Ice Fishing

Happy Belated Holidays to you and yours, especially if we missed you by phone or card (although our cards were sent after Christmas, so you may still be waiting)! Our door is filled with cards and pictures from the people we love. Thank you! We miss you all.

Jake and Daniel have been taking advantage of some recent non-windy days by driving out on the river to try out the jig sticks. Since we don't have our own auger, Jake watches out our river-mouth-facing window to see where other people are fishing, and as soon as they leave, he bundles up himself and DJ and drives the 4-wheeler down to occupy the hole, minimum ice-scooping and no chipping required. (We've tried ice-fishing without an auger, and spent nearly 60 minutes with 3 people chipping away at the ice with a razor-sharp pointed, long metal pole ... and still had over 3 feet of ice to go to reach any water or fish... so now we either go with someone who has an auger, or find a whole that is fairly fresh so we only have a few inches of ice to chip through rather than several feet.) It reminds me of driving around Kalaloch Campground waiting to find our (the Gunnings') "ocean-front spot" -waiting for the previous tenants to vacate while we drove around over and over again to see their packing progress.

The last several days have been bitterly cold... too cold to fish, in my opinion, although a few "soldiers" have stayed the course and continued to catch smelt and tom-cod at -30 something Fahrenheit. We have been burrowed down, sipping hot cocoa and playing Wii while we wait for the thermometer to read at least -20 or higher before attempting any non-mandatory outdoor activities.

Other than the cold, we are doing quite well. Daniel and Jonah both seem to be changing daily... learning new things, keeping us on our toes (even when we should be sleeping, at times), growing, making us laugh, and being the centers of our little Unalakleet universe.

Take care, everyone... especially our Spokanite followers. We will keep you, the city, and the nearly 80" of melting snow in our prayers.

Janelle

Daniel Jacob Sven Snyder is 3!

Daniel had a lot of fun yesterday for his 3rd birthday. -Wish you all could have been there with us.

-Woke up ~ 4 a.m. saying/singing, "Happy birthday, me?, Happy Birthday, me?" We sent him back to bed. -Woke up later to find a big, Tonka dump-truck as b-day present #1. He ran around the living room trying to ride it or putting socks in it and dumping them back out.

When we got home, we all had Peace On Earth Pizza (as requested by the birthday boy). Mmm-mm.















He was excited about all of his presents, like this one (play video to see) from Papa Bill and Grandma Retta:


But of all the things he received, Daniel seemed to enjoy the card (play video to see) from his Great-Grandma Betty the most:


Afterwards Darlene, Shak, Travis (their Grandson), Karis, and Adrianna all came over for cake & ice cream (and Dar brought some agutak too). We sang happy birthday (play video to see) and played with DJ's big, foam world-map puzzle from Papa Gary and Grandma Pat:


Life is good.

Jonah is getting bigger. If you look at the LAST picture here, he looks nearly IDENTICAL to one of Daniel's baby pictures (also up close, but with a blue background, if you remember the one).
































This was my first week back at work. Jake goes into Anchorage for training on Sunday, and doesn't get back until Thursday, so I'll be a single, working mother for a week... I already appreciate Jake every day, but even the thought of how much harder next week is going to be for me makes me appreciate him more.

Janelle

Everyday Picts For Your Special Day!

Happy Birthday to "Papa Gary", "Gary", "Daddy" from Jonah Dathan, Daniel Jacob-Sven, Jake, and Janelle Snyder!

While hopefully everyone will enjoy these photos, this post was created today just because it is Gary Gunning's BIRTHDAY. It is in honor of you that these pictures have been lovingly (and with obscenely slow internet) uploaded. YOU get to be the first bestowed with all of our favorite pictures of the last month. You'll notice some differences in the picts: these span from Oct 9 through Nov 6; DJ and Janelle have lost weight, and Jonah has gained, of course... he's 9.95 lbs now, and getting longer every day... almost too big for the newborn outfits now that he's 5 weeks old (also TODAY). -Janelle

Halloween!

