Comin' Home...Eventually

Well, we're not home yet, although we were scheduled to be home by 4:00 p.m. Utah time. We're in Anchorage and have been since a little after 10:00 last night.

The last week or more has been great weather with clear skies, besides the dip in temperatures and one or two days with high winds. Yesterday, however, mother nature decided to give us the snow storm she owed us, plus interest. Visibility was horrible, although there wasn't much of a wind. They put our flight on delay. We had been praying that we wouldn't have troubles and that flights would get places on time, so we began praying even harder. It stopped snowing long enough for them to get a plane to us, and the wind picked up to give us a good tailwind. We got to Kotzebue, our first stop, with plenty of time to spare.

When we got to Anchorage, however, we found out that even though we had booked our flights in September, we somehow missed out on seat assignments. There were a few other people like this, because they had oversold the flight. We volunteered to stay and reschedule our flight, because there was a possibility at getting a direct flight from Anchorage to Salt Lake. This was at midnight. By 2:00, they had finally finalized everything, compensating us generously for our trouble, giving us meal vouchers, and putting us up in a room for the rest of the night.

We spent the day in Anchorage. We looked at some fun things to do, and decided on a discovery museum for kids. We got a cab (by the way, few cabs carry carseats for both toddlers AND infants) and went to the museum, only to find out that it was being relocated (and hadn't been at that location for about two months). We decided to look at the shopping they had around there, being downtown. This is about the time that 7 hours of sleep and no naps for two days straight caught up with Chalyse. Luckily, we were able to find strollers for rent at the nearby mall and she took a nap while we were looking around.

It's funny how prayers get answered sometimes. Things don't always turn out the way you envision it, but that's okay. As long as we're doing what we should be, things turn out the way they should.

Oh, the weather outside is fightful!

We are getting SO excited to go home to Utah for Christmas! (and to get out of Point Hope for a little while) We leave Friday afternoon and get to SLC Saturday afternoon. We will take 6 different planes and be be traveling for about 24 hours. This is assuming none of our flights get delayed or canceled. We have been hoping for good weather for our trip. Last week was lovely. We were enjoying beautiful clear days in the mid 20s. Today, I'm afraid is a very different story. It has been about -20 all day today and quite windy (20-30 mph) coming from the North. They just issued a wind-chill weather alert. Brr, I'm glad I don't have to go out today. The forecast for Friday is about the same. I know the cold won't stop our flights (at least i don't think it will) but the wind sure will. Especially with the smaller planes. Here's hoping Friday won't be so bad that the planes can't land.

On a lighter note; here is the update on the girls:

Ellora is growing so much lately. We ran out of her size of diapers so she has been wearing Chalyse's. They are a bit too long but fit around the waist about as tight as they do on Chalyse. Of course Chalsye is a little skinny-minny; she thinned out a ton after she started crawling and then even more after walking. I bet Ellora will too. For now, though, I'm glad Ellora is a chub. Besides it being so cute it will help keep her warm.

Chalyse has been calling Ellora "Reese" the last couple of days. I'm pretty sure she gets it from combining Leese (what she calls herself) and Royce (her friend across the hall). I think I like her calling her "bebe" better than some made up name. Hopefully she can find a new nick name for her that sounds more like Ellora.

Chalyse's still loves teasing Mom. Here is an example of her newest way to get under my skin skin. Last night she was supposed to be going to bed. She was still playing around when I came in to put Ellora to bed. When Chalyse realized Ellora was asleep she started screaming. I left quickly because I knew she was just doing it to bug me but it was too late and she had gotten Ellora all worked up. I waited a few minutes to see if Ellora would calm herself down but when she didn't I went in to comfort her. As soon as Ellora was quieted and I started laying her down Chalyse started screaming again. GRR! I knew she was just doing it to make me mad so i quickly left taking Ellora with me this time. We ended up just waiting until Chalyse was asleep before putting Ellora back down.

