As we have been talking about forever, our sealift finally arrived this past week. It pulled into the fiord Wednesday night/Thursday morning around midnight and the excitement began. Here is a picture of the sealift sitting in the fiord:

With the sealift comes two smaller tugboats. Thursday they spent all of their time dragging the barge back and forth clearing the ice from the path they intended to take:

And finally they unloaded the crates Friday! Here is a pic of how they move the crates from the ship to the beach:

Once on the beach the town transports the crates by forklift to the different homes. Ours arrived sometime around 4:oopm.. prior to that we unloaded Claus' crate which was the first to arrive (of the teachers crates). He was not in town so some of the teachers that were in town unloaded every ones.

Here are some pics of our sealift crate being unloaded:

We had some eager helpers that insisted on helping us with our crate and we were pleased to accept their help:

As a mere thank you we gave them each a pop for their efforts:

And here is what our living room looked like after our crate was unloaded:

We then went on to unload an additional 11 crates that included teachers the were in and out of town and the crates for both Attagoyuk and Alookie Schools.

Needless to say we started unloading around 3:30pm and finished around 11pm at the school. As the night progressed the winds picked up with made it even more "interesting". We came home to our living room looking like you've seen already and we were pumped with adrenaline and were eager to unload our boxes... we got to bed around 2am with most things unloaded and put away...

What a crazy way to spend a Friday night! But needless to say we are super happy to have all our stuff that we dropped off in Ottawa July 15th!

Today we did some more tidying up but mainly spent the day sleeping and recuperating from last nights adventures.

Monday I head back to work as this past week was our professional development week with no students.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!!

ttyl
M&N

Ok so the sea lift has arrived sort of. It is in town now although not unloaded yet. We have been told that our crate May be unloaded tomorrow through the day or at midnight. Either way there is no sense in worrying because we can see the ship. Heck we have waited a two month delay already... whats a few more hours.

On another note. The Northern lights over the past few day have been great!!!

Hope you like the shots.
TTYL
M&N

ok so the site seems to be working correctly now. Here are the shots from the first snowmobile ride of the year.

While out for my ride i saw Jerry walking down the road. I asked him if he wanted a ride. He declined....i think he was alittle scared.

I should also add the sea lift still hasn't arrived. We expected it to be here this morning...but alas still not.
Maybe later today
TTYL
M&N

Hey All!!
Our site is being a little difficult tonight and is not letting us upload any photos... sorry!! So this week has been relatively uneventful except for the huge dumping of snow on Monday (20 cm) and again yesterday (another 10-15cm) and again today (probably another 5cm) so needless to say EVERYTHING is covered in snow!! Mike took the snowmobile out for a spin and everything seems great.. there will be pictures to follow whenever our site decides to work properly.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of PI (Professional Improvement) week. So that means that teachers do professional improvement things all week and students don't come to school. Mike will be running two courses this week, one of which I'll be taking as my PI fell through.
We are anxiously, as always, awaiting the arrival of our sealift. As of right now it's supposed to arrive tomorrow/Tuesday. We certainly hope so! For those of you who don't know, our sealift was originally supposed to arrive Sept 2nd but was delayed due to the transportation of bridge supplies. It was then supposed to arrive the beginning of Oct and of course was again delayed and every time I check the site it is delayed yet another day or two.
Hope everyone had a good weekend and well hope to provide you with a few pics once our site decides to work again!
ttyl
M&N

Romour has it that all you southerners spent you Thanksgiving in shorts. I cant say we were that lucky, we had a heavy snow warning up here and we sure got it. 20cm fell in about 12 hours....as to be expected i took a moment to get out and get a few shots.

This is the after effect that we woke up to.

this was well before the storm finished

believe it or not, this is looking out at the fjord...not much to see.

looking down the road.

All cleaned off

just a few randoms

The last image

LOOKING FOR LEFTOVERS!!!

We hope you all had a good weekend
TTYL
M&N

Well over the last week or so there has been a lot of progress on our new bridge. In fact rumour has it that the bridge will be done in a few short days. As you might expect i have made a few trips down to photograph the bridge. In fact i was down there the other day and i think the foreman thought that i was from a newspaper...!!!

So here are a few shots that i have been able to get over the last few days.

Here you can see all of our bridges, the dirt culvert bridge, the new bridge, the bridge that fell last year, and the first original bridge.

I'll just get right to the collection of pictures.

A little closer look at the construction

Some debris left over from the collapse of the first bridge

Just a day before the bridge was pushed into it's final resting place

And that's the excitement these days
TTYL
M&N

I thought you all might like to see one of my latest pieces. Is a long one 36"x12"
It has been already sold, but don't forget i do commissions.
In the next few months i will have a series of finished northern inks available for sale. So keep looking.

TTYL
M&N

We had a pretty relaxing weekend which included Mike going out on a few hikes to take some pictures, some house cleaning and getting together for our first music night again of the school year. We also attended our first loonie-twoonie fundraiser of the year but came away from it empty handed. So as you can see not a whole lot to report right now so we thought instead we might entertain you with a few pictures that Mike came across/created. We think these pics might bring you back a few years..

Pictures of Mike and I from over the years....lol....

Hope that brought a smile to your faces as you start off the work/school week!!

In case some of you didn't figure it out, this is a website that Mike came across that allows you to take your pic and drop it into different styles from various eras!

Enjoy your week no matter where you are!

ttyl
M&N

Once again this year we have arrived at the time when things are starting to get dark. We presently have just a little over 11 hours of day light but are losing light quickly. The nice thing about the darkness however, is the arrival of the gorgeous northern lights. Mike went out last night and enjoyed a spectacular display:

The following one had some magnificent blue (We are too far north to get many colours. Most of the time we get only greens so it's always nice to see other colours)

And the final picture is our town all lite up at night. Soon enough this is what it's going to look like at 2 pm ..crazy!!

Not a whole lot else going on right now. I've decided to help coach the basketball team and start up a choir at school. The basketball practices started today for me and the choir practices should be starting soon. We are still anxiously awaiting our sealift which brings with it many treats to look forward to. Its anticipated date of arrival is Oct 14! Fingers crossed that it won't get delayed any more than that!

Thanks all for now!
ttyl
M&N

Well Nic and i haven't been up to to much lately. So i made sure to get out yesterday so you would all have something new to see from our arctic adventure.

Sad to say, but yet again Christmas will be cancelled this year again due to lack of Reindeer to pull Santa's sleigh.

The new bridge (that would be #3) is quickly being assembled. Rumour has it, that it will be ready by the end of October...We'll see

I'll leave you tonight with a few shots from around town

TTYL
M&N