As is often the case, I’ve been having too much fun for a full post. Happy New Year!

I was supposed to catch up on sleep during this break, but the opposite has been the case. The two Anchorage trips, in particular, messed with my sleep schedule by late (or early) arrivals and departures. Plus, I've been staying up too late playing Assassin's Creed: Valhalla while also having early mornings due to movie marathons or car appointments. 

Considering that tomorrow is our New Year's Day celebration, I don't foresee getting much of a chance to catch up on sleep before reporting back to work on Monday. It hasn't helped that many of my nights have been restless for one reason or another. I suppose that I should probably close this post now so I can get some sleep tonight.

Katrina, Peter, Irene, and Alistair all made it home safely. For the most part, the roads really were not that bad, with the iciest section being directly in the pass. It took less time to drive there (and back) than it when I went to get them. Thankfully, their flights did not have any major problems--although they were over an hour late for their final arrival. 

Our time with them was entirely too short, as it always seems to be. We are hoping that we will get to see them again sometime this summer. At least then the travel should be a lot safer.

Tomorrow, I take Katrina and Peter up to Anchorage as they have a flight out in the wee hours of the following morning. The bizarre warming with freezing rain that we had today has made everything quite slick again (and power lines prone to fall). I'm not too concerned about the drive as we will have plenty of time, but the drive around Turnagin arm might be a little tricky.

Our second concern is over the number of delayed and cancelled flights that airlines (especially Alaska Airlines) has had out of Seattle. Hopefully, Katrina and Peter will not have to deal with cancelled flights there, but we received a message today to be prepared for the possibility. Unfortunately, it was not enough to convince them to just stay up here with us for the foreseeable future.

In the end, we take the precautions that we can and leave the rest up to the Lord.

One thing that this holiday break has driven home is how slow our Internet speed is in comparison to our usage. Several of our Christmas gifts were games requiring downloads. With multiple games downloading simultaneously, our Internet has been at a crawl for the past few days. It’s been bad enough that I’ve had to make all of my daily posts from my phone while using cellular data.

We don’t have terrible Internet, but it can’t quite keep up with the growing demand of multiple devices with growing download sizes. I’m hoping that Starlink will help us out in this area soon, but I don’t think that will happen u til this summer.

I couldn't help but be struck by the difference between Hannah from the first reading and Mary from the Gospel. In both cases, they are given a special child. In Hannah's case, she hands Samuel over to the temple to dedicate him to the Lord as soon as he is weaned at three years old (his terrible twos must have been truly terrible). Mary, however, keeps Jesus with her, and it is only on their visit to Jerusalem when He is twelve that He goes to the temple on His own, astonishing those who listen to Him. Rather than leave Him there, Mary has Him come home to Nazareth with her and Joseph--which He does so and "was obedient to them."

Jesus does not begin His ministry until His thirties. Samuel lives his live in the temple starting at three years old. Even though Jesus is the Son of God, most of His life is spent outside of the temple. Today's reading is one of only a couple times that it is mentioned that He even visits it. Perhaps this is part of Jesus' message: that being devoted to God is more than spending one's life in the temple. Rather, He stayed with His family until the time came for Him to preach out in the world.

Christians need to be Christians out in the world, not just while at Church. Being a part of our families is a holy and necessary part of out faith. Following the path of Christ means to do so every day as part of our everyday lives.

Janelle made a fantastic Christmas dinner. Everyone seemed to be happy with their presents. Even the dogs managed to not fight fight over their Christmas treats. Meanwhile, our Internet has been perpetually downloading game files.

​I hope that everyone was able to have at least as blessed of a Christmas as we did.

As has been the case for the past few years, we waited to do most of our Christmas present wrapping until today. The process took several hours and multiple rolls of wrapping paper, but they are now safely under the tree. Meanwhile, Janelle finished filling the stockings (which go down our stairs as our house does not have a fireplace). We seem to be set to go for tomorrow.

We did our normal Christmas church experience today. I played guitar and sang at the 5 pm service while Trevor and I both sang at our 9 pm "midnight" mass with the main choir. I still miss having the children's choir, and I hope that we will bring it back by Christmas next year.

I am quite tired and ready for bed. I feel like my children and grandchildren are going to get us up early tomorrow. As a sign of that, I think that tonight was the earliest that Connor has gone to bed in a while as he still has the child-like desire to get up early on Christmas.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I had a nice birthday. While the number 48 does not hold any particular significance for me (and only has the factors of four twos and a three), it still felt like a milestone. Perhaps this is because I thought of myself as being 47 for nearly two years. Perhaps I just like the combination of six times eight. Whatever the reason, it feels good to be 48.

My annual movie marathon was of the Spider-Man movies; although we stopped short of watching Far from Home. Perhaps we can revisit the last two Avengers movies and then watch it to put Tom Holland's Spider-Man in proper perspective. I'm still glad that Katrina pushed me to watch Homecoming so we could end the marathon on a high note. That second Amazing Spider-Man is quite depressing (and probably why that series came to an end).

