Chez Wilson

NOTE:  I apologize for the way this blog has published itself.  I do not want to remove any pics due to the nature of this post, and all the editing of lines and pictures seems to create more problems.  I am sure you will concern yourselves more with the actual words and pics than their positioning, but I wanted to mention that Blogger seems to have a mind of its own today.

CHEZ WILSON

It has occurred to me that I have not given you a tour of our house, and I can't believe I forgot about it!  When I mentioned that to the kids, they said, "Just wait before you take pictures of our rooms!" and they scrambled off (voluntarily I might add) to clean them before I snapped a pic to preserve for all posterity and to present to our friends and family.  Ha!  I should have tried that earlier!

The first thing about our house that we love is that it is a three-bedroom house and NOT a two-bedroom apartment.  Everything has its place and everything in its place, which was definitely not the case in London.  Our place was always cramped and cluttered because we could not fit our stuff into such small, close quarters.  When it was always cluttered, it becomes a struggle just to keep things organized...and cleaning like dusting and windows, etc. happen far less frequently because it's exhausting just to organize.  Now, however, since everything has a place to be stored, it is absolutely lovely to pull out the dust rags and the glass cleaner, although it does ice if you spray it on ultra cold windows!  You have to spray the cleaner on the rag first, and then wipe.  A friendly tip from the Wilsons of the North!

Some of you who have visited with us via Skype or Facetime have had the grand tour already, but I am sure you will enjoy looking at these pics of our house nonetheless.  It sure was fun to take them knowing I would be posting them for all to see what a northern house looks like.   There are families two to three times larger than us who live in houses half the size, although this house is small compared to a typical 3-4 bedrom house in Southern Ontario, mainly because it doesn't have a basement, and that we have one common area, rather than a living room and a family/TV room.  We are, however, used to that since we all used to pile one upon each other in the living room in our apartment!

We shall begin with the deck.  Every house in Tuk, and in fact throughout any place where there is permafrost has some sort of deck leading to the front door because the house is built on pilings.  Some decks are just a few steps, and then there is ours, which could hold a little gathering of friends come spring if the bugs aren't too bad. To the left of the picture are the stairs leading down to our driveway, but below the railings of the deck the driveway extends to the back of the property to the back entrance to the house.

Every house must have a front entrance, and up here every house in fact, enters into what we affectionately call a mudroom.  This is the place where you come stumbling in from the blustery wind and cold temporarily blinded from the glasses fogging.  Anybody who has to put on snow pants, parkas, boots, hats, scarves, as well as gloves/mittens and any other items deemed necessary to keep one warm in polar temperatures needs not only a room in which to dress and undress, but also a complete room dedicated to the storage of said items.  A closet just will not do when you have five people (and remember what I said about three kids being a small sized family for up here) who all have at least one set of what I just described. It is especially difficult when we all arrive home at once, and are unloading into the various storage bins I have put into place for organizational purposes, although some members of our family who shall go nameless (Patrick and Charlotte) think that the kitchen is a nice spot for their hats and mittens.  This is an ongoing thing - trying to teach good habits now that everything has a place. The kids still say, "Oh yeah!  I can put that away now!".  Our front entrance is the door you can see to the right of the house.  We keep the mudroom door closed unless we are expecting visitors or somebody home soon to heat it up extra well.  There is some heat to it so our feet don't freeze in cold boots, but not as much as throughout our house. We have to keep the door to the mudroom closed because the cold air seeps in through the front door, and we freeze!!

Our comfortable kitchen

When you enter our house from the mudroom, you spill out into the kitchen by the refrigerator.  Most houses do not have a dishwasher, so the fact that we have a portable one is pretty nifty.  We are grateful for it, too!  For those of you who really know us, the fridge magnets are part of our Wilson Family signature.  We have been buying magnets during our adventures since before James was born, and if you go somewhere, you have probably received a request from us to bring us back a magnet. When my mom and dad got married, they received a bell with a wall mount.  My mom has always had it mounted in the kitchen and when she was ready to call us to dinner, she'd ring the bell.  After a move, my mom always felt that she wasn't 'home' until her dinner bell was mounted in the kitchen.  Well, for the five of us, we aren't home until our fridge magnets are displayed.  The day the kids came home from school and saw the magnets they all commented "Good.  We're home now." There is not a tonne of cupboard or counter space in this kitchen, but we make do.  I store a lot of our overflow in the back room.  The eating area accommodates all of us quite nicely.  The table and chair set came with the house. Since we have a few laptops laying around and the kitchen table is where they tend to accumulate, I put a little table in the corner, and when the laptops aren't in use, they are stored there.

