We had a big storm last night, several inches of snow and 35 mile per hour winds. The winds continued today but the temperature went up, so what snow didn't melt, got blown completely away by the wind. Winds are still going strong. Hope you like the video!

Didn't remember if I put the moose in the last post or not. This one was like six feet from our car in downtown Anchorage.



Our Chevk new year was pretty low key. We did end up watching fireworks from our front porch with some of our neighbors.



We actually have the biggest porch and the best view of the lake from our house. Don't know how we lucked up there.



That is Elizabeth on the escalators at the Anchorage airport - notice her new hairstyle and color.




Roxy is hoping Tom won't notice when she steals a bite!

The photo above was taken in the Anchorage airport when the children arrived.

We fly back to Chevak tomorrow. Elizabeth flew back to Georgia last night. Charlie will leave tonight at 1 am. I'm afraid the kids were anxious to get home. We have so much running around to do when we are here for the Christmas break, I 'm afraid we have worn both of them out. We mailed back over 26 boxes of food and supplies, including a big sled and an exercise machine which we airfreighted out this morning. We will take back two ice chests of meat and several dozen eggs which tom will hand carry on the plane. We've eaten pizza and wings and fajitas and ribs and apples and oranges and chocolate covered cherries. Charlie gave us electric toothbrushes for Christmas, we got him a computer case and got Elizabeth two overcoats and gloves. She got us nothing!

The children flew in together on the 20th and we met them at the airport. They helped us shop and pack groceries and then mail them. Charlie brought his computer so there were two computers going all the time, and Liz helped me learn how to work my iPod. We drove down to Alyeska in Girdwood - which is a winter resort. They had great snow for skiing which I thought the kids would enjoy. However, the interest level was quite low and the price for skiing was pretty high. So we just enjoyed to snow and and the beauty of the place and only stayed two nights. We wanted to get back to Blockbuster and our $42 dollar townhouse at Elmendorf. They had great food at Alyeska at "great" prices - Christmas dinner was special. The ride down to Girdwood and back to Anchorage was just beautiful - like a winter wonderland.

Found out that Charles will not graduate until May. Enough said about that.

Elizabeth and I kept looking up places for her to live and get a real job once she gets her masters work done - which could be as early as August. It is so exciting seeing her grow up and make big decisions!

Here are a few photos from our Christmas:


Tom and the kids in a snowball fight somewhere.





The road from Girdwood to Anchorage was actually pretty clear.


Oodles of these ice things coming off the mountains and rocks along the highway - like water falls frozen in motion...



Tom and Charlie took snowboarding lessons at Alyeska. They had 26 inches of snow at the top of the slopes - very nice, good food, a lovely Christmas, but a little pricey for the Benders.


We went bowling one night at Elmendorf Air Force Base. I love Elmendorf. Tom now has a permanent pass on his truck.


Here's Charlie and Liz under the lighted arbor at Alyeska. Charlie wore his orange knit cap and his long green overcoat the whole time. The locals at Alyeska kept calling him "Flynn". Seems there is a local man there that Charlies resembles both in looks and clothing choice. It got to be quite funny after so many people said "Hey Flynn", "What's up Flynn?"

My little movie is short but sweet.

We are having the strangest weather. This winter is even warmer than last winter - so far. Actually all the snow we had earlier melted completely. We have some frozen water puddles and then we had bare frozen ground. I actually did not mind that because it was certainly easy to walk on and walk quickly on. If it is wet, then there's mud boots and mud to deal with. If is is all snowy and sloshy - then you've got the slipping and sliding and dragging snow inside. I may have a big surprise after we come back from Christmas - but right now - it is rather warm.

Christmas plans have been finalized to a point. Tom and I fly in on the 18th to Anchorage. We will do some food shopping and a couple of medical appointments. Charlie and Liz fly in on the night of the 20th. Hoping they will pack our groceries and mail them for us - hoping. We are just too old to do that stuff - it completely wears us out. Then on the 23rd we drive down to Girdwood where we will spend some holidays at Alyeska Ski Resort - assuming there is enough snow for the kids to ski. If there isn't we will just enjoy the pool and the scenery. Liz flies home on the 28th. We will then buy and freeze our meet and head back to Chevak with Charles in tow on the 30th. He will spend two weeks in Chevak. Not too much impresses Charlie - but I believe life in Chevak will...

I am almost finished with my Big6 class. Whatever possessed me to put in my grant to take a college class is simply beyond me. I can not concentrate on that stuff anymore - I am totally task oriented now in my later years.

The kids are really enjoying the new computers. I am also enjoying all the new equipment and books and DVDs and Playaways and the extended library hours. It is actually a lot of fun.

We had our Veteran's Day ceremony at school this week. We invited every veteran in the community including those on the school staff and of course, Tom Bender. The children made craft itmes for them and their names were read off for the various services and wars. Out of a community of only about 300 adults, we had a good many veterans. They seemed to end up being the more well known, successful adults in the community - I'm guessing because they have been exposed to another world besides Chevak, AK. The two Veterans in the photo above are actually Elders in the community and they work every day at school in our Cup'ik Heritage classes.

In this photo, you can see our principal, Del Lantz standing there with the glasses - the one not in uniform. Tom is actually on the other side - hidden. That is Roxie, our counselor and a good friend of ours, leaning against the door. The man in uniform on this side of here is the president of the Board of Education, John Atack.

