That weird sport where you slide rocks on ice...

So curling...what a funny sport. So every year Wolf Ridge has a bonspiel - curling tournament - and it is ridiculously fun. It is an insane game that is so complicated I hardly thought about strategy so much as not falling on the ice. There is four people on a team, the captain is called a skip and they tell you what angle and how much curl to put on the stone. I just tried to do what they told me to. 

 Here is a shot of me sweeping. Sweeping was so exhausting. The skip tells you when and how hard to sweep. You sweep to straighten a stone and to speed it up. It's interesting you sweep your stone to get it where you want and the other team might sweep more to make it move past where you want.

 Me preparing/trying to figure out what my skip is telling me to do.

 The slide....

It was a ton of fun. I played 4 games total and my team placed 6th out of 16.
I won't become a pro curler anytime soon but I would certainly play again for fun and have a much bigger appreciation for the sport.

This is something silly. For rock climbing I laid out bananagrams on a table with the word adventure already spelled out. I asked my 7th graders to spell out other words that had to to with adventure throughout class. This is what they came up with.








Coming home on Saturday - break is booked solid! I'm so excited to see all you beautiful  people!

Tis the Season

The holidays have arrived and I started them off with a bang. It was my first Thanksgiving away from home, and while I missed my family and friends dearly, my Wolf Ridge family made a pretty good substitute. I have tons of pictures that I'll share the story with. A permanent staffer donated their house to us since they were going out of town. We shared her house with Carson the parrot and two golden retrievers Chevy and Shiloh. Here's a picture of one of the dogs waiting for Carson to drop a treat.

This house is one of the few with cable in the area so we also got a chance to watch the Macy's Parade. Although truthfully I didn't watch much because I was cooking in the kitchen.







I almost forgot the gravy(I did...but Jill asked where it was). You can see most of the food is laid out and I'm scurrying to figure out how to make gravy.












Mary Beth took some artsy photos of our beautiful turkey. I think we did pretty good. It tasted pretty good too.







It looked so pretty I was scared to cut it....and in truth it looked very mangled after I dug in. Props to my mom for telling me how to cut it over the phone.














Group photo before we ate.









And let the eating marathon commence. If you know me you probably know I eat a lot. Thanksgiving is a whole new game. I think I scared my tablemates when I just wouldn't stop eating. They were done long before I gave up.





And then Carson started hoping around on the floor....
















A few hours later they talked my stuffed belly into desert. I made a cheesecake, apple pie, and MB made pumpkin pie. I was still stuffed and could hardly appreciate, but I enjoyed them as breakfast the next few days.
















Poor me.








Then it was time to cuddle with the dogs. Yes, that is me intertwined with a dog on the floor. How could I not? This is also when cribbage began (an awesome card game I will be teaching everyone who will let me when I get home) and Christmas movies!















And then with a perfect ending we got our first heavy snow! We made the dogs take photos with us and danced around a bit. We got ~5 inches that  night and a few more over the rest of the weekend.

The next day we set out on an adventure. We took a hike through the picturesque woods to find our very own Christmas tree.


We finally picked a winner, and used an old fashioned cross cut saw to cut it down. It was pretty silly  because of how thin the tree was but it was more for the stories/photos then anything.





I also made one of the most perfect snow angles of all time.












It's kind of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but in reality it's the cutest thing ever. We're still in the process of decorating. We're hosting a holiday parting this Friday so it will be all decked out by then.

Other things that have been happening....

We took a field trip to the Duluth aquarium last Friday. We got to meet with the education staff and get some behind the scene tours. It was fun to see environmental ed in a different setting. We also had class at UMD and decided it warranted a night on the town. Mostly just exhausted us though. 

Saturday we went to a concert - Cloud Cult. I highly recommend them. They're from MN, and pretty popular up here. The show was fantastic and a full on artistic experience. They had about 6 people playing in the band, videos playing, we were dancing and two artists painting on stage throughout the concert. The paintings get auctioned for local causes. 

This afternoon I was carving a spoon. There is a staff member who is a pro spoon carver that has been sharing his skills with us. It's hard work, and my spoon isn't quite done yet but working hard on it. 

Just two weeks before Christmas break. I think it'll go fast but at the same time it'll be very  busy. Have to write a paper for my UMD class, I'm doing the raptor program for the first time all by myself Wednesday night, and just lots of teaching.