The wood stove

Our living room is roomy and spacious. We have our orange walls, which to some people are a curiosity, but when you live in darkness for much of the time, these orange walls are cheerful and cozy, and match well with our olive coloured furniture. These pics were taken shortly after our flood while the living room floor was pulled up.  It has since been replaced.  We are lucky enough to have a wood-burning stove, and use it half-heartedly.  Wood up here is very expensive, and the wood that was already here for us was terrible and not split to the dynamics of our wood stove.  Greg and I are not exactly woodsmen ourselves so this means getting wood split for us that meets the dimensions of our wood stove, and that is even more money. Now that we are in the dregs of winter, our heating bills are not actually that bad, so we keep wood around in case we lose power, but that's all.

The big white thing is our water tank, which
accepts daily water delivery.

Hurray for laundry!!

The door to the right of the wood stove is our utility room.  This (to the right) is what you see when you enter the laundry room, but if you look behind the door you see this (see above, left).  The humungous white tank houses our water.  It is about 5.5 feet tall, 6 feet long and 5.5 feet wide. This is our water tank, which accepts our daily water delivery. You can see the pipes in the background on the right which lead to the hose outside.  Everyday, the water truck makes its daily delivery, pulling up outside the back of the house, and then you can hear the water hose being attached, and finally, the rush of water filling the tank.  We have to budget our water in a sense.  Since there are five of us needing to shower and/or bathe, dishes to be washed, toilets to be flushed, a dishwasher to run, hands to clean, and of course the never ending laundry pile, we have to keep track of who and what is using water and why.  We often wake up in the  morning and throw as many people as possible into the shower so that way we use up our water from the day before and will have a full tank with which to do laundry.  This means running the dishwasher often late at night just before we go to bed, or waiting until we hear the delivery truck pull up and get it going then.  We learned a few things the hard way, but we're pretty good at budgeting now. There is also our heat pump and hot water heater, which send the hot water through our baseboard heaters to heat the house.


Anyway, if you stand facing the utility room door and turn toward your right, you will find find a hallway with a step up.  The door on the left is THE ONE bathroom in the house.  We have had to develop some flexible rules about bathroom usage at our house, and here they are for your reading pleasure:

The one and only!

1.  Never lock the bathroom door.  Ever.  Too many of us need to use the bathroom at one time or in an emergency to allow for privacy.  Sorry.
2.  If you are in the shower, the toilet is free to use if the toilet user is unable to hold it.
3.  Towelling dry after a shower occurs behind the shower curtain in the tub so if somebody has to go while you are in there, it can happen.
4. Toothbrushing is not a private thing, nor is make up and brushing/blowing dry hair.
5.  Be kind about how many Wilsons can fit in a bathroom, because sometimes that happens, especially with toothbrushing.
6.  Smells happen.  Get used to it.
7.  Shower on your assigned day.  Kids shower at night and grown ups have the option to shower at night or in the morning.  If you are going to shower in the morning, say something to the other adult(s) in the house the night before to plan ahead. This applies on weekdays mostly.

Since we have figured out these rules, life with one bathroom works well. Oh yeah, and the bright red walls sure do wake you up in the morning.  I tend not to turn on the light for trips to the loo in the night due to the vibrant colour.

James on the right...

