Party time, excellent...

There's this really cool tradition up here called a "throw party"...basically what it is, is that when a lady or a female member of your family reaches a big life milestone, you invite all the other ladies in the village over and toss gifts, essentials, and random stuff to everyone off your roof/porch/whatever. From what we are told, it apparently originated out of a mix of celebration, a sense of community sharing, and also a little bit of bragging (hey, look at how cool I am, I can afford to throw all my stuff to you all, cuz I can just go get more!) Really, it all just adds up to a good time for the ladies...not to mention a little bit of elbow-sharpening and jockeying for position :-P

So, apparently, last spring Sara had discussed this all with a woman whose granddaughter had an occasion coming up over the summer (picking her first berries! woo!!), and they decided that in the fall, after we were all married up and back to the village, they'd do kind of a joint throw. Well, this all went down last week, and it was a lot of fun to watch.

There was definitely a lot of "boxing out" and trying to get good spots, and the windy conditions made for some interesting throws on lighter items. Also, unfortunately there were a few injuries (kitchen knives...yes, packaged, but still pointy...and large rubbermaid items were the culprits), but everyone seemed to have a grand old time.

I'll let Sara further elaborate on the whole story on her blog at some point, but I just wanted to post a pic (and maybe a video, once I get it off the camera and formatted), and let you know what we've been up to...

Strictly for purposes of linking...

I wish I would have thought of taking/posting this picture...oh well ;-)

Almost looks like Bullwinkle could be hiding under there, no?

Seriously.

It's been raining for two weeks straight. And looking at the forecast, it's supposed to rain for another week, at least. At this point, we'll be able to just boat to school in the morning.

But on the bright side, if it was a couple months from now and this was snow, the snowmobiling would be awesome.

Just keep truckin' on...

Well, we're already in the middle of September, eh? Well then...this semester is fixing to fly right by. Cool.

Was looking through some of the pictures Sara took in the spring, and noticed there was a good one of our new house from the front. So, I figured I'd include it to give a little frame of reference for what I've been raving about...the closets, windows, actual kitchen, etc. So yeah, this is our house.

Also, I wanted to post a link to a blog my brother started. For those of you who don't know my brother, he's an EMT/Paramedic/Firefighter/jack-of-all-emergency-trades, and he recently moved down from Wisconsin to Arizona for a job as a Flight Paramedic on one of the major EMS helicopter services in the Southwest. If you want to check in with him and see some cool pictures of the desert/mountains/helicopters (and an interesting climate counterpoint to this blog...seriously, my parents must be wondering how one of their sons ended up moving to one of the hottest spots in the country, and the other up to friggin' Alaska), check out his blog.

Otherwise, not really too much to update from up here. Weather's been about the same, except for the wind really kicking up lately. Days in the 50s, night down to maybe 40. Losing a lot of light, though. Pretty soon we'll be down from sunset at 11:00 when we got here to it being dark when we leave work after school. So it goes, so it goes. Looking forward to freeze-up, though.

Hoping to get out for an adventure of some sort here soon...itching to do some fishing. So I might have an actual interesting update for you soon...with "might" being the operative word.


*note - I fixed the link (thanks Patty)...I was just checking the specs on the endline for the rotary....girder......I'm retarded.*

Looooong Weekend

And not just because of the holiday.

We've both been down sick since, oh, last week sometime. I went home sick Wednesday afternoon, went to the clinic, found out I had strep. Good times. Plus, I think whatever shot it was they gave me for an antibiotic kicked my butt...I've had a screaming headache since, and that was almost a week ago at this point.

*whine*

Sara started out the opposite, with the flu-ish symptoms, and now she's getting the sore throat. She tested negative for strep last week, but I think she's going to go in today and get re-tested. I guess if there's anything you can say about the two of us, we're definitely good at sharing :-P

Hopefully we can move past it and get back on track this week. We were really a pitiful sight this weekend, just lying around the house, alternately napping, drinking tea, and watching TV for three days. Woohoo.