I'm sorry you get to hear from me 3 weeks in a row.  Tim is in Anchorage this weekend and asked if I could write the post.  I'm also sorry that I have no picture for you this week.  (It's okay Karen, you can make it through without a picture.  I believe in you!) 
    This was the first week since basketball season started that we didn't have students out of town for games.  It was kind of nice just having our student's in class and not having to worry about getting them their missing work and seeing them totally frustrated the days they were in class because they were so behind (okay, there was still a little bit of that).  Although, I was shocked at how many students still were absent even though the basketball teams weren't gone.  Next week is regionals in Chevak.  Which means about a third of our high school will be gone from Tuesday-Sunday.  It's crazy how much our classes are affected by sports, but that's the way it is when you have to fly everywhere. 
    This week we had mascot tryouts.  One of the big accomplishments of our student council this year has been to order a long wanted husky mascot.  We have had a volunteer wear the suit at pep rallys and games since we got it.  However, the basketball players wanted to take the mascot to regionals with them, so it was time for some official tryouts.  We actually had about 20 kids sign up to try out, which totally shocked me.  Only about 5 showed up to actually try out though.  The kid that has been volunteering to wear the suit was the one that won.  I'm totally okay with that, because I already know that he will show up and be reliable, because he proved it over the past month.
    We had middle school home games this weekend, one boys and one girls game on Friday night and the same Saturday morning.  I stayed and watched the games on Friday.  They were both close, fun games to watch.  The boys won by one point.  The were up by quite a few points and then one of their 5 players fouled out and they had to play the last 3 minutes with only 4 players.  I don't think I'd seen that before.  It made those last 3 minutes a bit nerve racking.  Saturday morning I went to the school to make sure things went okay with the mascot and that concessions were open, but I didn't stay for the games.  Instead, I went with Heather to the store.  It took as an hour and half to get to the store and back.  (Did I mention it's only 3 miles away.)  We just kept getting stuck, even after the plow cleared the road.  It was quite the ordeal and I decided that for now on I'm sticking to driving our smaller, lighter 4-wheeler . . . sometimes I wish we had a sno-go.
    Friday evening, Tim left for Anchorage.  He will be there until Wednesday at ASTE, a technology conference for teachers.  He was really excited to go.  It sounds like he's already learned quite a few things and has been enjoying himself.  I've been trying to keep myself busy, so I don't get too bored without him.  Heather and Kim have had me over for movies and dinner, so they're taking care of me!

    Saturday school has confused my internal clock.  On Tuesday I was absolutely positive it was Wednesday.  Several of my students were positive that Wednesday was Tuesday and others were convinced that Thursday was Friday.  It’s amazing what creatures of habit we are and how many successive days can be affected by one day being out of the ordinary.  Luckily, we have had a normal weekend to help us get back on track.  I guess it hasn’t been completely normal.  Tomorrow we have an in-service day, so our students have a three-day weekend.  Who knows, maybe our internal clocks will be messed up for yet another week.

    This week was spirit week.  Once again, I dressed up every day, but hardly anyone else on staff or in the student body dressed up.  Monday was fake an injury day.  I wasn’t up to getting up early to make any black eyes, so I just taped up a couple of fingers and told all my students I slammed my fingers in the door. Tuesday was fan day.  I really am not into watching sports and have no paraphernalia from any professional teams of any sport.  So, I wore my Proform Airborne Jump Rope Team warm-ups.  I forgot how wonderfully comfortable they are.  I wish I could wear them to school more often.  Wednesday was triplet day.  I am used to twin day and I was prepared for that, but triplet day?  Wow, that’s a little bit tougher.  Luckily, Tim and I were able to talk Heather into joining us.  There were only 3 people dressed up in the entire school: Tim, Heather, and myself.  We all wore sweatshirts that had “Phillips” written across the front and wore pigtails.  Yes, even Tim had pigtails (see photograph).  Thursday was nerd day.  I woke up thinking there was absolutely nothing I had for nerd day except taping up my glasses.  Oh, I was wrong.  With a little effort I was able to pull something together.  My students couldn’t stop staring at me.  It was funny to see the students try to take me seriously during our student council meeting.  Some of them were really struggling and just couldn’t stop laughing.  It’s probably good that we don’t have dress-up days every day or we would never accomplish anything.  Friday was our traditional school color day.
    This week the girl’s basketball team had some home games (hence the spirit week).  Thursday we had a pep rally in preparation.  In my opinion, it was the best pep rally that has happened at Togiak school. (Music REALLY helps.)  It was one of those times when I thought, “Oh, I’m glad I’m a student council advisor.”  The best part of the whole pep rally was that Mike (the other advisor) and myself really didn’t do much at all.  The students planned, prepared, and pulled it off (other than the shopping that Mike and I did for the supplies).  To top it off, I felt like our student body was a little more interested and spirited than usual.

