Easter continued: treats, a blizzard, and a surprise dinner guest

With a blizzard warning looming over us, we headed out to Jack's second game of the day on Saturday. The Aiviqs played Pangnirtung, the team that flew down from their home town to participate in the Toonik Tyme tournament. Pangnirtung is an Inuit hamlet, population 1,481, almost 300km northeast of Iqaluit. 

As I have complained about before, Iqaluit is very quick to close schools and other city services due to weather. Today there is a blizzard warning in effect, there is blowing snow forming deep drifts all over the roads, and NOTHING has been shut down (except for the dump--which has been closed).  I think the people who work for the city are aware of just how much money has been spent to fly kids from various communities across the territory to play hockey, which is factoring heavily into the decision to pretend the weather really isn't all that bad. The public outcry if this tournament was interrupted would be......impressive.

If it isn't clear, that's Iqaluit near the bottom of the map.
source

Pangnirtung.
(source)

On the way out to the car, the wind was so intense the snow was flying parallel to the ground (sideways for the mathematically challenged). Coraline was flustered. "The snowflakes are blowing so fast they feel like tiny knives hitting your cheeks!" she exclaimed. We all squinted and walked (hunching over against the wind) into the arena. Before the game started, we watched the last 10 minutes of the peewee game that was finishing up, Cape Dorset vs. Pangnirtung. Two extremely remote hamlets were being represented in Iqaluit.  The crowd was a little smaller than usual with no local team playing, but it was loud, boisterous, and fun.

The game between the Aiviqs and Pangnirtung was intense.  Both goalies performed amazingly, and kept what could have been crazy high scores reasonable.  In the end, we won by one goal (4-3).  This means Captain Jack Sparrow's team moves on to play in the gold medal game on Sunday!  They will be playing against the Okpiks (Owls). Of course, we are still expecting that blizzard, the worst of which is supposed to show up Sunday evening.  

Shaking hands after the game against Pang.

In typical "big sister" fashion, this is how Coraline spent
most of her time at the arena. She is wearing a hat that lights up
in the front (a gift from Laoli), reading a book.

And, of course, tomorrow is Easter!

Sunday

The Easter Bunny came Saturday night while the children were sleeping:

Easter booty!  I was lucky enough to find Easter baskets while shopping with Loali a couple of weeks ago. We found them at Arctic Ventures for about $3.50 each, which is an insane price for Dollar Store quality baskets, but at least they had them in town.  The clothing was mostly brought up from Thunder Bay, but I picked up more while in Ottawa last month for Captain Jack's other hockey tournament (I didn't have much choice, Coraline grew faster than I had anticipated last summer).  The Lego (some of which is no-name) was purchased through Amazon or brought up by my mother. The substitute for the Walmart hollow-chocolate bunnies we normally get is..........Mr. Munchy!  (Brought to us by Northmart.) And yes, to go along with that Easter chocolate: new electric toothbrushes!  ha ha ha ha ha (Ordered through Amazon Canada.)

Searching for eggs.

Counting eggs. (Somehow we only found 57 out of 60 eggs........)

Captain Jack thought this card with a photo
of a frog wearing bunny ears was the funniest
thing EVER!

Buffy passively watching the excitement.

The second part of our day was supposed to be a gold medal hockey game against the Okpik.  But remember that blizzard warning we received on Saturday?

Captain Jack is devastated.  There's no doubt this was the right call--looking out our dining room window all I can see is white.  The back of the house may as well be wrapped in paper. I shot a quick video outside Coraline's window of two girls walking up the street.  They were both clutching opposite ends of a rope, my guess is this was to ensure they stayed together.

Girls struggling in the wind.

View out the dining room window.

One parent posted on facebook that her girls are missing (they don't look older than 10)--they were outside before the weather suddenly turned bad. (Both girls were found safe.) City services are suspended except for emergencies, and even then there are no guarantees an ambulance or the fire department will be able to make it to you. Trucks are getting stuck in snow that has drifted onto the road, and abandoned until the weather clears.

The Easter Lego has been assembled.  The happy-fun-playtime lasted for a couple of hours (which is pretty good in our house), then deteriorated into tattle-tales and arguing. I am now doing what any amazing parent would do: put the kids in front of a movie. I don't even know what the movie is.  Something about an island starring Dwayne Johnson--so it must be high quality. 

Approximately 15 minutes before I was going to serve supper, the doorbell sounded.  It not being fit for man or beast outside, I immediately assumed it was Darah.