Where you have to step up just before going down the hall to the bathroom, you have to step down just before entering the boys' room.  This funny little step raises the bathroom up which allows for all the pipes and plumbing to be under the floor (rather than underground due to the permafrost and extremely cold temperatures) with the grey water pipe running outside the side of the house to an outdoor holding tank.  There is another truck that comes around daily to eliminate this waste.  We refer to it as the sewage truck, but we are the only ones who use this phrase in reference to the truck.  Everybody else Tuk born and bred, plus those who have been around a while refer to it simply as the s*@t truck.  Sometimes when the sewage truck is draining the tank, the pipes are accidentally bled dry, which means the toilet water gets sucked out of the toilet and all your pipes are empty.  What happens swiftly afterward is something unique to Tuk, and that is the ungodly smell that begins to emanate from anything with a faucet.  I am sure you can image what it is. If we are home when the sewage truck arrives, we send somebody to the bathroom to watch the toilet water.  If it gets sucked out, we quickly flush the toilet and turn on the taps in the bathroom and kitchen as well as the tub.  I also turn the washer on for a minute too.  The problem is, if we are all out of the house, such as on days when we are all at the school, the odour hits you like a tonne of bricks upon walking in the mudroom door!  A few minutes with the taps running eliminates it, but it's still gross.  Luckily, this is not unique to us....it's a Life in the North thing.

At the end of the hallway is the boys' room.  Just before their door there are several shelves which are supposed to serve as a linen closet.  One interesting thing about this place is that there are no closet doors.  The mudroom has visible hooks and rods for hangers but no actual door, nor do any of the bedrooms or the linen closet.

...and Patrick on the left.

The boys share a room, as always.  They actually like sharing a room and have said that they almost need one another to fall asleep at night.  Here they are in their room, which they cleaned up just for you! Almost all of their bedroom furniture was provided, which is great because the boys used a bunk bed from Ikea before this.  They were getting to an age where bunk beds were too juvenile for them, and the Ikea bunk especially would not hold them for much longer.  Had they had sturdy, maple beds that stacked on top of each other, maybe, but since these were Ikea it was time to leave those behind in London.  Here is a pic of the boys' closet, and as you will see, there are no doors. I don't know if other houses are like that up here, but for us it is yet another Life in the North thing.

Door free

Once again, if you go back to our living room and stand facing the utility room there is a hallway to the right which leads to the bathroom and boys' room, but if you pass the wood stove (see pics above of the living room) there is a hallway which leads you down to Char's room and Greg's and my room.  At the end of the hallway there is a door, which leads to an uninsulated room with a freezer and an external door.  Since fire code states that every house must have two exits, this is it.  The external door does not have a lock, which means anything you put out there is up for grabs if somebody decided to help themselves.  We have never had a large freezer before, so we use it to some extent.  However, why plug it in and use it when you can just put the items you
want to keep frozen on some shelves we set up and then let good ol' Mother Nature do her thing?  We keep the door to the house at the end of the hallway locked.

The boys enjoying some time in their room

Anyway, when you are looking down the hallway, Char's room is on the right and Greg's and mine is on the left.  Char hit the jackpot when we arrived here.  The little girl who used to live in this room had parents who painted her room in pale pink and purple diamonds, with a clever use of painting tape.  This definitely adds to the charm of Char's room, although a lot of it she decorated herself with her art work from school as well as other items she has created in her spare time.

The pink light!

The room is quite long and spacious with the door in the middle of the interior wall.  When I look to the left, there is her bedroom (and the cool pink light she insisted on turning on so you can enjoy its pinkness) and to the right you see the dresser, her art desk and to the far right...her closet sans doors.  Any of you who know and love our Charlotte will remember that one of our 'fond' nicknames for her is Hurricane Charlotte since she is known for leaving a trail of destruction behind her wherever she goes.  This is improving a bit with age, but we are most grateful that she now has a spot of her own in which to dump, and every other weekend,
she is responsible for the organizing and cleaning of her room.

Charlotte's art desk and dresser

As for our room, it is big enough to house our bed, which is king-sized to accommodate two Extra-Large Wilsons and a pipsqueak who often cuddles with us.  While it is not a designer room, it is warm and serves its purpose.  One day in the house of my dreams, my bedroom will be an oasis where I can retreat, complete with an enormous bathtub and room for a TV and sitting area, but for now...I'm happy to have a bed and dresser in a room with a closet, doors or not.




Well, there you have it, folks.  Our happy home in the North.  It houses us quite contentedly and has become our own refuge.  A calm, safe and loving environment in which we laugh, cry play and pray. This is our own little piece of the North, complete with an ocean view - the Arctic Ocean that is! While we understand that visitors will be few and far between, we promise that anybody who makes the two day plane ride to experience life in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories will receive a plate of chocolate chip cookies and some hot chocolate with marshmallows.

