Christmas is Coming!

Somehow we've made it all the way to Christmas Break! Time seems to just fly by these days. We had a bit of a hectic week getting ready to travel back to Pittsburgh for break.

Monday morning began with Homer, our resident weather man and school maintenance man, warning us that the weather was going to be awful starting on Thursday late night/Friday early morning. All of the teachers leaving were planning to fly out on Friday morning/afternoon, so you can imagine this wasn't exactly the cheery news we wanted to hear. After some juggling of schedules and looks at the calendar we decided to change our school calendar to make Friday a holiday.

A large problem with living so far from Bethel is that we only have one airline that services our village, Yute Air. They are notorious for their lack of professionalism. To compensate for their inability to manage flights properly our nanny, Gloria, left 2 days early so that the flights wouldn't be too full on Thursday afternoon. Thursday morning dawns with beautiful blue skies and a bright sun! YES! Surely, we'll get out on time today. The time for the first plane comes and goes--nothing. I finally called and they told me maybe around 1pm...maybe. We get the call that the plane is 25 minutes out, pack up the school van, get all of our winter gear on and head to the airport. Sit in the airport "parking lot" for 10 minutes past the 25 minute arrival time. Hear that the plane has turned around due to fog. SIGH. (insert screaming, tired, non-napping baby here) You might recall reading about our unfortunate experience with Yute earlier in the year here.

Frustrated by Yute and determined to beat the storm out of Goodnews, we started marking phone calls to other airlines as soon as we got back to the school. Our principal was finally able to find an airline that would charter a plane to pick us up at 2pm. WHEW--now the game was just sit and wait and hope that they too don't turn around. 1:47PM confirmation call from chartered airline--they will be arriving at 2:10PM. We head to the airport for round two. Plane lands to rounds of applause at 2:11PM. We enjoy an absolutely stunning view on our way to Bethel.

We're in Bethel tonight staying at Bentley's Bed and Breakfast. Imagine Super 8 with common living spaces and you've got the closest description I can give you for Bentley's. In no way does it align with what you think of when you think B&B. But-- the people who run it are the sweetest, kindest people. We've stayed with them several times and will likely continue to stay with them for many more years. We'll hang out here tomorrow during the day and catch the evening jet into Anchorage to begin our looong flight(s) back to Pittsburgh!

Our Lexus of a bush plane arrives!

A view from our seats.

I'll never tire of looking at the beauty that is rural Alaska. It was a stunning day for flying

Fur from coats provides great in-flight entertainment.

The stunning beauty of Alaska.