It is a little chilly here today: -22 with a wind chill of -48. Brrr! For those interested, a little weather history from Thule. The highest recorded temp (w/o wind chill) was 68. The lowest was -47. The highest recorded windspeed was 127 mph. These are from the main base where I am located although at one of the weather locations in the area the wind has registered at 207 mph. Also, all the vehicles here naturally have engine block warmers. The neat thing is at each building has several "hot" plugs so that you get out and plug in your vehicle to keep it warm. What's funny is that at some buildings the hot plugs are on what looks like a hitching post in from of the building adding a Wild North feel to the base. This is great except there is apparently something wrong with my vehicle. They are letting me us the Deputy Commander's while he is off-island and it keeps not wanting to start so they may have to take it, repair it, and give me another. Well, gotta go to the gym. I will try to stay warm.
Love,Ron

"Busy week this week. Col Raymond and Chief Master Sargeant Omdal are visiting Thule this week. They are the Senior Leadership from Peterson and are coming here because the 821st Air Base Group (Thule) is a part of the 21st Space Wing (Peterson). I am going to let Col Raymond know that he did not have to come all the way up here to check on me when a phone call would have sufficed. It is a fairly active worshiping community here in the land of the midnight sun. In addition to the Protestant and Catholic services on Sunday, we have 4 religous education groups that occur during the week (two bible studies and two support groups (male & female), as well as a game night for the Airmen where we play Xbox, Wii, and Playstation. My accomadations are suitable. Billeting here for short visits consists of a roughly 8x12 room and a gang latrine down the hall. This sounds worse than it is because there are less then ten people, on average, in billeting (75+ rooms) at any time. Obviously it is better if you are stationed here. Officers, for example, have a two room suite with a private bath. Well, enough for now. Also, I found out yesterday that I was selected as the Director of Staff (part of the Wing the chapel falls under) Company Grade Officer of the Year. This is similar to what I won in November, but an annual instead of quarterly award. This puts me in the running for CGO of the Year from the Wing. Blessings and all my love. Ron"

Gymnastics and Babies

Today we started doing gymnastics again. Price really had a good time and can't wait to go back next week. His teacher, Miss Heather, said he was very good at following directions, and he did a good job with the things she asked him to do. Here are a few of those pics.

We also went to the hospital today, and I was walking by the babies and saw this cute little one.

Hello all. I have arrived here in Thule, where it is very cold and dark. I know that some of you are asking for picture to be posted but that may prove to be impossible until I return home as, right now, I have no way to download them. It has been kind of boring here as there is not much to do, obviously, and I have not yet been able to do visitation. That will change tomorrow as we get back to work. All that being said, it was an interesting trip up here. The DC-8 that normally flies into Thule was broken when I got to Baltimore so we billeted in the BWI Sheraton, tough duty I know. The next day, since the DC-8 would not be fixed before Friday, and being we had the New Year's Eve band with us, they bused us to McGuire AFB to fly out on a C-17. We arrived at McGuire at 8:30 PM and by 4:00 AM they decided the selected flight crew were not qualified to land at Thule (difference between a true North runway and a magnetic North one) so they sent us to billeting with instructions to return at 11:00 PM that night to try again. We finally left at 2:30 Wednesday morning and arrived at about 8:00 AM. It has taken several days to get my days and nights straightened out (not at all helped by the lack of sunlight) but I have finally gotten my bio-rhythms right and I am looking forward to doing some ministry. Will update more in a day or so.
Love, Ron

Kids and Tools

This morning we went to Home Depot and participated in the Kid's Clinic that they have once a month. Theirs is the first Saturday of the month and then Lowe's does it on the second Saturday of the month. We'll be going there next week. Anyway... here are the pictures from the great time we had this morning.

Wesley didn't get his own project, but he helped screw some for the other boys. He did get his own apron with his name on it.
Price was concentrating so hard on screwing in each of his screws. He really had a good time and did almost all the work by himself.This is a little boy we picked up on the road *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*, and he had on the same clothes as Price and Wesley... what are the odds!?? Anyway... he did really well, and didn't want anyone to help him. Here is this little boy's finished bookends... cool, huh??Here is Price with his finished bookends. They got stickers that say NFC and AFC (Momma, Daddy can tell you what that means). Then we had to buy some paint and bring them home to paint them. So we put on some of Daddy's old t-shirts and got to work. They didn't make much of a mess, and had a really great time painting all by themselves.

Can you tell that someone ate spaghetti before we painted??

Price painted one lime green and yellow, and the other he wanted to be all blue because he thought Daddy would like that one best.

We had a really good time today and even spent 2 hours in between the making and painting of the bookends at the grocery store. All the boys were good, and now we're hoping for early bed tonight!!

Just a quick note to say that we've been really busy lately, but pictures will be coming soon. Ron is gone to Greenland (Brrrrrr!!!) and will be back the end of this month. Price is loving our first year of homeschool, and he's been having writing assignments. (He tells me what to write). Anyway... I am going to post the things he writes every week, so check out our homeschooling blog http://feeseracademy.blogspot.com and see the first three that he has written. I'll be adding the new ones every week. Hope everyone had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!