To the boat

Happy Monday Everyone!

R asked me this morning if I was going to do one more post before vacation.  Honestly I hadn't planned on it because I didn't think I had taken any pictures during the past week.  WOW - my memory is seriously lacking!  I need to double up on my fish oil intake!

I forgot all about our hike out to the boat.  Now if only I could remember the name of "the boat".  I'll have to google it and post it in here later.  I'm thinking The Roger, or The Albert............hmmmm - I wonder how close I am.  Regardless - what a great day that was and a nice little adventure.

This is a nice way to start the week.

The obvious thing to look at in this picture are the flowers.  Yes, your seeing that right.  Fresh flowers in Paulatuk, in the WINTER.  The Northern manager brought up fresh flowers for Valentines Day.  R brought them home and they are so beautiful.  I always use to have fresh flowers in the house in YK - but I have never had the opportunity up here....I like it alot.  I asked R if anyone else had bought any.  No.  He said one lady said "flowers, I don't know what to do with flowers".   I hope other people bought them - if we are the only ones they'll never fly them up again. 

Anyway - the thing I was actually taking a picture of was the shadow on the wall.  Shadows are fun - especially at 9:00 AM - which means not only is it light at 9, but it's sunny.  LOVE IT!

I have tried to take a few pictures of the boats and their winter storage locations, but the pictures just didn't turn out.  It makes me chuckle because I know people down South spend hours preparing their boats for winter - draining all the liquid out of them - covering them up and placing them somewhere out of the elements......



Here are some pictures of "the boat" that we hiked out to last weekend.  Four us decided to hike out to the little black spot in the bay which we had been told was a stranded boat.  We started out with a bit of nerves because somebody had cautioned us about cracks in the ice.  I REALLY didn't want to fall down some crack in the Arctic Ocean.  It became clear pretty quickly that it was going to be safe - so on we marched.  It looked like it was WAY out there.  I thought we would be walking forever.  Once it started to get closer it got close quick.  Maybe because we could actually see something more than a dot we walked a little quicker.

Once we reached it, it was really neat.  The boat was alot smaller than I thought it was going to be.  You can see in some of the pictures that it really isn't that big, especially given that this boat was used to transport people to residential school.  I really should do a little more research on this because I honestly don't know much - other than what it looks like.  Heck, I don't even know it's name.   Now that I've been there I have more questions.  How many people were on this little boat?  How long did they stay on it?  How long was it stuck out there before the people were rescued?  How long has it been out there?

Hmmm - I'm feeling awfully uninformed.  I'll have to get the information and fill in the blanks later. 



I know I am biased, but seriously - N is the cutest little boy!

He has this little police car that he cruises around in, one day he decided to take passengers with him.  Given that his giant dog is in backwards, I'm glad he has 14 more years to figure out a little more about this whole driving gig ; )



Bundled up and heading out for a walk, with owl.   I guess he decided to share the experience with him or her too.  He has started telling me every sort of animal is either "mama" or "dada".  Initially I thought he was trying to tell me that I was an owl.  Interesting.  I have since figured out that he has figured out that animals have Mom's and Dads, so he'll point to all of them and either say "mama" or "dada" and I say, "oh, that's a mommy owl", and he says "yeah".  It's a fun game we have going on......at least I know that he doesn't really think I'm an owl, hippo, worm, polar bear, whale, horse....you get the point.



The sky was on fire this week.  This is around 6 pm. 

This made me chuckle.  He lined all his birds up so they could look out the window one morning.  That kid is so stinking cute.  Have to say - those birds have a great view!

I guess that's it for today.  This time tomorrow we'll be in Inuvik on out way to Halifax and then Mexico.  Vacation has come quick again!  We get back at the end of March and then we don't plan on leaving again until October.  I can't wait to experience another summer in Paulatuk - it is so wonderful.  I guess we need to get out of this -40 weather first.

So Halifax here we come - that is after we hit seven airports -

Paulatuk

Inuvik

Normen Wells

Yellowknife

Edmonton

Toronto

Halifax

Oh - let the fun begin!!!

B

B = black out, blizzard, I mean local blowing snow and black garbage bags.   I guess that properly sums up the last few weeks.  B.

How should I describe life in the great white North during the past few weeks....

