November 30th Update

Grady takes in his first hockey game and watches his Uncle Isaac play. I told Grady to take notes!!

The girls helped bake and decorate their own fall cupcakes!

The quality of light around 3pm. The sun no longer makes it over the ridge. We'll see it again around February! :(

Norah loves school too when she can help Evie with projects. The volcano before...

And after!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was a little interesting due to having the stomach flu visit our house the day before Thanksgiving.We'd had a plan set in place with some good friends and so of course that didn't work out. Our poor little girls were not in good shape so we spent Wednesday cleaning up messes and watching cartoons and on Thursday we slept in and had Thanksgiving dinner at our leisure  (well, Justin and I did...the girls' appetites weren't up to par). All in all, though it would have been more fun to celebrate with friends or family, it was a relaxing day and we enjoyed the company of our kiddos and were able to focus on our many blessings without the worthy distractions of traveling, cleaning house, or being busy!
Victory's high school retreat was cancelled last weekend due to some pretty awful weather. If you live in AK, you know what I'm talking about! When roads close in Alaska due to weather, you know it's bad. Anchorage, Palmer and Wasilla received freezing rain which turned cars to ice cubes and roads to skating rinks. We didn't get much warmer than 13 degrees here at camp, but we got some wind and blowing snow that caused a power outage that lasted about 36 hours. That was a bit of a challenge with 3 kids, being the longest outage I've experienced since living up here. (We have frequent power outages but they usually only last a couple of hours.) We were thankful to have lots of candles and flashlights, a gas range rather than an electric one, and a woodstove! We ended up putting the contents of our refrigerator and deep freeze into coolers on the back porch. Did you know that you can freeze eggs and then thaw and use them again? I didn't either, but now I do. :)
We are looking at December now and the girls are awfully excited about Christmas. Last year we started what seems to be becoming a family tradition of making an advent calendar with a fun Christmas activity to count down every day till Christmas. It especially helps Evie because she can see the time pass in a more understandable way (versus Norah who is still at the age of being excited but not completely sure why).
We hope your holiday season is great and that you don't let the happy chaos of the next month or so overshadow the TRUE reason for the joy that we can have! I will be telling myself that often enough in the next few weeks. :)

November Snow

Our resident beaver was making himself a little too comfortable. The pond was starting to flood. So now the beaver is trapped and skinned and we got to watch the breaking up of the dam by heavy equipment!

Right before our big snow. You can see the mountains were ready!

Our new mouser Rajah really loves Norah...even though she tries to kill him daily!

This little man is almost always smiling! If you place him in the middle of a blanket he will have used his legs to push himself across it within minutes! He just needs to figure out the use of his arms. :)

The snow is here! We got around a foot in a night & a day. Evie's snowpants are mysteriously lost in our house at the moment, so the snow outside remains mostly untouched by little footprints. (They are like their mother anyways: huge lovers of the outdoors but only if the temperature remains above freezing!)
November as a whole is pretty quiet this year around camp - last year it was quite busy so it differs from year to year. There will be plenty of snow removal duties for everyone, though, so they shouldn't get too bored. :)
Evie came down with an ear infection over the past weekend and we made the drive to town to see the doctor on partially unplowed roads and lots of fresh snow. The highway was cleared  much better by the time we drove home in the dark, but we are thankful for snow tires and 4-wheel drive!

Ways you can be praying right now:
-For safety for staff members on the roads & around camp with all the new snow
-For wisdom & discernment as Justin and the program staff discuss next summer and any program changes that may need to take place
-Though there is a lot going on at camp, it is far too easy for me to get my focus stuck inside my own little bubble. Please join me in praying for the recovery from typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines, and the many hurting survivors who lost loved ones. Please pray also for North Korea at this time to be freed from the evil that is going on there. Pray for God's love & power to be shown in both these places right now!