First snow was September 28th!!! The snow machine will come out soon :)

Kevin and kids working on a honda at High Octane

Rainbow over the airport at Mountain Village.

Well, it has been quite a long time. We are both extremely busy and when we do have a minute, we like to veg out and be lazy. I don't even know where to begin for what's been going on the past few months. I'm writing this late in the evening and I'm pretty tired, so if it doesn't quite make sense at times, that's why.

For starters, I'll explain my hunting trip from the beginning of September. Kevin and I went out for Labor Day weekend with a guy from church here in Mountain. He took us out in his boat and supplied us with the knowledge and resources to "catch" our moose...yes we catch them up here. To make a long story shorter, here's how it went down: we took off Friday after school for a long weekend. As we went along the river, we would check meadows to see if there was a moose. Along the way, we saw a cow (we can only take bulls) swimming across the river, so that got us pretty excited. After that cow, we saw nothing for several days. We sat in rain at one particular meadow, checked a few more, and slept a couple nights in a small cabin. By small, it was maybe 5 feet tall and wide enough to sleep the three of us and nothing more. My birthday went by without seeing a moose, although we shot at a few beavers and ducks/geese, but we didn't catch anything. The next morning we decided to go to two different meadows, Kevin and I at one and Ted at the other. At the meadow Kevin and I were at, we had a few hundred yards to walk until we reached the meadow, and just as we reached it, we saw two bulls. They were tiny (for moose) and over 400 yards away. Being first timers, we unloaded on them. After about a dozen shots between the two of us, both moose were down...and the fun really began. It took a total of 12 hours to butcher the 2 moose and carry them 1/3 of a mile from the field to the boat. Luckily, a few friendly people came by and helped us carry some of the meat out. By that time, it was 10pm, and we barely made it back to camp before it got dark. Let me say, I've never slept that good on a plywood floor. The next day we got back to the village and gave most of the meat to many of the elders in town. So far we've had moose tacos, moose jerky, and some moose spaghetti. All turned out great.

In other news, Anne went for a trip berry picking with her kinders. They picked several berries and made muffins with them. Luckily, I wasn't in the room next door this time because I was at a technology in-service. I still remember last year when she made the muffins next door, and I had to smell them the whole time.

Last Thursday, Kevin and I began a new club for high school boys called High Octane. I did this for a year while in college, and it's a great club. What we do is invite high schoolers to come work on snowmachines and hondas for a few hours, and follow it up with a devotional. The two weeks that we've had it, all the boys have stayed for the devotional after, and most of them were talkative. So far, we have two hondas that we're going to meld together and two snowmachines that we'll also combine. The kids are really excited and they're always begging to spend more time working on the machines. In fact, one student said, "Why can't we do this every day of the week?" They don't really understand that teachers work and have lives outside of the school day.

Other short tidbits:
1. There was a rainbow here this afternoon
2. This past weekend there was a small grass fire. The siren goes off 3 times and everyone runs to the fire. I almost got to be a fire fighter.
3. Snow came this week and puddles are freezing, Morgan (our snow machine) will be out soon.
4. Kako retreat is next weekend, Anne will be going and I'll be staying home with Moose.

I'm sorry for the rambling in this post, and I'm hopping we can start posting more often.

Good day all.
Ben