Letter to Family and Friends

Dear Family and Friends,

Thought it would be good to keep in touch and hope you are all doing fine. We really had a great Christmas in Washington with John and Heidi and Johns family. We all went to Sun Mountain Lodge in the Cascade mountains for several days. The weather was a little on the warm side but we did manage to do some cross-country skiing, and eating, and sliding, and hot tubbing, and eating. and played pool and ping-pong. John was a good Santa and Heidi was his reindear for the opening of the Christmas presents. Some little kids at the lodge were giving John some strange looks. I guess he did not fit their vision of Santa Claus.

Of course vacations come to an end and we had to come back to work. We had a real cold snap down in the -20 range and had to shut down the plant due to a lack of gas. (Why do people need their houses so warm?) We lost the cooling water for about an hour, then later the steam tracing for a while. When we came back up a week later we spent days thawing out lines and instruments. It was cold hard dirty work, but amazingly nothing major was destroyed and start-up went OK considering the obstacles in the pipes.

We have had some wild weather swings for the month. From -20 to the mid 30's. A few days ago it rained, then dropped down to zero, and today it is raining again. Also Augustine volcanoe has been erupting from time to time! It has been interesting to follow on the internet at
http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Augustine.php It last erupted in 1976 and 1986. It often erupts off and on for many months.

About a week ago a large chunk of ice in the inlet ripped a 500' tanker off the dock at Tesoro and pushed it to shore. The tides were very high. Thankfully the ship was about a third full and they were able to get it free from the mucky shore a day later.

The kids are doing fine. I guess they are not kids anymore, but we feel young enough to call them kids. Holly will be in Australia for another 4 or 5 months with YWAM. John and Heidi are working with Young Life, and Heidi is also working at a Montesorri pre-school. Christoffer is working up in Anchorage for a while until bigger jobs come up. He is about ready to get his journeyman electrician card. Lois is at the elementary school and those kids gave us both a cold. Hopefully i will be OK for a hockey tournament we have this weekend. I hope you all have a good valentines day and a good February. Check out the blogs to see photos if you want.

God Bless You all.

Mark and Lois Ann