Christmas Break Baby!

Hello Everyone,

Well, it's Christmas break and Ben and I couldn't be having a more relaxing break. Well, I guess if we were sitting on a beach somewhere tropical we would be. We are just fine settling into our warm and cozy home here in Mountain Village. It may be warm in our house, but it is frigid outside. As I type this blog, it is -15 without wind chill and that has been the norm around here.

We went into Anchorage for a couple of days at the beginning of break. It was a really fast trip, but we were able to spend some time with the Burkels, see the Chiropractor, get some shopping done, and of course eat some sushi. Some fun facts about the Chiropractor that we saw was that the doctor grew up in Clear Lake, SD, which is right by Watertown (my hometown) and he said that I had the best spine he had seen all day. Boo yeah for being healthy! I'm really trying to be more healthy this year by eating right, exercising, and I guess taking care of my spine. :)

About a week ago we took a ride with some of our friends from the village to the next village over. It's about 17 miles and a 45 minute snow machine ride. We just went over to check out their much nicer grocery stores. It actually felt like we were in a grocery store. When we went over it was right around zero degrees, which was ok. We layered up and put face masks and goggles on.

On Christmas Eve we went to church for the candle light service (my favorite of the whole year) and celebrated the birth of Jesus. Ben and I then came home and opened our gifts that we gave each other. Oh yeah, and Moose got a new bone. Ben spoiled me for Christmas this year with some Ruby earrings, a jewelry box, a griddle, and some other things. I got him a bunch of gun stuff, and tools that I have no clue what their function is. He was happy though. On Christmas day we went over to Melanie's (another teacher) and had breakfast with Kevin, Jessica, Amanda, Melanie, and Sean. We did a gift exchange there as well. Ben and I then ventured off to church. We spent the day resting and playing with our new "toys" and at 5:00 we headed over to Sean's for Christmas Dinner. We had a lovely feast and played Phase 10 afterward, which is one of my favorite games.

The rest of break has been very restful. Ben and I usually do things around the house during the day and play Moose Farkle and Sequence in the evenings. We've gone into school a couple of times to get work done. I got all my lesson plans ready and should be able to relax the rest of break. We also have been staying up until about 1:00 in the morning and waking up around 10:30. We're going to be in for a rude awakening when school starts back up again.

Thank you everyone for the Christmas cards and gifts that you sent. We love hearing from you more than you probably know. :)

Have a very Happy New Year!



Love,
The Harvey's

ONE MORE WEEK!!!

Hello Everyone,
From the capitalized letters in the title, you can probably guess we are a little excited to share there is only one week left of school until our Christmas vacation starts! Not a whole lot has happened since our last post. We overcame having strep. In fact, Ben and I just finished our 10 days of taking pills every 6 hours a day. We would wake up with our alarms at 1 in the morning to take our pills. Usually when people get strep out in the village, the health aides just give you a shot of amoxicillin and you are good within 24 hours. Ben and I are both allergic, and that is the reason why we had to take the pills.

My Kindergartners have been working hard in the classroom. They know all of their letter sounds and are starting to form words. This is the part of the year where I absolutely love my job. You see light bulbs turning on at different times with these kids and it is just so fun to see. I wish everyone could experience this. We have also been practicing our songs for our Christmas program which is coming up this Thursday. My kiddos are singing "All You Need Is Love" by the Beatles and "I'm a Little Penguin." We are hoping to get it on tape. If we do, I will be sure to post it on here.

Ben is loving his High Octane group. They now meet on Mondays and Thursdays for a couple of hours. The kids love it and really find pride in their program. Here is Ben to talk some "logistics" of high octane as I don't truly understand all the machine parts and I don't think I could give the program enough justice if I wrote about it. So, here is Ben! :) Several weeks ago we picked up a Honda four wheeler. The elderly man who owned it had just had somebody else replace the cylinder, but he got it back and there was no compression. We tried to adjust the valves, but still no compression. We decided to take they cylinder head off and found that the valves were all in funk and the top end appeared to have been hit with a hammer several times. We ordered a new cylinder head, and swapped it out and finally got it started. Over the next couple weeks, we'll be putting it all back together and hopefully get it back to the man during Christmas break. I'm also looking forward to a dinner that Kevin and I will be having for the regular attenders over the break.

Ok, it's Anne again. Many of you that know me, know that I LOVE the Christmas season. Everything that it represents. I love the decorating, cookie making, shopping, music, etc. Most importantly though I love the Christmas story of how Jesus was born. I have been busy over the last couple of weeks decorating for Christmas, wrapping Christmas presents for Ben, baking Christmas cookies. Also, Ben and I are unable to get a real Christmas tree and so we ordered a REAL wreath from LLbean (yay for free shipping) Anyways, it came on Friday and it is absolutely beautiful. I started snapping some pictures and so you are able to see how we have decorated our igloo, I mean our home.

On Saturday the 17th Ben and I will be flying into Anchorage to spend a couple of days stocking up on supplies and seeing the Chiropractor. If we see a chiropractor or a doctor while in town, our insurance will pay for 90% of our airfare. I don't know if you know this, but it is more expensive for Ben and I to fly from our village to Anchorage than it is to fly from Anchorage down to the lower 48. It costs about $1200 for both Ben and I to get to Anchorage alone, so we will definitely take advantage of our insurance and hey, we will get aligned and all will be well. We will get back to Mountain Village on the 20th and spend the rest of our break here. We are definitely going to miss seeing everyone on Christmas this year, but are still excited to have a relaxing couple of weeks without having to worry about school work.

Anyways, I didn't realize this was going to be such a long post. I will let y'all go and we will try and update our blog over Christmas break. We love you all!

Ben and Anne Harvey