Christmas is in the air!!

This past week and a half has been a whirlwind of practicing for the Christmas program, making crafts and enjoying the spirit of the season. We have been working very hard on our two snowman poems and I think we just might be ready to perform for our parents tomorrow evening!!

We are very excited for Christmas break. The kids are looking forward to not having work and I'm excited to see some family. The teachers up here are asking for prayers for good weather Saturday through Monday as we all try to get out of the village.

I have been enjoying my ski doo on short trips, just around town. Maybe one day this week I'll have enough time after school to go for a short cruise out of town and see some country. :) I'll write more later. Maybe tomorrow evening I'll be able to post a video of our performance! :)

SKI DOO!!!!!!!

So. I know most of you know how ECSTATIC I was to order my ski doo... And then the phone call to have it shipped... Many of you also know how frustrated I was that my machine still hadn't arrived after 2 weeks and I've told the story of my phone call to my salesman.

So, my ski doo actually came in the Saturday after Thanksgiving.... The dumb dumb in ANC didn't put my right phone number on there so when the guys in Emo tried to call, they couldn't get ahold of me. On Friday I talked to the shipping folks and asked if they has shipped it yet. They said it would be within the week.... However, Saturday I didn't feel the need to call because it sounded like my machine was one of 5 coming out and it would be closer to Wednesday or Thursday. On Monday I called and lo and behold it was in Emo!! I did a crazy dance all the way into Jana's classroom where she and her boys (who've been asking constantly if it was here yet) got really excited too. So Jana and I skipped our Monday night class online and went to Emo for a new toy.

 Another evening at the dock....

 My ride next to Jana's after we got back from Emo.... Cold fingers and face, but had OH SO MUCH FUN!!!

 EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I really wanted to scale the side of the connex to jump that baby right down to the ground... However, the guys at Everts were speedy quick and I had my machine in about 5 minutes. :)

 SOOOOOO EXCITED!!! :) :) :) It was like 15 or 20 below at this point, but we didn't care! :)

Little baby started with just .7 miles on it.... Funny because LaFonda started with only 7 when I took her for a test drive... Hope this machine is as trustworthy as she was!! :)

I haven't been out playing on it as much as I would've liked because, well, I have this thing called a real job. It sort of hinders my daylight hours of playing in the snow. But I've been around AUK a little on it, cruised to the dock a few times. I'm hoping for a longer day of riding this weekend. I'll post pictures next week if I go out!

Thanksgiving Break

Again, 3 weeks between blog posts.... SOOOO SORRY!!!!

I think my last blog was just before Thanksgiving?? So, our friend Jamie came to Alakanuk from Mountain Village to spend the weekend with us. She arrived on time, had a worry free flight and seemed to enjoy her time here. We spent the weekend hoping and praying for my ski doo and smoked turkey to come and spending 90% of our time laughing....

I was highly disappointed Wednesday afternoon when I checked the PO and the turkey hadn't come... But it all turned out okay because I still was able to make pumpkin pie, ham, sour cream potatoes, apple pie and rolls. We also had a new invention on our dinner table.... Since we didn't have any turkey drippings to make gravy, nor did we have any powdered gravy mix we decided to give it a shot making ham gravy. Jamie created a masterpiece.

I had new adventure the day after Thanksgiving. I attempted cross country skiing. I did fall once going down a little hill, but for the most part I did really well. I think it helps that I've water skied so much, and tried downhill skiing a few times in my younger years. :) We skied to the dock and shot Jana's .22. It was really cool to see the dock because I hadn't been down there since before the big storm. The ice looks awesome.

 Jana and Jamie trying to see the range on the .22... They were standing on whats left of Alakanuk Hill...

 Make shift porta potty....

 DIRRRRTY ice... It was really cool to see the ice that had been pushed up during the big storm. I was way impressed. It was a couple inches thick, too!

Our student council also hosted the Turkey Tournament. Its a regional tournament for the mens city league teams around AUK. I spent lots of hours at the school volunteering to do scorebooks, gate, and help in the student store. I had originally thought that Thanksgiving weekend would be a good time to catch up on sleep. However, I think I got LESS sleep over those 5 days than I do on a regular week. Oh well, it was fun!

BIG STORM

Last week we recieved an email with a like to noaa.gov.... They were expecting a devastating storm. Many natives were concerned about it because they were expecting flooding and high winds. We ended up getting lucky and not having any flooding. We had wind gusts to 50-60 miles per hour, but nothing too major. The storm did push water all the way up, the slough was WAY higher than normal. No school was cancelled, nobody was hurt by the storm.

The night of the storm, Jana and I decided we wanted to go walk around and play in the snow... We went and got Michael to come play and we dove headfirst into snow drifts for about an hour. It was fun, not so scary at all.

I am glad the storm didn't cause the devastation and nobody was hurt, but I have to say I was disappointed that we didn't see more action...

 Jana's kitchen window...

 You can't really see the snow swirling... But it looked cool the way it was blowing and making snow devils in the courtyard.

This was right before we went to bed... Jana and I were hoping that the whole door would be drifted in when we got up in the morning, but sadly it wasn't any more drifted than that....

The temps are finally getting back down low enough to freeze the river. Over the last 3-4 days there have been many people make the trip between Alaknuk and Emmonak. Its still not totally as frozen as it will get, but its frozen enough to go from AUK to EMO.

Life in AUK

Over the month of October I was able to have many new adventures in Alakanuk... After we got back from training in Hooper I spent a ton of time on the weekends in the classroom or at school in general. We had a cross country meet at Alakanuk. We had alot of fun hosting some other schools and showing off our village.

