Hi all,
I've decided to switch our blog over to cnaphan.blogspot.com/
 
The new host, Blogger, is more flexible, has more options, stores pictures better and some other things.

Please adjust your bookmarks, if you have them. This will be the last post here although the blog will remain because there are no export features.

The weather here has turned exceedingly clement lately, despite the collective doubt of all Yellowknifers concerning the weather forecast. It was actually about -10 to 0 today and it is supposed to continue through much of the week. What awful recompense is Fortuna, that fickle she-devil, preparing us for? 

Seeing the weather was appearing to be humane, I called up one of my friends, Byron. We went to church on Saturday night and skipped out to go ice-fishing all of Sunday. Usually when I go fishing, I need to wear my massive mitts that go up to my elbows, but this time, I quite honestly only wore leather gloves a few minutes here and there. We left at 8:30 AM with Kevin and we stayed until 4:00 PM, so we got to see the sunrise and sunset. Kevin only stayed 90 minutes and then I had to run him back into town.

We caught about 5 fish, kept 3. Two pike and one trout. We built a small fire and roasted smokies for lunch. I got to use a lot of my new gear. The collapsable Swiss saw, a new tackle box, new gorge hooks, the new sled. I even turned a chopstick into a bait-preparing tool and it worked swimmingly. All the equipment worked really well. All in all, it was an enjoyable day.

At night, we went out for Chinese for B's birthday. A pleasant end to a nice day.

( As always, visuals... )

We had been talking about upgrading our station wagon to a minivan for several months now. We had our eye on the Toyota Sienna but there is no real Toyota dealer in town and it is quite pricey. With freight and some of our desired options, it would've been close to $40K new or $30K used. We had a day off on January 5th so we went to the Toyota dealer to talk about placing orders, then for fun, we went to the Ford dealer down the street. We hadn't looked at Fords because we were learning towards Japanese minivans and Ford's minivans do not come in 8 passenger models, whereas the Sienna does.

It turns out that our friend, Melissa, was the salesperson we first bumped into. She told us she had a 2007 Ford Freestar in and we were interested. With the trade-in, it would be quite reasonably priced. We thought about for a week, did some research, then today, I went and bought it.

I really like it. It's bigger overall than the Focus, plenty of room for my head. The windows and mirrors are all bigger, too. 

( See it! )

Our Christmas vacation is going very well. The last few days have been quite laid back. We went swimming from 6-9 on New Years Eve and we have not done too much lately. It is very cold out - minus 40 and lower - so there isn't much to do but stay inside, play Mario Kart Wii, cook food, etc...

( Some pictures... )

It's been busy around here with Christmas parties, Nikki's pregnancy and finally Christmas itself.

( Let the pictures speak for themselves... )

Last Saturday was our first day of sledding this Winter. We've gotten lots of snow but it is just starting to be enough to sled on. We went to one of the more popular hills in town, which is right downtown, which is cool. K went down on the GT and even A went down on the sled. I went down on the GT several times but on the third time, I broke the seat. Oops. I guess it is meant to support my bulk.

The temperature is about -5 C.

( See some pictures... )

Family has requested some shots of our house, so here are three. 

( View )

 ....cutie!

PS. We still don't know the gender. But we did get the technician to write down the gender in a sealed envelope which will be sent to certain key people for safekeeping. Hint, hint, Ladybug.

( See the ultrasound pics... )

We just got back from trick-or-treating. We didn't get nearly as many kids as we thought we would. Only 20 or so. People said we'd get swamped. Here are some pictures.

Me start to make our jack-o-lanterns


Their older brother cutting his jack-o-lantern


The completed works of art


Are you suitably frightened?


Getting dressed as a ninja turtle


Our busy bee excited to go trick or treating


Buzz!


Leonardo and the queen bee

We are getting seriously whalloped by snow today! From nothing at all to... only time will tell! Pictures will follow if I am brave enough! 

Alack, the Yellowknivean dream of a green Christmas shall once again come to nought.

Me and Nikki were invited to a Foster Family Appreciation dinner and we got a bit dressed up. They fed us and even had a parallel event entertaining our kids. I won a $50 gift certificate at a restaurant steakhouse that me and Nikki've been meaning to try. All things told, it was a good night.

Me and Nikki are debating whether or not to find out the baby's gender. We wanted to start a small poll to find out what people think. A yes or no comment will due. Thanks! 

This last weekend, I took the Cubs out camping at our usual spot. It was the first camp that I've been the lead planner and main leader on. It went well. The kids were vastly under-equipped for 5 to -5 weather - sneakers, a thin pair of pants, a sweater, a thin pair of gloves, etc... not enough by a long shot. We practicing making a fire, we went for a gold-finding hike, we made food and did the chores, we worked on our staves, we played some games. At night, we told some ghost stories and one kid became a bit scared for about 10 minutes, mostly because of the dark. Anyways, it was a good time for all and it ended well.

The group ready to head out


The kids making their fires


As far as we got looking for gold


Making our tin-foil dinners


One of the Cubs complaining to the other leader that we didn't find any gold

I was supposed to take my Cubs out camping this weekend, but we didn't do enough planning for them, so we downgraded the camp to Scouts only. I decided to go along too, at the last minute. We had really good weather and we saw some good Northern Lights. Nikki was in Edmonton this weekend too, and the baby was at a babysitters.

( Some pictures... )

Very exciting. Me and Nikki had an appointment today at 10:00 AM for an ultrasound. It was so neat! The technician said we might not see much but we saw lots! The baby was kicking and turning, maybe sucking his thumb or picking his nose... They said it was 12 weeks old and about 6 cm long, head to bum. YAY.

( Meet the newest Naphan... )

 Nikki is about 10 weeks pregnant. She heard the heartbeat at the doctor's this week.

On the August long weekend, we took a day trip to Fort Rae-Edzo (now called Behchoko) which is about 100 km outside of Yellowknife. It was the first time me and Nikki had been very far out of Yellowknife in the direction back to the provinces. The highway is pretty good quality, 100 km/h the whole way. There have been a lot of forest fires lately and we hoped to see some freshly burned patches, but we saw nothing. We also hoped to see some bison but again, nothing. Fort Rae was neat, about 1600 people, nice open waters all around it. I hoped to fish but we didn't have time. We went to parks in both Rae and Edzo, had a lot of fun, ate out lunch of meatball subs and apples.

We hope to take a 4 day trip to Fort Smith in September sometime. That's on the other side of Great Slave, near the Alberta border.