Don't forget your longjohns!

The Ice Road

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

For a Valentine's treat, Greg and I decided it was high time we shook the dust off us, grabbed the kids, hopped in the van and took a drive down to Inuvik for the day yesterday.  What fun! We had been going to go two weeks ago, but then there was the blizzard. One would do well to stay inside and completely off the road during a blizzard and that is exactly what we did.  Last weekend we were supposed to go on Sunday for my birthday because James and Patrick had entered a project in the area Education Authority's Heritage Fair about video games, and the judging was on Sunday, but the weather did not cooperate again.  Strike two.

It would seem that the third time's a charm, and yesterday morning we were off.  From May to December, Tuktoyaktuk is considered a remote community of 1,000 people accessible by plane, barge, and boat - provided it's big enough and you have plenty of fuel.  It is expensive to travel here and even more expensive to ship goods up here, thus the shipping charges are reflected in the prices. From December to April, however, we have the luxury of the ice road, which is an annual plowing of a wide path down the Arctic Ocean to the McKenzie River across the thickest parts of ice from Tuk to Inuvik, as well as Aklavik and other smaller communities up here.  This means that more goods and important, heavy items can be shipped from all over and it costs significantly less than it would to fly them in.  Currently, there is major construction underway to create a permanent road between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, and so right now on the ice road there are loads of transport trucks coming up with giant parts for equipment and for the road itself.  It is amazing!  Groceries are also coming up via truck as well, which means grocery prices are less right now too and there is more selection.  The Fruit Man is making his appearances, too.  He comes with loads of fresh(er) produce and other discounted grocery items and sets up for the day before moving on to another community.

Inuvik Regional Health Centre - Your PRIMARY
Health facility.....get it?

The enormous Northern Store in Inuvik.  Can you see the
Catholic Church the right?  It's dome shaped.

Since all the ice roads from the various outpost communities meet up in Inuvik, this small town becomes the central meeting place for all of these people, and the hotels, restaurants and shops do a booming business.  Prices are much cheaper and it sure is fun to sit at the one traffic light in town, drive on paved roads, and visit a variety of stores.  There is no Walmart, clothing stores, bowling alley, or movie theatre, but there is an indoor swimming pool/hockey arena complex, a Home Hardware and enough food stores to give you a variety of items that you can't find in Tuk.  This past weekend there was a hockey tournament in Inuvik, so the whole town was booming, and it seems like every time we turned around there were people we knew, which was actually kind of neat.  Honestly, I thought half of Tuk was in Inuvik on Saturday!

The Ice Road - Inuvik bound

For those of you who have never traveled on an ice road, I will describe how this works.  When the  Arctic Ocean and the McKenzie River freeze over enough to have a layer of ice several feet thick/deep, a wide pathway is plowed and there it is.  Actually, there is more involved to it than that, such as figuring out how thick the ice is and therefore how the road should wind around the ocean to make it safe and sound.  There are people who work on the ice road for both maintenance and constant monitoring, which is important.

When you first turn on to the ice road in Tuk it is like driving down a snowy, bumpy road.  For those of you who have ever driven a gravel road in the early spring when the frost is coming out of the ground, you know that the road heaves.  I know for myself that driving to my in-laws' house in Orrville, Ontario (rural Parry Sound) has had its harrowing moments over the years around Easter time!  You really have to watch the road to avoid giving your shocks as well as other parts of the undercarriage of your vehicle a run for their money.  Well, the first part of the ice road is like this.  Why?  This is because you are driving on top of the Arctic Ocean, which has tides and is always active underneath the ice.  The ice shifts and cracks a little so you get heaves and bumps, and since this part of the road is snow covered, mainly from the winds blowing in off the ocean, it is very difficult to see them as you approach until sometimes you are going over them before you realize it.  This means that speeds of less than 60 km/hr are necessary....40 km/hr would be preferable.  The snow is plowed along the side of the road, and while you are traveling along the Arctic O
cean part of the road, it is piled up high.  If you look to the right or the left, all you see is a vast expanse of white, snow-covered ocean. It sure looks peaceful and dormant, but you never know when the ever vigilant water underneath is going to do!  Again, we are lucky that the thickness of the ice and all elements of its maintenance are monitored so carefully.

