Adorable

I had to snap a picture of Rachel as I was tucking her in--she is so adorable!  Each night she chooses different animals to sleep with, and the rest are usually not to far away--tonight she made a bed for them on a chair next to her bed. 

Here are a few pictures I have taken this week of sunsets--they really are gorgeous, and I took them for granted until I moved to Boston and rarely saw so much of the sky--let alone the entire horizon, and realized that while the sun sets everywhere, not every city sees such vivid colors. 

Basketball Obsessed

I was thinking it might be fun to go to one of the basketball games this week since this town is obsessed and we have never gone.  When I was at Rachel's school for her class party around 1:00 another mom said there was already a line at the baskeball arena for that evenings game (at 7:30pm mind you).  I asked if even in the gigantic stadium the games can sell out, and she said yes.  So I figured, I am pretty close to there so while I am here I could run over and grab some tickets, I got there around 2:15.  Only problem, apparently the ticket windows weren't even open. What?! These small-town-high-school basketball-obsessed-suckers were standing in line to buy tickets and the ticket window wasn't even going to open until 5:00!!

Pics 1, 2 & 3 are the beginning, middle, and end of the line.  WOA! These people are crazy.  And I was one of them.  I had heard stories about this happening, so I decided that it was a quintisential living on the rez experience that I should take part in at least once while living here.  So I waited, then had some nice person save my spot in line while I went back and picked Rach up from school, and sent her home with a neighbor.  (the high is only 40 degrees so I figured she would get bored and cold waiting with me).  Lucky us, the window opened a little early at 4:30 so I bought some tickets for us, and some friends who said they would come along.  Here are the pictures of inside the stadium-There really weren't very many open seats by the time the game got started.  

 a little Navajo pride

here is the half-time show--some girls doing traditional navajo dancing

Oh-and they sang the Star Spangled Banner in Navajo too.

And while googling the Den to see just how many seats it holds, I found this article

Best High School Gym in America--the Arizona Republic --really?! on the rez?

(by the way it says it seats almost 8,000.

Oh and as of the 2000 census, the population here was only 5,366 people

Where do the people come from lol!

So that was 10 years ago...but I don't think many have been flocking here in the past ten years.  :-)

Random pics in Jan & feb

This little girl just looked too cute when she was all ready for school--she is definitely in the silly stage every time I try and snap a picture, you can't really tell but she is giving herself bunny ears.

When I was back in Phoenix the last week in January I had a blast! The first day there I hung out with my sister in law and Rachel's cousin Jamie, and later a few friends from Chandler and ended up spending the whole day in the sunshine at three different parks.  It was such a nice break from the cold snowy weather up here.  The other thing I did was go thrift store shopping.  I remembered my love of thrift store shopping and the fun of the hunt.  I went with my college roommate Megan to Name Brand Exchange  in Mesa and I had fun trying on expensive jeans like True Religion, that were still about $70--apparently that is a bargain compared to their retail price. I went with Heidi to Turnstyle in Ahwatukee, and we both bought some jeans under $7.  nice!  I got all of these books at Savers with my mom and dad (some I have already read...but I loved them and wanted to be able to see them on my bookshelf) plus bought Rachel a bunch of books and games and it was all under $30.  (I had just splurged and bought 3 books from Barnes and Nobel a few weeks ago and for just those 3 books alone I think I spent around $40.)  Rachel was in heaven:

"mom can I get a book"

"Sure!"

"mom, can I get this one too"

"Sure"

mom, look it's guess who, and I have always wanted to play Guess Who and we don't have it, can I get it?"

"Sure!" :-)

You get the idea, she ended up with this game, and about 10 books.

last weekend it was sunny enough that we wanted to be outside so we tried to go on a hike in the canyon...turns out it was still pretty muddy so we didn't get far, but here is Rachel with her friend-note more silly faces.

Rachel's other friend was over and we made pink, heart-shaped rice krispy treats for Rachel's party at school.  (those two things in the background are the extent of my Valentine's decorations so I thought I would get those in the photo too :-)

Every time I turned my back these two were snitching from the pan. 

stupid slow internet

Trying to upload lots of new photos...but our internet is SUPER slow and all the uploads are failing...guess you will all have to wait a while longer to see what we have been up to.

Ditched mutual and brought the only two kids that came to the basketball game - and just ran into the bishop lol
Amber

Think what you will...

But here is what is going on in our part of the world

The Rez in the news:
Food Drops on the Navajo Rez

Food drops not going so well

also: we had a funeral today for a man from our church who froze to death.  While the weather has been cold, it hasn't been that cold so I asked around trying to figure out how it happened.  Do they live in a hogan without any electricity and not have any firewood? I was told that he went outside, possibly to drink, and must have passed out and they did not find him until morning.  Sad.  Frustrating. unreal.

