Yes, we hunt for eggs in the snow....

So when folks ask me about our life in Alaska, a lot of times they follow up stories with, "And you do all that in the snow?" Yes. Our snow lasts a long time, all the way into June most years. So we have to do a lot of stuff in the snow -- Including Easter Egg Hunts!  Well, I guess it might be re-named "Easter Egg Race" since there is little hunting skill required for eggs scattered across a flat expanse of snow.  A co-worker joked that leaving the eggs white would actually create more of a challenge -- maybe we'll have to consider this in years to come. :)

Esther and Iris are awaiting the start of the "hunt"

The colored specks are the eggs laid out.

It definitely gets a good turnout, and this was just the younger age group!

Tuluk is helping Esther find good ones.

Iris's auntie Vicky helped her score some.

Esther's loot -- it's hard to see, but inside one of the eggs was one of those new gold dollar coin pieces. There were also eggs with candy pieces inside, and two with tickets for:

Easter Baskets Prizes! We gave one of the baskets away to a child who didn't find an egg with a ticket.

Easter Beauties! 

Hooper Bay 2010 OOOOO

Now that the weather is reasonable again, we're having our own Olympics up here! And the medals go to those of us who can have the most fun. It's a fun fest! :)

 It's been fun experimenting how to best combine kids, dogs, skis, and sled -- the girls have had fun and Esther has felt very official giving me feedback on the different methods.

Our breakthrough e-bay buy has been giving Esther a headstart into the world of ice dancing (she likes that way better than the term "figure skating"!):  double-bladed skates!

 They are perfect training-wheels, as they are much more stable than one blade. Usually by this time of year, there are high drifts of snow everywhere, but we have had such a sparse year of snow that I was able to scrape the snow off the frozen pond right behind our house and clear an ice patch just the right size for her.

 She is working on learning the "push-glide" movement and giggling a lot in the meantime. And when she falls, she gets back up and tries again.  Makes a momma proud. :)

I wish there were double-bladed skates for adults.  Believe me, I've googled it; the sizes go from 8-13 in toddler. *sigh* -- Re-learning to skate is a lot harder when you're bigger and have more to balance -- and more weight to hit when you fall!

 But the good thing about re-learning something alongside your kindergartener is that you show her that it's never too late to learn a new skill.  And by practicing with her, I remembered that figure-8 trick that we used to do before we knew how to push-glide that really improves your balance.  Yay for wholesome outdoor family activities.

However, my big focus for the spring is to learn how to "ski-jior", which is basically hooking up your dog to your belt while you're on skis.  First, I thought, I'd better get practiced up in skiing once again -- I haven't skiied in ten years -- but turns out it's much easier than remembering how to ice skate, that's for sure!

 Also, Jill & Jeremy gave me some advice on how to get the dogs prepped for this venture -- although the dogs pulled the sled last winter some, they never really got much into it because as I was working with them, poor Draco had his second mange outbreak and so I focused on getting him healthy first (supposedly he will now be healthy for good as he has grown into adulthood by now).  So a few Sundays ago, I hooked them up to some light logs, just for some nice weight for them to pull.  Fancy took to it like it was nothing, but Draco felt he was being punished -- poor pitiful thing!

So after practicing that a bit, I just decided to take the plunge and see how Fancy and I did together -- I always thought Draco, loyal, trustworthy, calm Draco would be the one I'd ski-jior with, but if he thinks he's in trouble while doing it, it's no fun!  So I decided to try Fancy.  She was not exactly thrilled at first:

 But soon she got into it -- enough -- and it was a great first experiment.  She was a little trepidatious when she felt my weight on the other end of the rope, and would stop trotting forward -- but that was OK, because it made a slow and steady first try.  There was one time she totally forgot she was hooked to me and veered drastically to the left to smell something exciting and knocked me down.  But it worked out fine -- she saw me fall and took the opportunity to lick me to death.  We also had a few tangle incidents, but I predict that we will have the hang of it soon.  And then the snow will melt! :)

 I'll end with some beautiful shots of our recent gorgeous sky (made even more beautiful with two gorgeous girls!):

 And I'll leave you to ponder this last one -- a great celestial arrow, or the heavens flipping us the bird?

