Back At It.

We're back to the daily grind, and everyone is back in the groove. My students have been very good, I was pleasantly surprised by how much they remember, and how easily they are adjusting to new routines. 

Last weekend we finally walked out on the Yukon (Max was scared out of his mind) and it was awesome! SUPER windy, VERY cold, but beautiful none-the-less. 

My eyelashes froze, and then froze together which really inhibited the view. 

The week passed without much craziness, other than the icicle story which I think a few of you might be anticipating. While we were walking home one day this week, one of my students was in an interesting predicament: When he was trying to stab the girl with the icicle, he had a mob of kids yelling at him, and the fight was picked with three older girls. We ran over and Max grabbed him, I broke the icicle out of his hand, and while he was squirming, kicking, and screaming, Max told the girls to go away, and let him go about 30 seconds later. He ran down the hill, and through the trees we saw the girl standing there waiting for him. He ran up to her, and she drew back and punched him in the face and he just dropped to the ground screaming. When he realized that no one was watching and he didn't have an audience, he got up and walked off. Nothing became of it, just another day in the life of a 4th grader. 

Recently, the weather has turned wintry. Last night we got a good storm with a severe weather warning. The wind shook the house all night, and the snow was piling up outside. 

... and inside. 

This is how it looked outside as I walked to school this morning. We went from a couple of
inches of snow on the ground, to drifts that were above my knees. 

This that same trail, today after school. 

This is our house from the hill above, on my way home after school. 

The back door of the school was frozen shut and barricaded by a few feet of
snow this morning. 

While we were home...

We were lucky to get out of Pilot for break, many people were stuck all over western Alaska with freezing rain for the week leading up to when we were supposed to leave. Our first flight got cancelled, but we ended up making it out on the following day, at the last moment possible. We heard a plane land, so we called Era to see if it was ours, they told us it wasn't, but if we could get to the runway in 5 minutes that plane (which was headed to Bethel) could drop us off in St. Mary's on their way... What service!

Anyway, long story short, we made it to Anchorage without much trouble, and luckily, in time for our flight back to Oregon! We did all of our Christmas shopping in one store in the airport, in about 10 minutes. It was quite the show, and we had a great time doing it. When we finally made it home, it was so wonderful to get to share our stories with my family on the way home, and when we got to Max's parents house we were greeted by Beau who was SO excited to see us, which made me really happy (I was worried he may have forgotten about us!)

We had just a couple days before Christmas to relax, but we didn't do much relaxing the whole time we were back. We made some trips to the beach, I went for a beach ride on my horse with my mom, we went to Eugene to do some shopping, and we spent Christmas Eve with Max's family opening presents and eating wonderful food, then we spent Christmas with my family opening more presents and eating more wonderful food, and then Christmas evening with Max's family, eating even more wonderful food. I can't complain.

I also can't complain about the day after Christmas. I was planning on hanging out with Jenna all day, and I was so excited, because I hadn't seen her since spring break of last year! However, before I met up with Jenna, Max and I got an early start and jetted up the coast to Devils Elbow, and the Light House. I was super suspicious, because Max was talking my ear off in a very nervous fashion, and kept accidentally alluding to marriage, and he also had a very square small box in his pocket, but I didn't want to spoil any surprises for myself, so I went with the flow and figured that if I had waited 7 and a half years for him to ask me to marry him, I could wait a few more minutes for the sun to hit the special place he wanted to take me. So, we twiddled our thumbs, and Max kept on chattering on about this, that and the other thing, and eventually we walked down to our favorite spot to watch the waves crash. Then Max popped the question. It went like this... "So ah, How about it?" (opening the ring box) and then I said something along the lines of... "Oooh, put it on my finger!" And that's how it went, in classic Max and McKenzie fashion, we're engaged, and awkward as ever!

For the rest of break, we caught up with more old friends, got lots of congratulations (by the way, thank you all for so many congratulations, we feel so incredibly loved!)

