Ja, das ist sehr gut

We have had a guest at our house for the last few days.  A group of German students accompanied by two of their teachers arrived in Virginia Minnesota last Saturday evening.  We have had Inkari (who is one of the teachers) staying with us.  It is fun to learn about life in Germany.  I am impressed with how well she can speak English.  I took two years of German in high school and don’t remember much.  She has been visiting classrooms both in Virginia schools and in Nett Lake school this week. Tomorrow they are visiting the underground mine.  I am jealous.  I have always wanted to take one of the tours there.  We hope she’s having a good time with us.  Its always scary being the representation for your country.  😉

Rain

Its been a while since my last post.  The days of snow covered ground have dicipated into the soggy soil below.  As the ice melts away from the shore we’ve scurted along the the mirror smooth water in our aluminum canoe.  The ice moves around in the wind and can cut you off if you are out for too long.  The aluminum canoe allows us to be mini ice breaking boats if we do get a little trapped.

With all this rain coming down and some milder temperatures I am getting more and more anxious to be finished with school.  I have 24 more days with kids and 25 more days of work.  Not like I’m counting.  I really can’t wait for our trip to Austrailia.  It will be nice for Erin and I to get out and about again.  We had a balst over in Ireland, and I think three weeks in a little camper will be a perfect way to start our summer break.  We will be in Southern Australia, so it won’t be a tropical vacation being their winter and all, but watching the penguins run up on shore and checking out the occasional winery will be very relaxing.

We went down to Baxter yesterday for Axton’s second birthday party.  He sure is getting big.  It was nice to catch up with the Svirs.  They have another little one on the way, so they will be busy for sure when the new one comes along.  Wonder what Axton will think of having a younger sibling.

On a sad note, my little dell mini bit the dust today.  I had it set up taking a time lapse for the last 5 days.  It was taking a picture every 5 minutes and when it did it would make a little beeping noise.  I woke up this morning and didn’t notice the beep at all through out the day, so I went over to check on it.  The screen was black and usually it would have the screen saver going, so I tried to move the mouse and no go.  I did some further checking and after a little chat with Dell support Im sending it back in sometime this week.  So for my first Dell purchase this doesn’t boad so well.  Im thinking its just the power board in the laptop that went bad preventing it from powering up the battery or running the computer.  So it shouldn’t be too difficult to fix.  It’ll be interesting to see if the time lapse was saved at all.  We’ll see I guess.  The support guy said that the turnaround time would be about 7 – 10 days, so we should have it back in time for our trip to Australia.  I’ll update you when I find out more.

Well time to get to my school work done.  Have a great week.

Vermilion Falls

Stacy and Dylan drove out to the house this morning to join April, Jesse, Jim, Erin, and I out to Vermilion Falls.  We hopped in the car and took off towards Crane Lake.  Its a bit of a drive, and since we took the back gravel roads which are pretty sloppy with all the snow melting it was even a bit longer.  We got to the road heading towards the falls only to find it hadn’t been plowed yet.  We put the vehicles in 4-wheel drive and continued down the 4 mile road.  When we got to the “drive way” into the parking area it was even more covered in snow and was heading up a hil, so we parked the cars and began our hike there.

We were hoping to catch the ice breaking up and being forced through the narrow gorge, but when we got to the river we found it already open.  It still is a fun place to visit.  There is a ton of water rushing through there.  We took some pictures and had lunch on a picnic table.

All throughout our day in at the falls we were having mini snowball fights.  The snow was the perfect consistency for making snowballs.  Dylan was a fierce competitor and was always ready for a battle.  After we finished eating Jim had the idea of making a snowman.  It didn’t take too long and we had a very respectable snowman to greet any visitors in the next couple of days.  I don’t know how long he’ll last, but as long as the skies continue to be covered with clouds and the temps stay in the 30’s it could be some time before he withers away.

We then headed back to the cars and drove to Orr where we filled our car with gas and our tummies with A&W root-beer floats.  They sure are tasty, but make it quite difficult to drive and work the spoons filled with the bubbly ice cream to your mouth.  We headed back to the house where we relaxed and had some dinner.

It sure was a nice way to spend a Saturday.

Half way there…

Yesterday a new pipe was installed between Jim’s house and ours.  This new pipe would bring the ever precious clear liquid used to not only replenish ourselves, but our poor dehydrated Christmas tree.  Unfortunately even though the line was good to go coming into the house, since the pipes under the house hadn’t been used in a week they had all frozen solid.  🙁

Last night I worked at the Virginia High School Hockey game against Princeton.  The final score was 9 – 3 with a Blue Devil win (Virginia).  I was in charge of taking tickets at the door.  Erin gave me a call to let me know that the pipe had been installed, but we still didn’t have running water.  I told her that I’d pick up a heater at L&M before coming home.

My friend Tony came to the game with me.  I asked if he’d watch the door for me while I ran off to buy a heater.  He was kind enough to leave the stands and tear tickets apart.  I drove over to the store and found that there were a few different options for heaters.  I knew that I needed one that put out enough heat to heat the whole underside of the house, but one that wouldn’t burn the place down.  Its kind of a catch 22.  The two “bigger” heating options were a diesel heater and a propane heater.  I knew that diesel would be easier to obtain, and not require a special tank.  Since it was already 7:45 in the evening, I figured getting a propane tank filled would be a bit of an ordeal, so I opted for the diesel heater.  Turned out to be a 40,000 BTU “ReadyHeater”.

I went back to the game an let Tony head back to the stands, and finished taking tickets till the second intermission at which point I joined Tony and Steph (another teacher at VHS) to watch the third period.  Since Virginia was so far ahead, the Princeton team seemed to play a bit more dirty.  There were a few questionable hits and ensuing penalties assessed to curb such behavior.   The game was a lot of fun.  Hockey is definitely my favorite sport.