No one ever eats the cranberry suace

We had a lot of left over cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving dinner (basically all of it) so we made a yummy dish with it. I was skeptical because i don't usually like fruit on my chicken but it was SO good. Here's the recipe:

6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 can of cranberry sauce
1 cup of lite mayonnaise
1/2 cup of sour cream
1 cup of ketchup
1 packet of ranch dressing mix

Combine cranberry sauce, mayonnaise, sour cream, ketchup, and dressing mix. Pour over chicken and back at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until chicken is thoroughly cooked.

Tom made some bacon and sour cream mashed potatoes and they went really well with the meal.

Enjoy!

Yesterday we went to the school to watch the volleyball regional tournament. Point Hope took first. When it was time to go Chalyse screamed and screamed. I know she likes to get out and is always sad to go home but this was a really bad fit. A few minutes after we got going we realized why she was so emotional.



I guess she was really tired because she fell asleep in her sled during the 5 minutes it took to walk home even with the wind blowing in her face. It was hilarious! She kept leaning over so that her arm or leg would drag and we would have to stop and out it back on. It is amazing the places kids can fall asleep.

Here is our rolly-polly baby eating her toes. (She has been trying to get them into her mouth for days but wasn't flexible enough before)





Ellora's piggie tails

Goo Goo, Ga Ga

A week or so ago Cathy put a post on her blog of some of the cute things her kids say so i started thinking about some of the things Chalyse says. Here are some of them:

"No, Know"= I don't know.
"Ga, Ga!"= There it/he is! I don't know how she gets that but she has the right tone when she says it.
"Mee, Mee"= Neh (what a horse says)
"Nummy" Yummy. She always says this when she eats something she likes. I love it.
"Pees" I want that.

When we read "Where the wild things are" she always answers the phrase with "No, Know" She thinks it is a question.

She also likes to talk to her doll and say "Oh Goo, Oh Goo" She gets that from watching me talk to Ellora.

Sitting, Sledding and Fish

Ellora is sitting up. Yay Ellora!




Here are some more pictures of our cute girls


The girls LOVE to sit right next to each other.


Here is Chalyse all bundled up. She is wearing Tom's goggles. We decided to get her her own but they haven't gotten here yet. (They are so cute. They are pink with butterflies on them :)


Chalyse loved riding on her sled. Tom would take her to the top of a large snow mound and send her down.


She screamed when it was time to come in.


Here is a picture of the frozen raw fish that they handed out at Thanksgiving at the school. (See post below)

Happy Thanksgiving...Err...Native American Heritage Day!

The last couple of days have been interesting ones. On Thursday, we had Thanksgiving with the village in the school gym. The teachers and a few others from the community had baked up more than 20 turkeys and a lot of hams that the Native Village (a local business) provided. At first, we were trying to decide whether or not to even go, because the temperature was right around 0 F, then the wind was blowing at around 30-40 mph. After windchill, the temperature was at best -50 F. We finally decided to put the girls under our coats (like the natives do) and do our best to break the wind on the way over. It worked out well.

At the celebration, we were greeted by many handshakes and the smell of raw fish. We brought rolls, because it was a potluck meal. We were expecting it to be served buffet style because all the food was on a long table on one side of the gym. After the Episcopal choir sang some songs of praise and a couple preachers got up and gave mini-sermons, they began to hand out food to each family to put into ziplock bags, starting with muktuk (the outer part of the whale that is half skin/half blubber) and whale meat. It was "fermented" (you and I might say "rancid") and the smell got to us, so we stepped out for a little bit. They then handed out large crackers called "Sailor Boy Crackers" that the natives like, soup, and drinks the same way as they had the whale meat. This way of doing things is a holdover from the old days when they would share their meat communally with each other so that those who didn't get anything in the hunts didn't starve. They had cut up salmon and other fish with hatchets and bow saws to be passed around and eaten frozen and raw, also. By this point, two hours had passed and Chalyse was hungry and tired and they hadn't even started handing out the rest of the meal. We found out that they were going to hand out all of the food the same way. So, we decided to go home and eat our own food.

While we were there, we found out that Friday was Native American Heritage Day (not sure if that was new or not because they said something about President Obama in relation to it). We had already arranged to have a private Thanksgiving meal with some other teachers in our building on Friday, so we decided that we had just swapped the two days.