Frigid

This is a picture taken from school out across the bay. The lumps in the far right distance are icebergs. Doesn't it look pretty out there?  Yeah, it's inaccessible right now. :(

It's so cold right now that walking from school to home (a distance of 500 yards at most) causes any exposed part of my face to get lobster red and throb all day.  It's so cold right now that when we walk on the wooden porch, it snaps and moans.  It's so cold right now that the impossible dryness that comes with it is causing all manner of skin ailments, including skin cracks that just won't seal up, no matter how much Weleda Skin Food I put in them.  It's really cold right now.

Most folks imagine that I'm used to this type of cold, but as my mantra expresses: Hooper Bay is the most perfect place on the planet, and one of the reasons for this is moderate temperatures.  The incredible cold that people read about in Jack London novels happens in the interior of Alaska, where there are trees and stuff.  While we get really crazy wild windy weather, we rarely get this kind of cold that we have right now. And when we do, it doesn't stick. And usually, it's the calm days that cause the mercury to drop.  This weather is defying all that.

What kind of cold, you ask? Well, for the past week, my thermometer has been reading between -2 and -10, and that does not take in to account any windchill. If the wind is calm, it's actually fun, actually cool to be outside in negative temperatures if you're dressed right.  The snow is so dry and packed that it feels (and sounds) like walking on styryfoam, and it's usually clear skies, so the stars are twinkling flashing multicolored magnificent.  It was like this last week, and I got a few early morning walks with the dogs in before anyone else was up, underneath the waning moon.  With the moon's sliver light, and the wierd snow to walk on, it kind of felt like what I imagine it's like to walk on the moon itself.

It's on these nights that we actually get to see the fickle northern lights, though sometimes it's in the wee hours of the morning and I'm never up then.

However, this week when it was already negative temperatures, the wind picked up to 30 mph, and that has caused it to actually feel like it's -50 outside, and maybe I'm wrong since I haven't ever lived in the interior, but it's a more dangerous, more cruel -50 than when it's just -50 and calm winds.  My lobster face says so.

So I'm not really used to weather that is too cold to function outside in. Usually, there is an activity that I like to do for every kind of weather -- I like to get out into those wild snow storms and such.  Plus whenever we've gotten snow this winter, the storm it rode in on has caused the temperature to rise to 32.5 degrees, which makes everything all mushy and wet, which just adds to the thick sheet of ice that is covering everything when the temperature drops like a brick again when the storm passes. So not only is it too cold to do anything outside, those 30 mph winds make for some interesting walks to school on the foot-thick ice. 

So we stay inside and bake, read, watch movies(when the girls go to bed), play board games, make up silly dances to Royksopp, talk on the phone, pretend to clean house and organize, put pictures in frames and scrapbooks, scurry the few hundred feet to the school to watch basketball games or participate in Yuraq (traditional eskimo dancing) in the gym, and BLOG!

In general we stay grateful for modern heating conveniences, though it always feels a little like living on the edge -- if the power went out, if we ran out of heating fuel... yeah, I can sense that the cold is a heartbeat away. It waits on the edges of the house, seeping in where I can't detect it and plug it up.  I think of people who were here before us -- what did they do in cold like this, in a sod house, fur clothing & blankets, and a little seal-oil lamp to heat the whole place?  Huddle together?  Yuraq to get their body temperatures up?  Although I think that it would be neat to experience a lot of things from earlier times, this weather makes me so glad I was born in the era in which I was born.  Plus, two yaks, my job would have zero application if I were yanked back 300-500 years (though I'd like to say my avocations would!).

It's Interesting...

This weekend we returned home from our travels far and wide visiting our loved ones far away.  It was a great break, a great vacation, a great Christmas, a great chance to do things that the "real" world offers (shopping, movies,  pizza, seeing the Nutcracker Ballet in a big city), but man is it good to be HOME.

