Joshua's Birthday

Joshua, my talented middle child, turned 11.  He loves to draw which inspires my younger boys to draw along with him.  He's been playing the drums and has just started playing the bass guitar.  Twice now in the last month Paul and the older kids have gone on a trip.  Joshua has stepped up as the man of the house, making sure we have enough wood and helping customers pick up their ATV's that Paul fixed before he left.

He got a box of Legos for his birthday.  He loves creating things.

Anna made a pinata for his birthday.  Below he's helping Hazel get a good hit on it.

After Hazel Joshua got to take the first hits at the Pinata.  Quentin made sure they weren't very good hits.

Anna made a cake and Josh A. made a cake.

The kids bought some trick candles while they were in Anchorage.  Joshua finally blew them out much to the amusement of his siblings.

Birthdays

Lavonne loves birthdays.  It makes it lots of fun to throw her a party.

Her Aunt Dorothy and Alex along with her Mom and Cheda Mary came over for her party.

The kids are eagerly waiting for her to blow out her candles.

Lee turned 16 and my older kids along with Josh A. got to go down to Iliamna to help him celebrate.  They went snow boarding and had a blast.  Below Anna is contemplating the hill.

Quentin heading down the hill.

 Quentin after a fall, he got a huge egg on the top of his head.

A neighbors big dog joined in the fun and kept getting in the way.

Lee blowing out the candles.

Lee's mom made a delicious birthday supper and they had a wonderful time.

Going's On's

Well my good intentions of starting to post again haven't lasted long now that we're home.  Everyday things aren't quite as exciting as traveling to Israel:)  But we have done quite a few fun things this month.

Our High School and Jr. High teams played against some of the teachers and adults in town including Mom and Dad.  It was a fun game but they had a little size on us.
First Half - https://vimeo.com/38132335
Second Half - https://vimeo.com/38879503

 On a normal year we can drive our truck across the ice and down to Iliamna but this year we've almost broken the snow fall record in Anchorage and there is too much snow to get past fish camp.  Since we couldn't drive our truck down, we drove snow machines and 4 wheelers across the lake.  Mr. Clark came up from Iliamna to fish camp and picked us and a couple more people from town up with their van and drove us all down to watch Dennis Agajanian.

He is an amazing guitar player who has toured with Johnny Cash and now works with Samaritan's Purse touring around villages. 

 We had family fun night at the community building to raise money for the carnival .

It was a fun night filled with speed scrabble, but no good pictures.

(The boys weren't into scrabble so much.)

 Last week, Dad and the four oldest kids spent most of the week in Anchorage watching state basketball and helping some friends get a cabin ready to live in.  

We were a little crowded in the plane.

Mt. Redoubt steaming.

 Newhalen and Aniak boys both made it again and Newhalen won this time!  Yay, one championship for each of them.  I think they could have easily got first and second again but being as how they don't seed the 1A teams they ended up playing each other first.  That ended up being the best game of the tournament and they easily won the rest of their games but with a loss the first night the best Aniak could do was 4th.

Newhalen and Ft. Yukon captains.

Aniak warming up.
All the yellow warmups are their seniors.  They're going to lose half their team next year!

4th place game.
Aniak rather ran away with this game.  All the non-starters got to play.  Go Andy! Go John! :)

The Newhalen and Aniak girls also made it to state and also played each other first and the Newhalen girls also won the championship!!  It was a big week for Newhalen.  It was a little scary to watch the Newhalen girls.  They had a tendency to get behind in the first quarter then come back and win at the end.  It made for exciting games though:) 

Newhalen vs. Aniak

The Martins are in the process of moving to Wasilla and living in Ms. Regina's cabin.  Ms. Regina only lives there for a couple weeks in the summer so there was a lot of snow to be shoveled and monitor wasn't working so in between games we were up there working getting it ready for them to move. 

There was LOTS of snow.  We're talking record breaking snowfall here and a super long drive way.

Dad working on the monitor.

Plus all that, we've had just normal everyday things doing on.

Hazel and Sarah helping Deborah cook.

Caleb and Hazel doing school.

Dog pile on Dad.

Going fishing in the living room.

We've also had a few birthdays but I'll save those for later. 

Feels like Spring

After a record cold January, when it finally got warm enough to snow it felt like spring:)

Snow angels and snowmen in the new snow.

A week of 40 degrees called for a picnic in the snow with short sleeves.

But with all this snow you might just go outside to see this.

Photo courtesy of Ryan Suchan / ADN reader submission

It sure makes it wet trying to go get wood.  The boys all got soaked.  Although that might have been because they were rolling around in the snow instead of helping haul wood.  
Dad had warned the little boys that even though it felt warm, if they got wet, they would get cold fast.  They didn't listen and soon David's feet were soaked and frozen.  They needed to build a fire...

Pop quiz, how would you start a fire if you didn't have matches or a lighter?  Oops!  The boys first attempt involved a 22.. It didn't work.  Their second attempt set the chainsaw on fire.  That one worked:)  David came home with a hole burned in his sock.  Sometimes getting wood feels like a Three Stooges movie. 

Goofy Kids

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2007/12/14/v-gallery2/110676/moose-sightings.html?/2012/02/10/v-gallery2/2310806_a2310396/wildlife-reader-submitted-moose.html#storylink=

Super Bowl Sunday

For the Super Bowl yesterday Claudine (Lavonne's mom) invited us to her house.  She bought a lot of pizza's, chips, soda and other good junk food for us to eat.  It was a lot of fun.  A couple people were going for the Patriots but most of us were going for the Giants so it was a good game:)

All the dogs became dad's best buddy.

The end of the game was exciting.

After the game the boys were sliding down the hill on their bellies it was so slippery.

Quentin and Sarah