Catching Up & Merry Christmas

Sorry I've been so inactive lately on the blog. I'm finally slowed down now and ready to enjoy some free time. The past few weeks have been busy. I'm sure a lot of you have been busy also. We had a craft fair a few weeks ago and I was busy making stuff to sell. Unfortunately so many people were already out of the village our turn out was really low. I did sell a few cards and some nugget boxes. My husband made a nice gun rack and some Ulus (Eskimo knives). My daughter beat us all out with her baked goods and pretty much sold everything she had made. Here are some photos of the craft items:


The following Sunday was our church Christmas program. We only had 8 kids show up for the program after weeks of practice. Our little auditorium was pretty full with adults to watch the kids. We had a nice service and the kids did great. Our only wise man was a 3 yr old. He kept everyone's attention by playing with his crown and wiggling around the platform!


Our local public school had a Christmas program also a few days later. I got recruited to play the piano for it and only had a few times to practice the music with the kids. It went very well also. I was impressed with the ending of the program. The entire school staff, including all teachers, sang "Silent Night" at the end of the program. Three verses in English and 4 verses in Inupiat (native Eskimo language here). It was such a blessing to hear them sing a hymn in a public school. Each of the classes also did at least one hymn in their portion of the program. What a blessing to be in a community that honors the Lord and no one is offended by having prayer, Christian hymns and the Bible in the school!


Now that all those activities are done I was able to get busy and make 6 birthday cards for upcoming birthdays for some of the kids here in the village. I put these together in about 2 days time and have them ready to mail out now.


We had our Christmas meal tonight. It was just as great as Thanksgiving, pretty much the same menu as we had before, only not as many pies this time. We made home made ice cream to go with the pies which we'll have later tonight. We decided to have our meal on Christmas Eve so we could do leftovers tomorrow and not have a lot of cooking to do.

Sorry for such a long post but as I said, I have lots of catching up to do...

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Winter Wonder Land

My we've had a lot of blowing snow around here lately. This picture was taken last week after the storm was over. This is the front of our church building.

Baleen Boats

My 12 yr old son made this boat last week. They had a class at the school in the evenings for all interested in learning this native craft. My husband made a big ship also. I'll try to get a picture of it later.

Baleen is the "whiskers" on a whale. They are usually pretty long and attached to the sides of the mouth. It is used to sweep fish and brine into the whales mouth. It is hard but flexible, so it's easy to work with for crafts. It is kind of like fingernails. It's actually compressed hair.
There is also a class coming up on making baskets with Baleen. Maybe we will get to try that out also!

A Whole Bunch of Cards.....

A Birthday card for mojo Week 13- check out Poetic Artistry for more information. Link is at the side. The DP is from Dick Blick, swirl clip and stamp image from TAC.

A birthday card for a one of our Bible Time kids- I love this Snowman!

This was last week's Mojo challenge- week 12.

I did this tri- fold card to look like basket balls.
When you open it up it says " It is You! Happy Birthday!
There are two basketball shapes drawn inside also.

Another card for Mojo Week 13. This is for one of our teens at church who has a birthday this week also.

Whew! That's a lot of cards for one day! I didn't make them all today, it's been several days of working on them. I have a huge list of Birthday's for December so I'm sure to be adding more cards later.

Yummy!

Fresh Homemade Rolls

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Six pies made by daughter #2 who loves to bake

Her very first Pecan pie- turned out perfect!

Just sharing some photos that my daughter took from our Thanksgiving meal. We are quite blessed and had a traditional Turkey dinner with all the trimmings, just like I always enjoyed growing up at home. With the help of my daughters the meal turned out picture perfect and we enjoyed a great day together as a family.

Happy Thanksgiving

I did this card for Mojo week 12. I think the background looks a little too plain so I may try to do it again with a background stamp. This is actually the second try on this card challenge using this retired Thanksgiving Stamp set from S.U.

I'm winding up my Christmas shopping and should be about done soon. Tomorrow will be busy with preparing for our Thanksgiving meal and Wednesday Night Bible Study plus teen time. I hope to squeeze in some time for Stamping but also have promised the kids we will get out the Christmas decorations and put up the tree on Friday.

We got a really neat treat today. Some friends sent a few boxes of groceries through the airlines from Fairbanks. When I opened one box we were excited to find 3 Pizzas from PIZZA HUT! Wow! What a rare treat to get Pizza Hut delivery 500 miles north of the nearest Pizza Hut! Thank you Mike & Anna if you are reading this post!!!! The Pizza was delicious!!!

Blessings in the Mail

Bringing home the groceries by sled!

This is the second sled full of supplies!

What a mess... but it will all be put away soon!

God's blessings of a full pantry!

Supplies in back Arctic entry

We are so thankful for answered prayer today about our supplies coming in. 12 boxes of our groceries were at the post office today and I hauled them home in two trips. This is a little different from you usual trip to the grocery store, isn't it? The kids hauled the boxes into the house and we began the process of getting everything upstairs to the kitchen. Our cupboards are well stocked now. We also have a storage room in our new back arctic entry with a freezer and shelves for dry goods that won't be harmed if they get frozen. It's full of supplies as well.

Another blessing in the mail was our new prayer cards that we've have been waiting for since last summer. We had several problems getting them made and then couldn't get them shipped directly to us. So we had them sent to family and then mailed on up to us. Now we can work on sending all our supporting churches these new prayer cards!

How you do like the new background?

My wonderful daughters designed the new background for my blog. I think it looks more like the Arctic now! The girls are so talented with graphic designs. My oldest daughter did the designs and second daughter upload everything since she know all about the codes that are needed to put them on the web.

This was a busy day so I didn't get time to stamp a new card. I've been working on getting some Christmas gifts ordered. Our mail takes so long up here we need to really think ahead for things that we need. I can't believe that Thanksgiving is already one week away. I'm still waiting on grocery items that I ordered over 2 weeks ago and really praying that they get here before Thanksgiving. I check the mail twice a day since the post office is just a short walk down the street. I drag along the plastic sled with me each time, hoping that I will have it full of boxes to take home! Maybe tomorrow will be a better mail day!

Kidz Birthday

This a card for one of our Bible Time kids. The stamps are from TAC. The DP came from Dick Blick in an assortment of paper scraps.

Wildlife Get Well Card

I made this card today for my husband's uncle, who has cancer. I used a caribou stamp from a set I bought from My Heart Stamps for You. You can find it at http://www.myheartstamps4u.com/index.htm
I used prismacolor pencils and mineral spirits to blend the colors together. Also in the blue card stock I stamped four images from the S.U. Wildlife set in Versamark. Also added a piece from the hodgepodge hardware that I just received last week.

Blog is created!

Welcome to my little spot on the web. I decided to create this blog spot to share some of the life we live in the Arctic. My husband, four children and I are missionaries in a remote Eskimo bush village of Alaska. In this blog I plan to share a little of our ministry, family life, and hobbies that we enjoy to keep us busy during the cold and dark winter months. Hope you enjoy it!