Approaching Finals

Hard to believe, but finals week is just two short weeks away and I'll have one more semester under my belt. I think that it makes six total. Daniela has been busier than normal with the army, two weeks ago she was in charge of a training and did not get home until about seven pm all week. This past week she was almost sent to Japan to help with the contamination sites two separate times; in each case it was determined that she has too many responsibilities to leave. They actually ended up sending her adviser and now she has even more responsibilities.

How many lanes can you see? There are four.

Just because the roads are not covered in ice and snow does not mean that its any less scary to drive. They use sand instead of salt on the roads and the ice never really melts, so the cars drive the same paths and it creates rutts in the road and removes the paint. Its just as scary to drive now because you can't tell where the lanes are.

Oh yeah... thats what the sun looks like.

Today we had a high of 35 and roughly 11 hours of sunlight. It seriously felt like t shirt weather after enduring this past winter. This past two weeks Anchorage celebrated a yearly festival known as the "fur rendezvous." During this time they have a bunch of different activities. Last week we went to watch a k-5 costume run and then looked at a bunch of ice sculptures and played around on an ice rink in the middle of it all.

There was an outdoor ice rink with these types of sculptures all around it.

 This weekend we went to see the running of the reindeer. This event is supposed to be like the running of the bulls except that the reindeer were fairly small and they were more afraid of the runners than the runners of the reindeer. Afterward we had some excellent street vendor hot dogs and went to the carnival to ride the gravitron. Also there was a snowboarding/skiing competition on this huge, home-made looking, ramp.

THE GRAVITRON! I hadn't seen one of these since the reams in Magna had a carnival in their parking lot. 

For Daniela's birthday we had some friends over for lunch, had some of my specially made cake and watched a movie. It was a nice quiet afternoon.
In other news, I'm starting week 8 of P90X. I'm seeing some good results, but I kind of fell in my eating habits. I've been playing basketball on monday mornings with some people from my ward and on saturday mornings with a group of polynesians. In all, its been good times all around.

February Fantastico!

In reality, this post entails our misadventures since Daniela returned from her arctic training. A few weekends ago we went to our local ski resort called Hilltop. The resort really isnt much, but its only a few minutes away and is pretty cheap. 

Daniela preparing to shred the mighty hilltop.

Valentines Day was awesome! I was at school until 4:00 and Daniela got her wisdom teeth taken out... i mean wisdom tooth taken out. Needless to say it was a nonstop party. Luckily I was able to sneak Daniela's gifts home so that they would be there when she got home.

Flowers, candy  and Step Up 3D. All the ingredients to attain a girls heart.

In other news we've been busy with school and work, we finally have one month of food storage, we've been hanging out with the other biracial couple in our branch and have been enjoying life. Here is something a little more interesting: last summer I could not find any huckleberry soda in all of Jackson Hole (this is the Jackson Hole brand ) but just this week we discovered it in our local Fred Meyers.

Ahhhhhh Huckleberry Soda

Anyways, we'll talk to you later blog.

Sub-Arctic Temperatures

Daniela after a 5K on snowshoes

Daniela beside the thermal shelter she helped build and had to sleep in.

Cross country skiing in Black Rapids, Alaska.

From the 4-17 of January Daniela went to a cold weather training near Fairbanks, Alaska.  As you can tell it was super cold.  The worst temperature she endured was -25 plus the wind chill which makes it feel like -40.  Jack spent this time preparing for school and he spent a nice day at Alyeska snowboarding.

Alyeska

 

New Year

Behold the avocado shake! A very smooth drink, but you can't drink too much.

For new years we, went out to eat at an excellent thai restaurant and watched a few movies. At the thai restaurant we were introduced to an enticing new refreshment: avocado shake.

Its a Celebration!

The Ayres clan with gramps and cousin Josh out shotgun shooting.

Notice how comfortable this trained killer handles a  Glock 9 mm

On December 17th Daniela and I made the long flight south back to Salt Lake City to spend Christmas. I guess that we have acclimatized to Alaska because we were surprised by how warm it was in Salt Lake; I'd forgotten that snow turns into slush. During our short vacation we visited friends, went shotgun shooting and had a traditional Kennington family Christmas.

Winter Wonderland

This trail is off limits during the summer due to high bear traffic

There are various trails throughout Anchorage for cross country skiing; it is one of the few places with groomed public trails. Last Saturday Daniela and I rented some cross country skis to give it a try, we both agree that mastering the correct technique is much harder than it looks and ended up sticking with the middle age woman technique of keeping skis planted and going straight. We asked a few locals about a loop for begginers that would take about an hour... 2 1/2 hours later we made it to the wrong parking lot, when we asked someone else how to get to the correct lot she said that it would would take about 30 mins... so we hitched a ride back. ha ha.
It was very pretty, we went through a section that is closed off during the summer because it is grizz territory; it was gorgeous. Near the end of our time we saw our first live moose here in Alaska, I wanted to take a picture but it was close enough that my better judgement, Daniela, persuaded me to keep going.
If you look at the bottom right corner of the picture you'll notice some really fat bike tires; they are about 4" wide and are used for winter mountain biking. pretty cool.