WEIRD

I found that blogging is similar to exercising.  Once your actually doing it your good to go...it's just getting to doing it.  I always sit down and wonder "what am I going to write about" but I always find myself with more to say than I even knew.  It certainly helps that when I look at the pictures that I've taken over the past week or so that all the stories that go along with them come back. 

As you'll see, some of the memories of the past 2 weeks are better than others - but I'm sure eventually we'll look back at the pictures and laugh about it.  It likely won't be while we still have to shovel out our kitchen....

Do you notice anything different about this picture?

Look at the smoke from the chimneys.

This is a great way to tell the weather.  While we lived in Ft. McPherson a friend and I took our daily walk.  At the time we only had dial-up Internet so trying to get the actual weather forecast was a pain.  We quickly realised that you could pretty accurately tell the temperature from how the smoke was coming out of the chimneys. 

Straight up meant is was pretty warm out.

Diagonal meant it was cooler.

Horizontal meant, bundle up...it's cold.

Little trick of the trades ; )

We had theft at the house.  To be specific, the barge room.  Good thing he is a darn cute little thief and giggles as he's tearing out with a container of Pringles and a grin from ear to ear.

Remember in my last post how I was so impressed that we didn't loose power during the blizzard.  I guess I should have knocked on wood.  One of the loaders hit a power pole while clearing out snow from that blizzard.  So there was a planned power outage to replace the damaged pole.  No big deal.  It was scheduled to last from 1 - 3.  I knew enough to know it would not go exactly as planned so when the power went off at 1:30 I wasn't shocked and expected it to be off for the next few hours.  I didn't think it was bad at all - N went down for his nap and I took the opportunity to sew some on the seal mitts I'm making for N.  It was actually nice, for the first 2 hours. 

N napped and I was sewing away, sewing  very slowly.  I'm not an expert by any means but I thought I was doing pretty well considering.  I had all the stitches nice and tight and kept checking to make sure it looked good.  I was impressing myself!  I managed to finish one side and let me tell you by the end of that my fingers were sore.  Seal skin is tough and sewing with sinew instead of thread means you really have to pull and tug each stitch to tighten it.  My needle was too small and kept ending up at a 90 degree angle so I'd try to straighten it out every so often. 

N woke up - it was getting a little chilly in the house now - it was -40 outside after all.  We read a bunch of books as we were cuddled up on the couch.  It was getting dark outside so I lit a few candles and N and I went on an adventure with our flashlights. 

R came home from work a little after 5.  He had spoken with the guys working on the pole and they thought it would be another half hour or so.  We all bundled up in our hoodies and waited for the power to come on.  For whatever reason I was starving, and as we all know, when you can't have something that's when you want it the most.  I settled for triscuits and the boys ate Pringles....shocking.

Around 6:00 it started getting cold.  The dogs were even making the rounds wondering what was going on.  Here is a picture I took of town.  It was cold and dark but I could see the guy up the pole and I knew he wanted the power to be on just as much as I did.

The power came on right around 6:30.  So our 2 hour scheduled power outage ended up being 5 hrs. 

Red sky at night, sailors delight.  Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.

I read the weather report to R one night because the next day was calling for winds of 120 km and local blowing snow.  The next morning - the morning that I took this picture, R called me from work to tell me that there was going to wind gusts of 120 km.   Can we say busted!  He really isn't infatuated with everything I say : )

It started out as a calm day - and as the day progressed, it kept getting more and more windy.  By that night our house was shaking.  I kept thinking about people telling us to have our parka's close.  I decided that if the roof was going to come off I wouldn't have time to get my jacket and boots on anyway so I should just get to sleep.  Easier said than done.  I couldn't believe the wind. 

This was not classified as a blizzard.  The weather reports called it "local blowing snow" and the locals called it "a big blow".  I call it insane.  All the snow that was already down just got moved around.  If you looked straight up you could see blue sky but if you looked right in front of you, you could not see anything.  All of the neighbours houses disappeared again.  It is odd to say the least.

When we woke up we had to shovel out our kitchen.  Evidently the door to the back deck is not sealed well.  There was literally a snow bank in the kitchen.  We shovelled it out and sealed up the door the best we could.

There are eight towels there and still snow came in.  If you look out the window you can see all the snow has blown off the deck which I guess was a good thing.

The "big blow" lasted for an entire 24 hours.  When things calmed down and the loaders and dozers had made their way around town clearing out paths we took a trip to see what town looked like with all it's rearranged snow.