    Tim and I attended the game on Thursday evening and then took our classes to a second game on Friday morning.  Our girls’ team never let the opposing team come even close to their score.  It was kind of an uneventful game in that sense.  The game ended with Togiak triple the opposing team’s score. (Go Huskies!)  Some of my students were complaining later in class that the game was boring because there was no competition.  I pointed out to them that at least the game was boring because we were winning by so much and not boring because we were losing by so much.  They stopped complaining after that.
    Tuesday was Valentine’s Day.  Tim and I kept it pretty simple.  I quietly hung hearts from the ceiling in front of his classroom door before school started.  He quietly “heart-attacked” my classroom door while I was in PE class.  Tim’s middle school students helped cut and decorate hearts for me.  Apparently, our last name is spelled “Philliphs”.  I laughed to see that spelling on over half the hearts.

    This weekend was pretty simple.  Tim and I spent Friday evening with Heather.  She was a good sport.  We showed up at 7:00 with little notice and in return she made us dinner and talked with us all evening.  Saturday, Tim and I hosted a movie night featuring Breaking Dawn.  Today has been a pretty typical Sunday.  We attended church and then spent time talking to Tim’s parents and my parents.  All in all, it’s been a good week.

     Happy Thanksgiving!  We had a great Thanksgiving get together with the other teachers at the school.  I (Tim) made the turkey, which I think turned out better than last year, and Kaitlyn made Three-wheelers (rolls).  The meal was great and spending time with all the staff was also great.  However, our Thanksgiving vacation was over shadowed by a basketball tournament that I ran.  Basketball tournaments are the way to make money and fund raise here.  People in Togiak love to play basketball.  I volunteered the wrestling team to sponsor the tournament.  The Thanksgiving tournament is an annual event, which starts Thanksgiving evening and runs all day Friday and all day Saturday.  After everything is done, 20 games are played.  I wasn’t really thinking when I volunteered the wrestling team to host the tournament, because I ended up spending my whole Thanksgiving vacation at the school.  Luckily, Kaitlyn was okay with it, she wanted to finish some sewing anyway.  I was lucky enough to have another teacher help set up and run things.  Actually, all the staff that volunteered were awesome.  I was really surprised how much food was sold in our concessions booth.  We went through 42 12-packs of soda pop (504 cans) in three days.  This number should have been higher, but I ran out of soda multiple times and had to go back to the store and buy more.  After everything was said and done, we ended up grossing over $3000.  This money will help us travel to more tournaments next year.

     Tim wasn't the only one who stayed active this past weekend.  Kaitlyn, being the multi-tasker that she is, stayed very busy.  She was kind enough to help out at the basketball tournament Thursday night in the concessions and then train the people who were going to work it the next day also.  She also went snowshoeing with a couple of other teachers at the school.  They went up "Two-Hill".  The temperature has been holding steady at around -6°F for most of the past week or two.  When she went snowshoeing, she came back and noticed that her eye lashes had iced over.  After that, she decided to keep it warm and came indoors and did some sewing.  Kaitlyn has been working on a Kuspuq, a traditional native shirt with hood.  It's essentially a 'hoodie', except that it's made out of thin fabric.  They can sell here any where from $65-$100+ dollars.  She thought it would be fun to make one on her own.  She's been taking lessons from one of the native teachers at the school.  So far it's been looking great.  Kaitlyn also took some time to continue working on her quilt.  She's been building her quilt at the school with a group of people from town and school.  Thanksgiving weekend was no break for Kaitlyn either.