Ty took some awesome engagement photos for us:

So, now on my free time I will continue to wedding plan (I can do it outside the closet now) and eventually we will get things figured out, hopefully in time for a late summer wedding in the Florence area! 

The break came to a close more quickly than we ever hoped, and it was so hard to say bye to everyone, but luckily, we're in the homestretch now, and we'll be home again before we know it! Our flights back to Alaska went flawlessly, but go figure, things got a little crazy once we got up north. We made our flight from Anchorage to Bethel with only a small delay, although we contemplated skipping the flight because we were quite sure we'd end up stuck in Bethel.

My last beer for the next 5 months. 

 Sure enough, we got there and met up with about a hundred other people, some of which had been stuck there since new years eve! We were told our flight was cancelled after we hung out for about 30 minutes, and we rushed to find a hotel as quickly as we could. We paid almost $20 for a 2 minute cab ride to the Allanivik Hotel, and they gave us their nicest suite (with it's own bathroom!) because that's all they had left, and we only had to pay a measly $220 for our room, and luckily we didn't even get bedbugs! 

We caught a break, and after spending the day in the airport hoping to get on a flight standby, we got on the last flight out for the day, and made it into Pilot right before the FAA closed the runway, and we were home at 6:30, the day before the kids came back to school. I was working in my classroom until 11, and got just prepared enough to teach the next day. 

Waiting for our ride on the Pilot airstrip

Our caravan! 

This week went much more smoothly than I ever imagined. It seems like the kids were eager to get back to the structured classroom environment, and they have been very agreeable and motivated. 

I hope that continues for the rest of the year! Happy 2014 :) 

A White Thanksgiving and A Countdown Until Christmas in Oregon!

We're going to talk about this long weekend backwards, because that's how the pictures uploaded. 

Today we went on a walk because it was beautiful out, and we realized that the hillside of the village we live on NEVER gets sunlight this time of year, and probably won't until May. So we have to get out of the house in order to get some vitamin D. 

It is 9 degrees today, with a windchill that makes it feel like -6. When we got back from our walk neither of us could feel our cheeks. However, I got some new boots (Sorel Glacier Boots) and they are made for -100 degrees, so my feet were toasty warm the whole time. We walked out on the river a little bit, but don't worry mom, we didn't go out in the middle. We're still a bit scared of falling through, even though people are already zooming up and down the river on Hondas and Snow Machines.

Rosy cheeks and a frozen mustache

The frozen Yukon behind me

These holes in the ice are for catching
Arctic Lamprey Eels. 

Walking on the river

This is where the sun lies at high noon.

Our snazzy WARM boots

An ice flow from a spring coming out
from under the cliff. 

The cliffs

Frozen moose head

Max and his Moose-cicle

This is sunrise on the village, as you can see,
they get sun, we do not. 

I got caught eating pumpkin pie for breakfast

Now for Thanksgiving…

We cooked our first turkey ever, and as you can see we did not burn it, or the house down, so it was an overall success.

Fresh things up here aren't very common,
so with our turkey, we had instant stuffing,
instant mashed potatoes, a store bought
pumpkin pie, and some sparkling cider.
It was quite decadent, other than the mashed
 potatoes which were terrible. 

After we ate we lounged a bit, fought off the turkey sleepies, and then went for a nice walk up to the airstrip.

This is what the dump looks like when it is on fire,
and it smells 100x's worse than it looks. 

I am looking forward to these next few weeks, because we get to decorate my classroom all wintry, and do fun Christmas activities in class. Luckily up here, I think we're about the least religious people here, so Christmas is not banned, and I think it would be frowned upon for me to NOT celebrate Christmas with my class. This Friday is also an early release, so this week is essentially a 4 day week, then we've got 2 full weeks of school until break starts. 20 days until we fly out (if we're lucky) and 22 days until we are back in Oregon!