North of the Lemon Tree

The snow plow is no joke.  Neither is the plow pile blocking the driveway. Menancing sky, looking south down the Channel.  Mady's class on a field trip to the Mendenhall Glacier.  The newspaper wrote an article about Discovery SouthEast, the organizers of the field trip. Mady was on the front page. It may sound strange, but a popular sledding spot is the cemetery. It is close to the house and the kids can walk over there by themselves. Alex enjoyed skiing back in December so we set him up with a season pass. He has gone up alone, with Phil and/or Zachary and with a friend from school.  A couple of bonus pictures, Mady's hair is so long.  I was involved in the Great Juneau Cookie Sort. All of the cookies for the city were in a large warehouse and needed to be sorted into troop orders.  This is the order for Mady's troop. February 4 was our one and only snow day for the school year.

It was a busy month for Zachary. In addition to the hockey tournament, he had 2 rifle matches and the end of season rifle party. The second match of the season was held at the other Juneau middle school, Floyd Dryden.  For some reason, they are able to transform their school cafeteria into a shooting range. While this gives them more time to practice, instead of driving to the gun range, the set up isn't as nice and as a spectator there is pressure to be very quiet. The final match was a mail in match. After shooting, the targets are sent away to be scored. 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist Pat Spurgin spoke at the end of year party.

Zachary and I flew to Anchorage for the weekend for his first hockey tournament! We took an early flight out of Juneau that was full of hockey kids. After we arrived in Anchorage, we began our tour of restaurants! Juneau in winter doesn't have many dining options. While at IHOP, we saw one of Zach's teammates and his family, a trend that would continue everywhere we went in town. Aside from eating, we did some much needed shopping and found new hockey gear and a great stick.  Many of the teammates were at the same hotel and the kids had fun in the pool.  Game 1, getting ready to hit the ice.  Juneau wins!  Game 2, still day 1. Juneau won again, but I don't have many pictures from this game. Mady's told her teacher I was in Anchorage, and her teacher sent me a text telling me about Great Harvest Bread. She said they give samples of bread. Lucky for us, it was super close to the hotel so of course we went.  These are the "samples" ...

Happy Birthday Alex! We started the day with cinnamon rolls and oatmeal and went downtown for a delicious sushi dinner.  Who's taller? Not today Alex! (probably tomorrow though)