Well, unfortunately, we really don’t have much to share this week.  It’s been a very ordinary week.  We went to school and stayed there all day, came home, watched some White Collar episodes, and went to bed.  That’s about it.  The most exciting thing that happened was that our principal told us that we were having another inservice on Friday.  So, for the second week in a row, we only saw students 4 days.  I do love having inservice on Friday.  I wouldn’t complain if it were to happen again.
     Our principal officially resigned.  We all knew it was coming, but he sent his papers in that said he won’t be returning next year.  Tim and I are pretty nervous about the administration for next year.  There’s a couple of scenarios we could see happening and we’re not sure how good they will be.  I guess change is always scary.
     I got talked into playing in another basketball tournament this weekend.  It was slightly humiliating, but fun as well.  We did lose both games that we played.  I guess if I want to be any good I should probably practice.  Robin is slowly wearing me down though, I’m pretty sure before long she’ll have me a gym night practicing with her.  I did make 2 points in the first game, so that was exciting. 
     One exciting thing that happened this week is that we finally finished writing our birth parent letter.  Thank you to all of you who gave us feedback and helped us improve it.  We submitted all of our online paperwork.  I believe all we have left to do is our home study and 10 hours of adoption training and then we can officially be approved as an adoptive couple.

This week we had the opportunity to have a teacher inservice.  Inservice days are coveted by teachers here.  Most of us are really new teachers, so it provides a time to have some extra time to prepare for class and a breather from the students.  This service we spent some time writing implementation plans.  Our school hasn’t shown annual yearly progress for the last three years, which means the state wants us to write down what we are doing now, as a school, and implementation plans to help us get back on track.  Friday’s inservice was dedicated mostly to writing those plans.  It took most of the day.
      This week our basketball teams played Bethel.  The boys went there and the girls stayed home.  Bethel is a big “sport” school.  The whole community plays a big part and attends most of the events.  Suffice it to say that there teams are really good, whereas our teams could use  a lot more practice.  I’m sure how the boys did, but the girls won both of there games, granted, they were playing Bethel’s JV team.  
      Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot to report this week.  Both of us have been fighting a cold, which is spreading through the school pretty thoroughly.  We’ve been hanging on, but we just feel out of energy all the time.  I guess that’s public school’s in January.  On a happier note, we are both really excited for the mid-season premier of White Collar.  White Collar is a USA Network show (replacement for MONK) that is about the white collar crime division of the FBI.  It’s fantastic!  We absolutely love it.  We’ve been catching up this week to prepare for it this upcoming Wednesday.  Any of you who want a replacement for MONK, a clean fun detective show this is it.  
     That’s all from us.  Have a good week all. 