So, Friday was our normal Thanksgiving. Two single guys who live in our building and were supposed to bring the drinks and dessert forgot about it, so we had to make up some Kool-Aid and get out a salmonberry pie that didn't turn out amazing that we had put in the freezer and half forgotten about. Besides that, it was a very big meal with all of the stuff that makes Thanksgiving dinner what it is. Regina, the lady that had put it all together, had also invited another teacher that morning. When she called, he said that he was with his son, so she told him to bring his son with him. As we were waiting for them to get there, we decided to call and see where they were at. He had no idea what we were talking about and his son was not even up here. He has a cell phone from Texas, so Regina probably called and invited some random person down in Texas to our meal. Needless to say, they didn't make it, either.

CARPET?! Really?

I need to vent a little. Whoever decided to put carpet in a dining area obviously didn't have kids. It is absolutely ridiculous. The other day Chalyse dropped her entire bowl of oatmeal on the floor and it landed upside down.



That is nothing compared to what happened tonight, though. Tom had his Japanese class over to cook up some curry. Everything was ready so I put Chalyse in her high chair and buckled her in. There was an entire pitcher of kool-aid on the table. (I bet you can see where this is going) I thought it was far enough away from her but it looks like i was wrong. I turned around for just a second and, yep, ALL OVER THE CARPET! Not to mention one of the students backs. Oh and it was red.




This is after trying to scrub it out. Any suggestions?



Here are some bonus pictures:




Chalyse put all of her rocks down her shirt and started complaining because she couldn't get them back out.



Chalyse in her "hat"

But Baby It's Cold Outside

We had our first day in the negatives, yesterday. The funny thing about it was that when we woke up it was -6 and it got up to about 2 before the sun came up. But then when the sun finally rose, it dropped again. We ended the day at about -15 or -20. One thing we're finding this far north is that the sun has very little to do with the daytime temperatures.

For all of those who are wondering, the sun is coming up now at about noon and setting at about 3:00. We have about an hour-long dawn and dusk, though.

Thankfulness Tree

We have been really missing trees, and pretty much all vegetation that grows higher than a few inches from the ground. So, we decided to make our own tree in our dining area. We used packing paper from various mail-orders that we've made for the trunk and limbs. The greenery was "donated" by the school. We also missed fall colors, so we made leaves out of colored paper and wrote on them things that we're thankful for. One thing that we're all thankful for now is our thankfulness tree. It is happy to have a tree in our house.

Our Outspoken 3-month-old

Ellora has become very vocal in the last few days. Well, not that she wasn't vocal before. She's just a whole lot louder now. It's pretty cute. Take a look.

Whoa!

Ever since Camille brought Chalyse outside to use her sled, Chalyse has started doing "exciting" and "dangerous" things and saying, "Whoa! Whoa!" She'll climb on the end table and pretend to fall off. Sometimes she climbs up on Camille's legs and bobble around like she's going to fall off.

When they went out, whenever Camille would drag Chalyse over a bump or a dip, she would say, "Whoa," and Chalyse caught on quickly. That's where she got it.

Chalyse all bundled up going for a ride on her sled

Around 3pm the sun getting ready to set.

Chalyse and her friend Bro. Stevens

Ellora in her new hat

Ellora eating her blanket (one of her favorite activities)

I refuse to pay that much!

All the teachers used to get two milks for lunch and Tom would bring one home but they have decided to only let them have one milk. So today i finally gave Chalyse some powdered milk to drink. I have been hesitant because i have a hard time making her eat or drink something that i would not. Of course i don't really like milk like Chalyse does and i can't drink it anyway because it bothers Ellora. Anyway, she complained about it a little but she drank it. The thing that finally pushed me to give Chalyse powdered milk though, is that the store was continuously out of fresh milk. If we were lucky they would have boxed milk that is ultra pasteurized and air tight so it can sit on the shelf. This boxed milk is...are you ready for this...$17 a gallon. Tom and i have a theory that the prices on milk are so ridiculously high is because the store has a monopoly on it here in the village and it is something that is in high demand. (Even fresh fruit and vegetables are not that ridiculous.)