Yes, even though I grew up in the middle of the midwest, Hooper Bay is home. Almost as if it was home beyond this lifetime... if you get into those things.

But it's a new year, and a new decade, and this blog has been around for 3 years now.  I've learned so much about blogging and this internet world this past year, much in the last few months.

I was recently asked to join a group on facebook called, "I Am Eskimo" and my blog was listed as one of the group's favorite blogs.  Thanks!  I like it -- I like feeling like my blog is getting out there to the world -- AND the whole experience raised an interesting point of discussion and made me feel like I needed to re-asess and rethink about the purpose of this blog and you, my audience.  I'll fast forward to the results of this thinking process and tell you that I feel great about this blog, its content, purpose, and you, my audience.  But you may find this thinking process interesting, so I'll detail it below. :)

When I moved to Alaska for the second time, with my M.Ed in hand and ready to take on the rural Alaskan educational system, and with Esther as a babe in arms, I was sending monthly newsletter emails with a couple pictures attached to a group of friends and family. This was a success -- and the number of people who were interested in our adventures kept growing.  So I decided to start a blog instead, so that I could post more pictures.  I also had the motive of reaching out to teachers new to Alaska, new to Hooper Bay, helping them visualize their soon-to-be surroundings, and showing them by example how to make the best of their experience: to get out into the community and the tundra.

Then when the random readers kept appearing,  I realized that my words were reaching kind of a lot of people -- not as many as the big bloggers, but maybe some who had never read anything about Alaskan life before.  Maybe my voice would be the representation of Alaska for the reader in Brazil, in the middle of the Amazon Forest (for real!  Check out the Clustrmap on the margin!).  Although most folks in other parts of the world know by now that people don't live in igloos up here, Alaska is still a shadowy region in their minds, especially rural Alaska.  And I have to say that a lot of what information does make it out is not good.  There are books and movies that, because they need a climactic plot line and a hook to drag  people in, show the ugly and tragic sides of Alaskan life (or the overly romanticized parts, which doesn't help, either).  So it was at this point that I promised myself that I was going to show the positive and wonderful parts of living in Alaska -- not to gloss over the hard parts, or to put on a rosy show that was not truthful, but to give a portayal of healthy wholeness that is inspiring, to show the ways we deal with the hardships that everyone knows are there but that I choose not to write about.

One example is the book "Ordinary Wolves" by Seth Kantner, which is really a fabulous novel and has received critical acclaim around the globe from all my favorite writers (Louise Erich, Barbara Kingsolver).  Although it tells an important story about cultural and identity confusion, does not give one positive depiction of an Alaskan Native person within its pages.  I appreciate the catharic nature of his novel -- it must feel good to express the difficult experiences he writes about (though it is indeed fiction).  And for many people who are going through similar issues as the main character, it may be a helpful read.  I think there is a lot of power in straight-on dealing with the ugly, hard side of life, and in my personal life I am definitely on the side of talking about things directly and keeping no secrets.  However,  I believe the problem comes in when the book or other media that reaches a worldwide audience who have no context to embed the portrayal within, or any real life experience with a culture to balance negative portayals with positive ones, and that one piece of media becomes the representation of the entire culture to the reader who lives far away.

This area of the world has its share of troubles, troubles that have no easy solution, and troubles that it's hard to get a break from.  But my answer to dealing with all of that is to focus on the positive, good things that are possible, to work on the things that can make even a small part of it better -- and to get outside.  I really believe that the tundra heals all, if you give it a chance.  Subsistence activities are the most healthy mind-body-soul activities I have ever had the honor to partake in, and I'm sure to a Yup'ik person, or any other native person, it is even more healing -- as Dr. Oscar Kawagley says, "Landscape creates Mindscape."

