It's Thanksgiving time, and we have a lot to be thankful for. The Subaru ended its vacation at Pillar Creek Beach, just in time to take us to Thanksgiving dinner at the KI. We're thankful for a blue sky Thanksgiving day. We're thankful for all the people who helped us get it out. We're thankful for good Samaritans. We're thankful that no children were decapitated in the process. We're thankful to have learned an important lesson about snow tires. And Pillar Creek Road.
We're thankful that we can now start being thankful for the snowiest November in Kodiak in over 20 years. We're thankful for snow sports. Thankful for being able to sled in our yard.
We're thankful for Lucha Libre snow masks. Did I mention that it's been cold?
Of course, we're thankful for all our friends and our family. We're thankful for modern technology like Skype and cell phones and Facebook and email that helps us keep in touch. We're thankful for jet airplanes, too. And trains. And ferries.
We're thankful to be healthy. We're thankful for warm fires on cold stormy days. We're thankful to be living in Kodiak, Alaska.
We're thankful for our shiny brand new computer that doesn't take five minutes to click programs open. It's not that we're unthankful for our old computer. We're just more thankful about having replaced it.
I'm personally thankful for all of the above, plus I'm thankful for 13 years of life partnership with my dear lupu. (Lupu is short for life partner.) We both have to confess to forgetting the Cat-Griz game last weekend. (For us Montanans it's quite a big festivity.) It snuck right up on us. Our chance meeting in 1998 is what we celebrate as the starting point of our life adventure together, even though we simultaneously roamed the halls of
Hellgate High from '88-'92. It seems like just yesterday that I was trying to impress Genevieve with my remote starting red 4X4 van as we departed the SLC Port o' Call satellite party. ("I swear, it usually works.")
Having forgotten the big occasion, we decided to celebrate on Sunday. Right after a short surfing mission. In-town waves! The surf mission was short. Getting the car back
up the hill was not. After a couple hours of attempting to get back up the hill, I was approximately 100 feet further down the hill than when I started. Of course, I was in my wetsuit this whole time. And the blizzard was picking up. A
short wetsuit blizzard jog and a good samaratin phone call later, Genevieve arrived for a Monster Van full team Wilco rescue. Tough Team Alert! Tough Team Alert!
Of course, the tow truck guy just laughed and said "No way!" So, we were off to do it ourselves. We bought some too small chains, the last pair in town, and headed out. Two hours later, we'd moved it about 15 feet up the hill.
We called it a night after learning an important lesson about leaving kiddos in a car with operable power windows. Namely, don't. Fortunately, we were close enough to prevent any decapitations. But Paxson had locked the doors, so it was fairly scary. We're glad it didn't turn out worse!
Back to the car. It wasn't hung up on anything, it's just that the road was solid ice. The very slippery kind. Eventually, with help from a lot of people over five days, we were able to get it out. Some friends tried to help on Wednesday and wound up getting stuck for a couple of hours themselves! We wound up using a 2 ton come-along to ratchet it up through the steep part. And the final pull out was from a good Samaritan who was passing by on Thanksgiving morning. Thank you, everyone!
Pax and Stokes thought Genevieve would rather be a fisherman than a princess, so we had to give the fisherman some feminine touches to turn him into Genevieve. Long flowing brown frosting hair and some cream cheese frosting augmentation.
I'm hoping I can make Genevieve's upcoming 38th birthday so awesome it will catapult me right out of the dog house. The candle selection might hurt my chances.
We went into the big city so that Genevieve could take some PT continuing ed. My favorite thing about her class was the venue's proximity to Golden Donuts. She might agree. We had high hopes of visiting friends, but it turns out that being in the big city with three mini-ninjas makes for challenging logistics. We rested our heads at the Dimond Hotel, and spent most of the daytime up at Team Wilyo's. The timing was perfect for celebrating Regan and Paxson's birthdays. And watching a 3D Puss N Boots. And frolicking in the snow.
The cool thing about the Dimond Hotel is each room has a HUGE bathtub ("Like Aunt Rani's"), and a portal that opens up so that you can watch TV from the tub. The kids loved it. The other cool thing about the Dimond is that it's owned by the Seldovia Native Association, so there's lots of cool Seldovia stuff in the hotel. 
Arashi in the foreground.
Arashi in the foreground.
Zooming in on the two specks. Long rides!
"What did I do to deserve this?"
Sweet rides at the Dimond Mall.
Birthday bakugan!
Too fast, too furious.
Gourmet cuisine at Chuck E Cheese.
I wish this one was in focus.
Lunch dessert at Thai Kitchen.
Large snowy mountain, very far away.
