Leaving Chuathblauk

This post is a little delayed, but it is hard to keep up with posting when traveling! Here's the events of our departing. We left Chuathbaluk on March 9th, the start of spring break. Dave hired his secretary Robbie to drive us down to Aniak, which was very nice of him considering that earlier that day he had gotten married! The day was cold, maybe 20 below, but I bundled Julia in a million layers and fretted the whole ride down that I was freezing her again. Thankfully this was not so, she was fine and toasty. We arrived at the home of Mike and Dolphin, who were not in residence. They were in Anchorage, awaiting the birth of their son. We stayed in Aniak for three nights, hanging out and enjoying the change of scenery. We met the neighbors, Carrie and Paul and I was immediately sad that I had not met them before. They run a small time daycare for their grandson and a few others, and invited Julia to come play. She settled in like she attended daycare every day of her life. It was really fun to watch. She really liked the other kids, loved the toys and was very comfortable with Carrie and Paul. She's definitely not the same clingy baby of a year ago.

Waiting to go!

She was refusing to wear any clothes up to about 15 minutes before we left. I bribed her with fruit snacks to get pants on.

In Aniak, we met up with the Haydens, our neighbors last year. Julia and Kiley played together beautifully all afternoon! Not one altercation!

Julia at daycare! Kingston, their grandson is to Julia's right. They hugged goodbye when it was time to go!

Carrie and Paul

Saying goodbye to Daddy. Julia took full advantage of the situation to beg some chocolate off of Daddy

and what do you know, he had some!

but she had to pay for it with kisses! She'll say "I love you" now, "Ah-doo!"

We said our sad goodbyes and had an uneventful flight to Anchorage. She ate m&ms and  slept! In Anchorage, we had a couple hours wait, but filled the time fine with getting our bags transferred, eating frozen yogurt, watching a little movie, going through security, ect. Our flight from Anchorage to Seattle was in first class! I've NEVER gotten to fly first class, and was pretty thrilled. (Dave was a sweetie when buying tickets!) The seats were roomy, there was free food and drinks, free movie players, and even a little flying wing pin for Julia. Julia was very well behaved, but the flight was long nonetheless, and I was happy to arrive in Seattle just before midnight. My friends Erin and Mat picked us up and kept us overnight, and the next day Grandpa Dave came down and brought us to Mt Vernon. We heard later that Mike and Dolphin had a 9 lb 7oz boy named Fisher Moon! That's our sort of middle name! I'm sad we missed that by a day, but Dave will get to meet him!

The Anticipatory Bordeom

We leave tomorrow for Aniak. We'll spend a couple days hanging out there, Julia and I will leave Aniak on Tuesday, and be in Seattle just before midnight. We'll spend about a week visiting various people before heading down to Klamath Falls. This whole week has lasted forever. It's because the contents of the house including all my little projects like knitting are packed. It's because Julia's toys are 99.9% packed and she's totally bored with the ones left. It's because I'm anxious about taking Julia away from Dave again and trying not to think about it. It's because I hate flying (despite doing it rather often) and am trying not to think about it. But it's mostly because when you anticipate a big event like moving, time crawwwwwwwls towards that event.
We've spent a lot of time over at the school this week, since being home is making me crazy. Today I helped a few of the high schoolers make pizza dough, so they could sell pizza at the movie night that is going on right now. Puss in Boots is being shown, but Julia is too antsy to sit and watch, so we're hanging out in the school instead. Tomorrow I'm going to be Mrs. Sather of the Kindergarteners again, so it will be an early morning for us.

In which I teach Kindergarten and pack

Julia drew this and informed me that it is the moon. she has since made several other moon drawings, but that's the only thing she's named so far.

She's in to drawing in general, markers and pens are her favorite, and body decoration follows paper decoration. Watercolors are also favored, though crayons will do if nothing else can be found

I knit this sweater-vest for her, but it turned out rather big. I think next winter it will work.

it looks more like a dress than a sweater!

She's latched onto a "chicken" stuffed animal that we swiped from my friend Andrea's baby when we were visiting. She insists that the chicken get a hat too when we go outside.

Two days this week saw me waking up unusually early (8 am!) to go to school with Julia and be the kindergarten sub. Helen, the teacher's aid has the kindergartners for much of the day and she was gone all week for medical appointments. Out of the three, I had two show up both days, Jolene and Steven. They were generally well behaved, but getting them to do any of their work and keeping Julia happy at the same time while also figuring out the small quirks, such as how to get to the bathroom without leaving them unsupervised was completely exhausting.

Jolene, and Julia behind her with the Jr high.

Julia wanted to join the Jr high.

By the second day, Julia was so tired that when we got home, she fell asleep waiting for me to come nurse her. I thought this was excellent, until she woke up with a fever. Poor baby. She had thrown huge tantrums that morning while I was trying to get us out the door and probably felt terrible all day. She was better by the next morning, and I was pretty thrilled not to be the sub any more. It's good for me to do that once in a while though, to better appreciate what Dave does to provide for us daily! He's officially resigned his position here in Chuathbaluk. He didn't have to do it this early, but wanted to give them the best opportunity for finding a good replacement. He's got 41 job applications sent out as of yesterday, and we've heard back negatively from two so far. He's applied to Washington, Oregon, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, California, Juneau, and Maine, mostly for principal positions. We're hopeful and anxious, cut free from one job while waiting to see how the job market will treat us this year. Our priorities are to be near one set of family or the other, and to be somewhere where I can take classes towards midwifery, but who knows if we'll be in any position to be choosy. I've been busy packing again. Spring break will be upon us in a week, and it is likely that Julia and I will head south to Klamath Falls sometime during that week. My last Anat and Phys class starts April 2nd, but we are hopeful that there will be an interview request sometime soon, so that we can fly as far as Seattle together. Julia turns two on March 22nd, and that marks the end of free flying for her. We want to get this last flight in before she reaches her birthday. Dave will join us when the year is up, in mid May. We are hoping that we'll spend the early part of the summer moving, but it is impossible to know how things will end up! It has been good for us to be with Dave but remote Alaska in winter is a hard place to have a small child. There's very little to do that gets you out of the house, and not so many days with weather that makes you want to get out of the house. I'm looking forward to being with family again, and with having the activities a town provides for Julia, and with having the work of a class for myself. I'm doing Developmental psych in correspondence form right now, but it's pretty boring just to read from a textbook and take the tests. I like going to class. I'm trying to get the psych done before A and P starts up, but I still have a fair amount of work to do. which I will go and do now.