Arctic Adventures

Ptarmigan, the state bird WOO HOOO SPRING BREAK!!! We had Thursday and Friday off of school for Spring Break.  Alision, Lori, and celebrated by watching a movie and enjoying $20 ice cream from the store. (It was totally worth it!) We celebrated the first day of Spring, with a beautiful a ski trip down to the river bed for a fire and picnic.  It was a gorgeous sunny day; the temperature was about 20 degrees, so once we were moving it was quite warm! THe trail was a little treacherous in a couple of places.  We all fell going down two of the hills.  It turns out, once you get your skis tangled and you're laughing it's pretty hard to get back up! One of the girls going to get more supplies. Cooking the hot dogs :) Making the loop back to town. This was the hardest part of the trip.  Climbing the hill back to Stan and Doris's house. I continued the celebration of Spring and above zero temperatures with a short jog today.  I didn't even need to wear a coat, it was wonderful!

I took the kids out for a snowshoe today for PE.  I could only bring 8 kids at a time, due to the number of snowshoes we have, but it was a blast.  I was a little nervous at first when I asked who wanted to go snowshoeing and some kids asked, "What's that?"  (I told them that if they didn't know what snowshoeing was they had to try it!) Then I brought out the "modern" snowshoes and immediately there was an outcry from the kids, "THOSE ARE NOT ESKIMO SNOWSHOES."  (Eskimo snowshoes are the "old wooden ones") Despite all that, they had so much fun--even the usually trouble-some students :) I had a hard time finding pictures because I didn't want to show their faces. . .  PS it was -17 when we went out, and we were SWEATING!   The kids were even trying to take off their jackets. I stopped for 2 minutes to help a girl fix her snowshoe, and I told the kids to play in the deep powder--but when I looked up this is what I saw:  haha they were

Today was a bright beautiful day.  When I woke up it was -36, but it warmed up to -26 in the afternoon.  I want to take the kids out cross country skiing sometime soon, so I needed a little practice.  Alision, Kyle, Lori, Mark, Doris, Stan, and I all went out from Stan and Doris's house on a little 2 mile loop.   Forging our own trail. I always feel like a little kid every time I hop in the sled behind the snow machine.   My cozy ride with my frozen friend, "Lumpy" My job:  YELL if the skis start to fall. Even though it felt nice and warm it was still -26, so the frost collects on anything remotely hairy. Check out Kyle's beard and Alision's eye lashes. Stan and Doris live at the end of town.  Their view. . . gorgeous. The girls :) from left to right Me, Lori, Alision, Doris Lori and Mark, Me, Alision, Doris These pictures are all out of order.  This was about midway through.... Alision, Doris, Stan, and Kyle. The beginning of our trek.  We voted for starting out

I am sorry it has been so long!  Let me recap the last few weeks:  I participated in the EJs City League basketball tournament, Brett came to visit, we had the regional Middle School Basketball Tournament, I signed my contract for next year, and now here we are at the first week of the fourth quarter.   The kids had such a blast when Brett was here (so did I of course).  He came in to school to teach them hockey and they just loved it.  The comments they made the first day were pretty funny.  "I've never heard a guy with that deep of a voice."  "What's the boy barbie?"  "Ken?"  "Yeah.  Kayla's honey looks like him."  Haha!  (sorry, Brett it was too funny to keep secret) The regional middle school basketball tournament was held in Kotzebue this year.  All of the girls, boys, and co-ed middle school teams were there, plus the 1A high school teams....250 players in all.  Talk about a lot of basketball.  We did get the first win of the se