Tender Mercies

Happy 2014 everyone!!  Thanksgiving Day 2013 I love New Years because it is a time of reflection and hope. It is a perfect time to start over and begin anew! 2013 was a roller coaster ride for me.  I had some of my happiest moments in 2013 and also some of the most challenging.  I'm not about to detail the trials of 2013 because we all have them and there is no use in pointing them out.  But I will remember everything I learned and experienced this year. It truly has been so great and FULL of blessings!! Winter Solstice 2013. I love all of the ice sculptures around Fairbanks. You know that saying, "When it rains, it pours?" well I really feel like that right now in my life, but this gives me no reason to give up hope. In fact, I stumbled upon this speech this morning which was perfect  for the new year.  Below are some of my favorite quotes from it, along with the YouTube link for your viewing pleasure ( Source for quotes ). Oh and some cute pictures of me

I can't help but count the many blessings in my life today.   Lots of beautiful, fresh snow blanketed our warm (9 degrees F) Fairbanks morning as I drove to church this morning. I was looking forward to spending my morning in the Christmas spirit as I celebrated the birth of Christ with everyone else at church.  The service was wonderful, and afterwards I quietly slipped out before classes were over to head to the rink. The snow was still falling as I was driving to the rink for our first "In-house" competition in years and annual Fairbanks Skating Club holiday recital.*  I was looking forward to seeing all of my lovely skaters and watch them perform. They had all worked so hard over the past couple of months, and this was going to be the culmination of all of our efforts.  It was a simple miscalculation on my part though. I was driving in the right had lane and remembered the lane was ending and  that I would need to merge back into traffic. Seeing as there was

Christmas trees are important.  I have good memories of going to the California mountains with my family every year to cut down our Christmas tree. I loved decorating it with ornaments while listening to Christmas music on our player piano.  This year is our first year actually spending Christmas in our own home, so it was imperative to have a tree! Well, at least it was for me.  But I didn't want to spend $60-$100 for a real one.  We don't have any space to store a fake one after the decorations come down.  We live in Alaska where the really nice, "classic" trees don't grow (at least I didn't see any). We borrowed a snowmachine from Marshall's buddy and we rode off into the hills until we found a tree that would do. It was relatively even and wasn't brown and dead. At least not all the way yet. I was pretty happy with it. I think the best part was just spending time with the man I love. My fingers were pretty numb by the

I don't know if my husband is going to feel satisfied if we move away from Alaska before he shoots a moose. We are keeping our fingers crossed that he will get one this winter.  How cool would it be to check that off our bucket list? Since we can't do that yet, at least we can check off eating moose from our list.  I've got to thank my Uncle Paul for making this possible.  As we were leaving his home after our Thanksgiving visit, he filled up our little cooler with moose meat--stew meat, ground meat, a chuck roast, and steaks. We felt so blessed! It is really good meat because he happened to get a young calf, which makes for really tender and non-gamey tasting meat.  Mmmm...Alaskan moose stew Last week I tried my hand at making stew in the crock pot for the first time (gasp!).  It turned out really good, and as we were eating it that evening, I realized that all of the ingredients were from Alaska. The potatoes from Delta Junction, onions from a local farm, the car