Be careful what you wish for!

I don't know if I should appologize to Fairbanks for making my earlier comment about not being able to earn our badge of honor when at the time I wrote that it hadn't even hit 20 below. Well, the cold weather has hit - it was 43 below this morning and the ice fog coming into town was like pea soup. But the good news is that it will be warming up to 20 below tomorrow. We all have earned our badge for cold weather and hopefully this will be the last we see of it ... at least for this year (2007). I hope that everyone has a great Christmas! Take the time to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate and a Christamas cookie.

More about Brent.

For those of you who have not met Brent, a few of his favorite things ... hunting, hunting, hunting and hunting. You get the picture. He was able to squeeze is a quick day hunt for a moose on while he was home on his shift home this fall. Brent got a huge cow moose, and as he describes her - she was one of the first to cross the ice bridge (meaning she was pretty old). After a hunter processes the meat, one of the things required by Fish and Game is that the hunter bring in the lower jaw. By doing this they are able to determine the health and the age of the animal. By the estimates given by Fish and Game, they said the one Brent shot was about 12 years old. If you take a look at the picture you can see by the size of her head, compared to Brent's leg, how big she was! Needless to say we have a freezer full of meat and that is after giving half the meat away to Brent's friend who helped him process it.

Sunrise . . . . sunset

Just another day at the office for Brent while he is on patrol in Delta. While he is out, Brent is able to capture some amazing pictures of the scenery along with the wildlife too. To give you an idea of what the view is like attached is a picture of a sunrise taken at about 9:00 am earlier this month and a picture of a sunset (with a view of the Alaska Range) taken at about 3:00 pm. But as I mentioned before, just another week and we will start gaining sunlight again!

Winter Solstice . . .

December 21st is soon approaching. To the lower 48, this date is considered the first day of winter???? Where "winter" has arrived in Fairbanks in early October, December 21st marks the shortest day of the year (just a little over 3 hours and 40 minutes of sunlight) but it is the light at the end of the tunnel as well. Each day we start gaining sunlight until we hit the summer solstice where it is the total opposite, no darkness and the sun does not set below the horizon. To keep busy up here during the darkest months, ice carving competitions have become a great way to appreciate the winter days. For the first time this year there is an ice park set up at Santa Claus house in North Pole. Check out the link to the right to see live web cam updates of the carvings. It is amazing what the artists can do with a block of ice and a lot of creativity. Also , take a look at the Arctic Cam link and you can see how light and/or dark it is via a web cam that is posted on a building in downtown Fairbanks. Until December 21, we will listen on the news as we hear how much sunlight we are losing each day and then by the end of the month we'll start gaining a few minutes more each day!

Carrot cake it is.

The favorite choice was carrot cake. But the best part about wedding cakes is that you can have more than one flavor. Now the next poll is to see what dance is the most popular . . . I can only wait to see what one is chosen.