Video Dump!

So! Facebook video uploads are still not playing nice with our internet, so we have a minor backload of videos from the last couple weeks. Mind if we throw them all into one big post? K, here ya go:

Here's Loki out for a swim this morning, dodging chunks of river ice...

Here's Isaac walking home from school Thursday afternoon...

And now some from the Bethel trip. First, a video of our transportation to and from the airport :-P...

Isaac spent an entire day continuously running around the Yurt, destroying everything within his reach...here's a sample...

And finally, a quick one of us taking off from Bethel, heading home!

Tag-Team Blogging

So yes yes, whole lot of doing and not much blogging going on this summer...so how about this for a special treat?

Sara and I have made up a video from some clips we had from taking the dogs swimming when her sister Mel was up last week...she just posted it on her blog.

So for your comic video enjoyment, check out Mel's dog Wyatt and his unusual swimming style :-)

Well hello there

Yes yes, it's been forever. But in my defense...no, I can't say I've been that busy. Well, with baby stuff, I have, but that's in no way prevented me from posting, really. I'm just out of habit considering the summer migration and all it entails...

But yes, we got to Wisconsin just fine...the trip went pretty well, all things considered. Honestly, the biggest challenge with Isaac was the airports, not the planes. Sara and I are considering getting a jet engine installed in our bedroom. It works wonderfully at putting (and keeping) the baby asleep.

So our days back in Wisconsin have been so far filled with babyness and beer and food and family and friends. Pardon the use of the space saving crutch, but I'm sure many (most?) of you are here for pictures...so I'll get right on that...

First visit at Grandma and Grandpa's :-)

Baby's first cheese factory trip!

Big smile in the bathtub...

Loki's enjoying summer vacation too...making sure he gets his proper attention and plenty of swimming :-P

Isaac stretching out on his amazing, handmade puppy quilt. We're just picturing him dragging it around by an ear in a couple years...good thing they're triple stitched. Way to go, Mary!!!

Chillin' on the deck up north at the shack...hanging out, rockin' the hat..

All quiet(ish) on the western front...

So remember when I said I'd try not to let this become an exclusively baby-picture blog? Yeah, off to a smashing start, aren't I? :-P

But really, there' s so very little to report. School's out, which means we're just hanging out, getting things ready to leave for WI on Saturday...but otherwise, there's nothing to distract us from the endless joys of little 3-week old Isaac. He's even occasionally cute, as these newest (grandma-requested) pictures may be able to shed some light upon:

Surrendering in his sleep...maybe he was French in a past life?

Loki's been good around him...showing concern when he cries, otherwise leaving him mostly alone. The occasional curious sniff is about it. Just wait a couple years, dog...you'll be good pals, I'm sure.

I've really been amazed at how alert and expressive a little baby can be when he's not crying, sleeping, nursing, or otherwise occupied...

Back in the Saddle (kinda)

Well, sorry for the long break in posting, but here we are, back again after xmas vacation. Far, far too many things to post from break, so rather than try to hit the high points and forget/leave out a whole bunch, I'm just going to skip the whole thing. Suffice it to say, lots of fun, friends, family, food, fermented beverages, and a whole bunch of other things that probably don't start with the letter F. If I'm feeling ambitious and in need of a post topic later, maybe I'll reach back into my bag of stories. And there's probably a photo post to be had out of my xmas pictures as well...we'll see.

So we're back, and what a shock to the system the weather was. Back in Wisconsin, the weather had been beautiful...too beautiful for early January, in fact. Since we've gotten back here, we've had blizzard warnings, a canceled school day, and a reminder that our brand of digital weather station only reads down to -21.9 before saying "off scale - low" (though at the time, the wind was calm, so there was no wind chill to speak of.)

The blizzard that hit us Sunday night through yesterday has left a massive drift in front of our door...I'll try to get a picture of it after school tonight. It's really quite impressive.

Otherwise, just getting back in the swing of things here at school and in the village. Aside from math classes, I've got a "Computer Applications" class with some of the high school kids, and we'll be working on updating totally re-doing the school's website, so I'm sure I'll be posting links for you to see our progress. Good times.