Isn't that nuts!  This was just snow that was already here.  It just moved.  There were tunnel type spots on the road.  That truck is a F-250, it's not little. 

There was one truck in town that didn't make out so well.  It got buried.  Seriously!  Totally buried.  I talked to the lady the other day and I was laughing about it, a little more than she was.  She said they went to bed that night and woke up and the truck was gone.  It just got dug out a few days ago and surprisingly enough come out with only a few minor injuries....well I guess a bumper is a little more than minor, but considering what could have happened, I guess it was minor.

This past week-end we started having really nice weather.  Usually when I check online for the temperature and I see a warmer temp. and makes me nervous.  I use to get excited and when the "warm" day came the windchill would be a killer.  If the forecast said it was going to be -10 that sounds awesome (well to us it does), but when the day rolls around, it might be -10 with a windchill of -33.  That just ruins it.  Last weekend though it started to get warm and people started to come out of hibernation.  You could look out the window and see kids playing on the snow hills and people walking up and down the street.  It's really nice.

Early this week N and I went to playschool.  Once there the teachers decided to take advantage of the nice weather and we all put our gear on to head out sledding.  I figured we'd be sledding on our bums.  I was kind right.......on our bums with a twist.

Oh yah - stylish I know, but boy oh boy those kids had a blast.  We put big black garbage bags on them and off they went. 

Oh - any my mitts that I was so impressed with myself about.  I took them to playschool with me and and showed them to one of the ladies who promptly told me "we have to take them apart".  I sort of thought she was joking, but I wasn't sure because she was not laughing.

She wasn't joking.

I sewed one of the pieces on backwards.  Uh huh.  So my sewing with my 90 degree angle needle was all for not.  I'm still looking for the silver lining in that one.  I guess I'll know better next time.   The worst part is I kept checking it trying to visualise it and make sure I had it the right way.  Some people are just naturals - me.....not so much.

Once they are finished I'll post a picture - they will be beautiful, and wait until you see the mukluks....they are so nice.  I may just have to make myself a pair.

The moon never ceases to amaze me

White

To you it might just be a colour.   It might bring images of fresh sheets blowing in the wind hanging on the line.  Big fluffy clouds floating in the sky.  I brand new piece of paper, just waiting for something to be written on it.

To me, and I'm sure the rest of town, it is the colour of everyday.  I suppose it could be worse.  White after all is a neutral colour, a blank slate.  It's not like I'm saying I see cotton candy pink ALL THE TIME.  Although......at this point  I'd rather see aqua blue water...beige sand......orange towels.....and maybe even a yellow beverage.

See what I mean:

That's a whole lot of WHITE.

Over the past 3 weeks (sorry everybody, it's been far too long) we have had three blizzards, one lasting for 3 days.  School has been cancelled at least one day every week, planes have been cancelled, mail disrupted, and people house bound. 

I am from the east coast.  I know a good storm when I see one.  I was in NS during White Juan.  We lost power for days and shovelled out for just as long.   The difference between a good NS storm and a Paulatuk blizzard is.....the blizzard.  It is just insane.  I'll try to explain it but unless you are here it just won't be the same.  The wind is insane, it just doesn't give up. I'm not entirely convinced it actually snows alot, I think it just blows around.  Like a snow tornado. 

During the three day blizzard the town shut down.  The store (yes the only one) closed down, school closed, the town building was closed, the post office closed, NOTHING in town was moving, not even the snow machines.  The reason - you could not see a single thing.  Nothing, I could not see my neighbours house, I couldn't see the lights up the road let alone across the bay, heck I couldn't even see out my living room window. 

Once it stopped this was the neighbours house:

and we shovelled off the window, yes, shovelled.

We had to take extra precautions because we didn't know how long we'd be living in white out conditions.  So when heard a blizzard was coming we filled up on water, made sure our flashlights were working and were where they were suppose to be.  N has added flashlight adventures to his daily activities so sometimes their location is questionable.

Initially I was concerned about power.  If we lost it how long would we be with out?  That would suck.  Then I thought about water.....no roads = no water truck and ummmmm if the water truck wasn't coming that also meant the sewer truck wouldn't be making the rounds either.  I crossed my fingers, hoped for the best and figured what would be, would be. 

In the end it was fine.  No we didn't get water for 4 days, we did the ol' if it's yellow let it mellow thing, and our power stayed on the entire time.  The satellite was sketchy for awhile, but I thought that would be the first thing to go.  Overall we came out unscathed.

