AK meets SC

This morning I woke up to 2 inches of fluffy powder, had a nice run in the fresh falling snow. Yesterday after 11 days of sunshine I hiked up to the top of Gaven with my friend Shari and played in the snow all day. When I returned from the hike after a nice dose of caroling with some friends I headed to Swan lake to ice skate for my 5th day out on the ice. In an hour I am about to get on a plane and fly south to South Carolina, and even though according to my dad it has been "the coldest fall on record in 123 years, getting down to 30 at night" I think the transition is going to be a bit of a culture shock. Goodbye beautiful snow capped mountains and fresh falling snow, hello flatness... Next year I am going to have to rope them all here!

Monsters

"Ms. Bradford, Ms. Bradford can we play monsters at recess?" - Lenny and Nelly

Meet Nelly and Lenny (above) polar opposites, best friends, name inverses, and always found together cracking each other up. This year my work world involves hanging out with these two all day everyday. I swim with Lenny (boy) each morning and then we head to Keet to hang out and work together, unless he fires me, which he does regularly when he thinks he can do the work alone. Nelly runs circles around Lenny but somehow their friendship endures. Lenny loves Star Wars, Sponge Bob, and kittys, Nelly loves horses and puppies. They both love laughing and tag. Last Friday Lenny wrote a story...

"If I could give anyone any gift the Christmas I would give Nelly a stuffed animal rabbit. I like rabbits. I think that Nelly likes rabbits. I think that Nelly would like a stuffed animal rabbit. I would give Nelly a stuffed animal rabbit."

WIND

above are pictures from a trip up Starrigaven on a windy but beautiful day that it was just too nice to stay inside...

Below is the 12 days of Christmas Sitka Style...

1 headlamp shining
2 snow tires biking
3 sightings of northern lights
4 falls on the ice
5 days of ice skating
6 surfers catching waves
7 sledders sliding
8 snowmen smiling
9 snowboarders on Verstovia
10 shooting stars
11 cups of coco
12 sunny days

Life at Work

Here are two funny interactions I had with some kids today:

"Ms. Bradford? Have you ever tried to close your nose and mouth and blow air out of your eyeballs?" Reilly just tried and his eyes turned bright red"

a few moments later another girl looks up at me and says this:

"My eyes are blue. Me and my grandpa are the only people in my entire family with blue eyes, well and my cat. Me, my grandpa, and my cat are the only poeple in my entire family that have blue eyes."

Wonder what would happen if the cat tried to blow air out of his eyeballs? Would his eyes still be blue?

Cousins

So my mom is the oldest of 5, she was the first of the 5 to start having babies, and I am the oldest in my immediate family, positioning myself as the oldest cousin on my mother's side. It is quite the responsibility checking up on the little ones, sending birthday greetings, doing the periodic phone call to hear the latest and greatest. However, just now I realized how recently I have failed in my oldest cousin responsibilities. I just went to send a quick e-mail to one of my professors and noticed that I had been tagged in a photo on Facebook, got distracted reading birthday messages from October that had been written on my wall and saw my cousin Delia (above 11) had written ME a birthday message! She had sent me a birthday message via Facebook. Wow, talk about role reversal. I was the one that was supposed to send the birthday greetings. What? And who was that girl in the photo? She was old, a FRESHMAN in HIGH SCHOOL. I have to say that I am in total and complete shock of this news. I guess the last time I saw Delia was Christmas 2005, and I have talked to her multiple times and get photos all the time in my e-mail but somehow these pictures on her Facebook page made me realize just how much a breach of communicate had taken place.

Thank goodness they are driving down from the cheese state to visit us again this Christmas. It has been way too long. Here are some picture from the last time they made the trip to SC. Other cousins featured are Emmett, here he was 13, and Cecil was 9. I can't wait to see them all grown up. (16, 14, 12). Wow that e-mail check ended up being a real distraction. 21 days until Christmas!

Mallory's Visit

Mallory, my BEST friend, from Boise, left YESTERDAY which was a TERRIBLE idea, however her coming was by far the best decision of all time. The adventures were infinite. It is always so fun to show this place off to people, all I have to do is kick up my feet and let this place work its magic. Except that I don't think I am really a kick my foot upper. Here are some pictures of some adventures that we chanced upon during the week she was here. The rainbow group above were just a few of the people to show up for the first annual Barnoff Blizzard Bonaza. A majority of this day was spent building giant snowballs and watching them roll off mountains, also known as avalanche making. We also built ramps out of the leftover snowball pieces to create the snowboard park. The pic on top is after a nice bike ride out to Beaver Lake! This place might have been created for her, and since it was created for me and we are practically the same person, I guess Sitka is about to have a new resident! The Sitka Vortex, taking one visitor at a time.