Loki is definitely happy to be back in all the snow...his habit of "needing" to go outside 3 or 4 times an hour is getting worse with all the snowdrifts to play in. I'm sure he misses all of his "grandparents" back in Wisconsin, but he's been having fun running laps both inside and outside of his Nunap house.

Anyways, I'm sure there will be plenty to post on the Loki, baby, school, basketball, and who-knows-what-other fronts in the next few months, so I'll just stop here and look forward to a great spring semester!

Pure fluff

Man, I don't know how I plan on keeping this blog from turning into baby-central once the munchkin arrives...I can't even keep myself from posting pictures of the d*mn dog all the time...

Said dog investigating his new snowdrift that formed over the weekend

Same dog enjoying our xmas lights, flabbergasted that Sara dared to leave the house and walk next door.

Back in the Saddle

Well, here we are, back in the village, back in school, back at it. It's amazing the things you can forget in a month or two. Like how nice the sunsets are (not to mention how late, and how long they last...when the sun's moving at crazy angles, it seems like sunset lasts an hour and a half sometimes!)

We're finishing up our first week of school today, and I'm actually feeling pretty good about the year so far. My mornings consist of being an in-class aide for some math classes being taught from the District Office by teleconference. As long as I stay on top of things, I think my mornings will go pretty well and be fairly low on the stress meter. My afternoons, on the other hand, could get interesting. I've got the whole Junior High (mind you, that's only about 25 kids total), split into two classes for Keyboarding/Computers. Mind you, there's no curriculum...I'm making it up as I go along. So that could get interesting. Added into the mix, I've got a P.E. class. Yeah. Try to contain your laughter.

As far as everything else goes...lemme see...

Getting settled into our new house. It's so nice to have an actual house this year, as opposed to the ex-classroom we were living in last year. Now we have rooms! With doors! And even closets, too! And more than one window! And more than 6 inches of counter space! It's the lap of luxury, let me tell ya :-P

Speaking of luxury...we've even been able to watch the last two Packer preseason games, seeing as the second was a Seattle game, and the Seahawks are our local NFL market, and last night's game was nationally televised on Fox for some reason. I think I've already seen as many packer games this season as I did all of last season. And they're on nationally I think 5 times during the regular season, too! Thank goodness for that stretch of the Thanksgiving Lions game and then the NFL Network!

What else, what else...hmm. Loki's loving it being back up here. Back to swimming and frolicking and jumping off of docks. I'm never sure how much he really remembers of people and places, or if he's just good at getting comfortable as long as we're there with him, but something interesting happened when we got back. He got out of the house when we opened the door one of the first days we were back, and he immediately ran out of our new house, over to our old place, and across the boardwalk to where his friend Bailey lived last year. Unfortunately, Bailey and his owner Christina have moved to Oscarville for this year, so Loki didn't get to go in and play, but I thought it was cool that he remembered where Bailey lived and ran right there...I guess his memory is pretty good.

And with that, I think I'm out of stuff to share at the moment...that, and I need to go to class. Hope all's well, and talk to you all again soon!

Even more random summer pics...

So our summer place...with the fenced back yard...oh yes, Loki is a big fan. He had a run-in with a bird the other day, so now his big thing is to hang out under this one specific tree, waiting for another bird to magically drop into his clutches. If one doesn't he tries to climb the tree...or dances on his back legs trying to reach the branches. Yeah, we never said he was particularly smart.

All the running around outside this summer requires adequate hydration, of course.

So we were out on a boat ride up north this past weekend, and we came across a flotilla of pontoon boats having soe kind of battle with big hoses and spraying water. Looked like a lot of fun, actually...it was pretty durn hot.

Just in case you've ever wondered what would happen if you stuck your camera lens into an empty beer bottle and took a picture...now you know.

Loki made a couple new friends today. Our friend Liz's dog Riggs (the Golden) was really, um, friendly...and then another guy came along where we were hanging out on the river and had a Doberman he was teaching to swim. So it was a big ol' dog party on the river.

Who'da thunk it...there ARE actually fish on this part of the river! Learn something new every day, I guess...

Summertime...

...and the livin' is easy.

So as you have likely deduced by now, there will probably be a limited few number of posts this summer on my Alaska blog, due to the fact that we're not, you know, in Alaska.

