Winter Fun

It's Christmas party time! Oh wait, no, that's just Jonah and Joshua having a tea party. Sorry for the confusion. (Elora got these for her birthday,but its the two boys who always play with them! This is a still from a video, thus the bad quality.)



We did have fun at a Thanksgiving party this year...we were invited over to eat with some folks from church, who some of their kids and grand kids visiting! So while our kids were punks and wouldn't eat much of the bounteous feast, they at least had fun playing with the other kids! And the day after, we made our own Thanksgiving dinner, and invited one of Joseph's coworkers over to share with us. Sadly, this is one of the very few pictures I remembered to take during that holiday:



Look at him go! What a great cook. And don't tell Joseph I posted pictures of him in his apron. heheh.


Well, what do we have here? Christmas decorating! We got to it the day after Thanksgiving, and we were glad we had our big tree in storage...because the local stores didn't have trees for sale until a few weeks later; they were all quite small and sad.


I forgot to take a picture of the finished tree (dang it) but suffice it to say, the lower half is bare of all but lights, due to a small personage in our home who would be removing them otherwise.



Said personage, was a little sad when we were decorating, because everyone kept getting mad at him for pulling things down. Finally he flopped down on the floor next to the tree and stayed there with a grumpy face for the next ten minutes. Poor misunderstood baby. Since this time, his brother Joshua has pulled down and broken several ornaments, and hidden others...so perhaps I was worrying about the wrong kid!



Early on this month we had a Branch Christmas Party of sorts too! We had a chili dinner, a few games for the kids, and then watched the Christmas Devotional together. Elora and Josh were so excited because the other two kids who rarely come to church were there to join in the games.
At the last minute of church that day, I was asked to be in charge of a few games..and I was told which games to do. Instead of the suggested pin-the-ornament-on-the-tree (which seems a little pointless to me because it doesn't matter where you pin it) I decided to do pin the tail on the donkey...with Mary and Joseph. You don't think that's too sacrilegious, do you?



At least they had some fun! (Do you like this photo of my ear?)


We also played musical chairs, then it was time for the Broadcast. Sadly, we lost the feed for a few minutes, right in the middle of Uctdorfs talk about the Grinch. So sad.

This month we've seen some interesting weather as well. School has been cancelled or let out early several times already for high winds and snow, but the coolest thing we've seen was the week or so where we woke up to ice crystals coating everything outside! The first day this happened, the first thing I saw was the railing on our porch, just coated with ice crystals; I loved how you could see every individual crystal.



The ice was on everything be it plant, metal, or plastic!


The camera didn't really capture how sparkly and white everything was, but this picture kind of shows the sparkliness and the whiteness of the day.



I decided to bundle up the kids and head outside to take more pictures. I though I was being so nice to take them out, but Jonah wasn't nearly as excited as I had thought he'd be. He picked up snow with his bare hands several times, and then he cried for fifteen minutes straight because he wanted me to carry him around.


So I guess I was wrong to think 20F was warm enough for everyone to go out and play..it seemed warm compared to the single digit temperatures of the week before! Don't worry, he did eventually have fun walking around with the other kids, at least for a few minutes:



And I got some really cool pictures! I like this one with the tractor because it kind of shows how far we can see on a clear day.




And this one shows how white and coated the grass really is. And, you know, me. You should have seen how many bad shots I got before I managed this one.



A few more:



most of the pictures I took turned out like this one, with the camra showing the dark skeleton of the plant instead of the icecrystals coating it. With the naked eye, this really just looked white!




When I got home and was perusing the shots I had taken on the camera, I was surprised to see that Joseph must have also taken some pictures before he left for work that morning! They were cool because they had those nice, soft sunrise colors in them. This was the rack on top of the car.



And the porch railing.



What a pretty morning.

sunsets on the prarie, part II: Ice Crystals

November 10th was the last time I went outside to catch a spectacular sunset.....





And I wasn't sure I'd be getting more anytime soon because its been so cold and windy. But the other day, (November 24th) I glanced out the living room window and saw this spectacular sight:



which slowly turned into this:



And I realized one can find beauty even without going out into the bitter cold!

Cousin Portraits: cousin #5

For Christmas this year, I am working on a portrait of Joseph's nephew who is the same age as Jonah. He has four older sisters that I have also drawn in years past, and his parents requested a picture of him to go with the others. To see the portraits of his siblings, see this post here.

When I received the pictures from his mom, I was so excited because it was one of those rare snapshots that is actually good! Meaning, it isn't overexposed and washed out, or underexposed and too dark, and you can easily see the person's features. Also, it had a really pretty background for the most part. He was standing in green grass with fall leaves around him. The only thing I changed was far behind him: in the original there were some buildings behind him (he was in a backyard), so I used the pretty fog-covered mountains from a photo of one of his sisters instead. I figured this would be fine because they were both taken in the same town!



I think I got a little too excited about doing the background, as I usually finish it last, but I worked on it first this time. Now I'll have to put paper under my hand as I draw the rest so I don't smear it around!



