Here are the two dogs we watched over for a week while the owners went to Anchorage (looking for a new job)!?  Susan and I are happy to stay in Emmonak for another year maybe. Our moving expenses would look better if we stayed another year.  Our family is not so sure.
In our world icicles are the attraction of spring, unlike the daffodils of Oklahoma and Arkansas. The sun melts by day and the cold sculpts the artwork, when it begins to freeze again. I watched a movie in which the characters were stabbing each other with these pointed daggers. I know; it was only a movie.
The frozen Yukon is not flat, but has high and low places. The low places are what concerned me as Susan and I walked over it. The lower places were probably two to three feet lower than the highs.
The trees still sport some frost even at 1 pm but was all off by 4 pm.  This is the island we always wanted to walk over to see. We crossed about half a mile. The wind was out of the north and cold, not surprising but the sun felt warmer than it has lately!
Here is a shot back toward one of the stores in Emmonak.

Susan and I walked across the frozen Yukon to the island across from Emmonak village. We heard the ice was 4 feet thick, but still did not feel completely safe. We have been informed of too many deaths from thin ice. 
These outboard motors are all that is showing of the boats that were left on the shore of the river. My dad always put our outboard motor inside the farm shed to keep the metal from cracking because of low temperatures.  Maybe, these Alaska motors are made from metal that will take the sub-zero temperatures. I do know they cost thousands of dollars.

April and still 3 degrees but it warms up and melts in the afternoons!  It is Spring but not that you would know it here yet.  We are pretty much use to it though.  On days when it gets in the 40's it is hot to us - we want to break out the sandals and shorts!
Large overhang - hope I'm not the one under this when it falls off!!
Susan flying from Anchorage to Bethel right by Mt. Redoubt on the way home to Emmonak. She had a meeting in Fairbanks so had to fly on three different planes to get there.  Smelled sulpher on the way into Anchorage and the pilot said "I got a little concerned there".  That was kinda scary.
Sharkey has gotten use to the snow and cold unless it is blizzard conditions - then he says "get my coat please" and he does not take long outside to get his business done and run back inside.
This was Sunday, April 5th - Mt. Redoubt had a huge explosion on Saturday am - made us think Susan would not get back from Fairbanks.  It could keep erupting for months.

Puppy says,"Now where, the frig!"


This over hang must way a ton. I hope it does not fall on anyone. It is in a place where no one else walks.
It is light, now, until ten thirty p.m., we are waiting for spring. Our principal said the we have spring, summer, and fall in the month of July.
We are doing state testing today. The test had sixty-five questions and was not timed. It is hard to get a quarter of the kids to work for ten minutes at a time. Some of the slow readers went from nine thirty till two o'clock with 30 minutes off for lunch. I don't know of any of the kids that are on ADD drugs. We just teach them when we can get them settled down. The reading test had a big 5 paragraph essay question. Tomorrow is the writing, what will they have to do, write a short story? 

Here are two nice sisters we work with in our after school program. They are the the daughters of our maintenance man and our junior high teacher's aide.
This was taken about 8:30 p. m. so the days are lighter for much longer now. 
The dog is going under the  neighbor's house to find shelter out of the blizzard.

Some moose in Anchorage.
Susan and a student with their new stick fishing pole. 

To read this picture story start at the bottom and go up. Oh, we did find the other boy in a blizzard of snow created by his shoveling. 
There are about six steep stairs. You can see the angle of the railing.
One of our students starting work on the project. There is another boy somewhere below in the snow that is 5' high at the bottom of the stairs. 
Susan and dog stood here to give you a scale to measure the snow.
I checked if your back door lock had thawed recently and this is what I found when I opened the door.....

