Christmas

Well, I'm not sure how it happened, but I completely missed the month of November. I'm sure lots of important things happened in November, but most of them are slipping my mind right now. Talkeetna seems to have been the subject of several of these blogs, and Beverly and I decided to celebrate Thanksgiving at the cabin, so we loaded up the trailer with two snow machines and a cargo sled and drove up the highway uneventfully. We made the trip in to the cabin in the dark on a trail that hadn't had hardly any use, and other than getting one machine stuck for a while right outside the cabin property, we had a nice time together and even cooked mini-turkeys (Cornish Game Hens) in the wood stove for Thanksgiving dinner a day late. The bear put a small hole in the surface of the cabin and we didn't realize it until the floor kept getting wet. I finally patched the wall and we kept up a dizzying pace of reading, watching movies on the portable DVD player, and relaxing. The trip home was also uneventful.

The month of December has been a little more hectic. Shawn and Rebecca got home from their visit to Idaho (Shawn is home from Iraq, by the way) on Wednesday, and on Friday, the 5th of December we loaded up all the kids and grandkids in 3 or 4 vehicles and after an hour or so of paperwork, secured the permits to cut Christmas trees on Ft. Richardson. There were lots of nice trees, and Beverly and I opted for a tree that we calculated would fit in our atrium. In fact, I paced it off once it was on the ground and cut it off, wrapped it up in a tarp, and heaved it onto the ladder rack on Tyson's truck. We got it home and since we had enough help with everyone there, we brought it right in and measured it again, and without further cutting, put the stand on



it and stood it up. The ceiling is 24 feet and the tree was 23 feet 6" after adjusting the very top


for the angel, so it fit perfectly. I swore last year that I wouldn't go quite so tall again, but it fit, so what could I do. The snow then started to melt off the tree, ran down the trunk and filled the stand to overflowing, so we mopped up water for a while. I spent parts of the next three days repairing light strings, lighting the tree, and putting up the ornaments and after it was all done, it was...and is... quite beautiful. The top two pictures are of the tree lit and then ornamented. The last one is the view from outside in the valley below the house. Wait till it comes to taking it down...but that's another story. Anyway, the next night was the ward Christmas party at church which was fun and for which Beverly did lots of cooking. She also was very busy with her cub scout den for 3 meetings this month, held a gourmet cooking class here for the ladies from church, organized everything non-musical for the high school choir concert on the 12th (costumes, choir trip, visits to the grade schools, tickets for the concert, etc.), and then did all the shopping and cooking for our office Christmas party on the 19th (prime rib and lots of yummy desserts). We had an adult Chrismas party for our church group at a lodge near here and had waffles, and now we are in coast mode until Christmas eve when we will have our traditional Christmas eve program for which we have invited about 40 people. I love Christmas, but I am always worn out by the time it gets here. Today was the Christmas program at church and Jennifer directed the choir in two beautiful numbers and the spoken and musical messages all testified of Christ, his birth, mortal ministry, atonement and resurrection.

Last Thursday and Friday at work we held our deband party where we had scheduled 7 and 6 patients on the two days to get their braces off as Christmas presents to them. Now the end of the year brings closing out the books and doing the end of the year payroll. Beverly is the bookkeeper so that will keep us both a little busy. Our website for the practice is just about ready to kick off. You can see the temporary site now, but in about two weeks the full site in all it's glory can be found at www.erortho.com . Come and see it.

We had planned for Sarah and Chris to join us for Christmas, but thanks to the Global Warming, snow has been dumping from Colorado to Seattle and literally hundreds of flights have been cancelled including theirs, so we still don't know if they will make it. We hope so.

The Lord has blessed us beyond our ability to measure. We are so fortunate to have our wonderful family; parents, children and grandchildren, our health, our faith, our country and even our occupation. We wish you and yours a joyous Christmas and a wonderful and prosperous New Year.

Eldon and Beverly