With Dr. Kawagley's quote in mind, I've chosen to raise my daughters here so that with any luck, they will be fluidly bilingual and bicultural.  Although this blog may seem mommy-bloggish at times, it's really the story of our family navigating complicated ground -- and I hope that our success so far is inspirational to any of you out there who are contemplating the same thing, whether you are thinking of taking the plunge into village life or you are in a different culture/region entirely.  I guess my point is this: it is possible to do important, meaningful work, be very involved in the village community and raise your family in a healthy way in rural Alaska, despite the challenges. And to prove it, here are pictures of my Esther, taken within a 10 day span -- she's riding the cultural divide with finesse, and I can't wait to see how she and Iris choose to negotiate the rest of their lives -- it's all new as they're living it; they're creating their future with each choice they make.

 
So please, enjoy the pictures and stories, and know that we are loving our life up here, and thanks for reading!

My first award!

Wow!

Terria at the Daily Good

graced me with a Best Blog Award. I am honored, surprised and happy. It's so nice to be recognized. The Daily Good is a cool spot on the web that, as listed on the site "was created to highlight and share information and news about people and organizations who are doing good in the world; the people and the issues that need our help and support, and ideas related to humanitarian service, being kind and caring, and green living", which is as cool of a mission statement as I can imagine. Thanks Terria!

So, in turn, I get to bestow the honor on my picks, as well.  Some of my favorite blogs have already received this award, so my list of Best Blogs will be a bit shorter than the list is officially supposed to be, but I think my list will make up for that in quality and variety.

Amy at Pretty Babies

 Amy is so funny and makes me laugh with every post.  She is also super smart and says things in just the right way, which gives me vicarious satisfaction, as if I'd expressed myself in just the right way.

Kat at Slugs on the Refrigerator

This blog is so freaking beauitful; the pictures are amazing.  And this cool, crafty lady lives in Scotland, and, as only a select few know, Scotland was my first choice before Alaska (obviously it didn't work out, and that's OK!).  I spent the summer of 1998 in the Highlands and Islands and it was the most incredible, transformational few months of my life.  So it was awesome to find this awesome blog.

Maija at Finnskimo

The Daily Good also awarded her the Best Blog Award, but, hey, she's one of my favorite bloggers, blogging about a subject close to home (and yet so far. She lives in Kotzebue, which is close by Alaskan standards, but probably not by the rest of the world's standards), so I'll doubly grant it to her, all in one day. She is so cool and talented, and I'm sure if you read her blog you'll be hooked.

TwoYaks at Geneflow

Reading this Fairbanks guy's blog makes me feel smart. Especially since sometimes I even know enough to make a tentative comment one of his erudite topics. :) 

Milkweed Diaries of the Swanannoa Valley

Too many years ago, now, when I was a student at Warren Wilson College, I thought I wanted to be an organic farmer. I had the whole plan in my head, how I would teach for a while to support the creation of my farm (replete with draft horses), and then full time dive into it.  Even though my love of experiencing new places and cultures won out over my farm dream, I still like to visit it in my mind, which this site allows me to do.  And I still want to figure out how to get a Kombucha mushroom up here to Alaska! 

Mary at Little Weloos Mom

I really like this mom's sense of humor and cute pictures. :)

Raging Wombat at Ugly Overload

This blog was recently made a "Blog of Note" by blogger, so maybe this award is silly on top of that, but I love it so much, beyond words.  AND a creature from my blog (well, actually from the bay) was featured on this blog recently.  So, to spread the joy, a best blog award to you!

Enjoy, all!  Thanks!

Why Not to Postpone Packing the Emergency Bag

I was all set with my long to-do list Thanksgiving weekend, excited for days to accomplish things that have been wasting away on that thing for months.  Something I kept chastising myself for postponing was the chore of packing the Emergency Bag -- that is, the bag that stays full of everything we would need in event of having to fly to the hospital in Bethel at a moment's notice: changes of clothes, diapers, toiletries, travel toys & crayons, etc., as well as IDs and credit cards and things that I never need on a day to day basis here in Hooper Bay -- I only need those things when I travel.  Every summer after we come back from our travels, I need to reorganize and get everything in the leave-in-a-moment bag. I hadn't done that yet this fall, and recognized I was tempting fate leaving it unpacked.

