Settling In

Our flights back to Utah went well. We stopped in Seattle for a few hours on Tuesday and spent the day with our friends Andrea and Danny and their little boy Brixton. Tom was in Utah for only 3 short days before heading back on his two day journey to the village. He made it back safe and is keeping busy with teaching, life guarding and a little more packing.

The girls and I are doing well and starting feel settled into our apartment. We are still missing a few boxes, mostly just toys but hopefully they get here soon. Like usual we are sick after traveling. We got the virus that has been going around. The cough and fever that wont seem to go away. Chalyse got it first and I think that Ellora and I are just at the beginning so it hasn't hit us too hard yet. Luckily Chalyse is usually a good sport about being sick and we haven't lost too much more sleep than usual.

My mom threw my sister Daurie and me a baby shower on Tuesday because we are both having a new gender than what we had before. It was a lot of fun and between that and trading baby clothes with Daurie I think I am almost ready for the baby. I had an other ultra sound on Monday and everything looks great. I did fail my glucose test though. It's not a big deal. I was just a little too high so I have to go back in for the 2 hour test.

Now that we are away from the isolation of the village we are planning to start a new blog for close friend and family to read. We plan to keep posting on this blog but for the more personal stories we would like to go private. Let us know if you would like to be invited to read and don't get an email from us in the next week or two.

Leaving the Arctic

Our arctic adventure has officially ended for the girls and me. I am glad to be back to what I am used to: being around family, being able to drive to the store...things like that. But I have had a lot of mixed feelings about leaving. I have been apprehensive about being with out Tom for two months again but I have also been a little sad to leave this stage of my live and enter a new one.

Living in Point Hope has definitely been a huge challenge for us. On the flip side I have learned so much about myself and about other people by being there and as a result it has become a huge part of who I am now. One thing that I noticed about the people of Point Hope is how genuine they are. They do not pretend to feel one way or an other. They act exactly how they feel. This is both good and bad but it is nice to know that when they treat you like a friend it is not just because they feel obligated to. Here are some of our friends in Point Hope who will be missed.

Gail: She taught Mandy and I how to make the traditional native atigluks.

Patty: Her daughter is around Chalyse's age and the girls enjoys having her come over and play. Patty is a lunch worker and the girls liked seeing her when we came for lunch.

Kathy and Cheryl teach in the elementary

Dorothy and Lovey are a couple of Tom's students. All the kids know Chalyse's and Ellora's names and enjoy playing with them.

Susan teaches the ECE. She is so great with the kids and has so much patience and love for them. The girls loved going to play in Susan's classroom.

Shea was one of our next door neighbors and good friends. She teaches 1st grade with help form her aid Hazel.

Here are a few teachers at the school. Debbie, Shea, and Beth.

Emily was one of our first and best friends from Point Hope. The girls just adore her. She is the one who made my parki for me. She also recently gave the girls their Eskimo names. She has lived in Point Hope all her life and grew up in the old sod homes. Tom is going to have her write down the names so we can remember them. I will post them and their meanings. 

Regina lived in our building and was always there when we needed anything. The girls also loved to visit her and her little dog Thumbalina and her cat Mo.

Emily was another neighbor and good friend. She teaches 5th grade.

Don is the shop teacher at the school. He joined us for church each week. The girls loved having him over and not just because he would bring them M&M's.

It's Official

For all of you who were wondering...It is officially a boy!

Oven-Fried Chicken with Cheddar Spinach Sauce

Her is an other recipe to try. Most of our recipes we put together ourselves after looking at several other similar recipes. Our favorite site to find recipes is Allrecipes.com. Anyway, here it is. I may add a picture later but for now you will just have to imagine how yummy it looks.

Oven-fried Chicken:

1 lb of chicken breast cut into 2 inch strips or so

1/2 cup mayo mixed with a little water

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup cracker crumbs or potato flakes

Salt

Pepper

Basil

Onion powder

A pinch of ground red pepper

Coat chicken in mayo. Place in it in bag with other ingredients and shake. Place on greased baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 35 min or until chicken is no longer pink inside.

