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

Last Unalakleet Summer Picts

The view from our backyard July 5.

If you look closely, you can see a faint double rainbow in this second pict.

Alas, the days of our summer dwindle...

This season has been busy: moving into our new place, installing a new boat motor, fixing the pickup, tending to our wild backyard to create a usable space, and Jake working full-time. But even with all the activities, we've had a lot of fun just being a family together... lots of little hikes on the tundra & walks on the beach, boat and 4-wheeler rides, fishing and picnics, working & hanging out in the yard, blowing bubbles & throwing rocks into the ocean, playing ball, feeling Jonah kick more and more, and generally being silly to keep our often-goofy toddler company. We'll be heading to WA in a few days, and will see many of you (Yeah! We are excited to see you!!!), but it will be a fast trip, and almost immediately upon our arrival back home to UNK, the speed of our days will pick back up to a rolling boil. We'll still get in some good berry-picking, silver fishing, and outings... but they will be less frequent, and we'll have less time to post. Here are some of our last "relaxed" picts for this summer. Enjoy!

DJ taking a break from the hike to enjoy the wildflowersDaniel charming the camera
Dad & DJ working in the yard

DJ at the "summit" of one of our hikes. He's been a little trooper... making it up all the hills is actually quite a feat for someone with such short legs on very spongy tundra.
After a bath (to wash off all the dirt from a 4-wheeler ride).
Mom & Deej Hangin' Out
Janelle driving the boat (It's a little less scary to "read the river" with a more powerful, working motor.)
Daniel posing on a beach walk.
Jake & DJ tinkering around on a rainy afternoon

Hope you're each making the best of your summertime and having fun as well!

Never W/O The Camera Again

Up through Monday, June 30, we had taken our camera on every single outing. On Tues, July 1, we decided that we'd gotten enough picts for a while, and left the camera at home for the first time all summer. Never again...

It was early in the afternoon, (Jake's been going to work early and getting off at 3 P.M.), and it was sunny in the village but sprinkling showers upriver--the kind of day that makes rainbows, when we're really glad there's a canopy on our boat. Because of the time, weather, and the fact everyone else was still at work, we had the river to ourselves; Vance and Leona were the only other people we saw on the river during the entire outing.

I hooked and fought with my first king salmon of the season (woo-hoo!), but lost it close to the boat... got some more king strikes, but we only came home with humpies.

Done with our fishing, cruising back down the river, we saw a large shape in the channel just West of South River. Jake asked me what it was, and I joked, "A whale," thinking that it was probably just the roots or log of a large tree floating down the channel. As we got closer, it turned, and we saw an enormous rack in the water... attached to a moose! We know this is common. After all, we've found several moose and bear tracks along the banks every year. But we've never actually seen a moose fording the river before... we tend to see more around the Anchorage airport from the car or in UNK from a plane. We got to watch it swim all the way across, and DJ got a big surprise as it came out on the other side and became VERY tall. He said, "W-ow." It was a beautiful bull. Hunting season doesn't start until Sept. 1, and only 16 are allowed in our game unit this year... hopefully we'll see another moose when that time comes around too. But this was cool, anyway. Definitely a rarity for people from WA state who don't get a clear view of them in the wild that often. We're going out hiking, boating, or both every day now, and we'll be going out early again today--with the camera! Cross your fingers that we can catch one of the critters we've seen on camera so we can share with you.

Janelle

Fun In The Summertime

Got crabs? We do. Jake has been making a lot of Idaho jokes lately, saying that only there and in UNK would you bump into people and get crabs so easily... but I think we have the better end of the deal up here. They're not the biggest, but our Norton Sound Arctic King Crab are SOOOO sweet! Don't even need buttah. We don't have a crab pot, but we have a lot of nice neighbors and friends... our freezer is full of these guys (and they're fresh... they were still moving before we put them on ice). Mmm, mm, mmm!

On June 21, our friends Heidi & Herb tied the knot up on Army Hill. They had the best weather of the summer so far for their celebration, and we all had a good time.

A few of my choir girls from this year came to practice in our yard to get ready to sing & play a few songs at the wedding reception.

DJ with a bucket on his head. We don't do these things to him... he comes up with it all on his own.

Heidi & Herb saying their vows.

Everyone attending.

DJ taking a break up the hill with Jasmine and Carter.

A week later (as you've read) our boat motor came in, and we had great weather for both of our first two trips. Like normal on the Unalakleet National Scenic & Wild River, the water was clear, and we could see to the bottom all along North River, and watch the fish follow our lures to the boat as we reeled in. Sw-eet!

Jake & DJ ready to embark.

On Friday night we just took a ride. It was awesome. The motor was so quiet we could hear the water splashing, and the unsecured snaps of the canopy clicking against the boat (noises that have been constant but previously undetectable with the decibel level of our old motor) and we got on plane faster than we ever have before.






























Saturday was for fishing. We took our friend Reza with us, and although we didn't catch any kings, we got a few large graylings, some pinks, and a dolly... enough to have a great, fresh-fish dinner anyway. We also saw a river otter (sorry, wasn't quick enough to get a picture)... but it's always cool to see them--sooo cute! We caught some stick fish too :-) but had an overall good afternoon on the water.



















Can you tell we love our new motor? Woo-hoo! If you call and can't reach us from now 'til mid-July, we're probably upriver. :-)

Janelle