Parachute fun!!

So the other day I went to the dump and there in the garbage was a perfectly good parachute! Well ok, it was not perfectly good, it is kinda ripped but we were not planning on jumping out of a plane. I took my wonderful find home and washed it. Now on windy days we bring it out. I am sure that this parachute will be a good addition to our summer play.

Here is a movie for your enjoyment......and yes I did put down the camera and play with the kids. Don't you just want to jump in and play with us? I am so excited to fit this into our homeschooling. How about the study of wind, or how parachutes work, or how hard you can laugh until you fall on the ground?

Spring Concert

Isa had her spring concert last week. Here are some pictures of all of the kids. Isa had to speak all by herself because her partner was gone. Although she had some stage fright she did great. After she was done we just had a blast watching all of her friends sing and play instruments. I don't know what kind of sick person I may be but I just LOVE listening to first year band. Maybe it is my lack of interest or knowledge of music but when music is played perfectly you just don't understand just how hard it is. When you watch those just learning.....well you realize that it is much harder then it looks.

Eskimo Ice cream

This is Eskimo Ice Cream.

I had heard about Eskimo ice cream before coming up here but could not really believe that people ate it. I guess now that spring is here we can all celebrate with some!

Eskimo Ice Cream is made first with crisco. Yes all that white stuff in the cup....pure crisco. Then mix in some white fish, some blue berries (from the tundra up here), and some sugar and eat up!

The taste is, well, kinda fishy. The texture is like eating a spoonful of crisco. It was not too bad but Jeremy and Isa could not stomach more then one spoonful. It is just the thought of eating an entire cube of grease that makes you cringe!



Isa thinks that she will stick with good old milk and sugar ice cream.

What a beautiful day! Yes it is still very wintery here but there is spring in the air. We had a beautiful trip out in the bush on the "snowmachine". After traveling out for about 20 miles we found a beautiful spot to have lunch. Here is a picture of Isa and I by our fire.











We put on our snowshoes on and followed tracks all over the river. I followed some big ones until I found this....
















A little while farther down the creek I found this......the beaver den. You can look down inside the den and see the water.






























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After we had lunch Jeremy took us up on top of a mountain here to see the Isuk's, or rock people. No one can really tell us what they are for. Some say that they are trail markers, others believe that they are places of shaman magic. I like the shaman magic myself. The place really was magic, black soil was visible there at the Isuk. It was the first soil I had seen in six months. It smelled fantastic!

Easter

Isa had two little friends spend the night before Easter with us. Although it did not feel very Easterish to us with all of the snow outside the girls did not seem to mind. We all had a great egg hunt and everyone ended up with a lot of candy.







After the eggs were all found Jeremy made the girls bunny pancakes.

It's been a while

It has been while since the last post. The reason for this is three fold. First, I lost my cord to connect the camera to the computer so no photos. Second, I was very sick for two weeks with "influenza". No I did not get the shot. I will from now on, I promise. Third, before I was sick my mom was to come and see me but she got stranded in Anchorage due to the volcano. So I was depressed for the rest of that week. So those are my excuses.

Today was Easter. We had two girls spend the night with us and they were up at the crack of dawn looking for eggs and eating candy. Then we went down to the river for the annual dog races. These dog races are for the kids and Isa got to race with all of the other kids down the river and back. It was a lot of fun and Jeremy got to race too. (He lost.)

tae kuando

Here are some pictures of Isa doing her Tae Kwando. I think this is one great, yet very strange, program to have up here in the tundra. Some Tae Kwando instructor in Nome got a grant to bring 6 college age black belts from Korea here to this area of Alaska and station them at little villages around Norton Sound.

Can you imagine what it must have been like for these young men to show up here in December! All of the instructors are from the big city and they were just dumped, each one in a separate village. They had no idea what they were getting into.!



I am a strong believer in martial arts training especially for the girls. It is so good for them. This culture has a high incidence of violence toward women, sexual and domestic assault. In the Tae Kwando classes over half of the students are girls.



The instructor is also teaching mental discipline. Children as young as 5 are taught to sit straight with hands on knee, eyes front. They also must meditate for at least 5 minuets before class. We could all use that sort of discipline.