Also Thanksgiving weekend I even planned a special snowmobile drive down to check out the frozen beach and let the dogs have a run and I would take pictures of it and blog about it! Especially since the snowgo is new to me -- a couple other teachers and I went in on it together and are sharing it, and I was excited about its purchase and the outdoor adventures we could do with it.  And please don't be picturing me hot-rodding through fresh powder like the snowmobile commercials, because it's more me puttering along looking for fox tracks as I go. 

But then it doesn't matter because it didn't happen. Because on Wednesday afternoon we crashed on said snowgo.  And then, wouldn't you know it, we needed the emergency bag, yes, the one that was not packed yet.

So now, instead of reflecting on a weekend productively spent with a nice outdoor adventure,  I'm going to post the story of our crash and and any pictures I may have squeezed out of the whole experience.

First of all, I don't think I've written about the most amazing thing that has come to Hooper Bay, yet (even more amazing than the windmills and the black plastic road)  :  The Sub-Regional Health Clinic, our link to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation (YKHC).  It has been a long-awaited and highly-anticipated structure, here, because all time before this, we have only had a tiny trailer-esque health clinic staffed by medical professionals called health aides.  I wish I'd thought to get pictures of the inside before the clinic officially moved; we happened to be seen there a day or so before they moved over to the new building.  But here is a picture of the outside of the old clinic:

The appointments for the day are always filled by 9:am, and the health aides are overworked, underappreciated, and stretched in 15 directions.  They are the people who keep the village sewn up at the seams, and yet they only get a few weeks of training a year.  Now there is a proper facility and many more medical professionals to support them -- we get itinerant physician's assistants, doctors, and dentists, but it's still the health aides who are the spokes of the wheel. Here are pictures from the grand opening barbecue of the facility we had in August, where the whole community was invited for a Halibut Barbeque, with other delicacies rarely known here (like salad!):

Above is Tuluk anticipating the great eats while we wait in line by the entrance, and below is Esther with her cousins Avery and Jasmine and her uncle Alex:

And the building is so freaking beautiful -- it's just like a real, normal medical clinic somewhere else closer to civilization. I took these pictures of the waiting room while I was waiting for Iris's appointment before all the calamaties began:

It even has a child play area:

So on Wednesday afternoon we had an early release from school, so we scheduled an immunization appointment.  It was time for Iris's MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) and Varicella (Chicken Pox) shots.  These shots make me nervous anyway because they are live vaccines and because anecdotally I've heard of many reactions to these shots -- but since we live in a town with no running water and a plane's ride away from a hospital, we do our vaccinations.

But, actually, all goes well that afternoon, Iris is not happy to have the shots, but gets it overwith, and she was running around the waiting room while we waited our mandatory wait time after the vacs.  My good friend Amy over at Pretty Babies gave us a call; her daughter Mary Grace wanted to ask Esther why she wasn't coming to her house for Thanksgiving, and by then it was time we could be released.  I had driven the new snowgo to the appointment, with Esther in front of me and Iris in the hip carrier, strapped to me. I only drove it so that I could get gas for it, since the gas station was going to be closed the rest of the week for Thanksgiving, and I had the trip to the beach planned, remember?

There is a significant dip between the parking lot of the clinic and the road if you don't hit it just right, and the way the snowgo was parked, since it doesn't have reverse, I would have had to physically drag the skis around to make it hit just right.  Why oh why am I always so lazy to do that sort of thing?  Well, whatever, I decided to go through the dip because I saw other snowmobile tracks go that way and I figured it would be ok.   Ugh.

So at the top of the dip, right at the edge of the road, I had to accelerate to get up on top.  Being only the second time I've driven the thing, I didn't know something crucial about it:  it has a belt that is too small and makes it leap into its acceleration at times.

