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. 

State Championship Basketball...

We heard that many times last week as every announcer said those words to open each game. We combined Abigail's orthodontist appointment and a seminar Paul had to attend for his aircraft inspector mechanic recurrence training, and took a trip to Anchorage. It happened (Abigail planned her appointment that way) to coincide with the state high school basketball tournament. The two teams that we played with the most this year made it to the state tournament. Newhalen is the closest school to the south of us and the school that we played many games against this year (we played the Jr. High and girls teams). Friends of ours go there every summer and put on a basketball camp where they coach the kids in basketball and do Bible studies with them. For the last two summers, Paul and the kids have joined them. The Wilson's and the Brueckner's are two families serving Yhwh and living in Aniak, a two hour flight into the interior of Alaksa. Every summer a church in Glennallen sends a team there to put on a basketball camp along with Bible study. The Brueckner's invited Paul and the kids to join them this summer. They went and had a wonderful time fellowshipping.

So, we went to all of their tournament games. They both won their first two games quite handily and made it to the Championship game. We sat in the middle between the two teams and cheered for them both. It was a terrific game, close all the way to the end!

The Newhalen Malmutes in the blue...

The Aniak Halfbreeds in the white...

Aniak's first game was at 0800 Monday morning. Only the hardcore fans were there at that hour.

Andy Brueckner homeschools in Aniak...

John Wilson also homeschools in Aniak. It was fun to watch our two young friends play in the huge Sullivan Arena.

Above and below Andy and John are going after a rebound.

Abigail painted her fingernails on one hand blue for Newhalen and the other yellow for Aniak. When Quentin saw that after every game they gave the fan of the game $25 dollars he was ready to go paint his face and collect the money. The closer we got to the championship game it had to be full body paint along with a funny hairdo and a lot of yelling, so he declined...

Deborah is enjoying the game.

Andy came and sat with us when his game was over.

Sarah really wanted to give the lion a high five. She talked Abigail into gong with her, but about halfway there she chickened out and insisted they head back to safety.
All the excitement was a little too much for Benjamin and Sarah. they got a couple of good naps in during the games.

Oh yeah, Aniak won the championship game, but not by much...

Homeschool Basketball

The kids played Basketball again this year. The public school had a few kids that wanted to play this year so the homeschooled kids (my oldest five and Josh Armstrong) practiced with them. Our homeschooled kids joined up with two homeschooled boys, William and Lee Clark, from the next village and played many games against teams from villages around Lake Iliamna. Lake Iliamna is a 20 mile drive across our frozen lake, up a trail and down a very icy road. Most of our games were played at the Newhalen school which is the closest village on Lake Iliamna to us. They host many tournaments every year and they invited us down for some of those and for several scrimmages as well. Twice the older kids drove with Paul to Iliamna and then got in the Clark's airplane and flew to other villages around the Lake to play their highschool three man teams. There are still a couple of schools they hope to play after spring break. They've had a great time especially since Paul is their traveling coach. Before Paul's elbow was healed enough to travel, they played in a Jr. High Tournament and Abigail was the coach. The Jr. High tournament has become an annual event for us. Levi and Micah Natewick fly down from Port Alsworth to play in it with us. Because Paul had an infected elbow Joel and Lisa Natewick flew down and picked our kids up on the way and chaperoned them for the tournament. They've had a tremendous season with lots of great memories of traveling in sleeping bags in a pickup in single digit weather.

Crossing the frozen lake in our pickup.

(Sorry about the quality of all the pictures, I snipped them from our video camera.)

Going up the hill on the other side of the lake.

Paul giving instruction during a time out.

Abigail working to get open.

Abigail scoring?

Deborah bringing the ball down the court...

...and driving for the basket.

Quentin has put on some muscle this year. All that sawing and splitting wood has paid off.

Here he is soaring to the basket.

Quentin driving the length of the court.

Quentin with the rebound.

Anna shooting the jumper as Quentin watches.

Anna is an awesome defensive player.

Joshua got to play in the Jr. High games even though he's a fourth grader. It evened things out since Deborah (9th grade) had to play to make enough players when we played five man teams.

Joshua is actually a great little player, he made this one.

A couple of times the mighty mites and pee wees in Newhalen were playing while we were there. They invited Caleb and Joshua to play with them.

Below Caleb has the ball. Joshua is on the far right.

Josh Armstrong going up strong for a shot.

Lee Clark is our best ball handler.

William Clark starting off the game with the jump ball.

Below Lee lost the handle on the ball and stopped to retrieve it which caused Abigail to trip over his leg and the kick the ball away from him. It looks really cool in slow motion...

Aniak basketball camp and Maryland youth group

Paul took Abigail through Joshua and Josh A. to Aniak for basketball camp. One of the advantages of having a father who is a flight instructor is that if you want to you get to learn to fly. You are allowed to solo when you are 16 so it's Abigail's turn. She has been getting a lesson anytime she can go somewhere with Paul.

They stayed with our good friends the Brueckners. A church in Glenallen comes down every year and puts on a four day basketball camp. They teach basketball skills and put on skits and told stories to present the basic concepts of the Gospel.

Paul spent a lot of his time with Steve Brueckner on the river.  Steve and his oldest son Andy had just spent a week bringing a huge bunch of logs down the Kuskokwim river.  They got home the night before our crew got there and they still had to land the logs on their side of the river.  Paul got to help bring them across the river and then they went up and got a smaller load ready to come down the Aniak river.  It was a great learning experience for Paul as he is much more comfortable in a plane than a boat.
They finished off their week with a cookout and bonfire at the Wilson's house (more good friends from Aniak).  

The Wilson's oldest son is also taking flying lessons so he and his instructor volunteered to take some of our crew home so Paul didn't have to make two trips.  Thanks guys!  
They had a wonderful time in Aniak and came back totally exhausted. They landed in Nondalton at the same time that a youth group from Maryland was landing. This is the fourth year that the group from Maryland has come to Nondalton. They stay at the community building on air mattresses and play games with the kids in the village and teach them Bible stories. They took a day to get settled in, which gave my kids a day to recover from their trip to Aniak.

They all had a great time!