We had the kids over on the weekend and carved a Jack O'Lantern, It has been a while since I have done it and it was so much fun with these kids. We managed to get through the whole process without slicing off anyone's finger or nose, inspite of Grandpa's dire warnings. A pictorial journey follows......


Assessing the possibilities








Sketching the face












This was the tricky part, but safety measures were observed and all fingers and noses were accounted for!!








The creative carvers








The finished product, designed by KID POWER

The ground is white outside and I have a cold so I am laying low this weekend.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I think we used almost every pot and plate in the place. It was a feast. Everyone lent a helping hand, including Elijah who we put on KP duty. It was great to have Heather and her partner Brad for dinner, as well as the kids. Thank you Brad, he flew Heather up from Fort Smith and he flew down from Tulita. It was so nice to have family around to celebrate and give thanks. Cassidy was busy downloading music for her new IPOD which she got from her Mom for her birthday which is tomorrow. She will be eleven, it is interesting to here her views on the world and find out what that generation is interested in listening to and doing. She can make videos on her IPOD and that was a big hit, she is not sure how to erase them, but that does not seem to concern her. She is going to have dinner with us tomorrow and she wants, grilled cheese, hard boiled eggs and French Fries! I should be able to manage that.

Elijah did really well in his race and he had lots of fun with his buddies. Unfortunately he had an equipment malfunction. His pants weren't done up tight enough, or perhaps they were just too big and he had to hold them up for quite a bit of the race. He finished fourth out of about 20 kids and Barry said that as soon as the 2 kilometer race was over he went off to play with his friends. Apparently he fell asleep on the way home so all that activity must have tired him out.

Barry took these shots of the kids in their swimming goggles! Cassidy was reading one of her books to me and she said she needed to put on her reading glasses.














Barry went to pick up some groceries the other day. I asked him to get some pine nuts. BIG MISTAKE, I did not specify how many pine nuts I wanted. I was thinking, you know maybe a hundred grams, to put on salads and fancy appetizers, well look what he came home with. His excuse was that he was too busy looking at the horrendous price of the bulk almonds and besides when you open the bin, they come out REALLY fast. Can you guess how much he got. We figure there is over a kilogram of pine nuts in the package and they cost, wait for it, fifty-three dollars. Guess what will be included in all of our Christmas packages, maybe we could foist them on some unsuspecting Halloweiners!!

We bit the bullet last weekend and attended a fund raiser in town for Kid Sport. This is the charity that gives kids that can't afford it the opportunity to participate in sports. We feel that it is a worthwhile cause, AND, the headliner was Donavon Bailey, the Canadian sprinter that won an Olympic Gold Medal in the 100 meters in Atlanta in 1996. Barry was not really keen on attending at first because the tickets were expensive, but how many chances are we ever going to get to meet a real Canadian track legend. Donavon (notice how I just can bandy his name about, since I have had my picture taken with him) was accompanied by 2 rowers, Adam Kreek and Dan Rutledge, who won Olympic Gold in Men's eights at Beijing in 2008 as well as Fiona Smith a member of the 1998 Woman's Hockey Team who won a Silver Medal in Ngano.
It was an interesting evening, a couple of things stand out in my mind. Dan Rutledge (he is huge, notice how he is leaning over in the picture) said that he wasn't much of an athlete when he was younger but his grade 11 biology teacher had the class measuring their lung capacity. His buddies blew and did a good quite well and then he took a big breath and blew and blew and blew and he said he blew the top right off of the machine. His biology teacher told him that he had a huge lung capacity and that he should do something with it.
We chatted with the hockey player and she said her brothers were a big inspiration to her, she grew up in small town Saskatchewan and had to play with the boys in order to compete. There weren't many women playing hockey back then. (Fiona is the blond)She was smaller than me and I asked her how her size affected her game and she said that skill and speed kept her competitive. When women play against men, body checking is prohibited and she said that when her team was playing a men's team if the game was close and the guys realized that they might get beaten by a women's team the game became very chippy!
Donavon was a bit of a disappointment to me, he characterized his running as a profession, he said that he competed every week, it was a job. He did say that he was lucky to have been born with a body that very athletic and he worked with that gift and his career was a result. One of his favourite moments was when he won a gold medal for Canada at the Pan American games, I think it was the first time he had represented Canada at a major games.
We had a very nice evening. I splurged and had my hair "done" for the first time since we were married. My cousin Greg dropped by on his way up north again and he thought I was a low maintenance kind of girl, all Barry could say was how all the money he was saving buying the cheap brand of beans was going up in smoke!!!
Elijah our grandson is carrying on a Lange tradition. He is going to be going to run in a cross country race in Rae, about 60 miles out of town. His grandpa is going to drive him because he is too young to go on the bus, so they are going to get to spend some quality time together, stay tuned. Barry tested out the new camera last night and it recorded a video for more than 25 minutes, so we could probably upload the whole race, well maybe we will post it on UTUBE or something, I have never done that yet!!!!!

