Windy with a chance of being snowed in.

Our Christmas tree did come on time and so did pretty much all our gifts. The Wednesday before Christmas Tom called me to tell me that we had gotten 6 new packages! Yay! But when he went to the front desk of the post office to pick them up it was closed even though it should have been opened. There was a sign at the desk that said, "We will be closed Dec 22th and Dec. 24th." What?! Plus they had been closed the Saturday before. One of the package claim slips said the package had been received 2 days before. Keep in mind we had been going to the post office every day. So Tom knocked on the door until someone came. They said that they were behind in things so they needed to be closed to catch up. They gave him some of his packages but said the others were too buried and he would have to come back tomorrow to get them. Tom asked if he could go look for them and so she said he could. He found them quickly on the top of the piles.

Here is our little Christmas tree and the window behind it plastered with snow.

In other news we have been having a lot of crazy wind.  Gusting up to around 55 mph and not getting much below 30mph. Because of this most the teachers who were headed out for Christmas were stuck here longer than planed. One teacher and her husband, who must have been inspired, left a day early and just missed the delays. All the others who had planed to go out Friday afternoon or Saturday had to wait until Monday. This wouldn't have been so bad but because it is such a busy time to fly many of them had to wait a few days in Anchorage or other layovers for an available seat. Most of them got to their final destinations almost a week late.

When Tom and I were deciding when to come down we were both feeling a little aprihensive about going home for Christmas. This is why we decided to go home for Thanksgiving instead. When I ended up going home early I thought that, that must be the reason but it looks like we were blessed in more ways than one.

'Twas the day before Christmas and all down the street, Nothing was working not even the heat!

Christmas eve we woke up to find our power had gone out. This had happened a few days before and was out for a couple of hours. Ever sense then we had, had several flickers and brief periods of no power so we were hoping this would be the case again. The power outage might have been due to the all the wind we have been having. Around 9am after the power had been out for about 4 hours Tom called the power plant. They said there were about 14 homes that were out of power and they needed to send in a line man from Barrow. He would be coming in a search and rescue plane and would get here as soon as he could.

When I was a kid I always thought it was exciting to have the power go out but with it being pitch dark and slowly getting colder and colder in our apartment some of the excitment turns into frustration. Not to mention all of our Christmas activities would be difficult without light or electricity. We of course have some flash light and a hand cranke lanturn but the dim light from those is not enough to do much of anything. As far as the heat perdiciment goes things were not too bad. Although it was -10 degree outside our small apartment did well to hold in the heat. I has tripple paned windows. The back door has two doors with an entry way in between called a "kunichuk" and the front door leads to a hallway that also has a kunichuk. We all dressed warmly and were fairly comfortable most of the time.

At 1pm Tom called again and found out that the line guy had been unable to get of the ground yet. We started making plans for Christmas at the school. As soon as we got too cold we would head over to there. The school still had power but even if it hadn't they have a back up generator. Later the principal called and informed us we could stay at his home which was all the way on the other edge of town. We had, had the school vehicle but the matenance truck wouldn't start that day so they had come to borrow the one we had. (He still has it) I wasn't so excited about a treck accross town in the extreem wind and cold and was really not excited about spending Christmas at the school.

Around 2 or 3pm we saw hope; a line truck drove by our window . By 4:30 our power began to flicker and then came back on. At first we didn't allow ourselves to believe it but we soon began to celibate and clean up our messy house to get it ready for Christmas. We have not had any trouble with our power since but our heat never came back all the way back on. Luckily, as we discovered last year, we are able to heat our apartment just fine between the oven and a small space heater. Hopefully they will come take care of it soon though.

From the Land of No Sun

I guess it is time to update our blog since it has been almost a month since our last post. We had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving in Utah with family. It was especially good to have Tom with us again. We all miss him so much. Chalyse would talk about him all the time and kept asking to go home to her Daddy. He flew in on Thanksgiving morning around 7:30 a.m. and then we all went to breakfast together. After a short nap we went to my parents for dinner and then Tom's parent's for dessert/birthday party. There are tons of birthdays in November and December on both sides of the family and we celebrated 3 Coxson nephews' on Thanksgiving.

We really enjoyed the rest of the time spent in Utah. We did the rest of our Christmas shopping and Tom and I were able to go on our first overnight date since Chalyse was born and probably our last for at least another year and a half. It was nice to get away for a short while and the girls enjoyed having a "party" with their Aunt Mandy and Uncle Spencer while we were gone. Tom and I went to Rodizio Grill at Trolley Square and also did some window shopping. We spent the night at Anniversary Inn. We started out in the Phantom of the Opera room but the heat wasn't working so they let us choose any other room that was available. We chose the Swiss Family Robinson room and got to sleep in a tree house and shower in a waterfall. It was pretty cool.    