So it did the leap -- it hit ice on the road -- and there was no stopping it.  Way too fast for belief, we skidded across the road and sideways-hit a metal pole that prevents people from driving over the above-ground water pipe on the side of the road:

Actually, my arm hit it, as I was trying like hell to turn the skis.  But I didn't even feel it at the time -- since my arm was around Iris, what I felt was Iris smashed against me as we ran into the pole. I was sure we were done for, especially when I felt the snowgo flip out from underneath us and dump us to the side.

Somehow Iris turned out, facing away from me, while still in the carrier, when we fell.  That's the moment her leg was broken. I think she took the brunt of the fall for both of us.  It's so wrong!  It's supposed to be me that takes it -- whatever hurt -- for the both of us.

Meanwhile, Esther was fine.  I don't think she felt anything but a nice little topple onto the ground -- but she was freaked out as I was incredibly freaked out, thinking I'd killed both of them.

Being a few feet from the clinic, we turned around and ran back.  I was too panicked to say anything so I laid Iris down on the desktop of the registration cubicle , and tearfully said, "We crashed!". 

Wow, those health aides can move!  It was pretty amazing how we were immediately surrounded and supported. The new urgent care room was well put to use.  It was clear pretty soon that Esther was just fine, and I was OK besides my banged-up arm.  They were able to x-ray my arm right then and there with the fancy, brand-spanking new x-ray machine that was installed in the clinic, and it was not broken. Here is the picture of the gnarly bruise several days later:

Not too pretty, but at least it didn't end up looking like this (sorry, fun with photobooth):

Because if you think my arm looks bad, check out the tilt in the pole, now!:)

So anyway, Iris seemed fine -- she was responding well to all their tests, all their movements of her body -- except that she was inconsolable, crying so sad and pitiful.  But that might have been expected since she had had immunizations (and she always goes downhill for the evening after immunizations) and also experienced the crash and watched her mom freak out AND had not napped well earlier.  So it was really hard to tease out what exactly was going on with her, especially since she would move all her limbs and joints just fine.  Here is a picture of us in the urgent care room:

So once she had calmed down and actually slept a little in my arms, and we had spent another mandatory waiting period, we were able to go (Tuluk driving us slowly on the 4 wheeler) home, where we were shaky and sad and freaked and went to bed as soon as possible.  However, before we went to bed we realized that Iris would not stand on her own.  We said we would reassess in the morning.

Thanksgiving Day was a perfectly funked up day. I woke up feeling shaky and anxious, but I had invited 10 people over for Thanksgiving, and I didn't feel like cancelling, as it would just make me feel worse, so I decided to just get started and then I might perk up.  But I was not at the top of my game; everything I cooked was just a little off.  The rolls had burned bottoms, the pumpkin pie was bitter, the turkey got done an hour after we got done eating (I promise it was thawed!  Thank goodness John & MaryEllen brought turkey, too.), and there was a cranberry incident involving the kitchen floor and all of us walking around with the bottoms of our feet dyed purple.  But we got through it; it was fine. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food I had cooked, even if it was not quite the level of what I usually produce.

Iris still would not stand on her own, which was worrisome, but there was no swelling, no bruise, no redness anywhere.  We kept doing little tests on her, like me holding her towards me and Tuluk would come up behind her and touch or move various parts on her body and legs to see what got a reaction.  We could do whatever we wanted and it did not hurt her, seemingly.  So even though she spent the day scooting herself around, we couldn't isolate the problem --  we pretty much all agreed that it must be a reaction from the vaccinations.  Again, we decided to reassess in the morning. 

Friday morning was no question. I noticed during the night that while Iris kicked her right leg, her left would stay still. It felt hot to me, and so we called the clinic right away who told us, despite the fancy new x-ray machine that had cleared me of a broken arm Wednesday night, that I would have to fly with Iris to Bethel to x-ray her leg.  The x-ray technician has not been trained in infant legs at this point.