Darah is a precocious young girl who has decided that we are her second family.  She shows up consistently at the most inopportune times, like when we are about to go out, or when the kids are not home, etc. On the rare morning JJ takes the kids to church and I get to sleep in, it is all but guaranteed Darah will start ringing the doorbell. She is about Captain Jack's age, and is well known in the neighborhood as a "free-range" kid. She loves to play outside, never has socks on with her winter boots, and is highly opinionated. She LOVES Buffy.

I opened the door while the blizzard was raging, about to tell Darah that now isn't a good time, when I looked down.  Way down. Standing there was a little Inuit girl I did not remember ever seeing before, wind and snow whipping around her. "Can I come in?" she asked quietly.  I stooped down so I could see her face better. "What is your name?" I asked.  "Sue" was her simple reply. "Sue", I asked, "Does your mom know where you are?" She nodded. "I'm Jack's friend."  I ushered her inside, and asked the Captain to show her where to put her snow pants, boots, etc. Somewhat concerned but not really surprised that she had been wandering about in the horrific weather, I whispered to JJ, "There was a little girl on the doorstep!"  When she came inside he asked her "How old are you, Sue?" She shyly raised the 5 fingers on her left hand. With a shrug, JJ stated "They breed them tough up here."  Not really knowing what else to do, we decided to just go with it, and Sue joined us for the evening.

Captain Jack shows Sue his electronic drum kit under the
loft bed.

Easter dinner with our guest.

I finished heating up supper while CJS and Sue played in his room. At one point Coraline came out of her room where she has been practicing on her fiddle. "Who is that?" she asked, after hearing voices from behind Jack's door. We explained to her what happened. Coraline doesn't usually like surprises, but she went out of her way to help Sue feel welcome. Easter dinner tonight was re-heated leftover pizza from yesterday after the hockey game. (Hey, at least I made a salad.) After she was finished eating our guest cleared her plate and put it on the counter--she had impeccable manners!

At the end of the evening JJ helped Sue put all of her winter gear back on, and made sure she got home safely. We still don't know if she lives in our neighborhood, or is visiting from elsewhere in Nunavut.

Despite tomorrow being a statutory holiday, the hockey association has somehow managed to get both arenas to open up until 1pm, weather permitting. Captain Jack's gold medal game is currently scheduled for 11am tomorrow.  I'm glad they will get to finish off the tournament with a bang, as opposed to a blizzard imposed whimper.

Monday

There was a lull in the weather overnight, which was nice because it meant we were able to sleep.  When the wind roars at 90km/hour, and your house is suspended over the ground on piles because you have no foundation, it gets loud. Your house is quite literally surrounded by wind.  The windows rattle, roof tiles fly off, items you have stored under your house may fall over or bounce around.  Fortunately, things were quiet here until about 6am.  At that point the blizzard hit again full force.  Taxi's were pulled off the road, all the stores are closed (many had holiday hours anyway) and emergency services shut down. JJ hasn't gone into work today.  As a pediatrician he is not deemed "essential", despite the pediatric unit currently having children as inpatients at the hospital. JJ has been doing his best to manage cases by talking to nurses (a certain number of which are deemed "essential") over the phone.(Emergency room physicians are also deemed essential and are required to stay at the hospital.) 

This means of course, that once again the arenas are closed, which means no hockey, again. The city provided an update at noon that stated all arenas would be closed for the rest of the day. I broke the news AGAIN to Captain Jack, and we went about the business of being stuck inside for yet another day.

Monday evening

However, I just happened to check facebook around 5pm and saw this:

Captain Jack's game would be happening at 6pm! It was a complete scramble to get Jack into his gear and make it to the arena (after shovelling out the car, which was nearly buried) with only 30 minutes notice, but we did it. I can't think of many other places where a hockey game can be announced on the internet with less than an hour's notice, and 30 families scramble and get their kids there on time, fully suited-up and ready to go.

Final score

Gold medal champ.

Tuesday

Tuesday we discovered we had lost our phone line and our internet.  The blizzard had knocked out phone service to everyone on our street. Because of that, dear reader, I have not been able to finish this post until now. Technicians have been working for days trying to fix everything, and finally, we have a working phone and internet. Yay! Another plus: yet another blizzard that was called for today appears to have bypassed us. Yay again! The kids are playing outside and loving it.



**As an aside, it's nice to see that Peru is still with us.  Who ARE you?  The vast majority of my followers are in North America (although there are always a couple of hits from other countries such as India, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Norway, etc.).  Peru, however, is right up there after the United States.  If you tell me who you are, and include your mailing address, I will reward you for being my most loyal South American reader!