Operation Hibernation

Operation hibernation is officially underway. 

You know when you look outside during the dead of winter and you get a little chill that goes right through you. Just thinking about what it must actually feel like out there.  It feels like the howling wind is going right through your bones and makes your jaw cinch up.  Those are the cold, hard days of winter.  There are nice winter days.  Sometimes it's cozy looking out.  It's almost a feeling of comfort looking out at the snow while your snuggled up in a blanket reading a book or watching HGTV.  Sipping hot chocolate or red wine, both comforting for different reasons.  Both warm you up, both relax you and both taste delicious on any given day.

Well lets just say I'm bundled up, and I wish I was drinking red wine.  Slippers and a zip up fleecy have been part of my wardrobe this week end.  I'm trying to convince myself that I should be thrilled we made it this late into September. This is after all the first time there has been snow here in town, right here by our house.  It's a little too close for comfort, but I guess I can't control that.  We had the day where we, and by we I mean the entire town, spotted our first glimpse of snow on the hills.  We were all thankful that it hadn't crept into town.  No such luck now, it's all downhill from here.

I'm sure some people are happy to see the snow.  It's a new season of opportunity - of possibility - of activity.  I don't necessarily have anything against winter, I just think it might be better in shorter increments.  But it is what it is, and as much as I'd like to stay in denial - I think winter is here.

What should have been another routine walk around town on Friday afternoon turned into a walk in a flash blizzard. Okay, yes I am exaggerating a tad. But there was snow and there was lots of it.  Big flakes,and the old saying held true, big flakes equal little snow, little flakes equals lots of snow. When R arrived home from work he asked "Did you see the snow today?" Um yeah, I saw it. At first glance I was actually a little thrilled to see it. It really is pretty. Then reality set in that fall had just began and kabam, winter is here too.

There were flurries all week end and now I think I have to admit to myself that the snow on the mountains is likely there to stay for the next 9 months.  Yes, 9 months.  That's a stinking looong time.  I'm glad I have lots of pictures of July because come March I may have to tape them to the window just to have different scenery.

With the arrival of fall I decorated the house up.  I replaced the summer wreath hanging on the front door with the boldly coloured fall wreath, I dug out my favorite fall candles - ginger pumpkin, and I searched the house for the Indian corn I knew I had packed.  I had it stashed well, so after a bit of searching, fall had fully arrived in the house.  To make it official I baked some autumn muffins and pumpkin loaf.  Oh yes, fall is here 100%..........as long as you don't look out the window.

Keeping in with the fall mood, I took N to play school twice this week.  On our first visit I had intended on just stopping in to introduce ourselves and to find out if we could come once and awhile so N could play with some other children.  Turns out we were more than welcome.  As long as I stayed with him, which I intended to do anyway, heck I don't even leave Scotia at the groomer by herself.  The age range is suppose to be 3 & 4 but there are 1 1/2 - 4 there on a regular basis.  It was around ten am and N was the only child there.

 There were three employees who where in the kitchen drinking tea and doing some sewing and beading when we first arrived.  They gladly set those aside to play with N.  We had full run of the place and he was loving the attention, all the new toys and books.  Come to find out this is the play schools normal morning.  Although open, the children in town don't normally go in the morning, just the afternoon.   The afternoon program is during nap time so it kind of defeats the purpose for it just to be us in the playschool. 

Coincidentally N woke up early one day.  Normally a dreaded thing, I thought I might be able to get him napping earlier and then to play school.  It worked, we were late but not toooo late.  I was excited to see N interact with all the other kids but as soon as we sat down another little boy poked him right in the eye.

No harm done, other than his Mom being mortified.  We arrived just as they were getting ready to play a game.  BINGO.  Pre school style, but still BINGO.  I giggled as N played with the buttons we were using to cover up the pictures.  You have to understand BINGO is huge in the North.  There are BINGO's held weekly and then some.  It is on the radio a few times a week. It's EVERYWHERE, even play school.


Ever have an Arctic Char dropped off on your doorstep?

I can now say I have.

What a nice gift.  It's nice to be welcomed into such a small community.  I returned the gift with a few loaves of pumpkin bread. 


What else did we do this week end other than watch it snow?

 Well we went to a Birthday party and built the tallest mega block tower EVER!!!

Here's an updated picture of the firepit.  It has certainly lost some of it's zing for life.