I got home around 10:30 after picking up some diesel from the Cook gas station.  Since it was kind of late, I didn’t mess with the heater and just went to bed.

Today Erin and I ran into town and visited with her grandparents and then stopped by the hardware store to buy a couple pieces of angled stove pipe to attach to the end of our ReadyHeater hoping to divert the hot air away from any combustible areas of the house.  We got back out to the house and found that neither piece of stove pipe would fit the heater.  We talked to Jim who was on his way back up from the cities.  He wasn’t too jazzed up about our new heater being a bit concerned that it might burn the house down.  He told us about a heater he had set out in the garage that we should try instead.  So I ventured up to the grage to find this miracle heating unit.  This is what I was presented with…..

I know… Like your thinking…. Really… this is going to heat up the entire underside of the house and thaw out all of our water pipes?  Here is the comparison between what I bought, and what was left in the garage.  Which do you think would handle the operation a little better?

So we plugged in the little one until Jim came home.  Unfortunately the breaker was popped by the heater and not much was accomplished in that time.  So when jim was there we set up the bigger heater.  We were still concerned that it might start the hosue on fire, so I stood outside for a while to make sure everything was under control.

After about 10 minutes of this über heater we had dripping in the kitchen.  After about 30 minutes we had running water in the kitchen.  At 1 hour we had dripping in the bathroom, and at 2 and a half hours we had running water at all faucets and our drains finally were thawed out.  We are leaving the water running and the heater going to make sure that all of the ice has been cleared out, but we are finally back to showering at home and having the ability to flush our toilet without dumping water from a 5 gallon bucket into the back of the toilet first.   I’d say that this was a successful weekend.

Ohh before the hockey game yesterday, Tony and I went out for dinner and then headed over to the curling club in Eveleth where we hung out with an Olympic bronze medalist and watched curling for about 45 min.  I think I’d really get into curling if I were closer to a curling club.  Its just not that feasible with a 50 mile drive.  I’ll probably go and throw a few stones this winter.  It was a lot of fun watching the “professionals” work their magic on the ice Friday night.  It sure is amazing how accurate they are.   I am looking forward to finishing up school this coming week and enjoying the Christmas break.  I hope you all have a very safe and enjoyable holiday season.

An end to the week…

I was able to sleep in on Saturday which was great.  I didn’t get up till 10:00 AM.  It was a beautiful day out with the sun and bright blue sky making the new snow sparkel on the frozen lake.  I went out and did some shoveling to get the steps cleared off of both Jims place and ours.  I then fired up the snow blower and headed down to the lake in an attempt to get the skating area cleaned off again.  I quickly found out how out of shape I acutally am.  When using the snow blower you have to lift up on the handle bars the whole time so that it scrapes the ice as clean as possible.  In doing so my biceps were quickly tired out.  I then came up to the house and did some looking on craigs list for a four wheeler with a plow.  That would be the best way to keep the ice clear.

Saturday afternoon I headed over to Hoyt Lakes to hang out with Kate and Tony.  We went bowling with Kates three kids.  It was fun to watch them wrestle with the heavy bowling balls.  There were a couple of times the rolling technique looke like a shotput.  After rolling the one game we headed back to Kates for some Lasagna.  After dinner we watched 5 minues of “Back to the Future” with the kids and then they went to bed.  Kate Tony and I then played a game of Farkle and I hit the road.  On the way home I got a bit lost and drove about 10 miles towards Two Harbors before realizing I was going the wrong way.  I got back on track and then came across a car full of High School kids in the ditch.  I turned around to see if they were okay about the same time a police officer showed up.  So I continued on my way home.  I had to drive relatively slow because the roads were a bit unpredictable.

Today has been nice and relaxing.  April and Laura stayed the night, so we’ve been watching tv and pretty much not doing anything.  I think Im going to run into town and pick up a christmas tree.  We were going to go cut one, but with hunting going on I think it might be a bit safer just to buy one.

Photos of that to come soon.

Finally Friday

The week has finally come to an end.  To cap off the week I successfully broke the school districts website this morning.  It was only visually down for about 5 min.  It wasn’t fully restored for a few more hours.  I won’t go into the nerdy details too much, but it involved a corrupt file being uploaded causing the site to not work.  I have since made a complete backup of the entire system just for such an occasion.

Erin and I decided to go out to a movie and dinner tonight.  So while I was waiting for her to drive over from school Tony and I went out for a tasty beverage.  When Erin got to Virginai we headed out to the mexican resturant for dinner and caught up on the day.  After that we went and did some grocery shopping before heading to see 4 Christmases at the theater.  The movie was pretty funny.  I really do like Vince Vaughn.  After the movie we made the 40 mile drive home in a pretty heavy snow storm.  It was very difficult to see at times, and the road was less than visible.

Its very nice to have the week done and better yet have the opportunity to sleep in tomorrow.  More than likely I’ll be up at 8:30 feeling like I’ve slept forever.  Crazy to think back to the days when I’d sleep till 2:00 in the afternoon.  Man that was nice.

Vancouver Visit

Erin and I headed out to Vancouver to visit Josh, Stacie, Abbie, and James.  It was a great weekend.  We got to relax and catch up on the last year.  We went out to dinner in Portland, and even checked out Bolt in 3D.

Here is a picture of my great family….

It really was a fun time..  A very relaxing trip and a much needed break from work.  The only difficult thing was having to come back to work.  I’ve decided that you get into the grind of things and don’t really realize whats going on in your life until you step back and take a break from it all…  I’m kinda hoping that I get back into the grind in a hurry so the weeks don’t seem like they are dragging along.

We look forward to our next get together.