Busy, Busy, Busy...

Phew, as you can probably guess from our lack of postings to the blog that we have been busy. I have had a few added responsibilities given to me at work, Jaycie is becoming more and more of a handful (a fun handful, of course), and me and Shannon have had a busy few months with our Church callings. But excuses aside, we have been enjoying the increasing daylight hours and fewer and fewer days below 20 degrees.

We have had some fun moose sightings last week. There is a big bull hanging out by the parking lot at work, I have seen him twice within a couple of days. Jaycie saw him when she and Shannon came to pick me up from work to head off to lunch. She looked out the window and said "horsey!" He was only about 20 feet away. We also have moose tracks in our front yard! A mom and a yearling live in our neighborhood. I guess they came to check out the Moon's place. We didn't see them, they must have cruised through in the night. Here are some pictures of a moose that we saw during mid-day as we were pulling out of the parking lot of Home Depot in the middle of Anchorage!

As you might be able to see, this is a young bull (antlers have shed, but you can still see the knobs where the antler bases were).

He very calmly and confidently (like he knew where he was going) walked behind the Lowe's hardware store (next store to the Home Depot that we were at).

Here is the first picture of the moose (taken from the passenger seat of the Camry) I saw him walking down the sidewalk from the right (yes, they use the sidewalks!). Luckly, no one had to dive into a snowbank off of the same sidewalk he was traveling as he passed by.

Jaycie at a "bouncy gym." There are a few creative ways that you can still get the kids out of the house and give them a work out while it is too cold to be outside for too long. You probably can't tell by the picture, but Jaycie is on a huge bouncy floor. She loves to jump. There are also a lot of inflatable slides that the kids can go on. Jaycie loves slides. Whenever she sees one she says, WEEEE!"

Cute picture of Jaycie with Daddy's hat on.

Jaycie is now running around and learning new words everyday. I don't know if I mentioned it in past postings, but she is making us very proud in that we have taught her to fold her arms while we pray before eating dinner. Now, when we all sit down to the table with our plates of food, she folds her arms before we do. I peaked at her while we pray and she even bows her head.

We are looking forward to the spring and some fun events that are coming up in Alaska. The Ididarod will be starting shortly and we are hoping to see some of the sleds start the trek from downtown Anchorage. I will also be headed down to SLC for my annual work conference in Midway in July. I will be coming alone as Shannon will be in her third trimester and not able to fly - BUMMER. I hope the family is ready to fish, golf and/or have their Phase Ten skills once again put to the test!

A Few More Christmas-Related Pictures

This picture is from about two weeks before Christmas in the hospital lobby. This is Jaycie's first "Santa experience." As you can see, it didn't go very well. As expected, she didn't like the large stranger in the overpowering red suit. Oh well, maybe next year.

Jaycie watching her new Elmo DVD with her two sled doggies that she got for Christmas. She is kind of outgrowing her bouncy seat, but she is used to lounging in it while she watches movies.

Christmas morning. You might not be abel to tell, but it is snowing pretty hard outside. it continued all day. By the next day, I had about 10" of new snow to shovel. Thank goodness it was so cold. The snow was a nice, light powder.

By the way, the farthest house on the right (through the window) is where I saw the black bear last August. He was sniffing around their flower bed (probably looking for berries).

We are all finally feeling a little bit better from our Christmas sicknesses.

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas treated us well this year. Even though we were away from family, we sure enjoyed the special day with our little family. Unfortunately, we were all sick together. Me and Shannon have sinus infections (got antibiotics the day after Christmas) and Jaycie got pink eye (thankfully, a vey mild case).

Aside from the sicknesses, Christmas morning was magical for one little girl. Jaycie is now just starting to understand the gift opening part and Daddy has been trying to instill the Santa tradition with her. She had fun and we had fun taking pictures, filming and laughing with her as she opened her gifts from eveyone. Here are some of the pictures. She was very excited and very cute with her gifts. It snowed all day on Christmas and there was 10 inches to shovel by the next morning.

Thank you all for the gifts and cards. We missed you all, but you wouldn't have wanted us around you all (we pretty much were the walking dead with our sicknesses). And I am glad we weren't stuck in the Seattle airport on our way down.

Well, we hope you all had a fun Christmas as well! See you all in January when I come down for my business meeting on the 16th.

We Have Felt our First Sub Zero Days

It has been COOOLLLDD!! We have had a few days in sub zero temps when I have gotten up to go to work in the early morning hours. Anchorage temps are a little more mild than in Eagle River. Eagle River, being inland from the coast a few more miles than Anchorage is about 3-5 degrees colder. I actually made the mistake to wash our car when it was only about 10 degrees. The water almost instantly froze when it hit the car. I went to one of those car washes that you pull your car into an enclosed port and use the high-powered jet gun. I guess it was just too cold, even with the water being hot coming out of the jet.

We are making the most of it, however. We had a warmer day a while ago, that we took advantage of. We took Jaycie sledding for her first time. There is a gentle sloped hill just behind our house that is perfect for little ones. Jaycie had a great time. So did Mom and Dad. We can't wait to go again, but we need it to be at least 25 degrees.

We are also planning on going to the local ski resort. We have some neighbors that are going to swap babysitting duties with us so we can both have some ski and snowboarding outings. As you can imagine we are looking forwarding to getting out on the slopes.

Photos from our Thanksgiving Trip Home

Jaycie sure had fun with Sunny. Sunny was a good sport and tolerated her rough housing.

We enjoyed our trips to the zoo with Nathan and Amy. Jaycie loves playgrounds now.

Shannon made sure Jaycie saw her favorite animals, bears.

More fun with Sunny.

Most of all we enjoyed being with family and being somewhere sunny and snowless! What a great break.

Halloween Pictures (Finally)

When we were home visiting family, it occured to us that we hadn't shown anyone any pictures of Jaycie in her costume. So, we wanted to post them for everyone to see. She was a kitty this year. The costume made good sense due to the fac that it was relatively warm and we could layer some clothes under it. So, she kind of looks like Randy on the Christmas Story. She is very well bundled up and looks like a well-fed kitty cat.

Jaycie dressed and ready for her first trick-or-treating adventure (we just went to a few houses around our neighbrhood).

We then went to the Trunk-or-Treat that the ward organized. As you can see, I am trying to keep her hands warm (it was probably 30 degrees). Her cheeks ended up getting a little rosie. however, she threw a tantrum when we left, so we knew she had a good time.

Jaycie organizing her stash of goodies that she brought in that night. She wasn't interested in eating them, just organizing them into piles. She especially liked organizing the suckers.

A Few New Words to the Repertoire...

Jaycie has been saying a few new words and phrases lately and we wanted to share them with you. She can say, what's that, uh-oh, bear, and num-num. She for some reason has decided to no longer say a few words as well. She doesn't say doggie anymore, but she will say woof, woof when she sees a doggie. She also hasn't said drink, kittie or horsey for a while. We are not sure why. Maybe she thinks that I have said it before so why repeat it?

Anyway, we are excited to see you all in two short weeks!!