The boy's photo was taken on a sunny day, while the background is obviously cooler and more cloudy. I had to remember to add a few cool colors to his face and clothes so that he doesn't look too out of place in the scenery, even if you figure that the sun was coming through the clouds to shine on him at that moment. Though the sunny foreground just looks awesome by that cloudy mountain. I love that!




For these last two pictures, I actually slightly blurred the scan in photoshop, because my scanner was bringing out all the white spots between colors and making it way too sharp. This way, it actually looks more like the real drawing. although in the real one, you don't notice the lines on the mountains behind him so much.



And voila! I hope his parents like it, and we'll be excited to meet our new cousin this Christmas!

Elora's Art Corner

It's time now for another edition of Elora's Art Corner. As our watercolor set is running low, we've had a lot less color lately, replaced by more line drawings, and more words! Of course, there is still the odd splash of color. For instance, Elora has noticed me taking pictures of the sunsets, and she has made a few renditions of her own:



This is the house from the movie "Ponyo" with the waves rising around it, and she added the Big Dipper in the sky. She is becoming very interested in outer space!




And this is her sitting in a red chair on a yellow picnic blanket. She is juggling yellow balls, and has red paint buckets next to her and a red rose in the front. I wonder if she was unconsciously channeling the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland?




Recently I explained to Elora that you learn to draw things by looking at them and copying them. She has definitely taken this advice to heart, as her new obsession is finding objects around the house to draw. This one is Joshua's grabber toy...she did a great job looking at the details!



A shoe.



From the left, this shows Jonah's stacking rings, a pinwheel, a card I had with an orange flower, a cup, a spiderweb and spider (no, she wasn't looking at a real one for that!) and some letters she copied from a flier we'd received advertising the election.




A small stuffed pink pony..I was surprised at how good this one turned out, compared to how she draws horses out of her head:



In this one, she was actually trying to copy the pattern of a woven place mat we own. I was impressed by how long she stuck with this one, I would think a five-year-old would find it a little tedious. The darker black pattern in the left corner was my version of the pattern .



Another trend I've noticed is the addition of more words in her drawings. Sometimes she asks me how to spell things, but more often she is figuring out how to write things on her own.
She says the three planets here are Mars, Jupiter (hence the spot) and Saturn. Then it says, "Eloras Penk Rocit" which means, "Elora's Pink Rocket."




Pretty self explanatory: "This is ice." I think she asked me how to spell "ice" on this one.



This is just from this week. It says, "a babe wal is a mamol", or, "A baby whale is a mammal." Below it says, "This is a bloo popcicol", meaning, "This is a blue Popsicle." Some of the letters are scribbled because she wasn't sure how to spell it. At the very bottom is a picture of a book (She does this a lot) with random words in it: "The flowr wit too cap", which she says is, "the flower went to cup." Then, liv mom is "Love, mom."



This says, "batrfli this is swarold", which means, "Butterfly, this is swirled." The tree is a blueberry tree and she is inside the basket, which says, "bascit" on it. At the bottom it says, "I mad this misalf I lav mom" which of course is, "I made this myself, I love mom." Not much of a picture, but I was very impressed by her writing!



As usual, we also have our regular line drawings that she likes to pump out every day. This is a house on a hill, a train and a car.




This is Elora depicted as a butterfly (love the bellybutton). Below her is someone trying to catch her with a net because she is "so beautiful". I think its funny that she tries to draw the fly on pants now...thats what that big shape is above her legs.



Elephants getting a drink. She drew the left one first, then remembered for the second one that its face should be on the side.





Elora blowing bubbles. Grandma sent them little bubble containers that look like jack-o-lanterns last month. Those are by her feet in this picture.



And finally, this is a drawing of our old apartments in Logan, complete with the playground and fence. They sure do miss that place!

Living Here

There are some things I really like about living here.

I love that about every other day I can see and hear cows from my house. (No I didn't take this photo from my house...but its across the street from the school, so its almost the same thing.)

I love the gorgeous sunsets every night that I can see from the kitchen window, and the bright morning sun shining in my east-facing bedroom windows! This was November 10th.

I love the drive into town every week, once for groceries (milk) and once for church . While there are no trees in our little community, there are several picturesque copses along the drive, as well as several creeks that we cross, and numerous small ponds between the rolling hills. I’ve found that with the fall, the grass changes colors too, resulting in swathes of orange, dark yellow, light yellow, brown, and some sprouts of green in the fields that have been plowed.

We caught a glimpse of what summer looks like here when we first arrived: Bright yellow sunflower fields in the distance, cornfields and wheat fields in between. I can’t wait to see what winter will look like; I picture it looking just like all the Christmas cards of the Midwest; any season it is quite peaceful and beautiful.

Every time we go anywhere, we see prairie dogs, antelope, deer, and sometimes coyotes, sky hawks, and even bald eagles!

This is the first place we’ve lived that I can send the kids outside to play without having to go out with them. I’m not worried that they’ll get hit by a car- at least by our house- because there are almost never any vehicles driving around here in the day time. They are free to explore and I can pretty much see them no matter how far they get from the house.