See the snow piled up along the side of the road and the
vast expanse of snow beyond that?
That is the Arctic Ocean!

Once you are further down the ice road Inuvik bound, you will eventually begin to see trees!!  Yay!!  We have passed the tree line and are back into tree country again.  It's funny because I don't notice the lack of trees up here per say, but I sure do notice when they start appearing along the ice road.  The other thing you see from time to time dotted along what would be the shores of the ocean and along the river are hunting cabins.  The Inuvaluit keep their 'hunt camps' out on the land so that they have a place to stay while hunting and fishing.  They are small, simple buildings kept warm by wood stove.  We saw several along our journey, their chimneys churning out wood smoke that goes straight up into the air it is so cold outside!  You can also see the pick-up trucks parked along what would be the shore....and of course the snowmobiles too.  Some of the hunt camps are bundled together like little parcels along the shore, and others are solitary.  Most cabins are in good shape, while others look more ramshackle.  It is amazing to hear how the Inuvaluit live while out on the land, but those who go out in the winter to hunt speak of how simple, peaceful and spiritual it is to be out there, away from the busy-ness of town.

See the hunt camps?  Some of these are quite swanky, actually.
Also....TREES!

As a native Southern Ontarian, the idea that the hamlet of Tuk is busy is completely foreign to me.  One drive down the 401 during rush hour, or a trip to a Walmart on a Saturday morning will show you the busy-ness of town!  However, to the Inuvaluit, the land is a place of peace and self-reflection, and it affords you the opportunity to feed your family.  The silence is necessary to hunt, so the sound of the water truck making its daily deliveries, or the plane landing at t
he airport, or people on skidoos making a mad dash to Stantons' or the Northern Stores before they close can make the difference between whether or not the people at the hunt camp eat that night.  I guess it just comes down to perspective.

Anyway, I digress. The ice road.

Once you reach the McKenzie River, the road straightens out and you can see the shore line on either side of you, all sleepy and covered in several feet of snow.  The road here can be a bit of a wind tunnel, but it is more protected than the ocean, so the ice is not so covered.  This means that when you look out the windows of your vehicle you see a dark, murky green colour beneath you, which is the ice....and if you are brave enough like Greg and Charlotte, you can see the water moving beneath the ice!  That does not impress me at all, so I stay in the van and try to think of other things, like unicorns and rainbows and anything that does not remind me that there is ultra deep, murky, frigid water beneath me that would stop my heart and give me hypothermia in a matter of seconds.  I try to comfort myself by thinking of the molecular structure of ice and its durability....and also the fact that if transport trucks are running up and down the ice road at speeds that will astound you, then our little van will be fine, right?  Right.  Right?  Right.

You can see patches of bare ice up ahead, which don't show
the green colour very well, but do show a nice curve!

The road does a right angle turn to the right just on the
outside left of the picture.

The next thing I want to mention about the ice road are the fissures.  From time to time, you will come across a warning sign to slow down, or a bump sign, or a keep left/right sign, and that is because there is a fissure in the ice.  Oh yeah.  They happen!  They are not wide enough that your vehicle will fall through, but cracks in the sea ice happen and you just have to be careful going over them.  If they become something of a concern, they are looked after by the Powers That Be who monitor the road, so I am told it is nothing to freak out about.  Again...more unicorns and fuzzy, adorable kittens are going through my mind!!  (Keep posting cute stuff like this on my FB wall people...I need every one you've got! ).  Of course, again, Greg and Charlotte think it's the coolest thing to stop at the side of the road, and to get out and....gulp....peer down the crack!!  Greg says you can actually see the water as it flows beneath all that ice.  Now is about the time when I call upon a higher power to safely deliver my family back to our van, and to implore my husband to continue driving so I can put my feet safely on land!

