December 2009
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to our Family & Friends,
Here we are at the end of another year. I’ve come to the conclusion that the older you get, the shorter the years become. Why is that anyway? We had our first snow fall of the season today so I decided it was time to sit down and write the our family Christmas letter since Christmas is only a few weeks away (it only took us four weeks to get this sent out). I was thinking of some of the things that we did this year and came up with a few of the highlights.
Our travels started in April with a trip to Virginia for the wedding of Kathi’s nephew, Jeff, to his wonderful wife, DeAnna. Despite the rain and chilly wind, it was a great trip to be with Kathi’s family in the Washington, DC Temple.
Erick’s BBQ season started in April this year and went through October. His first judging opportunity took place in Springfield, MO. We drove down and visited with Kathi’s brother and his family. While at the event, the skies decided to open up and it rained & rained & rained. We were fortunate to step under a tent of one of the competitor teams, who shared with us some of their yummy BBQ, so I guess it was worth it. BBQ pit masters are typically very anxious & willing to share their creations. Throughout the summer we traveled to many different competitions, and Erick ate lots of great BBQ. One of the goals of a Certified BBQ Judge is becoming a Master Judge. This is accomplished by judging 30 competitions, cooking with a team, and then taking a test. Erick completed his 30th competition in October when we were in Kansas City at the American Royal, a very big event with about 500 teams. The following week he cooked brisket with Joey Mack’s Smoke Stack, in Arthur IL. It rained & was extremely cold, but overall, Erick had a wonderful experience. He learned a lot and concluded that he was grateful to just be a judge. He is currently in the process of completing his test, and we have no doubt that he will pass with flying colors, he just needs to put it in the mail.
In May, we took Kathi’s mom, her friend Scarlett and Erick’s mom & step-dad on an action-packed trip to Alaska where we began an 11-day land tour and cruise vacation. Alaska is a very beautiful state and fortunately we had very nice weather most of the days. Unfortunately it was chilly and very foggy the day we were in Denali and therefore we did not get to see Mt. McKinley, due to the cloud cover. A few of our highlights are below:
- Glass-domed train ride from Fairbanks to Denali – saw the beautiful landscape and a few animals
- Denali National Forest – traveled deep into the forest and saw lots of caribou, a few bears, some moose and even a wolf, the trip lasted about 8 hrs, very long but very worth it. The next morning Erick & Kathi went White Water Rafting down the Nanana River. That water is a constant 38 degrees (are we crazy or what?)
- Zip Line in Icy Strait – zipped down a mountain over a mile with a 1300 ft drop, going about 60 miles per hour (this was one of Kathi’s favorite things) – it was such an AWESOME experience that Erick did it twice. We need to go do it again now that Erick has learned how to operate the video camera.
- Hubbard Glacier – the ship went within about a mile of the glacier; the blue colors of the ice were amazing, and we even saw a few glaciers calve into the water – SPECTACULAR. We also celebrated Kathi’s birthday while cruising Glacier Bay with a special dinner.
- In Skagway we took a train ride down the Yukon pass from Canada. We also panned for gold in an old mining camp.
- We did lots of shopping and wandering the towns
Overall, we had a fabulously wonderful time and would recommend Alaska to everyone.
May you be filled the Spirit of our Savior during this Christmas season. We love all of you and hope that you had a very Merry Christmas.
Love Erick & Kathi Hacking and Kaysye
Good to see an update! Keep it up. :-)
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