Sun!

We are starting to get to the part in the year where the sun comes back... YAY! It's so nice to walk outside at the end of the work day and see light outside. For the month of December we only have about 2 hours a day of sunlight, so I rarely see the sun. Right now, the sun is coming up around 11am, and setting around 5pm. Before we know it, we are going to have to put the boxes back up in the windows. Hard to believe! Here is a picture of the sky when I got home a little after 5pm. (It is 25 below outside which is why the air looks all hazy).


Although the sun is up, I call it a "fake sun," because it is still so far away that it almost doesn't seem like it's real. It's obviously not warm sun when it's 25 below outside!

Arctic Weather

It is winter in the Arctic, so of course we have been having some crazy weather! A week ago, it was -5 when we woke up to go to school, and by the time we went to bed it was 35 degrees outside (our first time above freezing since November), and we even got a bit of RAIN. Of course, the rain all froze and now we have about 2 inches of solid ice outside. We have been told that this happens every year when a big warm snow system moves in. So, then we woke up to that huge system last Saturday with a blizzard blowing outside... we could hardly even see across the street! Here are some pictures from the crazy snow:

The snow drift covering our stairs:

Here is what we opened our door to:


A little video of the snow and wind blowing outside

The crazy weather didn't end there! After the blizzard left town, the wind didn't go anywhere... in fact, it got worse. We had constant 35-40 mph winds blowing for 3 DAYS STRAIGHT this week (that's without stopping) and gusts up to 55mph. Michael and I had to walk into the wind going to work, so we had some serious resistance training on our way there, but then we were almost running on our way home with the wind pushing us from behind! We were definitely sweating by the time we got to school. I couldn't take my kids out to recess because the wind chill made it about 20 below outside, plus I didn't want any of them to be taken away by the wind. We walked home last night and the wind had finally died down, and it seemed like such an easy, uneventful walk home!

Basketball

I sincerely apologize for the lack of posting. Maybe my New Year's resolution will be to post weekly! Anyway, basketball season is in full swing for Michael. This weekend, Kotzebue is hosting one of two annual tournaments; this one is called the "Husky Shootout." There are a total of 8 teams here for this tournament- 4 girls' teams and 4 boys' teams. All of the teams are from schools in our region: Selawik, Buckland and Noatak. It never ceases to amaze me how many fans are in the stands during these tournaments. Many of the fans from the villages who are playing in the tournament will snow machine in to watch, and this is really one of the few forms of entertainment that Kotzebue has, so this means that there are a ton of people that come to the games. I went to a high school with 1700 students and I don't ever remember there being this many people at a basketball game... and this is how it is every week!

One side of the bleachers...

...and the other side

This is Michael and his asst. coach Lance (you can feel free to make any tall/short comments!)

The boys lost on Thursday night to Noatak, and then beat Selawik last night in a close game. They play again tonight against Buckland, and it should be a good one!