I may update here and there to post pics and let you know what's up...there's plenty going on, of course. Between wedding planning (not to mention the actual wedding), seeing people, catching/stocking up on stuff that I can't do during the school year, ya know...it should be a really, really fun summer.

And we'll certainly be doing a lot of this

<---------------------------------

Air Lab

So now that school's over and our days are filled with sleeping in and packing endless boxes, we've had a bunch of time to procrastinate take Loki swimming. We've even got him into dock-jumping. He was leery when we started...the first couple times he'd only do it once, and then only go in from shore the rest of the day...but once he got used to it and figured out how to keep his head mostly above water when he dives in, he loves it. Absolutely can not get enough. Check it out:

Now we just have to find a nice dock when we get home to WI this weekend :-P

More Pics

Sara and I took Loki for a swim this weekend. He seemed quite excited to get back in the water after a long winter...or that could have just been me projecting. Here are a couple shots of the action:

Obscenely Long Photo Post

I apologize (especially to those of you out there with dial-up or other slow connections) for the number of pics to load in this post...I just decided that I needed to get a bit of a photo essay out of the way before I could get on with more posting now that we're back in the good ol' snowy state of Alaska. So without further adeu, here are a selection of pics from Xmas break!!

Loki was quite relieved when the plane travel was over. He pretty much just passed out in a ball in the back seat of my parents' car for the ride from O'Hare. I couldn't blame him.

Of course, he later regained his energy to the point he could demonstrate his firm belief that despite being a 70+ pound Lab, he is, indeed, a lap dog.

George and I take our beer drinking very, very seriously.

My nephew Nathan got some presents for Christmas, which he enjoyed very much. He's a happy kid.

Our friend Katie came to Point for a New Years visit. Here she is apparently demonstrating that lack of alcohol causes her some sort of facial swelling.

The New Years Eve "Around the World" party was pretty crazy...definitely a cool idea with lots of different spirits in which to imbibe...

Which led to some interesting dancing, to say the least. If you want to see a couple really good pics from New Years Eve, check out Sara's post on the subject.

And of course we made it up north for a day. This may have been the only time we saw real snow for the whole time we were in Wisconsin. Sad, huh?

Back at the bar, our beautiful friends were out in style...

...and so were their respective Hamuses. Note the cans of bad beer...only the best for us Pointers. But hey, dollar cans of Hamms? I'll take it.

'Cuz hey, when you're in Point...there's always enough Elbow Room.

Tape Delay

Well, what can I say? I've been slacking off. We'll see how much I can remember from the past week and a half that I haven't blogged...

First off, as you can see to the left, the weather has gotten considerably colder lately. The river right by the village has frozen down a foot or more, and this is a picture of Sara and Loki from Saturday, when we went for a bit of a walk on the ice. Loki had a great time, but he's a little frustrated when he tries to pull us on the ice and can't get any grip. Poor Loki.

I should mention that part of the reason I've been postponing blogging for a little while is something that happened last weekend that I knew I'd have to mention. I won't go into too much detail, but a young man from the village went through the ice on the river with his snowmobile, and needless to say it's been a pretty sad situation. This also means our machine is still in Bethel, waiting for assurance that the trail is indeed safe. Most of the backwaters and stretches have a ton of ice, but there are sections that are thin or even open water, and while I have been out fishing once, I don't think I'd feel safe going out on my own without knowing where the trouble spots are.

But on the lighter side, Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. A bunch of the teachers (all who didn't go out of town, and even some that were planning on leaving but didn't get out because of weather) got together and had an amazing dinner and kinda-sorta party. Sara and I made a soup, a pie (from scratch...and the berry filling didn't quite set in time, which was disappointing), and some cookies. Regular Betty Crockers, we.

Let's see, what else? Well, basketball practice started this week, which is cool. I'm about 50% excited and 50% scared, so we'll see how it goes. Unfortunately, when the schedule came out, I realized that the first games are the weekend *after* I leave for Christmas break. D'oh. So hopefully we'll be able to find someone to take over for me that weekend. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, I'm thinking, since there's 4 girls from a nearby village that didn't have enough for a whole team there, and will joining our team for practices and games whenever they can get a ride over. Hopefully there's someone from over there that can handle coaching the games. But yeah, we'll see.

