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!