Still, I liked both of the Amazing Spider-Man movies more on this viewing than I had before, especially the first one. I think that this was only my second time watching either of them, and I'm glad that I liked them more on this viewing. The same is true for the first Spider-Man movie. I have always liked it, but I liked it even more than I remembered liking it before. Sadly, I liked Spider-Man 2 (with Doc Ock) less than I remember liking it; in the past, it had been my favorite Spider-Man movie, but I find it harder to watch every time--probably because it makes me dislike MJ so much by the end. Meanwhile, Spider-Man 3 is still absolute trash. The only thing I appreciated was just how many memes have been generated from this movie. I think that I can safely say that I will never willingly watch that movie again.

Now, I just need to go see No Way Home again.

I loved watching this show. There are a few things that bothered me, especially some of the resolutions and unanswered questions at the end of the show, but the good bits outnumbered any problems that I had. I am particularly enamored with the new character of Kate Bishop. Although she is almost lighthearted to a fault, I felt that the character was really well written with an excellent performance by Hailee Steinfeld.

Kate's banter is probably my favorite part of the show. It is an excellent counterpoint to Clint's much darker and brooding storyline and character. Together, they made a excellent team (even with its off-again, on again moments). However, it's her developing interactions with Yelena in the last couple of episodes that was my absolute favorite part.

My biggest complaint is that everything gets wrapped up too quickly at the end, leaving me with a number of questions. I was particularly disappointed with Echo's arc. In a way, it reminded me of the introduction of the Punisher in Daredevil season two, but with even less development and closure. It's clear that Disney is setting her up for her own show, but she felt shoe-horned into this one.

​All told, this was a great Christmas-themed show that I could watch again and again.

We drove through the shortest night of the year to arrive home only about ten minutes before the exact winter solstice at 6:58 AM (AST). About an hour and forty-five minutes worth of flight delays on the leg from Seattle to Anchorage was the primary culprit for the late (if early morning) arrival. It's safe to say that we are all pretty tired from the experience, even after catching a few more hours of sleep after Janelle left for work.

Alaska welcomed Katrina with 5.9 earthquake which she and I (and the dogs) were the only ones to feel at our house. Katrina was pretty excited as it was her first earthquake, even if it had woken her from her nap. I was just happy that, although it lasted for a little while, it did not cause any apparent damage.

It's good to have Katrina's family with us. Alistair and Irene have already grown so much! Both of them lifted their arms for me to pick them up at least one time each today. Their smiles and laughter have brightened our home. Even their cries have been a welcome sound (although the shine on that might tarnish quickly).

​My days have quite literally become brighter.

I'm writing an early post today (I usually wait until the end of the day) because I'm about to start a series of events that leads to me bringing Katrina and family home to Soldotna from the Anchorage airport. Despite their flight arriving at 1:30 AM (more on that in a bit), I plan to head out immediately after Rowen's dentist appointment (which was set before their tickets were purchased) so that I can have at least some of the drive during the limited daylight of the second shortest day of the year and get in a bit of shopping. As there is a bit of a snow storm, of course (last time we had an actual blizzard warning), I also want to be able to take my time, pushing my drive time probably closer to (and perhaps past) the three hour mark.

I am a little irritated about the flight arrival and departure times that we have available for any flights that start or end in Detroit. Considering that the flight time is a bit over 9 hours (usually 10-11 hours with a flight change), I do not understand why there are not flights available at decent launch or landing times. Instead the launch times in Detroit are either ridiculously early in the morning or in the afternoon. One of the only ways to make practical start and end times for people dropping off or picking up the fliers (or to deal with rental cars) is to have extreme lay overs--something that is particularly rough with two children under the age of two. Seriously, these if these flights times could be adjusted by just a few hours, this wouldn't be such a problem.

That said, I'm still REALLY looking forward to this trip as it means hanging out with Katrina,  Peter, and our grandbabies again. For me, that makes the travel times worth it.

Christmas is right around the corner as the fourth Advent candle was lit today. Today's Gospel has Mary traveling to visit family, just as many of us are doing during this holiday season. Often, the travel itself can make us weary, but we could hope to receive as good of a greeting as Mary gets from her cousin, Elizabeth. No doubt, Mary was exhausted and covered in road dust from her travels, yet her cousin immediately lets her know how glad she is to have her visit.

May our greetings, both those that we receive and those that we give, also be pleasant and full of joy this holiday season. 

The past couple of weeks have seen me sleeping for fewer average minutes than more normal sleep-deprived school weeks. It has certainly been catching up with me. Even with a full eight hours of sleep last night, I still felt only half awake for most of the day.

One of the main characters in the Belgariad series of books "stores up" sleep during times of low activity so he can force his way through times of crisis. His daughter makes it clear that there is scientific basis for such an idea, but this is a book series where the power of will can make otherwise impossible ideas become true. I think about that often when dealing with my sleep schedule during a school year. Even though I get more sleep now than I did before the move to Alaska, I still get substantially less during the school year than I do when on break. I suppose that I try to use those down times to store up on sleep too. Unfortunately, I am not a fictional character with a magical constitution.

However, I still rely on these breaks to help me catch up on the sleep that I have missed. That said, I have quite a bit of catching up to do in these two short weeks. I had better get started.