Cheddar Spinach Sauce:

2 table spoons butter

1/2 Medium onion chopped

1 cup fresh baby spinach chopped

1 table spoon minced garlic

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup milk

3 table spoons flour

Salt

Pepper

Seasoning (We used fennel salt but since I had never heard of that before someone gave  it to us you may not have it on hand. Make the sauce your own by adding your favorite spices or just have it with salt and pepper.)

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Cook onion in butter for a few minutes until it is tender. Add garlic and spinach and cook until spinach is wilted. Add remaining ingredients except for cheese and whisk to break up flour. Cook and stir until thick then add cheese and heat until melted.

Serve sauce over oven-fried chicken and rice or potatoes.

Too many tears on the way to the store

The other day I decided to take the girls out for a walk. We planned to stop by the post office and the store and to take out the garbage on the way. The community only has large garbage cans about once a block and ours is most of the way down the bock on the other side of the street. Since Tom usually takes it out and he had been out of town there were a few bags and a box. I would have taken it out sooner but every time I thought about it Tom was supposedly coming home soon. Finlay it started to make the house smell so it had to go.

Our trip went something like this:

It wasn't too cold. Only about 6 degrees and the wind was only about 10 to 15 miles an hour. I decided to let Ellora walk instead of ride on my back like usual. That way I could deal with the garbage and she could get some exercise and sun.

You should have seen us trying to get to the road. It was hilarious! The girls kept wondering aimlessly over the mountains of snow occasionally crying or falling over and getting stuck on their backs like a bug. I had the trash that kept falling off of the sled and I had to take it a few different ways before I found a way down. I had to run between each of the girls because I couldn't get them both over the mountains at the same time and they would each fuss or cry when I would leave them. You need to be aware that our house is only about 30 or 40 feet from the road but whole ordeal of getting to the road probably took at least 10 minutes.

Once we were to the road we were off but since the garbage was on the sled I had to herd the girls along as we walked down the street. Finally they decided they wanted to sit on top of the garbage and ride. Out in the road the wind picked up and Ellora decided she didn't like the wind in her face at all. So she cried on and off the rest of the time we were out.

We never made it to the post office which is good because I guess it was closed. When we got to the store a lady asked if I needed help and suggested it was too cold for my girls. She then picked up Chalyse and began carrying her away from me and into the store. You can imagine what happened next; Chalyse thought she was being kidnapped and began screaming and crying. By the time we got inside I had two screaming kids. There were several ladies visiting inside the door and they started saying that my girls were getting frostbite and we too cold. Trust me, they were not one bit frost bitten and were plenty warm. Sometimes I wonder if people say things like that to make you look stupid. They think that because we are not from around here we don't know anything about the cold.

Anyway...I was glad that we went. It gave us something to do and at least we got out of the house.

Check out my sister-in-laws recent post "Why?" She does a great job on her blog in capturing the joy in moments like these.

Girl with a Curl Strikes Again.

"There was a little girl who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.


And when she was good she was very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid."


Chalyse is a lot like tinker bell. She is not all bad. Sometimes she is all good. She is just so small she only has room for one emotion at a time.

(I know this all sounds a little familiar)

Chalyse is such a big helper. She likes to help me clean the house and loves to help take care of her little sister. She is so loving and kind. She enjoys giving hugs and telling people how much she loves them. She also is good at handing out compliments. The other day some one knocked at the door. I said, "I think it is Shea." Chalyse responded, "Oh good, I love Shea! She is a very beautiful person."

But...unexpectedly she will flip. Mostly when she is tired. Today, for example, I was working on a sewing project that I had put a lot of work into. I went to the bathroom and was gone probably less than a minute. When I came back Chalyse was sitting in my chair. She looked innocent enough. I thought nothing of it. Later I was going along and I found a huge gash cut into the side. AAAH! "How did this happen?" I exclaimed. I thought perhaps I had done it when I had trimmed the edges but Chalyse very proudly looked at me and said, "I cut it when you were in the bathroom." I said. "why would you do that?" Her response, "Because it was a very bad thing to do."

Now there is a good possibility that she did not do it to be naughty but when she saw how upset I was she played off of it. You see, she LOVES to push peoples buttons and watch them get upset. Whatever the reason was she still got a long time out.