People have asked me what is it like to drive on the ice road.  All I can tell you is my perspective.... from the passenger seat!  I, for one, refuse to drive on the ice road unless it is a dire emergency.  This is an experience I will happily miss!  No thank you.  It is fine enough just to be on the ice road itself.  Greg, however, will tell you that it is just like driving on icy, snow-covered roads during a winter storm.  You don't over-brake or over-steer and you watch your speed.  The actual speed limit on the road is 80 km/hr, and there are parts where this is reasonable and sometimes abused.  The road itself from Tuk to Inuvik is full of curves and twists and turns that require some navigation considering the fact that ice IS slippery.  Greg took a few turns a wee bit too fast, and we found ourselves sliding, but again, keep clam, don't turn into it and you recover.  No worries!  Right?  Wrong!  (No accidents so far thanks to Greg's excellent driving skills.).  They also make the road incredibly wide, to allow for people to pull over without any fear of being hit by others and to allow for sliding.  Also, the snow piled up along the side of the road helps.

See the blizzard-like conditions caused by coming across a
slower moving vehicle on the road? 

Since there is some snow on the road, occasionally and quite suddenly you will come across white out conditions.  At first, even Greg was startled and baffled by this, until we realized that we were approaching another vehicle.  You kick up and disturb enough snow on the road to create dangerous conditions for a vehicle behind you, which is another reason the road is so wide.  This way you can pull over to allow others to pass, which happens often.

Once you start going through what almost feel like s-curves, it's not far to Inuvik, and believe me I always feel like it's a sight for sore eyes!  The first thing you see is the Esso gas station where gas is currently $1.58/litre which is a steal compared to whatever it is in Tuk, and from there on in it's paved roads, traffic signs and the aforementioned intersection!  Civilization! This past week we got the van an oil change for $180 ($80 for the oil), had lunch, picked up some groceries, socialized with all the people we knew, met a lot of students from school, and wound up having dinner in town too.  Just as the last rays of the sun were disappearing from the horizon, we began our journey back to Tuk.  Greg turned the heat up in the van, put on 80s music (which lulls the kids the sleep) and we had a peaceful 2 hour journey home.

Some of the more typical houses you see in Inuvik. 

All in all, a great day, and a super fun adventure for us during our time in the North. We got some different groceries and some fruit and veggies that aren't normally for sale in Tuk, at fairly decent prices, too. We spent some time in the Northern Store, which is more or less considered a department store by southern standards.  We will definitely be going back and forth to Inuvik over the next few months while we can.  The thing is, you have to hit the road while it's open because once April-ish comes around, our access to civilization becomes limited to air again.

Bummer.

Cold Enough For Ya'?

It is cold outside!  If this weren't a family friendly blog, I would put a very apt expletive right between 'is' and 'cold'.  We have never experienced temperatures so cold in our lives and we are shocked that people survive, thrive even, in this kind of extreme weather.

Me sporting a hat head and a wool sweater, with about
3 layers underneath

One morning last week as I came stumbling into the staff room fresh from the outdoors, I joked with a few Inuvaluit colleagues and quipped, "Cold enough for ya'?".  I brought the house down.  Last week I could joke about the cold because it was only -40C.  Big deal. This week, when temperatures have dipped to -50C, I am hard pressed to joke about it.  If I tried, it would definitely sound similar to whining, and I have decided I will not whine about the frigid temperatures, but this blog most definitely has whining overtones to it.

I know, I know.  We decided to move up here, and we knew it would get cold, so suck it up, slap that frozen smile across our frost burned cheeks and soldier on.  Right?  Nobody else up here is complaining of the weather.  They are used to it.  It is just simply a part of life.  They are used to getting up in the middle of the night, getting dressed in outside clothes and running their vehicles so they won't freeze up.  They are used to dressing in layers, and wearing their furs and animal hides for protection from the cold.  Wearing snowpants (or skipants, as the kids call them) in the school is considered perfectly normal. Up here, Hot Paws mittens are for fall and spring weather!  Up here, if your coat does not contain feathers, you will freeze. And finally, if you go outside with exposed skin for more than a minute or so, you WILL get frostbite.  Greg knows a thing or two about that now!

A few things about Arctic Temperatures in Tuktoyaktuk:

1.  There is always a windchill here.  I guess living near the Arctic Ocean doesn't help.  The thing is, the temperature may be in the low to mid -20s, but the windchill drops the temps an extra twenty degrees!