This was bummer news to me, because a trip into Bethel means several things.  First, there is always the chance that you will not be able to return the same day, because weather can change during the day and cancel the evening planes, especially since we were on weather delay in the morning already (usually the morning flights arrive in Hooper around 10:am; and we actually got out of Hooper around 12 that day).  The next thing is that the ER in Bethel gets really backed up and the wait times are extreme sometimes -- also a contributing cause to missing evening flights home and having to spend the night in Bethel.  The third issue is cost -- right now it is $209 one way from Hooper Bay to Bethel.  It's not pocket change, and it's not something that I'm likely to have lying around, and it also meant that I couldn't just bring Esther with me, and I've never left her behind.  And it was likely that I was leaving her for overnight, since I would most likely get stuck.  And it all came to fruition, just like I thought.

After we finally got on the ground in Bethel, I was lucky to have awesome friends Marta & Frank were waiting at the terminal to help us.  It was only a moderate wait (a couple hours) at the ER, and here are some pictures of our wait with Iris in her precautionary splint:

After Iris got her x-rays, the doctor summoned us to the computer where the images had come up.  He pointed to a little line above her knee and said, "That's a fracture."

Oh, the guilt. It was an avalanche, crushing, horrible weight.  I broke my poor baby's leg!

However, the doc had plenty of reassuring things to say.  It is a stable break, which is why it didn't hurt her when we were moving her leg around, and it is above the growth plate, so it won't interfere with how her leg grows.  Also that infants' bones mend so well at this age that the fracture won't be visible on an x-ray a year from now.  The nurse said that a common adage of bone doctors is that at Iris's age, you can put two bones in the same room and they will grow together.

However, there is a chance it could kink as it grows, especially since it will be hard to keep her from using it.  They chose a fiberglass cast (in a sparkling blue color) and put it at a certain angle to try to discourage her from using it, but you and I both know that it's not going to slow this child down for long.  She has already developed an adept butt-scoot, which thankfully has been cleared as an OK activity for her, because this is not a child who will sit still.

But in order to make sure that the bone is not "kinking", the bone doctor wants it x-rayed once a week.  And since we have already been through it that the brand-spanking new x-ray machine already installed in Hooper Bay is of no use to us, I guess that means we are going to have to be gifting the airlines with $400 a week until Iris's leg is healed.

Not that I want anything to compromise Iris's health, and of course the money is nothing if it means she'll be healthy, but it still is a huge financial undertaking, not to mention the other things listed above -- especially leaving Esther behind.  However, at the time of this post, I'm not giving up yet.  I still have some paths of inquiry to explore,  so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed.  Till then, here are the pictures of poor little scoot-scoot in her cast:

 (She's not allowed to crawl, but she can pull it along, which she's doing here)

And finally, with her sister, the queen:

Oh, yeah, and on the homefront,  Esther had a fabulous time staying home while we flew to Bethel, making cookies and going to the school gym to watch basketball with Tuluk, and with Melody and Katie, going to Katie's son's birthday party. She was no worse for the wear when I returned home Saturday morning.

BUT then as if we didn't have enough going on already, pretty much the moment we got home from the plane on Saturday, Esther woke up from a nap (which she never takes) with a rocket-high fever and signs of what we thought was swine flu, but the folks we got it from were tested positive for Influenza A, so I guess that's what we've got.  Tuluk fell prey to it on Monday, and for the past two nights Iris has been battling it.  No fair to have flu AND a broken leg all in one week.  And I refuse to go down -- somebody has to keep this crew alive! :)

Of course this set me off into high overcompensation-mode and had me dragging out all my (child safe) herbal and nutritional remedies.  One of the tests run on us after the accident said we all three were slightly anemic, and so I latched on to this as something I could fix, so I tortured my poor children some more making them eat wierd combinations of vitamin C and iron-containing foods ("Here, have a spoonful of molasses right after you sip this home-squeezed lemonade" Blech!), before I got hold of myself and calmed down.  (While I get that iron and calcium compete in the body for absorption, why is that both calcium and iron are often contained in the same foods? Anyone out there nutritionally savvy that can answer that question?)

Thanks for sticking with me on this long and involved post!