Veterans Day

Julia's been mastering the fine art of using her fingers to pinch up cheerios. She's pretty good at it now and spends a great deal of happy time in her high chair consuming them. She's also learned to drink water from a sippy cup, and seems to enjoy that too. she was kind of perplexed by the taste of water at first, and would gulp and gasp, but now she's pretty used to it.

The sunrise this morning was beautiful. It lit the entire west riverside and water up in frosty orange.

The sun must have been hiding above some thick clouds, because this is all I could see to the east. 

There's a fisheries specialist at the school all this week, doing fish-based projects with the kids. Yesterday they were dissecting a salmon, and we got to take home the remains, which were huge. I made a salmon pasta dish by adding cooked, deboned salmon flakes (just a baked chunk) to some jarred tomato sauce we had on hand. (augmented with some extra garlic sauteed in olive oil and finished with some fresh basil and parmesan)  It was pretty darn good. I also made soup stock out of the head and some vegetables that I'm planning on making into chowder tonight. I'm also baking more of that overnight rising bread. I've tried adding cracked wheat and wheat germ to make it a little wheatier, and that seems to be working.

Julia, meet Salmon

The kids at school were decorating red, white and blue cupcakes for the veterans day assembly which will be tomorrow morning. There are five vets in the village here, and I want to send love to my favorite vet, my dad. Happy veteran's day, Dad.

Halloween

10/30 to 11/5
thus endeth a 8 day internet outage!

The school hosted a halloween party on saturday for the kids and families. Dave and I were bumblebees, and Julia was our flower. Good thing halloween wasn't any later or Julia wouldn't have fit in her costume! The kids got to play all sorts of games like musical chairs, relay races, sack hop, fish tank, bean bag toss, tug of war, and there was a cake walk, jello eating contest and pizza and treats for sale. I ran the face painting booth that also dabbled in pirate themed temporary tattoos. very popular, those.

how fast can you suck jello through a straw?

the get dressed-get undressed relay race

Trick or treating happened sunday night, and was actually kind of anticlimactic, as there were only about 5 kids to come by. Some had gone to Anchorage, and some were stuck across the river. Until the ice freezes solid enough to drive on, three of the school kids are stuck on the other side. We did take Julia to a couple houses, though she was pretty indifferent about it. 

the trick or treaters, traveling bush alaska style
(meaning a kid as young as 7 is often driving
other kids around on the 4 wheeler or snowmobile.) 

Julia seemed curious about the candy

other news:
Julia's getting another tooth, right next to the first one. I couldn't believe it. Six days apart!
She's also learned to clap, and it is the first thing she does now when she wakes up. She sits up and then claps, then goes about making sure I'm good and awake.

the teeth

Dave is going to teacher inservice in another village. He'll be gone from wednesday afternoon to saturday evening, so Julia and I are holding down the fort. I borrowed a sewing machine for a few days, so I'm mending and working on some small projects. Julia's hand-me-down snowsuit was missing one of the foot covers, so I knitted some out of red yarn, felted them and sewed them on. Pretty snazzy, I thought, but not 10 minutes after I finished sewing them on, I got word that the original missing bootie had been found. Sigh.

the booties

Julia got a PC shot and I got a flu shot at the town clinic. There's nobody living in the village to work the clinic, but maybe twice per year a traveling nurse will come to town for a few days.

the clinic

I've also been trying a new way of making bread from the cookbook My Bread by Jim Lahey. It's a simple dough that is barely combined, then left to rise slowly at room temperature for 18 hours. The slow fermentation develops the gluten that is a result of kneading in most bread recipes. After the 18 hours, the bread is shaped into a round ball and left to rise on a floured tea towel for 1-2 hours. Meanwhile you heat a heavy dutch oven style pot in the oven at 475 for 30 minutes. You flip the risen loaf into the hot pan, put the lid on and bake it for 30 minutes covered, and 15-30 minutes uncovered. I'm pretty pleased with the results. The bread is crusty, full of bread flavor, and the texture is chewy, with nice holes throughout.

Seven Months

Oct 29
This is the first month that I've missed recognizing Julia's month birthday. She turned 7 months old on october 22nd, and I realized it 4 days later when Dave commented on the change. She's getting much more stable while standing, holding on to the chair or bookshelf, and she's learning to walk along the edge of the couch. She can even navigate over my feet to get around me when I'm sitting on it.

You can see just a sliver of tooth right above my fingernail

Last night and the night before brought several more inches of snow.

The ice is stretching farther and farther out from shore

sunrise, 9 30 am

Today the kids were carving pumpkins in school, as part of a math lesson. Along with carving, they were measuring, weighing, counting seeds, collecting data, ect. Julia had her own tiny pumpkin to gnaw.

Rashaun, Sam, Dave and Miguel taking dimensions

Chelsea, Mattie and Alfreda scooping innards to be weighed

Tatiana, Honey and Angela, carving a face

Honey, with the finished result

Happy Almost Halloween