I hope that everyone is having a great time over the holidays! I enjoyed Christmas with my family in Alaska very much, although our white Christmas was a little bit difficult to enjoy due to the -20 degree weather. Jeremiah and I have decided to continue using our blog to document our travels, so soon I will be posting pictures of frosty Alaska, and, barring any bizarre accidents, in about a month I will be posting pictures of our time in Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia!

For now though (as per request), here is an excerpt of an e-mail I wrote to my family about my snow/ice/wind delayed trip from Seattle to Fairbanks, Alaska about a week ago- I made it but it was definitely an experience I don't want to go through again anytime soon!

"I made it out! Barely! I did get out of Seattle at 4pm on the 21st. At that point I think we were the second to last plane to leave Seatac airport before they shut everything down, at around 2pm the announced that they only had enough de-icer to clean off 12 more planes, and somehow, my plane ended up being one of them.

It's a long story that spans me getting to the airport at 8pm on the 20th, my flight being delayed until 1am, then canceled at 2am, then standing in the longest line of all time until 4am, making a line buddy (we both had laptops and were standing in line typing with one hand reloading the alaska airlines booking page over and over in case seats opened up), my line buddy getting through to alaska airlines via phone at 4:30am (my buddy was on hold for 2 hours), getting seats on a plane scheduled to leave midnight on the 21st, getting out of line and finding our bags by 5am (well, actually I was the only one to actually find luggage), sleeping on a pile of my clothes under a stairwell (there were people everywhere, I felt bad for the families with small children and the dogs stuck in kennels), waking up at 7am and bluffing my way into the boarding pass only/check luggage line without a boarding pass of any kind and without even knowing my flight number ("it just wouldn't print!"), finally getting a nice lady who checked me in for my flight 18 hours ahead of schedule and gave me a standby pass for a flight leaving at 10am, getting onto the 10am flight when it actually boarded at 11am, getting off of the plane 2 hours later when it became clear that the de-icer people were not going to reach us for another 2 hours, being amused by the Santa riding around in a courtesy cart handing out candy canes and the elf on a unicycle, at 2pm finding out that the Seatac airport only had enough de-icer left to clear off 12 more planes and then the airport would be shut down because all the de-icer was stored in Eastern Washington and they couldn't get it across the pass (!!), finding out that our plane was going to be one of the 12 planes to be de-iced and getting ready to board at 3pm, being told that my ticket was revoked because they decided to pool all of the unaccompanied minors who were in the airport and flying to Alaska on our plane, so they gave away all the standby seats to them, leaving 9 more people stranded, deciding to wait at the gate just in case someone who previously boarded to plane somehow got lost and didn't make it back on, and FINALLY, getting on the plane at 3:30pm (thank god for holiday induced airport confusion). We were de-iced and in the air by 4pm, landed in Anchorage at 6:32, ran to the gate of the Fairbanks flight leaving at 6:43, got on the standby list, made it on the plane, took off at 6:50, and LANDED in Fairbanks and had my luggage by 8pm! Rounding out a full 24 hours in airports, and 2 days without sleep!"

Whew! I hope that everybody else is enjoying their holiday season and has a Happy New Year!!