Wordless Wednesday

Good-Bye Autumn

When our friend Mollie was visiting, she took some amazing(!) photos of Brevig and the surrounding areas. I didn't get much of a chance to highlight her pictures during her visit but they're too good not to share. So, as winter is slowly taking it's grip on us with it's snow and wind and darkness, I'll take this time to say good-bye to fall. It was a good one. Beautiful weather, many visitors and memories to cherish.

good-bye to berry picking and jelly making . . .

to fall colors

and bonfires on the beach

good-bye to migrating cranes and spawning salmon
that will feed us through the up coming months



We'll see you again next year. Until then we will endure our winter white landscape, fierce blowing winds and subzero temps with comfort knowing you'll be back.

--AnnMarie

Big Brother Practice

Last week, C.O. babysat for a little guy who's mother had some work to do at the school. Harold loved helping with the baby. He is so ready to be a big brother.

--AnnMarie

Adoption #2

Did you know that today is Adoption Sunday? I really didn't either until this past week. I've started following an adoption advocate on Twitter, which is where I first heard about it. Perhaps some of your churches mentioned it this morning. Adoption Sunday a chance to bring to light the millions of children living without one or both of their parents and those that need a home and loving family to care for them. I hope that the information and stories that are shared across America today are touching people's hearts and moving some toward adoption or foster care.

Being that it is Adoption Sunday I thought it fitting that we share our exciting news publicly today.

The Rudstroms are adopting once again.

We've been thinking about starting our second adoption for quite some time. In fact, we had been saying, "as soon as Guatemala opens again, we'll start." Unfortunately, Guatemala is just not getting their ducks in a row and it looks like it'll be quite some time before the new adoption process will be complete. It would have been nice to have our kids from the same country so we could take them back more often, but it was obviously not meant to be. So, based on that information, we began looking for another country. We sorted through the information on a few different places and finally decided on Ethiopia.

Ethiopia was the best match for us for a couple reasons. Since we have the most perfect boy in the world, we would like to balance the household out in the gender area and get a little girl. There is a much higher need for boys to be given homes in the international adoption world so some countries don't allow couples to request girls. Ethiopia, however, does allow us to have a gender preference. We also want an infant that has been cared for in a quality system from birth until we take our baby home. Ethiopia has all of this, so . . . here we go. Our very first piece of paperwork will be sent on Monday along with the first agency fee.

We are trying not to get too excited at this point. The gestation period for adopting is a lot closer to that of an elephant than a human being. We won't be parents for the second time for 12 -1 8 months most likely.

It won't be an easy process. It will require much paperwork, a load of money and a lot of patience. And we also know full well that at any time something could go wrong. Adoptions from Ethiopia could be closed, something with US policies could change, etc. I could think of a million scenarios but we just go forward hoping for the best.

We are once again working with Christian World Adoption. They believe that God is in control of their agency and our adoption. We agree, whatever happens in these next few months, God is in control and has a plan for us and hopefully for a little girl in Ethiopia. We rest in that and look forward to sharing our ups and downs with you over the next year or so.

--AnnMarie

Fall Boating

Ocean View

This August we moved into a different house in Brevig. The new place is located right on the beach. After we got settled into the new house I moved my workshop down to the beach also. I haven't taken any photos of the house yet, but I do have some of the shop.This is the view of the ocean when I open the shop doors.

Here is another view from outside.

I haven't measured it, but I think that we are less than 200 feet from the waters edge.

C.O.

St. Michael's In-Service

This year's Bering Strait School District in-service was held at the village of Stebbins for some sites and at St. Michael for the rest of us. I was really hoping my brother's school, Elim, would be at St. Mikes, I was glad to find out we were at the same location and I got to see quite a bit of him.

In-services are a bit different for bush teachers. We stay at a school, sleep on the floor with co-workers and shower in locker rooms for four days. Some parts stink, but for the most part it's quite a bit of fun. Who else gets to do this with their coworkers?

Like last year, the organizers of the in-service week had some evening activities for all of us. This year's feature was the band, Landbridge Tollbooth, from Nome and a "caller" from Fairbanks to teach us how to Contradance and Square Dance. It was a blast!

I think this picture of John and my co-worker friend, Amy, learning some new dance moves sure turned out cute.

The following night we were treated to the performances of the Stebbins dance group. (Stebbins and St. Michael are only a few miles apart and are connected by road so they just drove on over.) Eskimo dancing is a lot of fun to watch. I enjoy seeing the ladies sport their colorful kuspuks and dancing in unison.

Brevig Mission Staff getting cozy.

Oh, and we did attend professional develpoment sessions as well. But that's just details. =)

--AnnMarie

Wordless Wednesday

Fall

It's that time of year,

Time to go out and retrieve your snowmobile from wherever you left it when the ice melted in the spring.

C.O.

Ice Skating

The lagoon behind our house froze nice and smooth this year.
We took the opportunity to start Harold out on ice skates.

Listen carefully and you can hear Harold sing as C.O. takes him for a ride.

--AnnMarie

What's Inside?

Harold and I had an Etch A Sketch that didn't work anymore. I have often wondered what kind of mechanism was inside that made those things go. So we took it out to the shop to see what we could figure out.

They are not really meant to be opened, so it took a lot of work to get it apart. Some of the pieces inside got misplaced while opening it, so we couldn't tell exactly how it works, but it is some sort of system of pulleys and wires that move the pointer around. The back of the Etch A Sketch says that the powder inside in non toxic, what they don't tell you is what a terrible mess the stuff makes if you let it out.

C.O.

Sailing

Harold spent some time with me in the workshop this past weekend. We built a little sailboat and sailed it in the lagoon behind our house.
C.O.

Playing in the Sand

Harold and I spent some time playing in the sand on the beach today.
C.O.

Faster, Faster!

Our friend Chris took this picture this summer. I love how it turned out. It captures how much Harold loves his little bike that dad built and how he has mastered riding it. He continues to use it regularly in Brevig. Now he goes even faster and down bigger hills.

--AnnMarie

Patching the Roof

Harold helped me spread some tar on the roof of my workshop today.

C.O.

Why We Live Here

Happy Fall!
--AnnMarie

Stunt Man

So the thing is, we encouraged him to perfect this move.

--AnnMarie

Young Adult Choir

My friend Darla (sitting to the right of me) and I are starting a young adult choir for church. We are meeting at our house every Tuesday evening. So far we've had a great turn out, about 15 - 20 people each time. Let me tell you, our tiny house is crowded with that many people all at once.

I'm playing the music and leading the singing. Darla is helping choose songs, bake goodies and teach us some choruses translated into Inupiaq. It's been a lot of fun and a blessing to have young people singing with us at our home.

--AnnMarie

Frieght

This afternoon Harold and I stopped out at the airport to see what was happening. Arctic Transportation Services was there with a CASA C-212.

This is the largest plane that we normally see in Brevig. It is a twin engine turbo prop that can carry 5500 lbs of freight. ATS flies this plane into Brevig three times a week. They normally just have freight for the store, mail for the post office, or boxes that have been shipped UPS.

Today they were hauling metal posts for the guard rail that is being installed on one of the new roads in town. As they were unloading the posts out of the back of the plane, we noticed that they had a flat tire. The pilots ended up spending the rest of the day waiting for someone to fly a spare tire out for them.

C.O.

Sunrise, Sunset

While Mollie was visiting us, she took some pretty amazing photos with her fancy camera. I stole them from her so I could share some fall scenes with you all. Here's some of the sunsets and sunrises we had during Mollie's stay.

--AnnMarie (photos by Mollie)