A Special Weekend

 We were able to go into Bethel for the Olympics this year. I brought in four students, athletes plus friends. Going into Bethel we needed money to spend! Fortunately, the school had cake mix and ice cream cones that needed to get used up. Perfect! We made Cupcake Cones. For two days we baked, and in two days we sold out.

 The first batch didn't go so well, they overflowed. We had to eat the "bad" ones.....we just had to. We even had to eat three bad ones each.....

 

  Then we had Bertina, the baker extraordinaire, come and we added popcorn balls to the mix. The students decided they wanted blue marshmallows. We also used up the rest of the sprinkles in the mix.

 At $1.00 a piece they sold out even though we only sold during the lunch times.

So, it was finally time to head to the big city of Bethel.

  We flew in using a Caravan, a first for these kids, and got ourselves settled. Next, it was time for pizza and making our banner for the opening ceremony. We were first in line. Barrow came up behind us, Bethel was next, Dillingham, Kwethluk, Kwigillingok, Napakiak, Nightmute, Nunapitchuk, adn Quinhagak all lined up.

The torch

 We had our own special cheering section, Eli and Katie.

 There was a short speech from the director out of Anchorage that was very inspirational. Then everyone broke out and headed off to watch the movie and eat lots and lots of popcorn.

 All the next day the teams were involved in a 3 on 3 tournament. The games were 20 minutes long, or the game stopped when a score hit 20. It was a great set up for our group.

 We finally had a break in the action and got to spend some of our hard earned money. Each student had a shopping list of what they were interested in looking for with an estimated cost. Slurpies were not on the list....but when you're a thrifty shopper you can make it work!

What a crew!

Then there was the dance and of course the girls had to dress up. The boys were nowhere to be found.

  As the night wore on more and more dancers joined in. The Conga line got the most dancers out on the floor.  We eventually found the boys, upstairs. So, we had to get at least one of them in the photo....

One tired group!