We were also able to enjoy a little bit of the Christmas season while we were down. Maegan had her annual Christmas party and visit to Temple Square to see the lights. My mom also had a choir concert at the Assembly Hall at temple square so they combined the two. 

One of Chalyse's favorite things to do while we were down was to drive around and look at Christmas lights and since Dad had been missing his new car he enjoyed this too. We had to go to the Festival of Lights twice because the first time we went Chalyse fell asleep right before we got there and we could not get her to wake up. It was worth it though.

The trip home was supposed to only last about 12 hours but ended up being a day and a half. We left Utah at 9:30 at night and all was going well until we got to Kotzebue and found that the Point Hope flights were delayed due to wind gusts. We spent all day in the Kotzebue airport. We had few snacks so we ordered some Chinese. We got two things and it was $45! We were able to nap on the couch a little and the girls were, well...manageable...barely. The airport is first of all filthy, of course, and it has one long staircase that is "off limits to kids"...yeah right. We were glad when people decided to sit at the bottom and block the way up. The Bering Air building where we were is pretty small and was usually packed with people, but every one was very friendly. The natives have a way of taking care of each others' children. It was nice but of course I still didn't want to let the girls out of my sight. Also, people everywhere were feeding the girls. It didn't help that Ellora will always go up to people with food and stare at them until they share. All we could do was pray that they wouldn't come down with anything serious. By evening, we finally were told that all Point Hope flights were canceled for the day.

Here is Ellora playing on the stairs

Happy to have snacks

Luckily we had needed to contact the branch president in the past and had his phone number. We called them up. They were so good to us. They fed us and put us up for the night. They have a little girl who is Chalyse's age, and it was fun for them to play in a kid safe environment; although, I felt bad about all the germs we might be bringing into their home. Especially after that night when Chalyse started throwing up (I will talk about that in a minute). The next day Ellora and I were able to attend the small church in Kotz and then around 3:15 we were finally able to fly home. 

Here is Chalyse and her friend in Kotzebue. They both have the exact same blankie.

It was great to spend so much time with family but we are glad to be back in our own home even though we almost never see the sun because it gets closest to the horizon during nap time (it doesn't peak above it). Soon after we got here I gave the girls a much needed hair cut. I was so sad to cut Ellora's long hair, but it was so uneven because she had lost it in spots when she had her helmet. I cut off about two inches and have cut an inch off before but it is really cute and can still go into piggy tails. Chalyse hair was in need of a trim in the back to even it up but I accidentally cut the same off the front as the back so it is pretty short in the front now. Oops! hopefully it will grow faster after having been cut.

Here are some before and and after pictures of their hair cuts.

Chalyse's before picture

Ellora's before picture

Chalsye's after picture

Ellora's after picture

 

 

 

From the front

The hustle and bustle of Christmas can be a lot of fun but I think this year it will be nice to have a quiet Christmas with just the four of us. The community does do a week long celebration with Eskimo games at the school so we will get a chance to see some of that, too. It should be fun.We bought a small Christmas tree and mailed it up. Oh, I hope it gets here soon. Chalyse is excited for it to get here, too. I suppose as long as it gets here before Christmas it will be okay.

As far as health goes we are all doing fairly well. The girl have had something very strange. I wish I had realized it before we left Utah, but they both seemed to be doing well at the time. It started with Ellora and Chalyse caught it about a week later. They will get sick and throw up for a day or two or even just a few hours then they will have really bad diarrhea for about 5 days or so although Ellora's first bout lasted for a week and a half. Then they get better for a few days. At first I just thought that they were catching something new each time but it is now clear that this is a pattern. I am fairly certain that they have Cryptosporidium. It is the "swimming pool" parasite. It is transferred only through the feces and usually in water. I think Ellora got it either from the water here in PH or a public bathroom. You know how toddlers touch everything. Then since I bathe the girls together Chalyse caught it. It doesn't seem to be harmful except to cause dehydration but they have been doing just fine with that. It supposedly goes away by itself with in a month or so. It has been about 5 weeks for Ellora but the last time she was sick it only lasted for a day.

The last time Ellora was feeling sick she went into Tom's and my closet and fell asleep on a suitcase