Summer 2011 from the rearview mirror

To say the the summer of 2011 was eventful is an understatement.  Looking back through the masses of photos I took was a real eye opener.  It was fun to reminisce about the fun that that we had, the places we visited and the people we met.  There's some sadness mixed in too.  We left great friends in Yellowknife.  No amount of persuading seemed to convince anyone else to move with us.  Part of being a RCMP family means that we will move, that we will have to say "good-bye" but it also means that there is a chance, a great chance, that we will be neighbors again someday.

Living in the North brings you close to people quickly.  There is less hustle and bustle than there is in the South.  Most people do not have family close that they can visit often, so essentially friends become your second family.  We have been fortunate to form close friendships with people that we will always consider family.  People that we love and miss, and are forever indebted to for the love that they have shown our son. We'll never say "good-bye" we much prefer to say "see you later" and naturally there's almost a secret handshake, that  "later" will involve being in a community in the Southern part of Canada.

You can imagine my surprise when one morning in early July I opened my email to find a message from a friend in Nova Scotia asking if it was my son in their newspaper.  I had no idea, but I knew it could be a possibility because we had taken the once in a lifetime opportunity to see the new Duchess of Cambridge and her husband Prince William.  Since we're all close now, I like to just call them Will & Kate.  What I expected to be a rainy day visit where if we were lucky I'd catch a glimpse of Will & Kate turned into a beautiful sunny day where we sat a few rows back from the Royal couple during their public gathering in Yellowknife.  N was entertained by the drum dancers and throat singers and all the people in their fancy hats and I was star struck at the realization that Will & Kate were RIGHT there. 

After the initial email my Dad called, sounding every bit the proud Grandad that he is, saying the N was in the paper.  N is now famous in NS.  Well with our family and friends.  I know this picture is on many fridges in Elmsdale and Middleton.

We were in Yellowknife until mid-July so we tried to soak in as much as we could.  It was hot at the end of June.  There were many days that it was in the high 20's and a few days it hit 30.  So we packed the bags and headed to the beach.  Oh the fun that we had.

So hot that we even filled up the kiddy pool that until this summer had been for Morley, our English Mastiff.  Morley can't swim, he literally sinks to the bottom because his head is sooooo big and heavy.  So kiddie pool it was.   Now that Nathan is home we gave the pool a good scrubbing and thought he'd have fun in it.  Nope.  It was too cold and Morley wasn't willing to share "his" pool.  So it quickly turned back into Morley's pool and he continued trying to catch the fish painted on the bottom.  It was soon dumped because it also turned into a mosquito pit.  

This is a picture of a day that we had dreamed of for a long time.  This was Adoption Day.  N had come home many months before this but on the day this picture was taken all the paperwork had been signed.  It was nice to have everything "official".

Cameron River Falls is about 40 minutes out of Yellowknife.  You have to drive down a dirt "highway" which is the Ingram Trail.  This is the same road that all the Ice Road Truckers drive down to access the ice road to the diamond mines.   During the winter months this road is primarily used by convoys of trucks and a few home owners.  During the summer months this road is taken over by people who want to take in all the nature they can.  This is the road to campgrounds, a day park, fishing lakes and Cameron Falls.  If we had been thinking, we would have taken a picture of the falls, but since we came across this shiny new bridge we took our family shot here instead.  Who can pass up a nice new shiny bridge?

Up in Paulatuk.  Off to the dump we go.  I wasn't kidding when I said in an earlier post that I like to hang out at the dump.  Look at all the treasure you can find there.  I mean I found a tractor in Paulatuk. 

I took this picture on our first trip down to the river.  I love it.  I've since titled this picture.

Mounties on the Tundra

Every Saturday or Sunday we go 4-wheeling.  Most trips are to the river.  One day we decided to switch it up a bit.  I've heard of a place that is said to look just like Mexico.  The water is suppose to be aqua blue and sand is fine and white.   Or so it's said.  I still don't know because we never made it.  One of the 4-wheelers got bogged.  4 wheel drive would have been better than 2.  Oh well, all part of memories.  We still have not made it to Mexico, but we will.

This is a truly Northern picture.  These little white cotton flowers where everywhere at the end of July.  I've since learned that they were used as wicks in days gone by.  They can also make 2 year olds squeal if they are tickled with them.  In the background of the photo you can see muktuk hanging.  It is a local delicacy.  I haven't tried it myself, but depending with who you talk to it can either taste like firm tofu (which the person loved) or a pink eraser.....