Pees

Today Chalyse was chattering and pointing at the door. She wanted to go out in the hall to play but I had already told her no. Then she looked up at me with puppy-dog eyes and enthusiastically said "PEES!"

I was surprised. Occasionally Tom and I will prompt her to say "please" when she asks for something but we are still working on getting her to call things by their names to get what she wants.

Chalyse's Favorite Things:

~Her Baby doll.
~Her Rock collection.
~The movie "Monsters INC."
~Being read to. Her favorite book right now is "When Sophie Gets Angry...Really, Really Angry." She also likes "50 Below Zero," "Curios George Rides a Bike," "Lizards Song" and "Mrs Rumphius."
~"Meeping" noses (pinching your nose and saying meep). She will "meep" her animal crackers' noses and will often be looking at a picture in a book, usually an animal, and will meep the nose of the picture.
~Saying "Bye." She will come and close the door of the room i'm in so she can say "bye" to me then opens it so she can do it again. She also likes to say "Bye" over and over again when we are getting ready to leave the house.
~Saying the sound a particular animal says when she sees it. She is really good and doing at elephant sound.
~Mimicking sounds she hears like the timer beeping. The other day she was mimicking the crows out side our window. She sounded just like them.
~Playing with the neighbor across the hall, Royce who is a year older than her. When ever she hears some one out in the hall she gets excited and says "Royce, Royce." Sometimes it sounds more like "Reese."
~Dressing up. She likes wearing hats (or sometimes a doll dress she pretends is a hat.) And she loves to put on Mom's or Dad's gloves.

*Oh, I also have an announcement: Chalyse has been binkie free for over a month now.

-25 Degrees

So, yesterday was the coldest day yet. It was 15 degrees (not our coldest air temperature) with a 30 mph wind. After the windchill, that put it at -25. It was definitely cold enough to get your attention. On the bright side, though, we put on most of our gear, and we were a little too warm. I wish that we had our goggles, though, because the area right around our eyes was the only part of our skin not covered.

A crazy side note: many of the natives were still running around in regular coats with no gloves and their faces uncovered. I guess they weren't affected to much by the cold, nor were they worried that -25 is just barely in the temperature range with an increased risk of frostbite (it's possible for your skin to get frostbitten within 1 minute, according to our temperature/wind chill chart).

11am

The First two are looking South out of Chalyse's window. The blue line along the horizon is the ocean. The last two are looking west from our living room. I thought the moon looked really cool. This picture doesn't do it justice. It looked a lot bigger.

Don't forget to check out our post about Halloween. It is 2 under this one because we didn't post it on the day it was originally composed.

Top Ten Things We Miss Since Moving to Point Hope

10. Warm weather outside

9. Cool weather inside

8. Affordable Produce

7. Milk at less than $10/gallon

6. Babysitters

5. Places to go

4. Restaurants

3. Grass

2. Trees

And the #1 thing that we miss since moving to Point Hope is:


1. *Insert your name here*

Halloween

We had a medium bit of fun this Halloween. It would have been a LOT of fun to have gone and seen our families.

Tom was asked to help judge a costume contest at the school on Friday night. Chalyse dressed up as a bear and Ellora as a monkey, but because Tom was a judge the girls weren't able to be in the contest, but that's okay. There were a lot of really creative costumes. Here are a couple of our favorites.





Geisha and Inupiat Barbie

























It was a little disappointing after the contest, though. We had about an hour before the carnival started, and so we went home for dinner. Chalyse had woken up early and didn't get a nap all day, so when she fell asleep on the way home, we tried to keep her asleep. She only slept for about an hour, though, and when she woke up she was very grumpy. We decided that it would probably be best if we didn't go to the carnival, because she probably would have cried the whole time.

On Halloween, we carved faces into little pumpkins. We had gotten a big pumpkin to carve, but it rotted before we had a chance to carve it, and the store only had them for about a week. Here are our mini jack-o-lanterns.


After we carved our pumpkins, we made homemade pizza. It was really yummy.

We dressed the girls up in their costumes and went trick-or-treating to some of our friends. Chalyse kept trying to take her costume off. We went to five different houses and only 1 person was home. Then we took the girls around the 5-plex where we live and found 2 other people home. Everyone gave Chalyse a handful of candy, so it was okay.

