The Ever-Northerly Vetsches

Baby's "First" Camping Trip!

2008-04-04T22:55:00.001-07:00

Since the weather has been so balmy lately (-10C during the days!), this past weekend we made a camping trip out to the wall tent maintained by the Ski Club on Banting Lake.

It's a 7 miles ski out to the tent and somehow I thought that I was going to carry all my gear on my back. . . Dan quickly disillusioned me and our intrepid dogteam ended up hauling all six people's packs in Brent's sled. (Tika was less than amused at first when she realized what we wanted her to do but she quickly got the hang of it.)

We found the tent fully stocked with not only wood but two futons, (I was thrilled because I really hadn't been relishing the thought of my backpacking thermarest...), blankets, pillows, and even a caribou hide! The temperature supposedly dipped down to -30 that night but we stayed cozy and warm. After thinking about it, I realized that was the warmest I'd slept since about September. Go figure...

At the tent ready to go back the next morning:

(Dan - ready to "drive" the team - Brent, & Colleen)

Gunhild (sp?), who is visiting from Norway, ready to go & Liz testing out the trail...

Happy and WARM the WHOLE time!! :-)

Sub-Arctic Winter...

2008-02-08T16:22:00.000-08:00

Well with the temperature still hovering around -40 and the windchill creeping down below -50 (and the phrase "God-forsaken wasteland" creeping randomly into my brain - I dunno, must be pregnancy...), I decided it was a good time to update our blog.

For those who have been waiting for "baby" pictures, below is me at five months (taken this past weekend). People keep telling me that's not very big, but since the ultrasound showed a normal-sized baby, I think it's plenty big enough, thank you very much! :-)

And, better yet, here's the little guy (sure looked like a guy!) himself at about 18 weeks!

Lately he likes to wake up right as I'm falling asleep and move around for a bit - I figure he might get into boxing or Irish dancing when he's older... :-)

On the subject of pregnancy: I've noticed that people tend to follow a script when greeting you prenatally. First they ask "How are you feeling?" and then continue with "You look great!" Oddly enough, I've found I get more annoyed with the first line and, even though I know the second always follows no matter how you really appear and I should really feel patronized and lied to, I tend to appreciate it every time (funny what pregnancy will do to your mind!). In answer to the first question, however, at present I feel great and am back up to hour-long stints on the elliptical (or skiing when it's not so flipping cold!) after being too sick during the first trimester for much activity beyond walking and hiking, so that generally keeps me in a good mood and helps both baby and I to sleep soundly! :-)

Getting back to the weather, there's really not much to do at -40, so two weekends ago Dan and some guys from church decided to build a luge run in our backyard. (Well, from the top of the monument, through our backyard, finishing off with a drop by the mailboxes and shooting accross the road - fortunately it's been too cold for any of the neighborhood kids to be out to try it because we really can't afford any lawsuits at present...) I was a bit of a party pooper and decided my personal shoveling efforts would be better spent banking up snow around our drafty (but still beloved!) little house. We then had a bunch more people over to try out our hill and had cider inside on the stove and sausages outside on the barbeque!

Ski-joring at -35 with the "whole family."

My Ode

2007-09-25T23:23:00.000-07:00

How pert and ripe and red thou truly art -
To think I ravished once thy counterpart!
Which limp, bedraggled, faintly blushed
As new-made bride brought home from super-mart!

But Thee! Thy passion unrestain'd red
Drives thy diffident rival from my head!
Yours is maturity of taste refined
Compared to school-girl: mild and under-read.

Ne'er more mine eye shall take delight in form
So falsly plumped and waxed (but travel-worn).
Thy true beauty shall delight my senses:
Be but my tomato and I'll be newly-born.

Alaskan August!

2007-09-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

This August saw us out of bug-ridden and rainy Yellowknife to a beautiful summer in Alaska! We enjoyed biking, hiking, fishing, camping and (for me anyway) trail running on real trails again! To the left is a short hike we took on the way back to Anchorage after our family vacation of biking the denali highway. I couldn't bike because I hurt my knee biking a few days previously (well, OK, and then doing a 14 mile run the next day which included climbing a 4,000 ft peak. Yes, you were right Darla - at 22 I really need to be taking care of my fragile little body... LOL) so Zan and I and Tika drove the RV as support (see right).

We went on numerous mountain biking trips - most of which ended up with alot of mud and alot of fun!!

Dad took us fishing several times and it was with little suprise that I caught nothing... (I have yet to catch a fish in Alaska - or anywhere else really - to this day). Below is them fishing in the brave line of stubborn (ahem, "persistant") fishermen, and then me "fishing." When I didn't go, they were successful so I think that says something about my fish-related karma which has completly run over my dogma of "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again," leaving in its wake the replacement "Always fish with a good book or a stick of dynamite when available."
To the right is the crew who went Halibut fishing while Dad, Zan, my freind Hannah and I ran the Lost Lake Race which I contest was way more fun. I however have a t-shirt and hat while they came home with 80 lbs of Halibut which is not to sniffed at now matter how few endorophins were involved. :-)

(From left to right is Rodney, Dan, Mom, and Vanya.) Mom caught the biggest fish :-)

Below are family pictures - everyone had grown up quite alot in the past year (well, except for Mom and Dad!!) and it was hard to say good-bye to both them and Alaska yet again.