I've never seen as many rainbows as I have since moving here.  They are fairly common.  This was first time I've ever seen a double rainbow.   Does that mean there are two pots of gold????

For about 2 weeks this summer there was a flurry of activity out on the water.  Between the boats and the float planes there always seemed to be activity on bay.  Watching a float plane take off in front of your house never gets old.

So there we have it.  The summer of 2011.  I missed lots of things I"m sure.  Somethings it's better not to have pictures of.  Going away parties, get togethers that we didn't classify as going away events....but we all knew,  tearful good-byes and s**w on the mountain tops. 

Lots of things change in a year.  I'm anxious to see what the summer of 2012 recap looks like, but I am thankful for all the memories of 2011. 

Weekend Bliss

Some weekends are just blahhhhhh.  Sure there are fun moments in between all the stuff that needs to get done.  Stuff that maybe we should have been doing during the week so that we didn't have to spend the weekend playing catch up.

This wasn't one of those weekends.  We were busy.

 Well Pualatuk busy.

 Our busy and your busy are likely completely different.

We had sand mountains to climb, tunnels to digs, sand avalanches to start and watch the sand flake down towards us. Which who knew, is one of the funniest things ever to a two year old. 

The picture pretty much shows how far N made it up.  There were some great attempts to get further, but alas - this was it.  A friend and I trekked to the top, at first laughing at our progress, or lack of progress.  As became more clear to the other that we were both struggling to get to the top we began to joke about how this was the strairmaster from hell.  With every step up, we weren't sure if we'd actually end up closer to the top, or if we'd be caught in the mini sand avalanche that pushed us back down the hill. 

We did make it to the top after the longest 5 minute stairmaster trek ever.  Funny how looking one direction and looking the other you can see two totally different scenes.  Both breathtaking, but remarkably different.

This was looking down from stairmaster hell.

This is looking out towards the land from the top. This picture doesn't do it justice. My camera is KA proof, meaning sand, water, idiot proof because of my past relationships with good camera's....gone bad. The land is beautiful right now. Yellow and red scatter the landscape and its incredible to look at.

This picture makes it look brown. I guess you'll just have to trust me that it's not.

Here's an up close and personal view of the red.

We walked along the beach, often commenting how beautiful it was, and how we couldn't believe that we were in Paulatuk and this is what Pualatuk looks like.  Every time we thought the sun was in the perfect spot, a minute later we'd realize, no now it's in the perfect spot, only to stand corrected a minute later. 

We found lots of treasures.  Not necessarily the same treasures that I'm use to finding at Brule on the Norththumberland Straight of Nova Scotia - but treasures.

In Brule my sister, cousins and I spent entire summers out on the sandbar.  We'd build snail farms, catch crabs and starfish and play hopscotch on jellyfish filled mounds of sand.  We also spent entire days building barricade forts around us that we were positive would keep the tide from covering up our snail farm of the day.  Each fort would have thicker walls than the last, just a little taller, but our forts could never hold back the Atlantic tide.  It's a force not ever the strongest sand fortress could hold back.

Here's a sampling of what we found on our journey along the Arctic Ocean.

Caribou Skulls

I'm not sure where this floated in from, but I am certain it's not from close by.

There is a little sandpiper on a rock in the middle of this picture. I hope he gets a move on and heads South soon.

Lots of little jelly fish were beached along the shore

This is my favorite picture of the day.  He is so inquisitive.  I'm not sure what he was checking out. It could have been one of the many jelly fish, a little shrimp that he caught a glimpse of as it squiggled by, or maybe he saw his reflection.  I love this picture.

This was Sunday afternoon, and on it's own it was magnificent.  This was not all of our busy Paulatuk weekend.  There were no suppers at a fancy restaurant, no glasses of wines on the deck, no appointments to make, no traffic jams to avoid, no shopping errands to run.  But it was busy, Paulatuk style.

Busy Paulatuk style includes of course our walk on the beach, a gathering at a friends house to say good-bye to family off to their next adventure, preparing appetizers for a UFC gathering at our house.  Appetizers included homemade garlic bread with homemade donair sauce (yummy), homemade chicken wings, and a cheese dip.  And what are appies without our near beer.  I have to say, I'm not sure if it's because it's all we have or I'm just tricking myself, but near beer isn't that bad. 

It was a wild week-end : )