Wow - hard to believe it's November already. This fall has flown by. We're two weeks away from heading to Cancun (yahoo!) so I'm frantically updating photos, deleting cards, organizing before I get snowed under. Literally.
We had the nicest night for Halloween since we've lived here - light snow and around 20 degrees. It was a nice change from 85 mph winds and/or minus 20 below. Nate was Thomas the Train and went around the neighborhood with Roger. We also took him to the Alaska Museum of Transportation and Industry where they'd set up their model trains and had a haunted train for the kids to go thru. Grace and I hung out with her girl scout troop that evening for a party and group trick-or-treat walk. She was a black cat and freaked out Anubis the first time she came downstairs in her mask. He puffed up like a cardboard cat cut-out to three times his size and hissed at her. It was so funny, I forgot to get my camera until he'd mostly calmed down.
Grace had her birthday party a few days before. We brought the girls to the pool for open swim and then they had a sleep over and were MUCH better behaved this year. She cashed in (literally) on her b-day presents and now is richer than we are. We've started a cash tab with her. :) She's counting down the days to Mexico and trying to decide what she'll buy first. She's joined robotics again this year, has basketball try-outs Nov. 15 and will try-out for a play with Valley Performing Art that week, also. If she gets a part, she'll skip basketball season since the practice times are so intense. We'll see what happens.
Nate and Luke are rink rats again. Nate is skating intro-to-play again while Luke's high school season is ramping up. He's playing varsity this year and heads to Fairbanks this weekend w/ the team. He's also still skating competitive hockey (he's no. 12 in the photo) on Sundays, since HS rules prevent comp. kids from playing games during the HS season - they can only pay during vacations. He's missing the Thanksgiving tournament but heads to Arizona over Christmas with the team for a national competition. It'll be his first time playing Outside - should be an interesting experience. He's also got a full load at school and is keeping up pretty well w/ a heavier homework load than most.
Roger's company is reorganizing w/ rumors floating that they're closing the Anchorage station. We haven't heard yet what's going to happen but their flight load here is way down. Business is shifting to the east coast/Europe/Middle East. He'll either start traveling again as a tech rep or move farther up the food chain and travel again as a director. Either way, we're enjoying his time here at home. He completed another Thomas bookshelf for our school auction that looks great.
I'm loving my PE job at Academy and writing grants to improve our health/fitness program there. I'm also doing some minor freelancing and started up a news business blog with two (former) newspaper buddies called The Palmer Post. Our goal is to post weekly but that's been a challenge since we're all overbooked parents that work outside the home. I think our audience is bigger than our follower queue bc people are always stopping me to ask about it or give me tips aka, gossip - some of them I barely know. It's fun and a great way to get the inside scoop in our community.
