Part 2 of Hiatus of Sorts

Housing Update:
So we do enjoy where we live. The place is quite nice and we would be quite content to stay there. However it is an elders complex so we are not allowed to stay. We're waiting on word from our Education Authority on what progress has been made on getting us our own house right now, so we'll see on that.

Shawna posted on facebook some pictures of the house and things. If you didn't see - I made an awesome walk-in freezer. It's approximately the size of our porch. It consists of snow and boxes. It works well.

 So at this point I've got a few fish in one of the boxes, a bunch of bread that was on sale in another, and I think there's some Ice Cream somewhere in there too.

 This is me with my spoils.

And defrosting the fish.














An important update in regards to the house is that it is really handy for hallowe'en. There's a little hallway that leads to each of the four units in our building. So I set up shop just inside our doorway to scare kids. A few small ones cried and many others jumped. The scheme: Shawna would open the door and invite the kids in holding a bowl of candy (to give a false sense of security) and as they entered the house I would yell and jab them with my pole.

We also put up our Christmas Tree. I picked up a bunch of decorations when I was away in Iqaluit. We got the tree from one of the RCMP officers that was leaving town. He forgot to give us a tree stand, so in the picture below the tree is held up with a box that has a hole in the top filled with a case of cream of mushroom soup to weight it down. It works, you just can't walk real quick by the tree as it's not terribly stable.

Weather Update:
The weather hasn't been too bad - it's totally manageable. Rule of thumb, as always, is be prepared. Everyday is a parka day now. The big thing, as always, is trying to stay out of the wind. The air is certainly cold, but the wind is the killer. Our parkas have huge hoods that work really well, so we've never really been that cold. If we didn't have those, I'm not sure how we would fare. Probably poorly. I should mention though, Shawna has said she's been cold a few of the bad days - but I've written that off as an effect of her poor circulation. I don't think any boot or coat could keep her warm. Her toes seem to get cold even though her boots are rated to -100. So, we're going to have to get that figured out.

We're pretty well in 24hr darkness. It's more like 20hr darkness and four hours of dusk sort of thing. We don't see the sun anymore, but there is horizon that suggests a sun is nearby. The picture below was taken at about 1:00pm. The suggestion of the sun hours are from about 10:00am - 1:30 or so right now. I'm pretty sure when at the end of December its totally dark, but I'm not positive.

Last week we scored two days off of school. There was a blizzard zipping through the area that began on Sunday night and carried through to Tuesday night. We were told that our principal rarely cancels school even once in a year, so to have two days off was quite the treat! We did venture out during the storm. The winds were the main concern that prevented school from going on. The snow drifts that were built up on account of the winds were insane! We're dealing with like 15' snow drifts. Simply nuts. Two of them spread across roads that were that large. Due to this, the school bus can't get around, so school was cancelled for that reason. We took some pictures of our adventure outside during the storm, but the pictures don't really do the winds justice. I didn't get pictures of the drifts, my bad. Perhaps next time. The plow has taken care of them by now.

So there's a bit of an update for now. We'll be home in two weeks as mentioned before. We're both uber excited to see everyone! Post a comment if you have a question about anything at all!