Thanksgiving

The church here in Juneau all get together for a big Thanksgiving dinner. I signed up to bring 2 things, and chose to make things that I had never made before. It was a little risky, I know. But thanks to Paula Dean and her culinary wonders, the sweet potato biscuits turned out wonderful. And the dressing wasn't too shabby. Unfortunately, we forgot to take our camera to the actual dinner. All we have are the preparations leading up to it.

Poor Yoda

Yesterday morning, Yoda was outside doing, well, you know and on his way inside began yelping for what seemed like no reason. After watching him on and off throughout the day and night, he seemed to be suffering from pain in his back, so I took him to the vet today. we found out that he has a herniated disk in his back and the vet suggested two courses of action. 1. steroids and pain meds then wait it out to see if he gets better. 2. get surgery, but juneau doesn't have any pet surgeons, so we would have to send him off for at least a week. we went with the first just to see if the medication will help him. i know it may sound silly, but would you pray with us for yoda, he is a part of our family. he is such a good dog and has brought a lot of joy to us. not to mention he is the only one who experienced the ride to alaska with me. well, i gotta go now, but we will keep you posted.
bill

6 Months Old

This was just the beginning.

Marie turned 6 months old yesterday. It seems like everything about her has changed in that time. But she is still the sweetest baby ever. God has blessed us with a beautiful baby.

We enjoy all the smiles she gives us.

And we also enjoy the perceptiveness and curiousness she has too.

WE LOVE THIS LITTLE BABY!!!

It's Cold Outside!

Bill took Marie with him when he did some things over in the church building and when he went to visit Geoffrey at the school down the street. Bill didn't want to take the stroller, so he put Marie in the carrier around him and then buttoned his coat around them both. It had just snowed a couple of inches, and I wanted to make sure Marie stayed warm. Bill assured me that she stayed nice and toasty.

2 Babies!!!

This past Friday night we had the opportunity to babysit Elijah while his parents went to a movie. Eli is about 6 weeks younger than Marie. We had so much fun! They were both really good and played well with each other.


I think Bill could definitely handle twins if we ever had any - he's a natural!

Making Friends

In the past couple of weeks, Marie has really started to notice our cat, Pippin. And Pippin has started paying more attention to Marie. Pippin has even let Marie pet him. She will hold out her hand, Pippin will sniff her fingers, and then he will rub his face across her hand. She absolutely loves it and squeals with delight! She is going to be a cat lover for sure!

New Clothes

Last Sunday, I decided it was time to get out the next size up in clothes for Marie. She was getting too long in the legs for most of her outfits/pants. It was like shopping from home! Here are some of her new clothes she wore last week.

This is the outfit she wore last Sunday.


The overalls have a pretty jacket that matches them.


I wasn't sure about this outfit at first. Too many strawberries almost looked like a strawberry explosion. But once it was on her, it became one of my favorites.

Pictures from Out the Road blog

The sun was about to set here. This is absolutely beautiful!


These are creepy hangy things from the trees. The picture is not as scary as it actually was.


Notice the mountains in the distance. They are all covered with snow.



This is officially the end of the road. 40 miles and we were done!

Out the Road

In Juneau, there is not a lot of road. Which is a good thing - we use drastically less gas than we used to. We went to the end of the road several days ago. The people here call it going "out the road". We've been told that you can sometimes see whales there in November before Thanksgiving. So we embarked on our journey on a "Sun-day". We've been looking forward to seeing some animals since we've been here, but we did not see any whales or bears or deer. We did see a bunch of sea lions though. The drive was beautiful. The sun was just about to go down, so the light seemed a little orange. I've tried several times to upload some pictures, but something isn't working. I'll try again later.
-Amanda

Halloween, Football, and Voting

On Halloween there was a harvest festival at the church annex. The harvest festival Bill and I had gone to up in Wasilla had been without costumes. But we found out shortly before the one here that most people, children and adults, dress up in non-scary costumes. We scrambled to find costumes and finally came up with some from our own clothes. Bill is a cowboy, of course. And the best thing I could come up with was getting my old nursing uniforms out and dressing up as a nurse (I have actually been missing my job a lot lately so this was a treat for me!).

Last year when the Finley's thought we were having a boy, they bought this pirate costume for our baby. It has been in my gift box since then. So when Marie needed a costume for the harvest festival, I knew just where to go. I know that traditionally girls are not pirates. But I must say that, for a girl, Marie makes a very good pirate.

Saturday rolled around, and there's no guess as to what we were doing in the Williams house - watching Georgia Football!!! Unfortunately, Georgia was doing so badly that it really wasn't much of a game. Marie thought so too. She got tired of watching them make mistake after mistake, so she just went to sleep.

Voting day was a family experience. Marie did fall asleep on the way there, but we went on anyway.

Even though Marie was asleep, I cast her ballot for her. She had told me previously who she wanted to vote for. I was sure to get her an 'I voted Today!' sticker for her to show everybody.