BYO Rainboots!

Margot and Lily building a Santa's sleigh.

Lily at her concert. Sorry for the unexciting picture, but this is the best I could get from my spot in the gym.

Lily dishing out some love for "the little baby".

This is what Margot arrived to at her school after a blizzard. There is a deck and pathway under the snow.

Lily playing while I get some work done. It's about -23C.

Sledding with the kids.

Lily and Janice taking a break from sledding.

Good Morning everyone. Well, we made it to Christmas break! We are now all done school and I am over my end of school crash (the flu) so we are able to have some fun. It's been nice spending time with my family and start to slow down a bit. Sadly, the weather up here has been terrible. It has been so warm that much of the snow and ice that was starting to form started melting off. In the midst of the heat wave it rained. This carried on for two days then turned to proper freezing rain. You can imagine how icy it is now that the temperature is starting to drop. After the freezing rain, our house ran out of water. It was Saturday night when I had to start calling to get more. I started with the Hamlet emergency housing number and all they could do was suggest other people to call. It was very trying but I did finally manage.

Our Christmas concerts all went well. They are crazy events in which the audience never seems to stop moving/talking/walking. The highlight was seeing Lily's classmates participate in various songs and dances when they joined Margot's concert at the elementary school. They were great and Lily was so funny. She performed a dance routine and song in Inuktitut and was very well received by the audience, along with all the other little ones. My concert was a bit of a challenge as I was partially responsible for putting the event on. It was a challenge to put on a large event in a new school, new community and to me, a foreign culture. Everything went well and we received lots of positive feedback.

Margot and I had a couple of errands to run the other day, so decided to pick Lily up together and head over to the stores. Lily likes being out in the world and we thought it would be fun. Well, it wasn't. Lily had had a long day at school and emotionally crashed shortly after our getting her. She has now hit a stage that involves complete shut down (pitching a fit, screaming, crying, falling to the ground). Knowing she was hungry, Margot grabbed a package of green grapes for her to nibble on while we finished our shopping. This helped a bit, but boy, when that kid get's going, it's tough to get back on track. I find it very frazzling to have Lily in this state. It's upsetting to me to see her so upset, and I'll admit it, embarasing. I can only imagine what bystanders are thinking. Anyhow, when I get to the checkout to pay for our items, the girl shows me the price of the already opened green grapes: $10.89!!!! This is a small package, about a pound. The manager tells me they are about $22.00 a kilo. I am floored, but we already opened them, so we pay and leave. No wonder there are nutrition issues up here when that is what fresh fruit costs.

I have finally gotten our snowmobiles finished (for the most part) and they are now both able to be ridden. Our used machines that were in "great shape" ended up costing an additional $700 in parts. This does not include the labour to do the work. I really dislike buying used things sometimes. However, with that being said, it is great to have them. They make life here easier and more enjoyable. I went for another amazing ride yesterday. I was able to make it to another part of the island and was able to watch a beautiful sunset (at 2 in the afternoon) over the open ocean. In the background I could hear hunters shooting their guns in their attempts to get a whale. There have been belugas around and people are really excited. The ice is starting to build up on the inlet and people are walking on it. The other day, a man's snowmobile fell through though. I heard that both he and the machine were rescued so I suspect it must have happened near shore. It will be great when the ice is thick and stable enough to travel on. I have been invited out caribou hunting on Baffin Island which will be a truly unique experience although a bit daunting.

Take care and have a safe Christmas holiday.

-Richard