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.