We came home and invited some people from the 5-plex over for a movie and games. We had a lot of fun.

Tummy Time

Thank you Sandy

For a my birthday/Christmas present my mother-in-law Sandy got me a sewing machine and even had it shipped up here to me. Up until now I had been borrowing one. My Mom has been sending me fabric and other materials and I have also been ordering from a web site Fabric.com. I have had a lot of fun working on some projects. Here are some of the things i have done:





Since i don't have any stuffing i used packing paper to stuff the green and white "pumpkin" but while we were at the school visiting with the shop teacher i had in idea. He had just finished planing and piece of wood (which means to cut it down to reduce the thickness) and it had left a pile of strips of confetti-like wood. So i stuffed the large pumpkin with this sawdust and it worked really well. I think i may re-stuff the others.






Here are some more pictures of Tom and the girls.

Clarification

Hey everyone, just to clear things up i do not have strep. I just have had a LITTLE sore throat which did not amount to anything. The villagers here seem to call every sore throat "strep" and that is why we called it that in parentheses. In fact we are all doing well, with the exception of Ellora who we are beginning to think is bothered when i eat onions as well as milk. Hopefully that is all and she will feel better soon. Not much has happened this week. The snow is finally starting to stick but we only have about an inch or so. We a supposed to get more this week. We are excited for Halloween on Saturday. There will be activities at the School on Friday and we will do a little trick or treating on Saturday. (like around the 5 plex) We will post pictures.

Breakthrough!!

Chalyse was feeling her usual self yesterday. I just thought I would give the update, although that's not why I'm writing.

About a month ago I gave a unit test in my English classes. My 8th grade class did horribly. Half of the class REFUSED to take the test for most of the period, and instead sat and talked, despite my best efforts to quiet them, separate them, punish them, etc. Today, on the other hand, I gave another unit test, and every single person took the test quietly. They even did the writing sections!!!!!

How did I work the miracle? Besides a LOT of praying, I came up with a system that I call "Respect Points." The way it works is that I divided them into teams, and they earn points for each member of their team who is on time doing what they're supposed to be doing, and additional points for when their entire team is being respectful. They lose points when any person on their team does something or says something disrespectful. At the end of the period, the winning team gets to leave 1 minute early while the other teams get to stay and practice being respectful. If a team has negative points, they get to stay one minute for each negative point. If the losing team(s) have less than 10 points, they get to stay 30 seconds into their break.

It has worked like a charm. I just hope these lessons in respect carry over into the rest of their lives, but most especially into high school. We seem to have a worse problem there than in the middle school with respect.

No Foyer at This Church

This morning we called in to church right at 10:30, when our church starts, and the automated conference call system announced to us that the conference we had selected was currently full! We were a little disappointed, as you could imagine. No worries, though, because we called back a couple of minutes later and got in.

There have been two bugs going around since we got here. One is "strep" and the other is the flu. Camille has been battling strep the last few days, but it hasn't really hit her very hard, yet. Last night, Chalyse fell off her bed at 12:20 and naturally started screaming. We rushed in there, and put her back on her bed. While we were comforting her, she threw up and then rolled in it. We were worried that she had a concussion from falling out of bed, but we couldn't find any bumps on her head, and her pupils were contracting properly. She continued to throw up for the next 2 hours. We decided to put on a movie to keep her awake to see if she had a concussion. She finally stopped throwing up near the end of the movie.

This morning, she was over her vomiting, but diarrhea had replaced it. We changed, between the two girls, about 9 stinky diapers before noon, half of which leaked. We decided to put plastic underpants on Chalyse to protect her clothes. She appears to be feeling a lot better, though.

Looking up to my big sister.

Natives are always coming by to sell us art work that they have made. This one was really neat with lots of detail. They use a lot of walrus ivory in there art. The thing he is standing on is a piece of whale baleen.



Ellora and her fun sticky-up hair.



Some of the girls in the village came over to play with Chalyse and show us some of the dances they learned on Eskimo dance class. A favorite activity for the kids is visiting the teachers.



Sleeping in the stroller.



