Christmas Letter

As the winter and Christmas season approaches we realize how quickly 2010 has flown by! It is always a highlight for us to recieve news from family and friends at this time of year.

In January Pat took another course in web design studies through the University of Alaska, learning advanced web design with an introduction to JavaScript. The latter topic was extremely challenging and while she managed to see it through, it isn't something she plans to pursue further (whew!). Pat taught acrylic painting classes to a couple groups of homeschoolers, in still life and landscape. She also enjoyed teaching two new students (ages 6 and 7 1/2) a beginner's art class of learning the basics of color, pattern, texture, and drawing with simple shapes. Her students alway inspire her as they learn and grow in their art skills.

Near the end of May we flew to Raleigh, NC to visit Chris's family and to attend a cousin's wedding in Virginia. It was a joy to witness Daniel and Lois's beautiful wedding celebration and it brought back memories of our wedding day almost 13 years ago to the day. Our time in Virginia gave us the oppurtunity to visit with many family members. While we were in Raleigh we got to visit with Aunt Linda as well - it was so good to see everyone!

This past year our church family grieved deeply for the loss of three loved ones who went to be with the Lord. It's been difficult to accept but God's comfort and peace has been evident day by day, and we know He works through all circumstances for His glory. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." - Matthew 5:4

In August Pam and Sarah came to Ketchikan for a few days. We shared a quilting craft table at the Blueberry Arts Festival. The weather was cool and damp. Sarah (7) used blue crayons to color a page from her coloring book, held it up for people to see, and welcomed them to come and "pick anything you want" at our booth - an adorable little blueberry helper!

In the two days following American Thanksgiving Pat participated in the Winter Arts Faire and had a table with quilted fall- and Christmas-themed table runners, small zippered fabric bags, potholdders, and Pam's beautiful crocheted snowflake ornaments. It was a fun event and unlike the Blueberry Festival the Faire was indoors so there were no weather worries. Interestingly, Pat shared something in common with fellow crafters next to her. On the left, knitted hats and scarves were made and sold by friends name Pam and Pat... on the right, the handmade jewelry designer was Ivy Rose... friendly Faire neighbors with names in common!

We do not have any bear stories to tell this year (for which we are thankful), but in October it was weather that became headline news in Ketchikan. We had hurricane force wind and rain storms come through several times, causing power outages over many days. Linemen were flown in from outside regions to help restore things back to normal. Tree cutters were also in big demand in delaing with the many trees that ended up leaning across power lines and falling across roads. We now have our own generator for future emergencies. Power outages are not uncommon in our community but October's weather created longer and more serious outages than usual.

In spite of a very busy summer and fall at the Coast Guard base Chris has been working hard on honing his pastel painting skills in his free time. He plans to evenually make prints and sell them at a couple of local art gallery stores, and hopefully he'll be able to have an art show sometime in the future. Most of all he just wants to enjoy and grow in the art of creating art!

Happy New Year!

The Son of God became a man to

enable men to become the sons of God.

- C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

Independence Day Parade

The weather cleared up just long enough to head into town to see the Independence Day Parade get started. This is the first time in quite a long that the parade started on the south end of town and headed north to finish at the Plaza Mall. The food and game booths were set up in the malls parking lot. Always look forward to our little town's festive parades each year as so many are eager to celebrate together even in the rain. Below are a few pictures taken that day to share with everyone. Hoping next year will be sunny and warm.

The beginning of our towns parade.

Someone is expecting rain for the day.

Misty Thistle Pipes & Drums of Ketchikan.

Local Alaska Natives marching in the parade.

KAAHC Parade Banner.

Outfit from 2010 Wearable Art Show.

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!

Holiday Tree

Here are a few photos taken over the holiday season. We decide to remain at home this year versus going off to visit family or friends elsewhere. With the bad weather on the east coast and in the mid-west it prove to be a good decision; plus we saved a few dollars in this economic down turn.

Patricia putting some finishing touches on the tree this year.

Putting on the string of lights gets interesting when there is a short or missing bulb.

We usually put a real tree for the holidays but in past two years its been a fake tree. When the real tree was up the cats would come running over to drink the water from under the tree. So for the past two years we've placed a bowl of water under the tree just for the cats. They get a fresh bowl placed next to their food everyday, but for some reason the water tastes better under a tree...they're so funny!

Mardi dressed up for the occasion...he looks so noble and handsome!

Farley looking for the toy mouse or is it a real one!

Winter Decorations

Getting caught up on a few blog post from this past winter. Patricia and I decided to drive around the town looking at neighborhood winter decorations. Not many on the island put up these decorations so its a treat to hunt them out and take a couple of drive-by photos.

Quite the set up even had a little bit of fresh snow to brighten things up. I think next year we're going to try taking video as there is much more going on than this photo is revealing.

This house not only had decorations but also play holiday music for folks like us who were driving by for the evening show.

Not sure why there is a snow globe, it was all steamed up so couldn't make out the scene inside that was unfolding. We like the lighthouse to the far left and the reindeer. All in all it was a good drive through town to hunt out these winter decorations; such a holiday spirit can't help but make it a special time.

Home For Christmas

Short video of our Christmas Holiday together.

A Grandma For Christmas

Here is a 2 minute video of the Christmas evening play at Calvary Bible Church titled 'A Grandma For Christmas'. The children did a wonderful job of presenting this play to us and our visitors.

4th July Parade

All four of us headed out the door this morning to watch the 4th of July Parade go through downtown Ketchikan. We arrived early thinking the parade started at 1100 am, to our surprise we found out that it started at Noon. We stood around talking about various ways towns celebrate holidays. At one point Frank & I went to get a cup of java on the docks. While in line we noticed a group of people standing behind us were some of the actors from the Much Ado About Nothing performance form the previous night. We thanked them for the wonderful job they did that night then headed back to the girls.

When we got back to our viewing point we notice that the crowd had grown quite a bit. And that Donna and Jenny, friends from church had join Pat and Janet. Shortly there after the kids parade started. As you can tell by the photos in the slide show the kids parade was great. Once the kids parade end then the main parade started with a fly by from Temsco Helicopter with a hugh America flag in tow.

About half hour later the main parade grouped showed up in the downtown area. There was lots of cheering and candy being thrown from each parade floats that drifted by us. We recognized many of our neighbors and friends partcipating in the festive events. As the parade was coming to and end we made our way to Salmon Landing to grab a bit to eat versus hitting the make shift food court.

We headed home shortly after finishing our lunch to relax in the sun on our deck over looking the ocean. I was very beat by the end of the day as I ran in a charity run the night before. All in all the day was sunny and the parade was great for a small town.