not too much going on in our neck of the woods these days. the weather is either cold and snowing or clear and really cold. and it always seems that when it "warms" up to about -20;the wind comes up to give you that wicked windchill. you know you are an optimist when you think of -20 as warming up. people go around saying things like "wow, t-shirt weather!" the other one I like is "just think only four months to go!" when refering to how long til spring. Only four months....only?

Miranda couldn't find coleman one day and guess where he was? yup he climbed up on Harley's bike and was sitting there going vroom vrooom, when I came in, I think he thought he was in trouble, cuz he just started climbing off right quick. in the next pic you can see coleman err maybe its rainman, solving rubiks cube. charlene with her chill on and in the last pic coleman with an almost full charge on. the humidity in here is really low and when those kids get on the couch and play the static charge is crazy. coleman likes to try and kiss you when he's all charged up. it sounds like velcro getting ripped apart in here. there was another pic with coleman looking at the camera with all his hair straight out but i must have deleted it off camera by mistake. If you haven't seen Ice Pilots nwt yet, check it out.

yeah that's right it's me, coleman

the family

we bought harley a brand new dirt bike down in alberty

Beckers and charlie brown build a gingerbread house

Coleman was grabbing these red balls on the sly and stashing them all in one place on the tree-til mom barked at him. We had a cold snap, I shot this pic at three in the afternoon, temp -44. My new trainees are on station now and when they came it was -14 and they were all like "this is'nt so bad" then wham! -40's for a week. but they are still here, so they're game.

We went down to peace river in alberty to do some shopping last week. 11 hours down, freezing drizzle, deer all over the GD highway-it was awesome! we bought a special someone something very special. It was the whole purpose of our trip, I would elaborate but who knows if this person might BLOG snoop looking for hints. I 'll fill yall in after christmas.

I got myself this wicked telescope back in october and it just came in now, this thing is so powerful I should be able to see human artifacts on the moon. And way up top the coolman coleman.

Merry Christmas to you too Mike, and sis I will endeavor to update more often, sadly no hope at all for me to start facebooking, i am way too conspiracy theory freak for that. but I will post on christmas and show how much we love jesus and the economy by how much we spent, we must love them both an awful lot. Frank and Cathy thank you for the card and merry christmas to you both from all of us.

Two of the most popular shows on TV right now are shot in the Nortwest Territories. I think everyone has probably heard of Ice Road Truckers on Discovery and History channels, the new one is called Ice Pilots NWT. I made a non-speaking cameo appearance on Ice Pilots on wednesday night. Charlene was quite impressed to see dad on TV. I think they re-show it on history channel on sunday, if anyone wants to see me standing quietly in my office. This episode wasn't as exciting as the first two but still pretty good, (better than ice road truckers) maybe i'm biased as the truckers never put me on TV. Always thot my first national TV appearance would be on COPS or America's Most Wanted. I'll tell everyone in blogville the same thing I've told everyone here, "Don't be embarassed to ask, of course you can have my autograph!"

well what a surprise, a blizzard for hallowe'en. At least this year there was room in charlie's costume for her parka. -19.0 out side this morning, so no reprieve from winter. The ferries are due to stop running today, so we'll be taking out a second mortgage on the house to buy a jug of milk. Steven (of the burnt legs) phoned from CFB Borden the other day-basic is going well for him. Well that's all for now, got a day off, got the kiddos...maybe go chicken hunting(charlene loves it).

Frank, yuppers, geese flying after legal dark-and although there are no published IFR approaches into Willow River, because it's class "C" airspace they can get away with it. In all fairness to the geese tho, the weather was VFR at the time. We've been aggressively squeezing the last drops of summer out of '09 but alas winter arrived right on schedule. Every year everyone says the same thing "maybe the kids won't have snow for hallowe'en'

yeah right, the globe ain't that warm yet. It doesn't matter what costume you buy...the kids all end up dressing up as arctic explorers, with parkas and all the rest.

The willow river was starting to freeze over when we went down last weekend, by the end of the weekend she was froze. We pulled our boat in and pulled miranda's mom's boat in as well.

We have a 1000 liter water tank on our deck and we drained it before it froze solid, it made some neat ice sculptures under the deck.

Charlie Brown makes another trip to the wood pile. Gotta go, gonna grab some lunch and head down to willow. Solo trip this time. just me......WOO HOO!!

Well it's been awhile (more blog posts are started with those four words than any other four)

What have we been up to? the usual, working and weekends at willow river.

Steven of the burnt legs has left and gone off to the military- I haven't heard from him yet but his aunt told me he was having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new way of life. So lots of overtime at work(like I need more of that) but we have two people at school that are doing well

so looking forward to being fully staffed. When I reach that holy day, I'm considering just working eight hours a day mon to fri 8 to 4... AAAAaaahh aaah(that's angels singing)

the pics are all pretty much what ya see is what ya get. Although it was pretty cool that Charlie Brown made and cooked her own hamburger on the fire for the first time. That's my girl!

Another first was me Coleman and Charlie all going for a ride on Quadzilla.

Any guesses on the first pic?