Its nice that Joseph’s work is so close. We can see his classroom window from our house, and he doesn’t have to drive the car to work at all. If I need him for an emergency (like when Jonah smashed his finger) I can easily go get him.

Oh yeah, and our rent is super cheap! I complained about our house when we first moved in, but now that I've heard about and seen problems the other teachers have in their homes, I feel we got one of the better deals, seriously.

For these reasons I would much rather live out here on the reservation than in the town. (Not to mention we couldn't afford for Joseph to commute every day.) Besides, how often do you get to drive through a herd of cattle on your way home?

The town is cool too though, because it has an awesome found-object dinosaur sculpture, commemorating "Sue", the most complete tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found.

I love the people in our very small branch at church. I guess there is a whole page-long list of inactive people, but right now there are only five people who come every week, along with someone’s daughter and her two children who attend occasionally. As there is not really a primary, Elora got to give her first church talk in Sacrament meeting, and she had so much fun! (She spoke on Jonah and the whale, and read half of her talk herself!) Because it’s so small, we quickly became friends with those members who are there, and our kids feel like they are family. We have potlucks about every other week and have been invited to others’ homes several times.

While I love all of these things, there are plenty of negatives that make us think we probably don’t want to stay here for too long. Most of these issues deal with my kids. For instance, they never have anyone to play with. None of the other teachers (who live here) have kids their age. Some of the Native families do, but they are gone all day every day for Headstart. I know my kids could go to it too, but I just don’t feel comfortable sending them there. Not only is it all day, but they take a bus to another reservation town down a dirt road. I know I can teach them better at home, and when they’re home I don’t have to worry about them catching head lice, which is always going around here. Still, sometimes I feel guilty for depriving them of those relationships. Occasionally there are kids on the school playground on weekends when we go to play, so there's that.

I don’t like feeling like a minority, and my kids would be singled out if they went to school here. I know this is an issue that actual minorities have to deal with every day, but why should I put my kids through that if I don’t have to? It’s interesting seeing this issue from the other side. Joseph was telling me how one teacher's kid in the high school here was often called “white boy” even by the white teachers, and he was bullied around from the moment they moved here. Elora has mentioned several times how the other girls she sees are so pretty, and she wishes she had dark skin and black hair.

I feel like every time we step out our door, if there are people around they are staring at us: this happens in town because its soo small and we are the new people that no one knows, and on the Reservation because we don’t look like we belong out here. Even with people in town, It’s hard to find things in common. Almost everyone we know has a job in agriculture (cattle, crops, bee-keeping, etc.) while the people we know on the Reservation have a hard time relating to us because they are divorced, single, have kids from various fathers, are unreligious, etc. It’s good to get to know people that are different than you of course! But its hard when there is no one who shares much in common with you.

I worry that Elora will have a hard time if she goes to school here next year, not just because of the minority issue. I hate to promote stereotypes, but Joseph says its true that most of the kids here are somewhat behind academically. The school classes are taught as if the students are all potential delinquents, and they have big problems with bullying and stealing. Right now, Elora can do all the stuff that kindergartners can do (reading, writing, numbers, etc) and I worry that if she’s ahead of the other kids when she starts school next year, she’ll either be ostracized for being smart, or she’ll “dumb down” to fit in with the other kids. (And no, I’m not planning on homeschooling either, I don’t have the patience or the discipline!)

Our car is always dirty or muddy, because we have to traverse a seven mile dirt road to get to our home. I worry about the frequency of plowing on this road in the winter time! Speaking of winter, last year they had a huge ice storm that broke windows and froze all the pipes so they all burst. The Natives were given vouchers by the government to go stay in hotels in Rapid City for a month while they fixed up everything, but what would the rest of us do if that happened again?

I miss the conveniences of a bigger town. We’ve been to the clinic in town a few times now, and it seems so small and inadequate compared to the large new facilities in the last few places we have lived. The facilities in town seem dingy and outdated, and I’m not sure I’d be comfortable going there for checkups if I were to have a baby here. They don’t have many local doctors and no specialists on staff; you have to wait until they are coming through town once a month on their circuit. This is a little worrisome considering Jonah’s heart murmur that we’re supposed to get checked every year or so. In fact, when we mentioned it to the doctor, they said they might send us to Denver or even SLC to get it checked on if needed. That’s a three day drive from here!?

I thought the hospital we had to go to was four hours away, and I was a little consoled to learn it is only about two hours from here, in North Dakota, but still that’s quite a drive, especially if there was a real emergency.

The grocery store doesn’t carry half of the things we like to eat, and the produce is often of low quality. There are no dentists, eye doctors, craft stores, department stores, redboxes, movie theaters, and only two restaurants in town, which are overpriced. I guess the lack of entertainment is good for the pocketbook at least!

While I like the people at church, as I’ve mentioned, I feel sad that the kids don’t really get to go to primary. Plus, three of the five people are leaving for six months, as they do every year for their business. I don’t know how great church will be with just us and two other people! I guess we should pray for more people to start coming…

Joseph's current contract is only for a year (they don't even ofter tenure here) so we don't even know if staying here will be an option. But if/when we do move, it will definitely be with mixed feelings and I will miss this corner of the world.