The sunrise today was at 8:46am. Sunset was at 3:08pm. Enough said.
Some advantages of extended darkness: (1) holiday lights are on nearly 24 hours a day so everything is always festive looking; and (2) you get to go on cool night hikes, 'cause it's nighttime at 4pm.
We took one such night hike with the Juneau Outdoor Family Playgroup. All the kids made lanterns for the hike. Addy and Cora made theirs out of sticks and tissue paper with a flameless LED candle.
"This little light of mine. I'm going to let it shine!"
It finally came - our first snowfall! 10+ inches and it did not disappoint.
Let there peace on Earth!
As you can probably tell, both pictures were taken from my car - safely, I promise! The first is a street in our neighborhood. The second is the road in the Lemon Creek area of Juneau. Lemon Creek is where you find shopping. Costco and Home Depot to be specific. You can see the Home Depot sign in the distance. But in classic Juneau fashion, the road to Costco and Home Depot ends at a trail head. This trail, marked by the peace sign clearing, is 6 miles in length, climbing 2000 feet in elevation and leads to the Juneau Icefield (meaning, source of many area glaciers).
Graham had the day off work, the girls had the day off school and while it was a chilly morning, the sun was shining! We headed back to Skater's Cabin to find the lake covered in a layer of thin ice.
Everyone had lots of fun stomping it, kicking it and just generally trying to enjoy the noise it made upon shattering.
We tried mightily to recreate this guy's experience:
But no such luck. The ice was still a little too thin, and I couldn't seem to skip a rock and hold my phone at the same time.
We did have a wonderful campfire, with hot dogs and s'mores.
Contemplating whether this is the most delicious mini hot dog ever...
Getting the perfect amount of burn on her marshmallows...
And then, it was off to explore.
We played around Mendenhall Lake for a while but then we went back by the house to pick up Grandma Sherry and head "out the road" to the Shrine of St. Therese. A stone chapel built in the 1930's meant to be a place of refuge, to experience peace and serenity. It delivered.
We took one such night hike with the Juneau Outdoor Family Playgroup. All the kids made lanterns for the hike. Addy and Cora made theirs out of sticks and tissue paper with a flameless LED candle. 
