This goose is heading south for the winter!  Well, two weeks.  No one else seemed convinced that Jesus' birthday is so important it should be celebrated for a couple months, so two weeks is what we get. 
We will fly out tomorrow night and hope we have already exhausted all of our travel bad luck.  We arrived in Homer to find the hood frozen again - and since we have to prime the fuel lines to start the truck that is a bit of a snag.  We worked that loose and got situated to find the batteries were dead and we eventually had to call the tow truck to come jump the truck.  We also had to have a local delivery truck jump the truck again this morning, so we got new batteries a little earlier than planned.  Hopefully all will go smoothly from this point on so that we can enjoy a much needed visit with family, friends, Browning, our house, and some time in rabbit fields and the deer woods (it is still bow season after all).

While we were originally scheduled to fly out of the village today, we flew out of the village yesterday instead.  The weather forecasts were looking unfriendly so we decided not to chance it.  Having heard there were no flights today, we are very glad we made that decision.  I am disappointed to miss the Christmas program at school today as I know our kids worked very hard to translate "Silent Night" into Sug'stun (their native language) and wanted to hear them sing it in both languages and share the story of the World War I Christmas truce.  I will be sure to lay the blame for this bad weather on the shoulders of one particular student who was hoping we would not be able to get out of the village for the break.

I have another student, though, that I will be forever indebted to for taking care of Little Miss Sunshine.  She's so patient with me that she's even agreed to talk to my kitty (she's allergic so she can't pet her) and turn the TV on for a few hours for her so she won't feel so terribly lonely.  One of the teachers from the neighboring village is also planning to come over and visit with the kitty as well since she had to leave her babies behind in Oregon and is missing feline company.  Hopefully my furry purry will survive the next two weeks without her family.  James and Carol's cat moved to the village dump and refused to return home for several weeks after they returned from an extended trip so I'm hoping my little kitty doesn't decide to take drastic measures to express her displeasure at our absence.