Friday night at about 5pm (and it was already dark) Cyndy and two other girls had to drive to Hooper Bay on their snow machines, spend the night in the school and get up early the next morning to take a Praxis exam. Cyndy and her husband had purchased our snow machine and while her husband goes everywhere on the snow machine, Cyndy had done no more than gotten some insruction from him as to how to start it. So Friday night she takes off in the dark on that snow machine with three others and they drive 20 miles in the dark snowy night to Hooper Bay - now if you miss Hooper Bay you can end up out on the ocean. I was pretty worried about them, but they made it safely - a bit sore but safe. Brave girls. Okay, one of the girls was Cupik and had made the trip many times, but still....remember there are no lights or signs or houses or phones.

Yesterday we cleaned up our apartment, I realized I had brought some material with me to cover the couch in case Roxie chewed on it =-well she fortunately has not chewed on anything. So I took the matieral and made drapes for our living area andthen made some pillows to match. We moved our litte stove over to the window and then for the rest of the day it felt like Christmas.

Ok, have to get to work on my Big6 online class.

Roxy says "Hello"

Everythingis happening at once with my grant. I just finished working with Mitinet to get the marc records cleaned up - and they have now been sent to Alexandria to be added to my new circulation program. Nettrekker came this week and I love it. NewsBank is trying to come in - we are having multiple problems with the ip addresses. Hope they can work that out soon. Then the kids are going nuts with the new macs - all I have on them is Kid Pix. They love it. Here's what these little ones can do - they can import a Photo Booth photo into Kid Pix. They can open iPhoto and import their photos from PhotoBooth and then they can import those photos into Kid Pix. They can also drag photos from PhotoBooth into iMovie and make a little movie - plus slide shows with music in iPhoto. It is amazing - the skills spread from one child to two more to four more!

I had over 40 kids again this past Saturday at the Saturday@yourlibrary program - all they want is the computer. The president of the Board of Education came with his two little ones. I was glad we had a big crowd for him and it was a big crowd.

This little kindergarten child won the gummy bears last week. She was really proud!

The photo of Tom outside our apartment was taken this past Thursday morning. It is really getting cold - I guess I had forgotten how cold it gets here. No looking forward to the winds - which will come...

Below, a middle schooler is using our new 30" mac monitor - it is rather bright!!

It's Snowing! It is getting colder here and we are already into boots and winter gloves. I haved started my Saturday@yourlibrary! I'm open three hours on Saturdays. The kids can come in and do whatever they like on the computer except chat. The chatting gets out of hand pretty quickly. I have also received our bean bags from the Scholastic Book Fair. I ordered - rather cashed in vouchers - for 25 bean bags. The reason I got 25 was that I didn't want the kids fussing over who gets a Bean Bag - so now we have enough for everyone with no fusses. I do not think that teachers are pleased but the kids certainly are. These photos are from my first Saturday@yourlibrary - loads of fun and the kids had a great time surfing and game playing.Our library grant pays me to keep it open. If I continue to have this many kids I'll need some help. This little pre-schooler was fascinated by the twirly things. Wish my photo did her justice.

Here are the moose photos I said I'd post. Notice the kids and dogs - this is high entertainment in Chevak.


The head was later skinned and only the bones left. They are drying and sunning now. The folks saved all the skin/fur for making things.


That is our tech specialist holding up the head of the moose.

That beautiful Walrus in the photo above is presently on the beach at Barrow, Alaska. Our friend Carmen emailed it to us. Many of the walruses are being killed. One walrus had five pups(?) with her and four have been killed. The natives can kill as many as they want. A fellow teacher here told me that it is really easy to kill them when they come up on the beach - much easier than going out in the water - so people go out in droves as soon as they know the walruses are there. The kids get right up out of school and go get their guns. Carmen said the police were out there trying to keep some order. Just makes my heart hurt to have those beautiful animals slaughtered - but this ain't my house.

We've had pretty rainy weather the past few days. I really enjoy the rain in the evening. I love listening to it - it's almost like a waterfall. But during the day I'd like to see a little sunshine.

A barge came into to Hooper's Bay and then a smaller barge brought us a bunch of boxes - I mean literally hundreds of packges -all of the school supplies that had been ordered supposedly came in. I wonder if we can ride that barge out next summer!! Don't think Thomas would go for that.

We have talked the children into coming up for Christmas. I think this year we will try go to Alyeska resort. There's lot of winter activities - it just may cost too much. I need to check out the prices pretty soon. We didn't really talk the children into coming - Tom just told them we were buying tickets and they were coming up, so...

I had my first moose dish the other night. Several of the teachers have gone moose hunting in the last few weeks and shot one. We were fortunate to be at Deanne's house when Steve and Stewart drove back after a weekend of hunting on their 4-wheelers pulling one third of a moose behind them in a cart. Just that third was huge. The other men who had hunted with them got the other two thirds. Stewart cut the head off, and later cleaned it out and has it on top of the connex drying, I guess. He and Steve immediately started skinning and cutting that huge thing up. It is not as easy as it would seem. Took them a few hours and then the rest of the night they and the wives cut and packaged the meat to freeze. Tom and I watched for a good while - and then when I got home all I could see in my dreams that night was huge hunks of red meat with fur on it. Yuk. Steve brought us two pieces the next day and we finally got around to cooking it this past week. I was very excited about having a bit of moose - but all I could think about while I was eating it was that precious moose head that just looked like a huge sweet Roxie head. Deanne had also made some delicious moose jerky she shared with us. Same story - it was good - but all I could see was that sweet moose face which by now been skinned and cleaned and was sunning on top of Stewart's connex.

I thought I had a photo on my computer - I'll try to post one soon.