     Thanksgiving: This past week was Thanksgiving.  We worked full days on Monday and Tuesday, and a “minimum” day on Wednesday (which means we got to leave 1 hour early).   Both Kaitlyn and I were really excited for this week.  I wish I could be 100% truthful to say that we were truly thankful for the blessings we’ve received, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say we were excited for school to have a break.  
     On Thursday, most of the teachers (at least the ones not from Togiak) got together to have a little Thanksgiving.  There were about 20 of us in total.  We all volunteered to bring items to our Turkey-day potluck.  Kaitlyn volunteered to bring rolls and I volunteered to bring a turkey.  Kaitlyn made some awesome layered rolls, which were gone very quickly.  I was excited for the challenge to cook the turkey.  Last year was the first time I’d ever attempted cooking a turkey and I did it with the help of both of my parents.  It turned out really good.  This year I had to do it by myself.  I had read over a bunch of recipes and watched a bunch of foodnetwork.comvideos to prep myself.  I felt relatively confident in my game plan.  I decided that I wanted to brine my turkey first.  This is a salt water bath the turkey takes overnight before it goes in the oven.  The brine replaces the water already in the meat with salted, flavored water.  As a positive side note, the salt in the brine helps increase retention of the replaced water in the meat, which helps keep the meat from becoming too dry while cooking, and the flavor helps the meat taste good.  As I saw it, it was a good choice.
     I brined the turkey at my apartment, then took it to the school to cook it. (If you’ll indulge me for a few min, I like to say how I cooked the turkey.)  I first coated the turkey in some oil and then put it in a 500° F oven for 30 min.  The high temperature helps develop a deep color on the skin. After 30 min, I dropped the temperature to 350° F  and put a probe thermometer in the breast meat. I had calculated that if I covered the breast meat with aluminum foil and waited until the meat reached 161° F the breast meat would be done when the dark meat reached about 180° F.  It seamed to work well.  The white meat was flavorful, juicy, and cooked just right.  The dark meat cooked just right as well.  The turkey turned out great.  I always appreciate comments about how good my cooking is, but the best comments are always when people are “wowed” and just can’t get enough of the food and continue to go back for more.  This was one of those times.

  After our school Thanksgiving get together, the 5 high school teachers was invited to another Thanksgiving dinner at a locals house.  We all were invited to Ester Thompson’s house, she is the special ed aide at the school for my down syndrome wrestler.  She had a two-part meal.  A traditional Thanksgiving according to white people and a traditional Thanksgiving according to Native Alaskans.  I’ll focus on the Native Alaskan food.  She served us sweet and sour walrus, agutak (berries, sugar, & crisco), green agutak (berries in some green paste), dried salmon, and salty fish heads.  Oh yeah, quite the experience.  We all used the excuse that we were full from the previous meal, (which was mostly true, we just made sure that we made it known.) 
    Kaitlyn and Basketball: Each year during the thanksgiving weekend, here in Togiak, there is a community basketball tournament.  (Nothing gets this town going like basketball.)  Kaitlyn decided to play with a team of other teachers and aides.  She hadn’t played basket ball since she was 12.  As you could imagine, she was the less experienced out there.   None the less, I think she was in the best shape.  Her team went 0-2.  There first game went into overtime; they lost by 4.  Her second game was a blow out where the other team scored more than 20 points than Kaitlyn’s team.  

Wrestling: This past week was tough for my team.  We went to a real tournament in Bethel (where there are brackets and consequences for losing).  Most tournaments at small just match up wrestlers and let them wrestle.  This is great for wrestlers who aren’t really very good, because they can get 4+ matches even if they lose them all.  At real bracket tournaments if you lose twice you’re out.  So, right off the bat, the stakes were higher for my guys.  The first two rounds were going well, then one of my best wrestlers broke his collar bone.  He was thrown in a lateral and landed on his shoulder instead of his back.  There was nothing he could do differently.  I was surprised to see that move at the tournament, it’s a pretty technical move.  Anyway, I spent the next 5 hours in the ER with my guy.  We got home around 3:00 a.m. The collar bone break took the wind out of our sails and the tournament went down hill from there.  
     When we came back I was informed that my senior wanted to quit and start with basketball.  This left me in a predicament.  I have been taking 5 guys to all my matches.  4 high school and 1 middle school.  The only match we have left is Regionals in Bethel, which will happen next week.  Middle school doesn’t wrestle post-season, so he’s out.  One of my high school guys is a high functioning down syndrome guy.  Post-season isn’t a place for him, so he’s out.  Collar bone break guy is out for the next 4-6 weeks, so he’s out.  My senior just quit, so he’s out.  Which leaves one guy left, a freshman first year wrestler.  This was tough.  I only have one guy left on my team.  It’s going to cost $2,300 to charter a plane to go to Bethel.  The school doesn’t want to pay that much money for one wrestler, especially if he isn’t going to be a big contender.  Long story short, wrestling is over.  It’s been quite the trip, although, I am very excited to have my planning time back for school.  I was hired to teach, and that’s what I really want to do.