I read all of the comments on the news articles, and thought about the death of this man, and as someone who lives here, I still don't know what to think.  Some people do live in shacks, and have "crap" all over their property (as one comment suggested), yes-many still live without running water or electricity, many of the elderly do not speak or understand english very well.  Many are on food stamps and welfare.  Some on the otherhand, seem to still live a traditional lifetyle--herd sheep etc.  Some people who work here do so because they love helping, and sometimes I have a hard time feeling like any of the "help" does any good in the long term. 

blog stalking

So one benefit of driving 30 minutes to class (to an even smaller town) is getting the chance to meet up with two couples who live up there.  They do a lot of fun stuff, let it be said that neither has any children, so they are in a fully free state to come and go as they please.  I emailed Julie because she is a pharmacist and wanted to chat with her about this profession I am considering (for reasons that still seem ridiculous to me at times:-).  Anyway, when she emailed back I saw a link to her blog at the bottom and thought, hmmmm, so I read all about her--They hang out a lot with this other couple and had links to their blog, and Patricia's photography blog.  Let's just say that when I look at her pictures it makes me wonder, "Do you live on the same rez as I do?!"  I will happily purchase some of her photos to have in my house and enjoy the beauty of the desert that I don't often see when I look out my window.

When I just looked at their blog to steal some pics, I saw that they recently went on another random, fun, couple excursion.  After the storm, they loaded up their 4x4s and their skiis, and their snowchains, and drove to a road that is closed for winter, and then put the chains on the cars and kept driving, and then put on their skiis and skiid down the snow covered road.  Awesome!   If only we could keep up with them :-)

Decorating

Here are some looks that I enjoy--borrowed from HGTV's ratemyspace.com and from my friend Kirsten's design website....

 And here is all I have so far--obviously I need a lot of help :-) 

After going back and forth on whether or not to decorate here--or just wait till we move, I have decided to go ahead and decorate...but try to choose items that will also work in my "real" house  (ie--the house that Mike and Heidi have already lived in longer than we did--but we have hopes of someday returning to). 

I want to bring in the green color as an accent, but I think I also want a second accent color--maybe a blue-grey, or another color that pops...not sure what.

I hadn't bought a bedskirt because I hoped to buy a bed frame that wouldn't require one...but we are going to wait on that for now...and so I should probablky get an inexpensive one for now...but in what color? White-to blend in with the bed? brown--to pretend like it is a bedframe? khaki--I saw something like that in a hotel that looked pretty-but then the walls were khaki too.  

If anyone has any brilliant ideas--please share :-)

Chuck-E-Cheese

Rachel has been to Peter Piper pizza but she has been seeing tv commercials for Chuck-E-cheese and has been begging to go.  When we got there she ran in and tol grandpa "Let's go find Chucky!"  and playing along my dad asked "Who is Chucky?"  and she said "I dunno...either a mouse or a rat."  She ran around playing games and the highlight was when grandpa was able to find a game and win bonus tickets 2 times!  For the rest of the weekend she was telling everyone that she "Got to go to Chuck-e-cheese and my grandpa won bonus tickets and I got 139 tickets--that the most tickets I have ever gotten in my whole life!" 

Driving to School

The school where I am taking classes is 30 miles deeper onto the rez --and it is really in the middle of nowhere.  Here is about 10 minutes past my house...

Here is about 20 minutes from my house--the drive is actually nice, and even though I feel isolated because I don't get cell service, I am pleasantly suprised that I still get radio stations.

January - Winter Wonderland

We have had snow on the ground the entire month of January.  It snowed in December, just a few inches that would have melted off quickly, except we had unusually cold temperatures (low near 0 and highs in the 20s--remember all of the frozen pipes) so it stuck around for month.  Then last week we got three different storms and quite a bit of snow.  It was a snow/rain mix and if it had all been snow we would have gotten a lot more, only about 6 inches accumulated. 

This was Rachel's favorite run--with tunnels to ski through. 

An igloo at the ski resort--all the fun without having to build it ourselves.

View out of our hotel room.  The giant icicles looked too fun to resist--so Sam took off the screen to the window and reached out and grabbed one.

I may have rolled my eyes at Sam when he did this, but it is fun that despite his age he still has a silly side.
I am liking the new photo editor...except these 3 icicle photos seem distorted and I can't get them normal even when I delete them and add again. (but I think they look okay when you click on them).

Letting Rachel play in the snow before school--because I am fun like this :-)

Christmas & New Years

We had a little bit of snow here--just barely enough to sled.

In retrospect, I would not recommend sledding in an area of all dirt and rocks unless you have way more snow, I hit a rock going down and have a nice bruise on my buttocks to prove it.

On Christmas morning after we opened our presents (and waited for the pipes to thaw out) we drove to Durango. It was a cold day --and Rachel and I were big fans of the fireplace in the lodge and the hot cocoa.

Here is me attempting to get just one decent family picture on Christmas day in the hotel.

Then for New Years Eve we decided last minute to drive to Flagstaff and meet up with my sister and her family who were staying in Flag and sledding and playing in the snow for the first time.

One extreme to another-a quote from Rachel I want to remember

Rachel was playing with her friends and I went in to tell them to clean up and I decided I would help them. Rachel practically yelled--"It is OUR MESS! and we can clean it up OURSELVES" While I was glad she was owning up to her mess, I said great, but I just wanted to help--to which she switched her standpoint to, "Fine, you can be our maid."

At that point, they were left ot fend for themselves. :-)