First Day of School

Hello Everyone,

We have survived our first two days of school! I can't remember if I mentioned in my last post that we had very little time in comparison to the last two years to get our classrooms ready for the first day. Because of construction, we were unable to get into our classrooms over the weekend and so we were all a little stressed out trying to get everything ready.

The first day for me went as expected...CRAZY. Each year I forget how UN-trained these little tikes are. Sitting down for more than two minutes is seriously hard for them. Think of how many two minute's are in a 7 hour day. The morning went really well and we did some really fun activities. However, there are times throughout the day when I would be talking and children would just get up and walk over to the kitchen area and start playing. It left me puzzled. Like, "hello children I'm over here trying to teach you some ABC's." I had to make some serious modifications to my room. For example, I ziptied my play kitchen cupboards together so they couldn't get into them even if they tried. Muahhh, some call me a mean teacher....I call it training. The second day went so much better. I think the first day excitement maybe just got the best of them. Now that they are familiar with my room, they were able to sit for a little bit longer. I also put in a lot more structure in my day. I started reading groups, which they did fantastically well. I was a bit surprised. I love my kiddos this year though. They have such different personalities than my last group. This group is just funny. They make me laugh and smile at the things they say. One of my little girls will randomly just say, "Mrs. Harvey, I love you." I always tell them I love them back because out here, I'm not sure they hear those words enough.

Ben had a great first two days as well. There is the 8th grade class that is pretty difficult, but with our new Assistant Instructional Leader, I'm thinking it will be a lot better for Ben. He seems very strict, which is just what our kids need. Anyway, it's been pretty rainy out lately, but today the sun is shining and the sky is blue. It's 4:00 here and I just finished getting ready for next week. We will keep you posted on the happenings to come. Thanks for reading! God is so good!

Ben and Anne

Expiration

Hey Everyone,

Well, Ben and I are busy getting our classrooms ready for the 2012-2013 school year. I will show you some before and after pictures. Our school is still undergoing a lot of renovations, but it is coming along and students will be here on Thursday....ready or not.

This won't be a long post, but I just thought I would update you all on something that has been happening at our house. We have been using items from our shelves that have expired months...some things even a year ago. Guess what, somehow we are still alive? We are trying not to, but some things we are just like, 'ah, what they hay."

Anyway, enjoy your week and I will try to update the blog this weekend when we will have had our first days of teaching over with.

Ben and Anne

Summer Has Come and Gone.

Hello Everyone,
     Well, the summer has come and gone as I sit writing this blog back in Mountain Village, AK. I apologize for not getting a final blog out before the start of summer. If any of you are educators, you know how the end of the year can be. Hectic is not a strong enough word. The end of the year finished very well. The kids and teachers were very excited for summer to come and to relax a little. There has been a lot that has happened this summer so I think I will categorize this blog into months.

May: As some of you may know, I zoomed home right away when school was over to get home for my sisters Baby Shower. It was a lot of fun to shower her and see her and her cute baby belly! I have many nieces and nephews, but it is a lot different when it comes from  your one and only sister. Ben joined me in the lower 48 about a week later and we ventured off to Wisconsin for a Harvey vacation. It was a lot of fun. We stayed at this HUGE resort that was really cool I guess in the 70's. I thought it was still cool, even though we were the only family staying here. It was really great to hang out with all of Ben's brothers and their families. We spent some time exploring the resort, golfing, swimming, and taking a trip to Duluth, which was someplace I had always wanted to visit. I got to learn all about aggots. (spelling)

June: June seems like a blur to me right now as I'm thinking back on it. Ben and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary. I don't know if it is because we have spent the last two years in VERY tight quarters or what, but I feel like we have known each other our whole lives. He is my best friend and we just get each other. I couldn't be happier with where we are in life right now. The other important even that happened in June was the arrival of my nephew, Liam Patrick Swier. He was born on June 29th and he couldn't be cuter! It has been really fun seeing my sister become a mother. I must say, she's a pretty da-gone good one!