Some of the Denali wildlife suprised in their natural habitats while foraging for berries.

Ali and Becky going for a "swim" in a very cold stream...

And Mom and Dad using Dad's new environmentally-friendly push mower!

And finally the whole family!

Women of Faith (& Fun!) Retreat

2007-05-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

This past weekend (Friday night and all-day Saterday), we enjoyed the first annual (hopefully!) Women of Faith (& Fun!) Retreat out at Camp Connections 55km outside of Yellowknife. We couldn't have asked for better weather - God was smiling on us in solar form!! The theme was women of faith in the Bible and we had devotions around the stories of Hannah and Esther. It was also a wonderful chance for a bunch of "modern" women of faith to connect and enjoy each other and God's creation! Below is our group:

(Left to right: Annie, Debbie, Alea, Charina, Taren, Taylor, Jess, Kate, Brianne, Darla, Lorna, Jamie, Tara - Pam is taking the picture)

Friday night, Connie & Roseanne led us in worship. Pam graciously walked around waving "incense" (pic) in an attept to keep the bugs at bay... Jaimie led us into the story of Hannah, which led into a time of sharing stories of God's faithfulness, which then somehow led to the girls climbing trees until 1 in the morning at which point the caretaker came to tell us that there had been a "bear sighting," which effectively got us all into our cabins for bedtime -- probably what he intended! :-)

On Saturday, we enjoyed gorgeous 20-something degree weather as we read the story of Esther, decorated T-shirts,

paddled in the river, played capture the flag, make hemp necklaces, and went "swimming" in 2-degree water. I managed one dip, but the girls did 20 collective "water charges" in which they would begin from the top of the hill, run screaming down the beach en mass, dunk in the water, and run screaming back out up the hill.

Left is Annie decorating her shirt and below is her sister Charina . . .

Around noon we had a big game of capture the flag in the sand. Below is team "Red Rango" which had by far the best cheers and elaborate strategies but were still bested 2-5 (or maybe it was 1-5...) by the Blue no-name team. Go figure...

I think it was Tara's fault.

To the left is picture of her grabbing both of my "life-tails" simultaineously . . .

All in all, great fun was had by all and we finished the weekend off by celebrating Taylor's 13th birthday with an almost-surprise cake made by Barb. ("Well, everyone knows what dessert is except Taylor..." LOL, we love you Taren!!)

Christian Communism?

2007-02-28T20:21:00.000-08:00

The other day in youth group, my girls and I were discussing the concept of the early church sharing their possessions and having "no poor among them." One young lady said, "Oh, so it’s like Christian Communism!" Sure - just with God at the head instead of corruptible human leadership! Maybe if Israel had been originally forming as a nation in the days of Marx, we would be talking about "Comrade David" rather than King. And then instead of being taken over by the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian monarchic empires when they fell away from God’s covenant, they would be subjected to the domination of the American capitalistic empire. I asked her to expound upon that revelation: what did she think about the idea of "Christian Communism"? (Forget for a moment my general avoidance of "Christian" as an adjective.) She paused for a minute then slowly said, "Well, I think communism has some good ideas but it just doesn’t work in the hands of men." (Another gold star!!)

Christians in the mid to late twentieth century had a tendency to fear the idea of communism. (For today’s generation, I’ll simply explain that it was their version of the term "terrorism.") The whole idea of common property has connotations of Stalin’s box and Animal Farm. And yet today donation boxes in our churches are filled with second-hand cast off jackets and shoes which we would no longer wear anymore but are apparently just fine for charity. Oftentimes the donation box is simply an extension of the lost-and-found-box. We don’t even know the names or faces of those on the receiving end of our "charity" but still walk out the door in our third North Face jacket and smart new Sorels, smug at having actually done something to help a needy person. What would the early church say to this practice? The church in which "No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had." (Acts 4:32) What would Jesus say? "When I was naked you gave me your ratty old ski jacket from the eighties and when I was hungry you passed me on the street with a ‘God bless you - I wish well; keep warm and well fed.’" Marx has often been compared to Jesus - to the chagrin of the church. Was it the Dali Lama who said that there would be no need for Buddhism if Christians actually followed the teachings of Christ?

Today, however, it is not often we will sit in our church-potluck circles and lament the evils of communism. Christians today like to lambast the greed and corruption of capitalism instead. Capitalism: everything being driven by the high and mighty dollar, big business with their unscrupulous practices pushing the honest "little man" out of work. No wonder societal morality is dictated by MTV, Hollywood and overpaid athletes! We shake our heads with a "What-is-the-world-coming-to?" sigh and send up a brief prayer for Jesus to come back before returning to our plate of macaroni casserole and Tim Bits. Allow me to play the devil’s advocate and pose a question: What is the foundation to this inherently evil and corrupting economical system? We like to refer piously to the false-god Mammon, but really it’s our own checkbooks. Whether we like it or not, even as the body of Christ, we are consumers in terms of economics. The system we like to condemn operates on the basic principals of supply and demand. Who determines the demand? WE DO.