I also got an opportunity to go seal hunting with some natives. Bummer called Jana one morning and asked if he wanted to go. She was kind enough to call me and off we went. It was so much fun! We chased lots of seals and beluga whales, but we didn't catch anything.

 The river was starting to freeze up. Actually this may be out toward the Bering Sea coast more...

 Bummer and Jadon looking for seals.

 Jadon put one of the shells up on the ice when we stopped the boat. Funny kid.

 It was cool to see the ice crack and flex and break as we drove the boats through it.

I was able to leave Alakanuk in October for a weekend in Anchorage including a surprise visit to Sarah and Adam's wedding in Las Vegas. It was awesome to get to see everyone and be part of their special day. However, I realized that its sort of annoying to go back into town after being in the village for so long. Of course it was nice to get to do a little grocery shopping and have a beer with some friends, but I really rather enjoy the quiet and isolation of our quaint little village.

They've got their dancin shoes on!! 

Somewhere between Anchorage and St. Mary's.

While in Anchorage Jana and her dad and I needed to burn an hour before taking me to the airport... Naturally, we went to Alaska mining and diving company. Why you may ask!? Well, because I wanted a snow machine. So, I bought one!! haha. And actually, it has been in Anchorage since the middle of October because the river wasn't frozen for me to get it from Emo. However, I called wednesday morning to have it shipped out... It might be in Emo now, or hopefully by tomorrow so I can go get it!!! EEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 My new best friend.... :)

 Sunset in Seattle on the way to Vegas... Man I miss the trees of the Pac NW!

Sunset in PDX...

One morning last month Jana called because she heard the Northern Lights were out... So we went down to the slough to check it out. By the time we got there they were mostly gone, but it was still cool to see them a little bit... Its hard to get good pictures, so I don't have any to post for you. Sorry.

At the end of October we had Red Ribbon week. Here in AUK they don't have homecoming week for football, but they do their dress up days in conjunction with red ribbon week. We had fun dressing up... Sometimes my kids participated, other days not so much... We had a parade of the kids on Halloween and we had AWESOME Power Ranger costumes. It was quite the day.

General life in the classroom

Okay.... So much for getting a blog done every week, huh? We finished the first quarter and all seemed to have survived parent teacher conferences. I had about half of my students and their parents show up. Its interesting to see the difference between the parent teacher conferences in Oregon and up here... In Oregon it seems that many parents are more concerned with how well their child is doing academically in addition to behaviorally. Many of the parents I talked to here were solely concerned with their child's behavior in the classroom. Thats not to say that they don't value the academic side at all, it just seemed that it was less of a priority.

We also have been celebrating all sorts of fun things like Halloween, and the end of the first quarter and earning a cupcake party for good behavior in school. I have a student with some serious food allergies and his mom volunteered to make the cupcakes for us... I was SO impressed with what she brought....

Some of the kids wore costumes to school, others brought them for the afternoon costume parade. Me?? I was ALL decked out in my super awesome Power Ranger costume with Jana, Michael, Zoey and Sarah. We got a few pictures on the night of the Halloween carnival, but sadly Jana was too busy setting up for the Haunted House that we didn't get a picture of all 5 of us...

 I'm most proud of my belt.... Freakin awesome...

POWER UP!

I bought a pumpkin for my kids to dig into and work together to carve... I was amazed that NONE of them liked pulling the seeds out of the pumpkin... Thats my FAVORITE part!! Anyway, they weren't interested... We did some counting of seeds and you would have thought I'd asked them to put their heads in the toilet or something... Ha.

We're still working on routine in our room... Perhaps I need to be more strict with routine, but I'm struggling with that... Any suggestions would be helpful! :)

We were VERY excited to get a video from Miranda, Arden and Jordan... I had called and asked them to make a video, per Jana's request. Jana's class was learning all about natural disasters and Jana asked me to come talk to her kids about fighting fire... So my dear cousin Adam sent some pictures, and they kids LOVED it... I had Mirn and the crew make a video for us. Totally HYSTERICAL!!! I loved it, and I watched it probably more than 5 times... The kids loved it too. They thought it was so cool to see them spray the water and drive the heavy around.

My class was also very excited to receive a letter from a class in North Carolina. They are learning about leaves and they sent letters to different states and countries. I emailed the teacher back and said we were already a few weeks into snowfall, but if we could find any fallen leaves we'd send them. The kids thought it was cool to see leaves from somewhere totally different. They also loved getting dressed up (putting on snow pants, coat, gloves, hat, boots) to go out and look for some leaves. We did find some that were wet, but still in one piece. We have been pressing those for a few days now. They're probably ready to be glued to some card stock and sent to that class. Here is a picture from our leaf walk.

That just about covers it for this month... I'll REALLY try to be better about posting more about life in the classroom... I'll leave you with a few more pictures of my sweet munchkins playing in one of the first snows of the year.

October-so far!

Holy cow! Its been a while since I've posted... Since our training in Hooper Bay we've been busy at school learning how to read, practicing our writing and working on some addition and patterns in math. We wrote a letter to Mr. Patton's class in La Grande. We're just waiting for a letter back. :)

Um, I feel like there is so much that I need to post about, but I can't think right now. Maybe in a few hours when I am sitting my my staff meeting, something will come to me. Haha!! My kids are busy working on the computers doing starfall learning how to read. I'm exhausted from a weekend of being in town.

I'll post more this evening. XOXO