July: Ben and I celebrated the fourth of July in Minnesota. We had a barbeque at Dennis and Kathy's during the day and then in the afternoon we went over to my brother, Jon's house and went swimming at a lake nearby with my niece Katelyn and sister in law, Nikki. In the evening we watched fireworks in Chanhassen I think. I'm not sure, all those suburbs kind of run together for me. The second week in July Ben and I got to go back to Fargo and spend more time with Sarah, Jason, and Liam. It gave me a good taste of what motherhood will be like. :) We had a blast and got to witness little changes in Liam, even though it was only a week that we were there. It was EXTREMELY hard to say goodbye to Sarah and her new family. There is something different and unique about a sisterly bond. On July 17th my mom and I ventured to Vancouver for three days to start out Cruise to Alaska.

Cruise to Alaska: I just decided that our cruise needed a section to itself. :) Anyway, my mom and I went to Vancouver, B.C. for three days before leaving for our cruise. Ever since the 2010 Olympics I had always wanted to go to Vancouver. Let me tell you, it didn't disappoint. My mom and I had the best time in this city. We rented some bicycles and road along the sea wall. We ventured into Stanley Park, which had some of the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen. We visited Granville Island, which was a really cool marketplace. We then got onto our cruise ship in Vancouver. We were so excited just to see what "cruising" was all about. We had an easy transition from land to our cruise and started meeting people from all over, many of whom had been on multiple cruises before. I could go on on and on about the cruise, but let me just say that we had an incredible time. We went to shows, comedy shows, game shows, and I had a lot of "drinks of the day." I didn't have too much, but let me just say that my favorite bartender was Lucy and she knew me by name. On the cruise portion of our trip we visited Ketchikan, Icy Strait Point, Juneau, Skagway, and Hubbard Glacier. I really loved all the places we visited. One of my favorites was in Juneau where we got to go whale watching. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. There were whales who were bubble net feeding and it was incredible. If you don't know what bubble net feeding is, you should look it up on you tube. It was absolutely amazing! When our ship landed in Seward we got on a motor coach with about 24 other people and headed up to Anchorage to catch a flight to Fairbanks. We were now starting our "land" portion of our cruise. We got into the air on our way to Fairbanks and had to turn around and land back in Anchorage because of some Hydraulic issues, which was kind of scary. Anyway, we jumped on a new plane and made it to Fairbanks just fine. It was SO nice to get into a spacious hotel room. The room we had on the ship was very small. Fairbanks was a cute little town and we were able to go on a riverboat tour down the Cheenah river and visit a Mock Athabascan Village. It was really fun for my mom to see some of the things that I live through like they do in the Athabascan villages. Visuals are always good. :) Anyway, the next day we got back on our motor coach and drove up to Denali. We stayed at another cute cabin like place in Denali and go to visit a dog mushing camp. It was Jeff King's house and camp where they train their dogs. He was a four time Iditarod musher and will be mushing in this next years Iditarod as well. The next day we woke up for a 6:20 A.M. tour through Denali National Park. It was pretty cool. We had a sunny, cloudless day which is very unusual for Alaska. We were able to see some Caribou, Moose, Ptarmigan, and even Denali itself. After we were done with our tour, we got to hop on the Alaskan train and ride down to Talkeetna. The views were spectacular. Our tour director called Talkeetna, TalCUTEna...and for good reason. I kind of fell in love with Talkeetna and want to move near there for the rest of our lives. We'll see if I can convince Ben, especially because it's kind of a hippy town. We got to go on a little river raft ride down the river there and then jump back on the train and go to Anchorage where our Cruise Vacation would end. :( It was seriously the best time I've ever had with my mom. We laughed so hard we had tears on multiple occasions and we now have memories we will never forget!

August: Ben and his two brothers, Adam and Wes came to Anchorage on the same day my mom left. So as someone put it, I lost my mother, but gained three Harvey boys. I was equally excited for them to see Alaska. We enjoyed going down town, seeing a moose, panning for gold, and of course...our Bush shopping. We dropped a good chunk of money at Wal-Mart. This year we decided to let them do all the packaging and mail it out to us. It was pretty great, we shopped, pulled our carts to the back and they did the rest for us. Wes and Adam made the trek with us all the way out to Mountain Village. They are having a blast so far. They are all out right now trying to catch a moose. Hopefully they are able to catch one!

Our school is under some major renovation, so we can't get into our classrooms yet. It stresses me out because I can't get my room ready yet. Oh well. I guess I will enjoy being in the village without having to work. Hopefully it will be nice enough out to go pick berries. Thanks for reading and I will try very hard to keep this updated. Thank you for the friendly reminders!

Ben and Anne