Our Skull-N-XBones Pumpkin
(It looked better before the wind blew out the candle, but we tried.)

Our Mud Room Door

Our TRICK-OR-TREAT Candy Dish
(The hand came down as kids reached for candy and said stuff in a spooky voice... made the kids jump... very nice.)

Jake & DJ coming home after Daniel had a thoroughly fun time, and suddenly requested to "Sleep in truck" and started fake snoring during their outing.

Daniel as ELMO
(Yes, he picked out the costume. He has a thing for the color red to start with, so the Spider Man costume just didn't have a chance once he saw this one.)

Jonah's First Holiday!

All four of us went to the school's Halloween Carnival. Jonah slept through it all in his puppy outfit, and Deej was a bit overwhelmed with all the people and noise (he got a bit grumpy and took on the character of Oscar rather than Elmo)... but all in all, we had a fine time. Then #2 and I passed out candy @ home while Jake took #1 out for Trick-Or-Treating.

In our old-fogey stage as parents of a newborn, and with me still healing, we gave up crashing any of the parties here in town for a little bit of sleep in our own bed. Although a part of me misses our carefree couple days when we could easily go out at any hour (and have more energy to go out in the first place), I am very happy that we have our boys! Nothing lost here. My 3 guys fill me up, heart & soul.

Happy Halloween, All! -Janelle

Our Newest Little Snyder

More picts to come... Jonah Dathan Snyder (1 day old, @ AK Regional Hospital)
Jonah and Dad (notice the stuffed pink flamingo that Daniel picked out as a present for mom in the hospital... I don't think Jake would have agreed to it if he didn't know how much I just LOVE pink flamingos... thanks to Grandma Betty) :-)
Our view of the Anchorage Mtns. from the hospital room.

New brothers DJ and Jonah with their Nana Pat.

My pregnant self a few days before Jonah was born, waiting at our friend Gayle's house in Anchorage.
There's a park right next to Gayle's. DJ and I had a great time going there every day to play in the leaves while we waited for Jonah to come.
We just started getting boxes of fresh produce shipped bi-monthly from Full Circle Farms. So far, we have been very satisfied... eating healthier, spending less money, and enjoying food we don't normally have access to here in the village. We'll see how winter affects the quality of the shipments, but so far, we're planning to continue doing this. Yey!
This sunset beach pict was taken just before we left UNK in Sept. to have Jonah. The slough is now frozen, there's lots of snow on the ground, and ice is starting to form in the sound as well. Hopefully everything will be frozen over before the autumn storms hit... then we won't get a flooded basement! :-)

Jonah, with freshly washed hair... 6 days old.

DJ standing in front of all the boxes from one shipment of our Anchorage shopping sprees. (We got in more boxes after this, but this was the most all at once. We were unpacking for 2 days.)

We're all doing well. Jonah is still sleeping during the day and waking up all night long, so we're sleep deprived... but happy. More picts coming soon! Love you all.