Out and about around Yellowknife

A gold mine which has gone out of business about 15 kilometers from town.
We went to visit our old friend France, she is quite the gardener, who would have thought you could grow eggplants North of 60. Check out these upside down tomatoes. You just water from the top, it is a great use of space.











This is the view looking north from Pilot's Monument the largest hill in Old Town. Notice the 3 storey blue building in the foreground. That is a stackable condo that an architect had constructed then brought up in three pieces then stacked. If you zoom in on the pic, you can see some workmen hanging off the red box like structure at the top putting siding on it. This is a view to the south, I was wishing I was in that boat.




















Good place to store your snowmobile for a few months.

Check out the sign, You don't have to fence it in, just let people know that it belongs to someone.
As we were walking through down town on the weekend a white gov't truck went racing by us with his siren going, he had a orange pylon in the back. We made disparaging remarks, there must be a very large pothole ahead, etc, etc. When we got closer to the trail that goes along the lake, an RCMP showed up and someone was headed towards us and warned us there was a bear in the vicinity. The renewable resources guy pulled up with a dart gun and another vehicle was making a terrible noise and we saw this very frightened black bear go tearing off through the woods. We waited patiently, camera in hand hoping she would show up again but no luck. The Terry Fox run was diverted around it's potential path.

The annual race to Moose Bay takes place on the September long weekend. It is about a 25 mile race, we leave on Saturday morning, we have a pot luck supper on Sunday night and then race back to Yellowknife on Monday. This year we had spectacular sailing, I was asked to crew on a Catalina 27, the boat that I wanted to buy 10 years ago. We had a blast, the boat's theoretical hull speed is 6.2 knots and we were hitting 7.9 regularly, we were flying. We won the leg on the way out as the wind was behind us most of the way. We arrived in just over 4 hours and 20 minutes which is the fastest time ever for me. We left at 0900 hours so we had the rest of the day to enjoy ourselves once we arrived.

I spent the rest of the day berry picking, finding tons of cranberries and some rose hips. The next day I spent the afternoon fishing and managed to snag a very small jack. It is the first fish I have caught, with a rod, for quite some time so I was happy. The poor fish was not pleased as he got snagged in the net but he lived to tell the tale and hopefully grow to become supper in a few more years. We had a wonderful afternoon, first we spotted a bear, he was a good size and was munching down on the berries we had been helping ourselves to the day before. Then a short time later Jacky noticed an otter swimming about in the weeds that we were scouring for jacks. The sleek animal's head just broke the surface as he headed down the bay. An eagle was majestically soaring about checking us out every once in awhile. We saw wildlife on the land, on the water and in the air, I caught a fish and the pot luck was to die for, life does not get much better than that!
The next day we awoke to a very sullen sky, the clouds were full of rain, but the front has switched the wind and we were going to race home with the wind at our backs again, what luck. There is one very fast boat in the fleet and we followed along in his wake until he disappeared into the mist. We held our own until we turned to sail the 12 miles up the bay to Yk and the wind was on our nose. We made it all the way without having to tack but we were not heavy enough to cut the waves, although we reefed early, the gusts kept slowing us down, I guess we should have rolled in more foresail, we ended up third. The rain was with us most of the way home, we both changed in mid race as our lower bodies were soaked to the skin. Once we were close hauled it became a bit harder to ignore the rain as it pelted into your face as you were peering ahead to see your course. I never felt really cold though and we were only 17 minutes slower on the way home so even though it was wet it was a fast race. The comforts of a tub full of hot water once I got in the apartment were very much appreciated.
I froze the cranberries, we will enjoy them all winter, the rose hips once again made a lovely syrupy jelly. Whenever I need a Vitamin C boost I will cook up a batch of pancakes or just pour some in a smoothy.
Hardy Northern Raspberries