midnight baking : Feliz Natal!

Well Hello Lower 48! I'm back after being away for nearly 11 months!!!!! I arrived in Texas on December 15th to a muggy day. I left Alaska just before a blizzard hit the center causing it to close down. Only to arrive in a Sunny Texas where it was 75 degrees that day. You could say it was a bit of a climate change. The first night back we had our annual moms vs. moms soccer game. My youngest brother plays soccer on his highschool team. Every year they have a fun game where the moms from all 4 highschool teams play in a game. This picture is with my mom, corey, and parker (my 2 younger brothers).

I was very excited to meet the newest member of our family...Low Rider AKA Rider! She is a rescue dog. One day my brother, Corey, and mom were at Petsmart. They had dogs up for adoption and it was love at first site for my brother. On her papers it says she is a mix of Lab and Basset Hound. I am convinced that she also has a bit of pit bull in her. Pitt Bulls have a bad reputation for being aggressive dogs. However, I believe that it is not the dog that is bad but the owner that trains it to be aggressive. All dogs have the potential to be aggressive and threatening. I believe that a domesticated animal, such as a dog, if given attention and love can be a life long friend. So here she is making her first debut on my blog....Low Rider!

One reason why I headed back to Texas a bit earlier for the holidays was because my brother Parker was getting married!!!!! This wonderful, cute, couple on the right became Mr. and Mrs. Parker Leighton on December 17th 2011. Lauren and Parker went to Cancun for their Honeymoon. After they got back on the 23rd they still had a few wedding gifts to open. I think one of my favorite gifts they received was a pair of Bride and Groom frogs. You can see Parker looking at the frog as he opens it.

Here he is loving his first ornament with his new bride; a pair of bride and groom frogs!

On Christmas Day we headed to Church. Church is one of the things I miss most being away from my family. I also can't remember the last time Christmas landed on the same day as Church. On Christmas morning it is tradition to open our stockings first in our new pajamas. So after opening our stockings, going to church, opening gifts, it was about time for lunch. Here is my Dad with my dog, Delilah. Delilah is also a rescue dog. I found her near a dumpster in Louisiana. She is a miniture Dachsund. Don't let her size fool you...she is a HANDFULL! She is constantly trying to get people to play fetch with her. On christmas morning we had to give her new toys to distract her while we opened gifts. It didn't really work. She quickly got bored with her new toys and found one of her favorite tennis balls to nicely drop in our laps to throw to her.

Parker and Lauren also joined us for their first time as Husband and Wife. It was fun having a new family member, my sister-in-law, with us on Christmas Day.

After spending the morning with parents and siblings; we meet up with my cousins,aunts, uncles,grandfather, and Great Grandmother. This year we ate lunch at Bouca Di peppo. It is an Italian restaurant. In all we have 21 family members on my mother's side that live all in Texas...(except me).

On the left side we had the "adults" sit together. On the right the cousins, and now my brother's wife, all sit together.

A somewhat new tradition that has gone on for 3 years now is our White Elephant Gift Exchange. Because there are so many family members it can be stressfull to buy everyone a gift. So a few years ago we decided to switch to white elephant gift exchange. You can either buy a really cheap gift or even find something from around the house. I wanted to make my gift something alaskan. I bought a moose hat from our giftstore at the center. I was thinking that the younger cousins (around 10 years old or so) would be fighting over the moose cap. I never would have thought that my 21 year old cousin and his sister in highschool would have been competeing for it! All in all you could say our gift exchanges are always a lot of fun.

I do go a little photo crazy when I am home since it may be a while till I am back home. Here is me and my mother.

This is my great grandmother. We all call her Nana. She just celebrated her 94th birthday!

You go Girl!!!

Now since I will be away from the center for another month or so; I still get wonderful emails from Doug Lindstrand to keep me filled in on whats going on up in Alaska. These next four pictures are what happens when you play with a 350 pound, 6 month old, moose named Nelson.

Don't worry no interns were injured during the filming of this event.

Thanks Doug for these pictures!

I also wanted to explain the title of todays blog. I was catching up on my facebook today and noticed that I had 2 un-read messages from people in Brazil. Both were viewers of a television documentary about our center. Earlier in the summer I was interviewed by a journalist from Brazil. I completely forgot about the interview. When I was reading the messages today it reminded about the interview. They were very interested in learning how the cubs were doing. So todays title "Feliz Natal" is simply Merry Christmas in portuguese for the loyal followers of our animals at the center.

Here is the latest picture of Taquka and Shaguyik.....

Shaggy is on the left with Taquka on the right