Ellora craning to watch Chalyse play.

Updates

Chalyse still loves her rocks. She asks to play with them everyday. The other night she insisted on sleeping with a couple of them. I sure am getting sick of them so when she thew most of them behind the couch I was glad. She still has a few. She keeps finding them in all of her little hiding places and so do I.

Ellora is doing well. She tries to eat everything (her blanket, her hand, my hand, her toys). I keep thinking she hungry but she just wants to put things in her mouth. She loves to be talked to and talking back. She loves her big sister. She will sit and watch her play for a long time and loves it when Chalyse brings her toys and piles them on top of her. It makes her very sad when Chalyse is mean to her (Sometime Chalyse will hit her or pull her hair to get attention).

Tom is very busy! He does life guarding 4 times a week. They are paying him well for it and in the mornings twice a week he and some other teachers take turns life guarding and swimming laps. It will be good for him. He will be starting an after school Japanese class this next week. They will meet twice a week for about 2 hr each time. They are also keeping him very busy with his regular duties. He is teaching 5 different subjects. He also has ILP's due soon for each student and can't seem to find time to work on them even though he goes an hour early every day. And one Saturday a month he has in service which is code for useless meetings all day. This Saturday is it.

As for me I'm keeping busy. Between the girls and house work I can't seem to get much else done. Everyone around here keeps worrying that i am getting bored. I don't see how i could. Maybe a little lonely but never bored. I have a lot of projects i want to work on and i don't know if i will ever get to them. Oh, and at the beginning of the year we brought some rolls to a dinner some of the teachers were having and now i have people asking to buy them.

The Pool's Open!

One of the reasons that Camille and I thought we could do okay up here is they have a pool that we can use on a regular basis. Well, when we got up here, we found out that the pool had been out of commission for about 6 years. They had said they were for sure going to fix it this time, though.

Well, they fixed it this last summer, but because the pump had sat unused for so long, some of the gaskets had deteriorated and we needed a new pump. In the meantime, I became one of the lifeguards for the pool for whenever it was ready to go, and I was given the job of re-certifying the other lifeguard who was planning on being the lifeguard originally.

After the pump FINALLY got here, Cathy, the other lifeguard, had to retrain the maintenance staff on how to maintain pools (she's a trained pool inspector). This was only a little chaotic. The chlorine was either too high or too low. The pH was all over the place. When we finally had everything to where we needed it, the heater decided to act up and the pool heated up to 96+ degrees. Not quite a hot tub, but way too warm for swimming. The problem this time is that we had told people we were going to open just before it happened.

So, after nearly two months of trying, we finally opened the pool for students to come in last night. Camille brought the girls. Chalyse had a blast in the pool. She doesn't get out much, and being able to play around in the water was so fun for her.

By the way, this isn't exactly an Olympic-sized pool. It's about 25 yards long and two good-sized lanes wide. The depth ranges from 3 ft. on either end and 4 ft in the middle.

October in Inupiat is Sikkuvik. Which means the months when everything freezes.

Yummy Shredded Beef Enchilada Casserole

This is a new recipe Tom and I tried and it turned out really good.

Shredded beef:

2 lbs frozen roast
1 can tomato soup
1 cup water
1 tsp beef bullion
Garlic powder
Onion salt
Pepper

Put frozen roast in baking pan and add soup, water and bullion around it.
cover top of roast with garlic powder, onion salt, and pepper.
Cover and bake at 250 degrees all day. About 8 hours. If roast is thawed bake for about 5 hours.

Red Enchilada sauce:

1 15 oz can of tomato sauce
1 cup water
1/2 onion
1/2 green bell pepper
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 clove garlic minced
Dash of cumin
Dash of oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Blend up onion and pepper (or chop finely) You try different kinds of peppers.
Put all ingredient in sauce pan and simmer for 20 min. Chill for a few hours.

When roast is done drain off fat and extra juices (about half of it) and set aside. You can add some back in if it is too dry. Shred beef with a fork.

Layer in a baking dish corn tortilla chips, beef, enchilada sauce and grated cheese. Cover top generously with grated cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.

Here are some pictures of the girls so you can see how big they are getting.