See, I know I had more I wanted to blog about, but I can't remember what at the moment. Oh, I had a couple more pics and a video of Loki playing in our first big snowstorm this weekend, but I gave them to Sara to post on her blog...so go on over there and check them out! And I promise there will be more frequent post over the next couple weeks before I head back to WI for the holidays...I promise!

Moderately productive, as weekends go

I'm in at school, playing online while Sara does her Sunday evening lesson planning, so here are a few pictures from this weekend as long as I have a couple minutes...


Christina and Carey were both in Bethel Friday night, so we had Bailey over for a little bit of dogsitting/playtime with Loki. This shot just happened to catch them in a fairly, um, playful moment. They look downright evil, don't they? I think it's the red background. But don't worry, they're still friends...


See, I told you...still buddies. So they hung out and wrestled and slobbered on one another most of the night. A little the next day as well. As for Sara and I, we were on call to help pick people up from the airport. Which was good, because I had yet to really drive the school boat (mostly because I'm a chicken, and have far, far too little experience driving boats considering where I was born and raised), and this was the necessary push I needed to get me comfortable behind the wheel of the thing.


See? That's me, driving. Not a big deal, I know. But I got over that little hump of actually *doing it*, you know? And you know what? Pretty easy. And fun, too.

Oh, and we finally built shelves yesterday, too. No pictures of them yet ('cuz really, how interesting is that? Just shelves on a wall), but they turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself. We had gotten the materials in Bethel way back when and had been basically waiting to get up the motivation to get into the woodshop and get them done, and for some reason inspiration struck Saturday. Now that they're done, I'm looking for a new project already...thinking about turning an old door that's just sitting off its hinges in out apartment into a table...or an island in the kitchen...or into fold-up counter space....or we'll see ;-)

And oh, before I forget, I have a link to post, too. Here's a story I found linked on Drudge from the L.A. Times, regarding the possibilities of bird flu migrating from Asia into Alaska through the villages in this area of the state. Interesting stuff, but mostly I'm posting it because it's a national article about this area, with pictures and descriptions done by, you know, an actual, professional writer-type person.

A thousand words...

Yeah, don't really have much to post, so I thought I'd share some pictures. It started snowing last night and into today, but if what I hear is true, it's doing the same in Wisconsin this week, so we're really not all that ahead of the curve. Just wait a few months, though...I have a feeling I'll have some good winter pictures and stories by then!

Anyways, to the pictures:

Here's one I just liked, taken while walking the "long way" home from school one evening. Sun setting over the village and all, I just thought it was a nice shot.


If you'll humor my "outdoorsman" fantasies, here's one of me from last week, taken while we were out fishing. I've been taking my shotgun along in case any ducks or geese decided to fly too close for their own good. Mind you, I've gotten exactly zero so far in the few times I've been out, but I just felt it necessary to pose a bit for this picture considering I am, you know, in Alaska and everything.

Here's an obligatory picture of Loki, demonstrating one of his newly aquired hobbies...climbing on top of the couches like a mountain goat. He doesn't really do anything onced he's up there, just looks around and comes back down, but I think he's really just testing our limits and seeing what we'll let him get away with. Sara says his recent...excitement...is normal, "puppy adolecence", but I'm starting to wonder if he's not just slightly retarded.

And! As a special bonus (lucky, lucky you), here's a link to a video of what happens when you purchase neoprene boots for your dog to protect his paws from the ice and snow when it gets to be real, honest-to-goodness winter in Alaska...and you try to put them on him for the first time. It's not that he hates them, so much, as it is that he doesn't know what the heck is going on. Sorry about the goonish laughter from behind the camera, days can be long and entertainment is at a premiuim. That, or I'm just going a little crazy up here. You can decide.

Mental exercise

Ready? Close your eyes. (Okay, so you can't really do that and read, so just pretend.) First, picture a livingroom coffee table. Nothing special, and a little messy with a coffee cup, newspapers, and a book or two scattered upon it. Then picture on that coffee table, a bunch of plastic containers of beads, maybe half a dozen or more, each with, oh, a couple hundred tiny colored beads. For craft projects, that sort of thing.

Then picture a dog. A nice dog. A happy dog. A dog that's rarely shown any indication of being the canine embodiment of the mischievous being from whom he derives his name. If you have trouble picturing such a dog, just scroll down. There are pictures.