Janelle

Moose Hunt

On Monday morning Ryan Woodruff (the HS's new math teacher) and I left Unalakleet at 6:00 in the morning to go in search of moose. We were at the top of White Alice just in time for the sun to rise. We rode out a little past the end of the road to look out in one of the open fields. We were just getting ready to move on further down the trail when we heard some people coming down the trail behind us. We waited and saw Conrad Woodhead (Janelle's Vice Principal), Perry Corsetti (a former teacher at the school who is now in the DO), and Joel Oyoumick (a son of the Covenant Church's Pastor here in UNK). We sat and talked for a minute before heading down the trail a little further. Conrad, Perry, and Joel stopped off at a little knoll not far from where we met up at while Ryan and I headed down the trail a little further. Ryan and I stopped at another good vantage point and we thought we saw something moving down in the meadow. We started walking down the side of the hill. When we got most of the way down the hill we realized that our possible moose was just a big stump. While we were standing there looking around a huge bear came running out of the trees about 600 yards from us. We stood still and just watched it. The bear stopped in the middle of the meadow we were walking down to and started eating berries. I looked up at Ryan and we gave each other a high five as we started sneaking up on the bear. We climbed down into a little creek bed and started following it to the bear. The closer to the bear we got, the more excited we got. When we got within 300 yards of it I laid down on my stomach and took my time taking aim and working on getting a clear shot. I had my scope on the highest power as the bear walked into my line of fire. I squeezed the trigger and the Bear sat right down. It started to move again and I fired again. This time the bear sat again. I then tried aiming above the bear and fired again. I ended up firing 8 times at the bear and finally it ran off into the trees. Ryan and I walked up to where the bear had been and we looked all over the place for a blood trail and we couldn't find anything. We didn't realize that while Ryan and I were stalking this bear, Perry and Conrad had been sneaking down the hill towards us. They came down and joined us and Conrad told me that he thought I had hit the bear at least 3 times. We kept searching and searching, but could not find any sign of it (I was told by Willa Eckenweiler that her and her husband saw it alive and well again in the same spot Thursday night). After Perry and Conrad gave us a ride back up the hill we decided to go our own way and head back home. Ryan and I were planning to just go right back to town and look for some spruce hens to shoot along the way; Perry, Conrad, and Joel were going to explore one more road before coming back to town.

Ryan and I stopped one time to check the readiness of the cranberries when we heard Conrad and Perry shooting. We almost headed back up the road to see if they had shot something and needed any help. After hearing a lot of shots we decided that they were just messing around, so Ryan and I started back to town. Just after I crossed the bridge I saw a huge moose off to the left-hand side of the road, just walking slowly towards a big group of willows. Ryan had just finished taking some pictures of the bridge and pulled up behind me just as I got my gun reloaded and ready to go. We started following this moose through the marshy area it was in and had gone about 30 feet from the road when it disappeared into the willows. We tried to think of the best way to stalk it when it walked out of the willows broad side to us. (I'll post some pictures of the moose before the first shot when I get them from Ryan.) I dropped down to one knee and took careful aim and fired. The moose stopped walking and just stood there. I knew I had hit so I fired again and it was another hit. I was down to a total of 3 shells left in my rifle and knew I had to make them count. I started walking around to get another clear shot of the moose and shot it again. Still it didn't go down. I shot one more time to try and hit it in the head to finish it off. I missed and the moose started running. It didn't go very far when it finally fell to the ground. Ryan and I started yelling and shouting (he even knocked me to the ground and it reminded me of trying to block Nate Simmons at basketball since Ryan is also 6'7"). We started to walk up to the moose slowly when it started to get up and I fired my final shot into its head. I then laid my rifle down and drew my pistol. When we got to the moose I fired two shots into his head and we left to go get the 4 wheeler and cart. We ran into Perry, Conrad, and Joel at the road, and they drove out to the moose to give us a hand. We were so thankful for the help they gave us. Ryan and I would have been there forever it wouldn't have been for them.



After we got back to town there was even more work to do. Janelle had Adrianna, Shelley, and Karis there waiting to help Ryan and I to cut, process, and package all of the moose. Adrianna has posted some pictures of this process on her blog, so you should all check it out.



Today the swelling from my bug bites has finally subsided. (I got bit by gnats so bad that my arms and hand swelled up to the point where I was taking 2 Benedryl every 4 hours all week long 'til Thursday night.) Because I could finally use my hands and arms again, I was finally able to cut the antlers off the head this morning. They measured 58" wide and it took me about an hour with a hand saw to cut it off. So now the antlers are bleaching and we can finally get rid of the smelly head. We have now given away most of the meat that we'll be sharing to people in the community. (It is Eskimo tradition to give away most of the meat from your first catch, and we have many people in the community to be thankful to for their generosity to us over the last 6 years, so we have shared with many people.) We ate fresh moose heart during the week, and enjoyed our first moose roast last night - yum!

More picts and posts to come. We've been crazy busy since returning to UNK the first week of August, and have gotten behind on our blogging. Take care. Love you all.

Jake