Once the storm was over the grader and loader hit the roads to make them passable.  I walked up to play school and chuckled a few times at the "roads".  I felt like I was walking in a tunnel at a few places.  The drifts were over my head. 

We were the only ones at play school.  A 5 to 1 teacher student ratio isn't so bad.  They were just as happy to be out of the house as I was.  One of the teachers was telling me about a big storm (this one was just considered normal) that blew the steps right off her house.  We were all talking about loading up on water to get ready and the teachers told me about how they also keep their parkas, boots, mitts etc close by.  No kidding.  In case the roof blows off or the house blows away.  It kind of sounds like the big bad wolf story but I guess their is a legitimate concern.  All of our house are built on stilts because of the permafrost.  There is not a single basement in town.  So we are up on stilt, some are open to the elements and some people have enclosed the area to create a storage area.  I suppose if it's on stilts.....there is a chance it could blow off the stilts. 

R came home from work telling me that he was talking to a man who had suggested keeping our outdoor gear close by.  So I chuckled and we exchanged stories.  Turns out the storm that the stairs blew away is the same storm that had people in town dressed IN their outdoor gear because they really thought they might end up outside.  Lets just say I'm glad I wasn't here for that storm!

We also had our first day of -50.  There is no way to explain it other to say -50 is really cold. 

I was heading over to the school one afternoon and figured I'd skip my snow pants because it's just extra hassle and I wasn't really going very far...just to the school.  I started out walking.  Progressed to a jog and ended up running and cursing that if I got to the school and it was locked I was going to each persons house that was suppose to be there and cursing them out.

I was relieved to get to the door and it was open.  I was greeted by a friend saying "it's cold out there".  Yup, I'd agree with that.  She went on to tell me it was -48.  No freaking wonder I was freezing.  We were at the school to do a little circuit training in the gym.  Only problem was the gym door had blown open over night and it was freezing in the gym.  Have you ever seen people doing circuit training in parkas, fur hats and seal skin mitts?  I'm sure it would have been a funny sight, but even all geared up and working out, we all still had red noses.  Not so enjoyable, but a good chuckle.

-52 is great for a good old science experiment.  Some of you might have seen the video on Utube that went viral last year.  A lady in YK dumped boiling water outside in -30 and it turns to snow.  Neat.  So we decided we should do it too.  Just because we could.  Some of the teachers decided to advance the study and add food colouring to the water and see if they'd get coloured snow.

It was fun.  More white!  The food colouring didn't work.  It did show up on the snow after it landed, but white, more white.

The days have been getting noticeably lighter.  I would say it is light during the day.  Maybe I've kind of lost my base line as to what "light" is because I'm sure without the sun it can't be just as light as your light is.  It does seem light though.  From about 10 ish it starts getting "light" and then around 4 ish it starts getting darker.  Right now it is almost 5pm and is dusk out.  About as light as daytime was a month ago.  Definite progress.

January 26 was the BIG day.  The day the sun came back.  I had been eagerly anticipating it's arrival and for the previous three days N and I had been reading his Northern books that tell stories of the sun coming back.  They are nice stories.  One tells the story of how a raven stole the sun and the new sun would come back bigger than the last one so the raven couldn't steal the new one.  The other is about a little Inuit boy who goes with his parents for a walk to the ocean.  Along the way they meet a polar bear, a walrus and a fox all going to the ocean.  Once they get there the sun comes up. 

We'd read these stories before nap time then come to the living room to look out the window, because surely the sun would be there then.  Nope.  Then on the 26th I noticed what I thought might be the tip of the sun:

Then about a half hour later I saw someone in front of the house taking pictures:

THIS HAD TO BE IT!!!!

Sure enough

THE SUN

Happy day in our little community.  This sun is big - I'm pretty sure the raven won't be able to steal this one ; )

I took this one today - it was only up for about 20 minutes

With every sunrise there must be a sunset.  The sunset on January 26th at 3:00 in the afternoon was awesome!  Cotton candy pink!

By total fluke I made red velvet cake yesterday for a pot luck.  I didn't have any red food dye, but I had pink.  Close enough.

Sure looks like cotton candy to me.

That's playdough by the mixer, not

food colouring......

And there we have it.  The past three weeks updated. 

Onto tomorrow, a blank slate.

A white blank slate.....

Here's a few of N - too cute not to share.