Anyway, then picture coming home after a couple hours away to find said dog happily asleep on the couch, but all the plastic containers from the coffee table chewed up and on the floor, with the thousands of colored beads they contained liberally scattered about the living room carpet. The two in-process projects chewed to shreds, with beads and traces of thread spread about on both couches.

Yes, it would have been a good idea not to leave such things within easy reach of a Lab less than one year of age. The thing is, he's never really showed an interest in chewing such things, or anything really, since we've moved up here. We thought we were safe, that he was sufficiently occupied by his own toys, and that the days of ever needing to put him in his crate while we weren't at home were past. At least I did.

Alas, Loki has earned his name. And through carelessness I earned a few hours last night, and again this morning, plucking beads from a thick pile carpet to save as many as possible before resorting to the vacuum cleaner.

Lesson learned.

Friday picture roundup

Don't worry, there will be a post detailing my first 3 days in the world of education *cough*snicker*cough*, but I'll write that this weekend. For now, how about a few pictures from the folder I've been keeping seperate from the rest as "stuff I should probably post at some point". Everybody likes pictures, right?

Here's one of Loki being generally retarded (or cute, if you're into that sort of thing)



Here's one Sara took while out picking berries on the tundra. I like it because it's good composition, and 'cuz it's a pretty good picture of the landscape and how flat it is, etc.



Finally, the two of us on the boat. And apparently showing our loyalty to the ol' alma mater.

Testing...video testing...

Okay, so youtube.com is blocked by the school internet, but Google Video is not...so in the interest of experimentation (as well as showing you the canine craziness, of course), let's see if you can access the video of their morning wrestling match if I link it like this!

What's this bright, glowing ball?

Hi there! I'm trying not to do too many posts of just pictures, but it's hard because there really hasn't been too much going on. Let me rack my brain a little and see what I can come up with...

Well, first of all, this picture is the sunset from tonight, just a couple minutes before 11pm. It's been overcast and rainy here for, oh, pretty much the whole time since we've been here, so I was pretty excited this afternoon while I was watching Monday "Night" Football when the sky started to break a little. First I could see a few little patches of blue, then a little more, then by about 6pm the whole sky was clear and there was actually sunlight bouncing in the window and all around. I know, not too exciting, but when it's been a while...what can I say? When I saw the sun startign to go down I ran outside to see the sunset and take some pictures.

You know, outside of the getting used to going to bed with it still being light outside, it's kinda nice to have it stay light so late in the summer up here. There's just so much more....day. As I type this at around 11:15pm, Sara's still out with our neighbors picking blueberries and salmonberries. I forced her to take my camera (the less unwieldy, more pocket-friendly of our two), so hopefully she'll return with some nice pictures as well to share.

Let's see, what else? Loki's been continuing to terrorize Bailey, of course. We were over there earlier tonight to play Settlers (yes Aaron/Eric/whoever's reading this, I actually learned to play Settlers, and I think it's something I could become addicted to...so beware), and the two of them were going at it non-stop for the majority of the time. Dispite panting within an inch of his life, drinking 2 or 3 bowls of water, being bloodied and slobbered, Loki just refuses to leave poor Bailey alone. It's really quite something.

School starts this week for Sara, which is cool. I know she's excited to get to work and meet all of her kids for the year. Well, outside of the ones we already know from their knocking 5 times a day wanting to visit or play with the dog. Something tells me you'll be hearing more about a certain boy named Billy before the year is done...

Ok, I think I'm starting to ramble a little too much for tonight, but remind me to tell you a little about Loki's swimming adventures, not to mention some rediculous tundra mosquitos. I think I've had more bug bites in the last week and a half than I did the rest of the whole summer!

Partners in Crime

Here are Loki and Bailey, caught in a rare moment of pause due only to the introduction of a couple of tasty treats into the arena of combat. Otherwise, a full two hours of non-stop wrestling is not unusual for these two canine neighbors.

Please note that while they may appear to be constantly fighting, nipping each other and rolling around the floor, in reality they're becoming fast friends. This, even dispite Loki's insistance on stealing Bailey's food/water/treats/attention whenever the chance presents itself. My dog has a number of positive traits...good manners, unfortunately, are not on that list.