Enough snow, already. We are having another blizzard today. It started last night and continued off and on today. All the trails through the drifts are filled again. I have to walk through them and get all wet when I go inside. If you happen to step where there is no boardwalk you immediately sink in to your waist. You have to roll to get out and hope no one sees you. Once one of our women teachers went down off the boardwalk and showed up with her nostrils full of snow. We tried to re-enact that and just could not get that to happen again. PS. The lady recovered, but gets inquiries about her nose all the time. Like she is sniffing the wrong white powder.
Sharky in his winter attire. I think it is his paws that get the coldest. Sometimes he has to find a way under our house to get out of the weather before he freezes solid. 
Playing kids. All of them are too young to be Susan's and my classes.
Susan made snow ice cream. It was sooo good. She had to go to Anchorage to for some tests. All is well and I am so happy about that. I don't know when she will be able to get back in though. Spring, maybe?
Don't walk under the snow armed with razor sharp ice cycles. Especially when the wind is blowing 60 mph. Course no one is walking around unless they have a little dog who has business outside. 

Yes, we have had plenty of snow this year. This is a walkway to the emergency generator for the school. These are a couple of our Junior High students with Susan. The hoods always remind me of home(Blytheville). Our native children call hooded sweatshirts sweaters.
A road to nowhere. Well, maybe the airport. The days are much longer now. How about some heat, please?
Our principal sent Susan to the airport to take a couple of out-of-town accountants to their ride. We had just gotten another foot of snow which had drifted as high as the pickup hood. It took a loader to get Susan out. Yes, it is a 4-wheeled drive, Ford, and 2008.
I could have been falling off the chair in the hotel room in Anchorage where I was staying for a technology convention or maybe not... double exposure?
The technology conference lasted several days. I found I don't like crowds much anymore. Once at a buffet in convention room too small for the people in it, someone kind of  pushed me getting to the cream cheese pie and I was surprised myself with the response that came to my mind. It was a physical response accompanied with a verbal blast. Verbal blast, reminds me of Sonic. I did recover before either and left for some fresh Alaska air. Susan did not get to come with me, but I sure wish she had. It was a nice break from the village, once I got used to the pitiful pace and packed place. 

Here is my honey in pile of snow another blizzard left. They are much like the blizzards we had in Oklahoma, but much, much more snow. The hand rail behind Susan is probably 3 feet high. It was packed  down to 6" before this storm. Susan is actually standing on a pile of snow and she is too light to sink in all the way.

Here is a snow mountain from our small school parking lot. A small child is having a lot of fun!
This is the bay near the Captain Hook Hotel were I am attending a technology conference. I am enjoying being out of the village, but it is really a strange feeling. Part of it is that Susan is not with me, and the other part is all the closeness and activity here in Anchorage. I hope they don't think I will be sitting in a room with a lot of people tomorrow. Right now, I would just as soon be in my classroom with my students and Susan right there across the hall from us.

  I sure am going to miss all of the students this summer. 

Same bay at sunset out my hotel window. I hear there is a swimming pool down stairs; think I will go check it out. 
The days are longer, now. This was at 6:30 p. m. The days of extended darkness never really never bothered me. Susan and I were always busy. There were always things we liked to do. Sometimes we would let some of our students into the school gym and let them play basketball. All of us had fun doing that. Our dog loved to romp up and down the long school halls looking for candy a student let fall from their hand. 

All work, no play.

Susan and I have spent the entire weekend working on a required Alaska History course. All the teachers new to Alaska have to take the course. The first lesson I did took 17 typed double- spaced pages. We have essay questions on the lessons and the two tests. I will be so glad to get this out of the way. Some of the courses at other universities let multiple people work on the same lesson and just put all their names on it for credit. Not ours, we have to do the lessons individually. We will probably do better on the tests, though. We plan to do three lessons per weekend finishing the lessons in one month. Our school district is paying for the course after we pass it, of course. 

Susan and the Yukon River. We still need to walk over to the island.

It snowed and stormed so much that we could not get out on a plane and missed a teacher in-service in Anchorage. We could have been in Anchorage 3 days at the end of this week. Now we will be here for months, unless another in-service comes up. It snowed a foot then 4o degree temps came in one day and melted a lot of the snow cover. Now, of course, the temp is in the single digits again. Oh, that is negative single digits!

Shark Boy playing with his new Spanish friend. Someone called her a teacup dog.

This was at noon, I think. Heavy clouds were moving in with a brisk breeze. Susan has her winter cough. She went to the clinic and they gave her cough syrup. I think she needs a shot of something strong with a syringe.