Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Greetings from Ketchikan! Last winter the snow began arriving in force on December 23, and continued almost daily for two weeks. From that point on we spent four months traversing the steep hill to our house on foot, leaving our vehicles parked on the street below. While there have been several snowfalls since mid-November, currently we have barely any snow at all and temperatures have been fluctuating between crisp and cold to very mild. It’s quite the contrast to the same time last year.

University Online (Jan-Apr)
Pat signed up for an online course through the University of Alaska, learning HTML Web Design. She designed web pages by writing the computer code from scratch. For her midterm project she used sister-in-law Lisa’s company (Carolina Vascular Wellness) to design a series of web pages. For her final project she used her mother’s family history as the topic. Pat thoroughly enjoyed this course!

Hummingbird Festival (Apr)
As part of Ketchikan’s annual Hummingbird Festival sponsored by the Forest Service, Chris taught a 2-hour bird-drawing class at the Discovery Center in downtown Ketchikan. Eleven students attended the class. Chris put together a short visual PowerPoint presentation and Pat assisted him. There was a Hummingbird Juried Art Show with submissions by many town and local residents in the Southeast Alaska area. The art show’s criterion was for artists to render Alaska migratory birds, in any medium. All seven of our home school art students entered the show, as did Chris. Carrie (13) received “Best in Juvenile” and her brother Paul (10) placed “First in Juvenile”.

Rosie-locks and the Two-many Bear Cubs (Jun-Jul)
In June and again in July we experienced two home invasions…of the non-teddy bear kind. The first encounter happened on a sunny Saturday morning. Chris was outside carrying bags of garbage down to the truck to take to the dump. Pat was in the bathroom blow-drying her hair…when out of the corner of her eye she saw a movement. Lo and behold, a bear cub was peering through the open doorway!! The bathroom door was quickly closed and when Pat peeked out a short time later, the cub was nonchalantly checking out the living room where Mardi-cat was beginning to wail in fright. Pat made beeline out the back door purposely leaving it open. On the way she saw that the cub had climbed into the open back window and had torn out the screen. A visibly shaking Pat alerted an incredulous-faced Chris and he entered the front door yelling and throwing a pair of sandals at the cub, forcing it to leave via the back door. Chris was definitely Pat’s hero of the day! Pat spent a couple of months carefully looking both ways before leaving the bathroom.

The second encounter took place in July. Pat arrived home with several bags of groceries and as she entered the house she immediately noticed an odd odor! It didn’t take long to realize that another cub had been inside the house and had strewn the kitchen garbage all over the kitchen floor. She quietly tiptoed around to check every room for animals (other than cats). Thankfully, the cub had already left! Somehow the cub managed to force his way through the cat door at the back of the house. There were many muddy paw prints on the windows in the living room where he tried to leave, and more on the window in the back room where he had entered and exited. Since then, it has been several months of opening the front door and carefully peeking inside before entering the house.

Family Gathering (Jun)
The big highlight of 2009 was celebrating Pat’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary at the end of June. The family got together in Calgary, Alberta, where Pat’s sister Cheryl and her family live. The last time our family was together was in 1997 for our wedding. It was a very special time and we enjoyed every minute of it. We made them an anniversary quilt (wall-hanging), incorporating five photos of Mom and Dad, including their wedding photo, each one representing one decade. Pat pieced the quilt, Pam hand-quilted it using a fleur-de-lys (lily) design, and Cheryl embellished it with several beautiful antique buttons that Mom and Grandma Burrill had collected over the years.


Following a wonderful week in Calgary, Pam and Chuck, Laura and Sarah, Chris and Pat drove up to Jasper National Park and shared a darling cabin in the woods for 3 days. We celebrated Canada Day in downtown Jasper by attending the small-town parade. We later drove to Mayerthorpe to visit Aunt Ann and Uncle Alfred on their farm where we enjoyed a very relaxing 3 days. Pam, Chuck and the girls continued driving back home to Juneau, Alaska. We flew home feeling very refreshed from a great2-week vacation.

Back to School (Sep)
In September Pat went back to school with another online course, Web Scripting. The class is almost finished, with just the final project to be completed by mid-December. This course has been extremely challenging, once again writing computer code from scratch, learning how to design forms for web pages, entering user information (i.e. name, address, choosing a product to purchase, etc.), collecting and storing the information in a database. It’s fascinating to begin understanding the in-behind-scenes of computer technology via the web. It’s also a lot like learning math again – the course resurrected some high school memories of algebraic-type formulas. It’s been a worthwhile experience!

Happy New Year!
We can hardly believe that another new year is quickly approaching already. We are deeply grateful for the blessings of 2009, and you are a part that. Some people we have seen recently, others we have not seen in a long time, but the continued connections we have especially at this time of year mean a great deal to us!