Baby, it's cold outside...really freakin' cold.*

The fun part of living in Alaska is that it's basically living in your favorite fantasy books.  In the summer, I live on the edge of the Enchanted Forest.  In the fall, I live in Lothlorien.  Then, when the snow falls,  my backyard is Narnia, where it's always winter and never Christmas (until tomorrow, that is).

It's been in the negatives for a couple weeks now.  It was a bit of an abrupt drop, but it is stunningly gorgeous.  When it's so cold your first breath crackles a little, there's diamond dust in the air.  The trees glitter with hoarfrost.  The few hours of daylight are rosy twilight, with the sun skipping just high enough above the horizon that you're blinded and in pain whenever you drive south.  At night, sometimes, you get light pillars--when it's cold enough that the moisture in the air crystallizes, and reflects the lights up.

This isn't snow.

And it's really stinking cold, too.  So cold that the doorplate *inside my house* has a coating of frost tonight, and the inside of my screen door has iced over.  We tried taking the kids to Christmas in Ice, the annual ice-sculpture park that is set up by the Santa Claus House in North Pole every year.  Even with Claudia so layered up that she could only starfish, it was just too cold to stay longer than an hour, most of which was spent in the warm-up trailer where we could see our breath.

-22 tonight!

-10 at the park

I also love the snowflakes.  I've never seen them as big anywhere else. The other night I was out on my porch and the snowflakes were so big they looked fake.

But enough waxing poetic.  The snow isn't going anywhere until April, so there will be plenty of time to talk about it.

Thanksgiving was delightful.  The night before we had a pre-emptive pie night.  Because I am surrounded by unrepentant punners, we naturally had a chocolate moose pie.  The day of actual festivity, we had some friends over for games and ham.  It was a nice way to spend the evening.

Rick and I finally made it to an Ice Dogs hockey game.  We have two main teams up here--the UAF Nanooks and the Ice Dogs.  The Army and Air Force also play, but they're more of a specialty game.  Anyway, I was told that if I wanted to see proper, rule-based hockey, to watch the Nanooks--and if I wanted to watch real hockey, to go to the Ice Dogs.  My source wasn't kidding.  Even a couple of hockey-illiterates like ourselves could see the cheating.  There was hooking, sticking, multiple fist fights.  Even the goalie of the visiting team was sent sprawling, helmet flying, and took several minutes to pick himself off the ice.  The fans were brutal.

I can't wait to go again in January.

Then, on the 30th of November, we had the earthquake. We were in the middle of school when all of a  sudden I felt like the couch was rocking.  I thought I was just dehydrated or something, but then I saw the blinds swaying gently back and forth and promptly announced, mostly out of surprise, that we were having an earthquake.  The kids thought it was cool--the house gently wobbled, kind of like Jello, for roughly a minute.  Then we all took to Facebook to track the news.  Sure enough, there had been a 7.0 earthquake in Anchorage (tangent--it took about two minutes for the tremor to cover the 350 miles from Anchorage to Fairbanks).  Anchorage continued to be rattled by aftershocks for days. Main highways and roads were collapsed and blocked by landslides, houses and buildings cracked.  It could have been really bad.

Yet it wasn't.  First off, earthquakes aren't exactly new up here.  After the Good Friday earthquake in 1964, which leveled part of Anchorage, Alaskans started building structures that could handle the shaking.  According to an exhibit at UAF, Alaska averages an earthquake about every 15 minutes.  We have at least one magnitude 7 to 8 a year, an average of six 6.0-7.0 quakes, and countless smaller ones--the majority of earthquakes that occur in the U.S.--and 11% of all earthquakes recorded world-wide--actually take place in Alaska.

What's amazing, though, is what happened afterwards. There were no deaths.  There are no stories of looting, no cell phone videos of chaos and depraved humanity going viral, no runs on basic supplies like gas and bread.  Instead, there are pictures of shattered highways that are repaired less than a week later, stories of people going door to door to check on their neighbors and volunteering to go clean up grocery stores so they can reopen.  Anchorage is still rebuilding in parts, but it's pretty much just life as usual.  There wasn't even a hiccup in fuel or groceries in the Interior, despite the roads and train tracks being repaired.  Alaskans are incredible.

And, naturally, it spawned some hilarious memes.  Because that's naturally what you do when you get a day off from work because the road is broken.

We ventured out to the local production of the Nutcracker Suite in a naïve but well-intentioned attempt to expose our kids to culture.  The ballet was very nice--Leah and Aeryn in particular loved it--and the dancers are mind-boggling athletes, but I don't think ballet's my thing (especially with a toddler in tow).  Maybe if they had razor blades on their feet and the nutcracker went after the rats with a stick, I'd enjoy it more.  *shrug* Since Rick fell asleep in the second act, I think he'll be okay not going again.

It looks empty, but we were just early.  That auditorium was *packed*

We took a break from having fun to deal with a slightly unpleasant stomach bug.  By "slightly" I mean that I had two children who vomited every time they thought about food for three days and lived on my living room floor within spewing distance of a bucket, and a third who slept for a weekend and complained about nausea. Thank goodness for carpet cleaners and praise Thor's mighty abs that nobody else got sick.

The solstice was the 21st, and you can't mention winter in Alaska without mentioning the solstice. We had just under four hours of daylight (and I use that term loosely) that day.  I always love it, and I'm always a little sad in my vole heart when the solstice passes and the days start getting longer again.

Sunrise 10:58

Noon

Sunset 2:40

Christmas has happened in a rush.  Saturday, Santa came around the neighborhood on the firetruck, handing out candy canes to anyone who risked the cold to say hi.

The next day was the Christmas program at our church.  Rick narrated.  I love that man's voice.  Frankly, it's a crime that he wasn't alive during the golden age of radio.  Afterwards, we had dinner at our friends' house.  They have basically built a jungle gym in their living room, and Rick and the girls had a spectacular time playing on the gymnast rings, attempting the obstacle course, and hucking balls (and 25 pound bags of beans) at their friends.  Good times.  I'm pretty sure we outstayed our welcome, but it's pretty much the host's job to kick you out after 10 so I can't be held responsible.

Tonight (last night?) we had some other friends over for games and snacks.  I made a pavlova (a baked ring of meringue topped with whipped cream and fresh berries and pomegranate) and a buche de noel.  We played Jackbox games until one of our guests had to leave because they have a cat allergy and our house was literally killing them, no biggie.  We even got our annual Christmas moosen--a mama and her twinners strolled into our yard during dinner.

Once we chased the girls to bed, we finally loaded all the presents under the tree. I've been resisting Christmas because it's been hard enough trying to convince Claudia to keep the ornaments on the tree.  I certainly didn't want to be constantly rewrapping presents from Thanksgiving until tomorrow (today?  It's so darn late).  At any rate, I can muster a little Christmas spirit now that it's basically here.  Yes, those are even Christmas jammies.

That catches us up.  And now to bed.  It's going to be an early morning.

*Aside--I can't believe people are going nuts over that song.  Everyone needs to calm down a little bit.  Eat some pie.  Care about things that actually matter.  Maybe learn the context of the song.  And if you still don't like it, change the station.