Monday, December 19, 2011

Moose Christmas

Just a picture of Mya in the snow, so that this wouldn't be a pictureless post :)


I've probably already shared this story a bunch of times, but I've been thinking about it, as I always do at Christmas, and thought I'd share it in case its new to someone. The year we moved to Alaska we got here in the fall, after dad had been here all summer fishing. So we had a freezer full of fish, but no meat. We had always lived on what we could hunt or fish, but we weren't able to bring out meat with us. So we were living on the fish, with a little bit of other meat as we could afford, which wasn't very often. So we ate fish. Pretty much every day. Every Day. We even ate salmon spaghetti, which was horrifying enough that after almost 18 years I can still remember it. It was some sort of white spaghetti sauce, nothing tasty like alfredo, much more spaghetti'ish than that.


But anyway. We were eating fish, and lots of it. It was Christmas eve, 5 months into the great fish-o-rama. We were making our usual Christmas eve dinner of breakfast (sausages, eggs, cinnamon roll, etc), and I still remember I was setting the table, mom and dad were cooking, and we were just hanging around, trying not to be sad our first Christmas in Alaska. As we were standing there the phone rang, and it was the dispatcher calling to see if we wanted a moose, and that we had moved up the list because it was Christmas eve and no one wanted to go out after a moose. We had no such reservations! We turned off the burners, found our knives and went to work. It was just around the corner from our house, and we got the whole moose. It wasn't a big moose, but it was the most wonderful Christmas gift ever. I still remember the joy of that night, and the overwhelming gratitude I felt.


Whenever I'm at a party or visiting this time of year and someone asks what my favorite Christmas was, this is the first that comes into my mind. The second would be the last Christmas we were in Joseph when Blake came home for the last time. We had a great time just farting around, we rented a video game set up from the video store in town, and we went to the little shops, and watched movies, and just had lots of fun.


This year hasn't been a very good year for us, but we've been trying really hard to keep a positive outlook and to keep pushing ahead. Thursday night, or early Friday morning, we got a call from the dispatch asking if we would be willing to get a moose that was less than 2 miles from our house. Another Christmas miracle, and I'm very grateful for that, and for the gift of love and kindness it is to us, and to me.

3 Comments:

Blogger jed-laura said...

I'm glad your moose came to you this year as well.

I like your salmon spaghetti story.

I like salmon a LOT, but in spaghetti, not sure what I would feel about that!

This has been a rough year for several of us in a lot of different ways, hasn't it?

Here's to a better 2012... keeping hope alive that better times are to come.

8:08 AM  
Blogger jed-laura said...

maybe a "moose" will appear for me and my family this Christmas too. I'll be on the look-out for "moose" blessings.

8:09 AM  
Blogger Sandra said...

BLESSINGS TO YOU ALL, AT THE END OF CHALLENGING YEAR. MUCH LOVE, SANDRA AND SUSAN

9:09 PM  

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