Learnin' those kids somethin'

Lately we've been doing some teaching and learning at home. And by "lately" I mean we have done 3 lessons, including 2 letters. And the second letter we started today. But I plan to keep it up. It's more of an activity for when we don't go to school for longer periods, than a scheduled class plan.

**I just remembered that we also did a Valentine's theme. So that's 4.

So, we started with the short "a" sound, combining English and Inuktitut.

The activities that we did with this included the prerequisite apple picture, with printing practice:

and the most all-encompassing activity I may ever come across - well, actually do, anyway.

These are, of course, paper chains with an Anchor at the end. First they decided on what pattern they were going to make by colouring lines on paper. The green links on Logan's chain and the yellow links on Liam's chain are the days of the week (in both languages). So, while they were following their pattern, and manipulating the strips of paper to make the chain, we were reviewing the days. They had previously coloured and cut out the anchors. Then they printed the word "anchor" to accompany the chain. Is that anything short of awesome?!

As a bonus, now that we have anchors on the wall, we can build on that with boats, octopus, water.... and fish. Which brings us to our new letter.

Luck of the 1/4 Irish

Last week we went to school twice: Tuesday and Friday. Tuesday the teacher's announced that we would be having game day then, instead of Friday. The adults and kids each played a game of Inuktitut Snakes & Ladders. I didn't win the adult game. Logan decided he would rather just play with his game piece, instead of putting it down, rolling, and moving. In the end, every player on the kids' side was within 1 or 2 of winning; it was just a matter of who would roll the magic number first. The die went around the group about 3 times. Finally, Liam rolled the 1 that he needed for the win. And what a win it was!

That's 4 juice boxes, a box of yogurt tubes, a bunch of bananas, watermelon slices, a doodle pad, a mini stapler and plastic hand clapper things. While you are looking, you may as well click to make the image larger so you can check out the prices on the watermelon and the stapler.

Now that you have recovered....

We went back to school Friday, and lo and behold, it was game day again. And of the 3 games, Liam and his partner (not me! but the lady he has adopted as his partner - they win more often than not) won one game. A smaller prize this time, but who's complaining.... Whose mom feels a bit of guilt every time we take one of these prizes home, because there are certainly people there who need them more than we do!

I'm pretty sure his motivation for picking this prize was the picture of a pie on the tub of lard. He lives in constant hope that his mother will make an apple pie with him. Better order some extra apples....

I beg to differ.

I read today that some climbers are coming to the Clyde River area to scale some rocks. It's going to take the three climbers 20 days to climb the rock face. This means that at least some of the time they will be sleeping hanging on the wall of granite. This climbing website states that "the main feature of Great Sail Peak is its NW face, which is a sheer 1150m wall," and that it looks like this:

Courtesy of Google Earth, I can see that Stewart Valley is about 100 km from Clyde River:

The red dot is Stewart Valley; the blue dot is Clyde River.

As awesome as sleeping in one of these

sounds, the part I love the most is that the article also states: "They hope not to encounter snow storms, which are unlikely in such a cold environment."

Really? Have they done their research? Can weather patterns differ that much within 100km in the Arctic? Because this was our front porch last week during a storm that lasted from Saturday night to Monday evening, that blew winds at least 100 km/h. At 8:30 PM we cleared the area of accumulated snow to start fresh.

9:54 PM	1:43 AM
Preparing to shovel at 1:47 AM.
Opening the door to put the snow outside would have been just plain dumb, not to mention futile.	9:28 AM

Knowing that our house, that is built on pilings drilled far into rock, really shakes when the winds get up that high, it doesn't seem like a brilliant idea to be sleeping hanging from a rock face while the wind howls and the snow blows.

Recent scenes of Clyde River

These are recent pictures of Clyde River, mostly from inside the house. It seems like whenever we go out for a truck ride, I either forget the camera or the battery. Therefore, they are a bit repetitive, but that's why you can scroll.

The snow drift up the back of the house.	It makes a very good wind/snow block now.
Sled dogs.	Sun dogs.
These pictures were taken a week apart.	There was a 2-day blizzard in between.

'Cause we like it.

A couple of months ago, we started planning our next vacation. We were tossing around lots of ideas (most of which were incredibly expensive) and started thinking about what kind of holidays we would take as a family when we got back to the south.

We figured we would be less of a jet-setting family and more of a camping family. I, however, am not a go-into-the-wilderness-and-set-up-a-tent kind of girl. I look at the people who pull up in their RVs with beds, heat, stoves, fridges, showers, toilets, and (now that I have kids) locks on the door, and I think that's more my style.

This led us to thinking that maybe we should rent something like this and see how we like it. Now, eventually we wouldn't be getting a full-sized RV, just a trailer, but you can't rent those quite as easily when you don't have a truck. Then we started throwing around ideas about where to go RVing - when you're renting, you can start from anywhere! Finally we decided on driving to Calgary, renting there, then driving up and out to Vancouver Island and back. Great; we picked the RV we wanted to rent and started planning where we would stay each night.

If you've ever seen me plan a trip, you know that I now know everything there is to know about RV sites in BC. We even found out that there were "dinosaur" related stops to make along the way. Then we started to see a pattern. Some campgrounds were open all-year, more opened May 1, and the majority were May 15-ish. The tours we wanted to do of dino-stuff started the end of May. One campground that I emailed would open earlier than May 1 if enough snow was gone. Next we started planning what kind of clothes/jackets we would need to take.

Then it got really, really cold here in Clyde River. And we started to wonder if, after a winter of extreme cold, blizzards, and 110 km/h wind storms, we were looking forward to a chilly, rainy vacation. The answer became "Not so much." So where could we easily take the kids (so it would still be a vacation for us, not a marathon of survival) where it was warm and they would have fun and we would have fun? The skies opened up and the answer was clear:

We know the area, we know what to expect. Then, there was more planning. We wanted to go for longer; try to achieve that balance of the Disney experience without feeling rushed. So we're going from May 1-12. And to stay that long, in one room.... well, let's just say that our favourite part of travelling is not putting the kids to bed and then sitting in the dark, with me on the iPod and Craig on the laptop. Sometimes we watch a movie on the laptop; Craig gets the left earbud and I get the right. I know, it sounds awesome and you can't understand why we don't enjoy this.

So this time we are going to stay here:

In a room like this:

See over on the right? Through that door? That's our own room. That couch folds out into a queen-sized bed. Oh, and that's right... that's a fridge and stove - not that we have any crazy ideas about using them too much, as we always have food left over on the dining plan.

We're staying there for half the trip. The other half will be here:

Same deal, with a separate bedroom. This place has a pool with a water slide and we can take the boat launch to Downtown Disney.

Someday we will go somewhere new and different. But for now we're going back to Disney World. 'Cause we like it.

More sunrise/sunset

Here is a time lapse video from today. The first picture was taken at 11:13 a.m. and the last at 1:31 p.m.

It's up, It's up!!!