When Telus mobility announced its new business plan to add porn media as an optional feature to its customers’ monthly billing plans, where were the Christian families with all their values calling to cancel their service and switch to another company? Telus only received a few hundred complaint calls before rescinding this idea after its stockholders shared their misgivings. Imagine if every single self-proclaimed follower of Christ had called to cancel their service as a protest to such a policy! Next thing you knew, Telus CEOs would have been scrambling to create a Bible-Verse download service in order to keep their company afloat! We cannot sit back and condemn societal immorality around us while our monthly Sirius bill lines Howard Stern’s pocket and our chocolate, tea and coffee purchases support a system of laborer exploitation in third world countries. Honestly, how many of us support a child through Compassion Canada? And how many of us are wearing clothing potentially made by that child’s friend or sibling under terrible working conditions for scant pennies a day? I think Jesus might find quite a number of whitewashed tombs wearing Prada and Armani (never mind the Wal-Mart brands!) filling pews today.

The early church didn’t have to think about issues like this, but we don’t have that luxury. We live in a global society in which our purchases at Extra Foods may well affect a widow or orphan on the other side of the world. I don’t think I need to elaborate on what Jesus would say there. Christian Capitalism: where your money doesn’t go is just as important as where it does. And after all, it’s not ours in the first place is it? Christian Communism reminds us of that and invites others to join us as the corporate body of the God who is bigger than big business and strong enough to lift the oppressed from under the weight that crushes them – be it economics or Satan himself.

"All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. . . . They broke bread in homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." (Acts 2: 44-47)

Christmas Tree Shopping in Yellowknife. . .

2006-12-19T17:06:00.000-08:00

Above is Dan headed down the Christmas Tree Aisle at an undisclosed location. No, it's not the dump -- however, I did see a lovely artificial christmas tree there in the Household Department the last time I patronized that particular establishment (and look it up: that is the correct usage of that verb, Ali :-).

It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done . . .
After failing to get lost or stumble upon one of those marveous misadventures which we always seem to find when they are least appreciated (we weren't that far from the road and Dan did, I suppose, have to be at work in an hour), and after looking at our watches, we denounce one semi-decent unrepublican tree to be sentanced to Madame Chainsaw. Unfortunately I forgot my knitting. (Those of you puzzling over that remark would do well to read more Dickens, or Dumas, or for that matter even the illustrious and imaginative Baroness Orkzy. . . LOL)

On the right is me about to drop the tree and make a grab our rampaging little sleddog heading full tilt in my direction.

(Isn't she cute?)

Our castle on a rock

2006-10-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

At long last, here are some overly-due pictures of our house:

It's on a beautiful lot with cranberries, raspberries, black currants and wild strawberries. In the back "yard" (which in Yellowknife is not to be confused with a "lawn," as such suburban luxuries are still few and far between here due to lack of dirt), we even have a greenhouse! Some re-assembly required. . .

Below is the view from the front of the house which is seen through our picture window in front of the dining table - fortunately, that one's not getting plasticed for the winter. On the right in more of the property and a view of Old Town.

We enjoy all the modern conveniences of electricity and all the romantic rusticity of having to poop in a bucket. It is a one bedroom, 1/8 bath with a living/dining room, kitchen, and arctic entry/workshop. Our central heating consists of your choice (and wealth is choice is it not?) of either oil heater or woodstove in the middle of the house -- both of which must be started by match.
On the left is our dining/living room; the middle is the kitchen (much better than the apartment, hey mom?); and on the right we have the stoves and the ""bathroom."" (The honeybucket lives behind the cream-colored curtain - the white thing is just a trash can in case anyone is worried about our extreme lack of hygene...)

And finally . . .

. . . the guest house!

We are currently taking reservations for next summer and please be advised to bring your own water and linens. Just kidding! But you will want your bug nets, mosquito repellant, propane bottles, blow torches etc. to keep the bugs at bay.

Our new family member . . .

2006-10-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

. . . although not as cute as Murray and Esther's. . . That will come later for us :-) For now this one's name is Tika - a Maori concept for everything true and right and just. It's the opposite of Teka, which is everything false or unjust. Cool, hey? No, she is not named after the Petzl headlamp: that's spelled with two K's.

After fourteen months of paperwork and waiting and fees... :-)

2006-10-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

Well our big news for this week (although involving neither a nine-month period of expectancy nor explosions, mountains, car chases or bikes) is fairly exciting, or at the very least long-awaited. On Tuesday I got my Canadian permanant residency which means I can now work, study, and come and go the same as a citizen of this country. No more visas!! Anyone who has ever had to jump though immigrative (yes, I just made that an adjective) beurocratic hoops knows what cause that is to rejoice!