for opening night!

The Landing

There are a number of places in town to get out of the rain and meet with friends to catchup on things. The Landing is the most popular gathering place in town to meet.

Called our Pastor last night to invite him to join me for early morning breakfast at The Landing restaurant. The place is under extensive remodeling with some new construction for additional rooms. It's a popular place for most locals to go for a quick bite to eat with friends anytime of the day. The Landing is located 5 minutes from the airport ferry parking lot and a couple of minutes walk from the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry Terminal.

The both of us had a good time talking about the up coming Christmas play over a plate of bacon & eggs. We ended our conversation with a cup of hot java and juice. It is always good to share a meal with our Pastor as he is such an encouragement. (Did you notice the inflated Santa on the top balcony? With the winds lately Santa may find himself rolling down the channel with the Coast Gaurd in pursuit.)

Narnia Night

Tonight was the night we decided to drop everything and head off to the movies to view the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. Having only read about Lewis's work on the Narnia series it was great to see it in film versus having read the books first. Funny I've read a good majority of CS Lewis's work but for some reason avoided the Narnia books.

Found the FX in the film to be on par with the Lord of the Rings and the theme of good versus evil to be refreshing in a world that loves the color gray in all area's of life.

Patricia has read the Narnia series and thinks that the director took some artist license but for the most part kept in line with the spirit of the author's intent. Just the other night I started reading the first book in the series and look forward to getting through them. Here is a link to a web site that is pretty interactive if you want more details about the Narina movie. Enjoy!
http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/narnia/main.html

Hillside Gang

These two guys where found roaming the hillside neighborhood one morning as I was taking off to work. They're a part of a much large pack of dogs that make their rounds up and down the hillside. We don't mind their attention they just get a little annoyed if we run out of doggie treats. As you can tell they didn't like getting their picture taken this morning... looks like the start of a police line up.

The black lab Scout has been around since we moved into our cabin a few years back. She is quite playful and enjoys any attention you can give her. The other dog is a new addition to the pack...we still don't know her name. In due time we'll find out and get her to trust us a bit more. Scout seems to tolerate her for the most part. Can't tell you how many times Scout has saved our bacon by chasing the black bears off our hillside since we moved into the cabin. A doggie treat is always waiting for her.

Mardi & Farley

This is Mardi our oldest cat. He is a mixed breed cat, as most are today, but has stronger Abyssinian features which he got from his mom Maggie who was a pure bred. He is always ready to greet us with a purr whenever we pick him up.

This particular day he climbed up on the couch pillow to start his evening nap. We had just finished putting up the tree so he was exhausted from all of the excitement. Mardi is a cautious creature and doesn't like having to much company over to the house as it disrupts his routine. Once he has gotten use to you he can be your friend forever.

Here is our younger cat Farley who was also bedding down for the evening after all of the excitement. Farely is the playful one, just like any cat, in his own time and terms of course. He really doesn't like being bothered during his nap time as you can see. Farley likes to bring home the neighborhood birds, mices, and an occasional squirrel to show off his prowlness. Sometimes they are dead, other times it can be quite the event chasing down a live wild animal in your cabin on the heels of a cat. In any event all is quiet this night.

The Tree

Well we finally got The Tree up this year! This year it felt great to pull out the boxes of ornaments and lights from storage downstairs. As most of you know some years it seems like such a chore to put decorations up. Usually if we travel to visit family we forego putting up a tree and stick to the lights.

Patricia does a great job decorating the tree and rest of the cabin each year. A number of the white snow flakes that are on the tree were hand made (crochet) by her twin sister Pamela. In addition Patricia has accumulated a number of angel ornaments from family and friends over the years which lend themselves to brightening up the tree. This year she bought a string of icicles to reflect the lights even more.
As you can see we have very limited space to put a tree in our cabin, so it goes in the only place available. In the past it takes us a while to find just the right size tree. This year we struck up a deal with the Boy Scouts and feel lucky to have found it so quickly.

Today a couple of boxes arrive from Canada for us. My neighbor on the lot just above ours called to say the Postman dropped off our packages at his house. We both laughed as the very same thing happened last year to us. Anyway it gave me a chance to visit with him on his doorstep and greet his dogs. On the way back down the hill I couldn’t help but wonder if there was any maple syrup in one of these boxes…just have to wait for the big day to find out.

Through the looking glass

Don't know why we waited so long to post to our blogger site. Anyway, here is a typical view out the front window of our cabin. It was an early cool morning just before heading out to work when we snapped this picture. A kindly scenic reminder on why we prefer to live up here in the rainforest of Alaska versus the hustle of suburbia.

Of recent it been raining for about 3 weeks straight with a little bit of a break in the rain and very little sunshine. On sunny mornings like this I can count on the the neighborhood dogs wandering over to our place for their morning treats just after they walk the kids to the bus stop. We will try to share more pictures like this from around town with everyone.