new year's eve

another year almost over. for 2008, my biggest goal is to have a transplant. sky and pella on our morning walk today getting ready for the big night out.

Package from Ca for Christmas

who is Ca?

Ca (nickname from Jessica Jordan Champagne) is my best friend from high school who flew out to UW Hospital(2006) to visit, and knitted this hat for me. Ca and Todd own their own organic vegetable business in California. Her business is called www.happygirlkitchen. com.
check out the video too!

i received my Christmas package from Ca and Todd and pictures of their 2nd child Jaya. Now she is making homemade face cleansers and lotion using herbs from her garden. Ry(5 years old), their older son, helps Todd selling goods at the local farmers market. the Champagnes are a true inspiration to me, they are wildly adventurous, one key i believe to living a full life. at their wedding they grew all the vegetables to feed the wedding party, they really believe in growing the food you eat(including pickling everything to eat all winter). who knows what their next big family adventure will be?

one more from hatcher

jen and brad, my tele ski instructor friends in CO, are cringing as they critique this horrible form, but i did get down without a fall. ben has the scenery shots on his blog later tonight.

Hatcher Pass Christmas

i hope this post finds everyone in good health for the holidays. i am sooo lucky we were able to do this ski Christmas day, as dialysis has been making me extremely tired and almost not leaving the bed three days a week.
ben and i had a great trip to Hatcher Pass. Here is the view from our cabin and the peak we decided to tele ski Christmas day. we were the only ones there and the guy that owns the small a frame lodge made us whatever we wanted for breakfast.

walking to the lodge from our cabin for breakfast. he was so accommodating and had coffee's ready and stoked the coal fired stove for us.

leaving the cabin to ski the nearest peak. notice the fog rolling in on the right.

almost to the top.
taking the skins off for the decent. we dug a snow pit and the snow was amazingly stable, so we were able to ski a really steep pitch.
ben and his rockin tele turns. the fog was so dense, but the snow was awesome. ben probably has some more pics, but he is back to work today. i am home after another very tiring dialysis.

Happy Winter Solstice

martin, stac, sarah, greg and ben out watching the fireworks. our shortest day of the year over.
we all headed out to the winter solstice festival downtown. there is Stac turned backwards. here we are watching the fireworks on the bridge over the Chena River
ben caught this firework over the river, it was only 10 below, so everyone was out and about.
they also had a treasure hunt for kids and grownups. here is the map, Sarah pushed hard for us to finish gathering clues on the walk and we all got prizes like my 2006 Yukon Quest pin. what a fun night hanging out in downtown Fairbanks.

i walked to meet Sarah for lunch today, 33 below zero, no wind. i was happy to see our good old Fairbanks weather back, it is supposed to stay this cold for weeks according to Ed the weather forecaster. High of 40below tomorrow. it was so quiet and pretty out with the sunset sun today. it may be one cold ski into tolovana over new years.

Martini Mixer

Ed, Trevor and I planned a martini party last night and it was a blast. Since I don't really drink anything, I have become a good bartender. Trev and I made the martini's.
Here are a few of the martini drinkers, the fancy martini's were a hit. We made fresh blueberry, mango lime, vanilla lemon lime, straight up and one virgin tolietini for Jackson.
we danced the night away and that was the best part. here is Brown gettin' down. i also learned that she is an expert knitter, she teaches it! we made plans knit. it has been a bit stressful lately with transplant scheduled for Feb. 8th (fingers crossed)!!! this was the perfect night of good friends and lots of dancing. i am sure there will many more pictures on the other blogs.

cold skijor at creamers

Audrey and I went for our last skijor together for awhile. she is moving to Seattle to finish up her thesis. the temps are dropping to 30 below by Monday, our normal Fairbanks weather.
pella (with Ben) chased sky today and Audrey skied with no dog and kept up, very impressive.

they rearranged dialysis so i have Christmas Eve and Day off! Ben and I are excited and we are headed to the Talkeetna Mountains to stay in a cabin and back country tele ski.

dialysis has been kicking my butt lately. even so, i could not resist getting out to ski this weekend, we have had a warm winter and now finally more snow. here is ben with my goofy hat.
we are still hoping for a transplant in January, but we have been this far before. i did have three more friends get tested to see if they have less of a cross match, so for that i am grateful.
very quickly i am becoming what Sara calls a "a yarn snob", she gave me another skein of yarn from local yarn shop Inua's wool. i learned to rib and cable tonight, how exciting!

We had a lot to celebrate last night at the Fox Brewery:
1) Julie is headed to Antarctica today.
2) Audrey shot a caribou Sat.
3) Patrick successfully defended his thesis.
Julie 's new scarf that i knit her for Christmas.Ben excited about the tea Julie made for him. we did our gift exchange early because she will not be around for Christmas. I received some some great yarn from local yarn shop Inua's.

ben shot this video without knowing it today on our cold skijor at creamer's field.
he thought he was taking a still shot with my camera. no volume.