Bowing snow 40 km/hr gusting to 70 km/hr

2.  The wind can and often does blow up and create low visibility.  We have learned that the difference between a winter storm and a blizzard has to do with the kind of precipitation falling, temperatures, and wind.  Winter storms have a mixed bag of precipitation, usually involving snow and ice of some sort, have cold (but not too cold) temperatures, and some wind.  Blizzards, however, are limited to strictly to snow, with winds so bad they shake your house, restrict or eliminate visibility, and have extremely low temperatures.  The word 'severe' kept coming up in the blizzard descriptions.

3.  Even the snow has reacted to the extreme temperatures. When you walk on the snow, you can hear an almost echoing with each footstep.  Everything sounds hollow.  The sounds of our van doors opening and closing and the tires on the snow at the front of our house.  It is not packing snow because it's too cold out, but it's not fluffy or crystal-like either.  It is solid.  When the snowplow, which up here is a heavy duty, monster-size front end loader, comes through and clears out our driveway, the snow piles in large chunks.  I suddenly realized that this was igloo snow!  My suspicion was confirmed when I was talking to the Inuvialuktun Language teacher.  She said this snow was light enough to lift but condensed enough to insulate, which is why it is perfect for making igloos.  Of course, we haven't seen any.  They are becoming archaic, just like dog sleds.

The staff from Tuk who work at the school tease me and tell me I have to develop thicker blood...my thin Southern blood won't keep me warm.  My blood must the only part of me that IS thin, I guess.  If the people here have to get up in the night to run their vehicles to keep the oil from freezing, what keeps their blood from congealing?  That must explain the large families!

After a night of blowing snow, this is what we found when we
opened the door the following day!

Our house is warm enough, especially now with the window and living room floor repaired (a shout out to our land lord), but when the temperatures are this low, it is impossible to keep a house warm enough to dress in anything short of sweatshirts, woollies, and to cover up with our afghans.  The other night I went to tuck Charlotte into bed and she was still wearing her clothes from the day.  I asked her why she hadn't put her pyjamas on and she said, "My clothes are so much warmer, Mom.  They're already warm on my body!"  She had a point, so she slept in her clothes.  The worst parts of the day involve putting on clothing, both indoor and outdoor, a sure sign that the snuggly warmth is about to come to a dramatic end.

We enjoy being toasty warm in our beds, but staying in bed does not get us to work or school, does it?  So, we haul ourselves out of our duvet cocoons, shiver into our wool and fleece and about seven layers of socks, plus our own sets of furs/hides, parkas, and boots meant for extreme temperatures and head off in the darkness to school.  The sun is now well above the horizon by the time we leave school at lunchtime, but there is  something about the cold and darkness of the morning that makes it dreadful to be outside.  It is still dark for about 18/24 hours right now, and although we gain ten minutes of daylight each day, it is difficult to see much past the snow, ice and cold at the moment. Also, when you are in the middle of a wild and crazy blizzard, the sun and the daylight amount to squat.

Greg in his slippers and sweater with his hood pulled up to
keep his follicularly challenged head warm.

I used to say that I would prefer winter to summer because at least with winter you can always add a layer if you're cold.  In the summertime, there is only so far you can go before you have reached your limit.  Well, I am going to officially retract that statement.  I have learned that despite the numerous layers one can add to one's body, including long underwear, sweaters, socks and blankets, parkas even....a bone chilling cold is simply that - a bone chilling cold.  It is worse than any shiver one can experience during a fever, and far worse than a tingle-up-the-spine shiver.  It can take hours of shivering to balance your body temperature when you are that cold!

It's too bad that showering is a necessity, because we would have given that up a few weeks ago.  Showering means being naked, which is the worst thing possible at the moment, even inside a steamy bathroom! We will just remain in the same clothes and sleep in our parkas, hoods pulled up, our scarves wrapped around our faces with just our eyes peering out like a bear hibernating in a cave.  This is how you will find the Wilson Family when the temperature finally does rise, and if we haven't frozen our woollies off, you can stick us in a nice hot shower and thaw us out.

By the way, if you ever hear any of us whining about the heat again, smack us!