I return, on schedule!  I know, I know.  I can hardly believe it myself.  Anyway, as far as what's going on right now, we just finished our first week back at school, and it looks to everyone involved like it's going to be a great year.  We've got a good group of kids in all of the grades, we have a school-wide discipline policy that's actually being enforced (which is a big improvement), and I can already tell that I'm much more on top of things than I was last year.  Jenny is handling working while pregnant pretty well, although the first couple of days she was a little sick.  She's had a good weekend, though, so hopefully that'll continue.  And that's about it for the past week.

Returning to our California trip, I left off at the end of December 30th, our day at Yosemite, which brings us to New Years Eve, which was a very busy day for us.  We got up pretty early and grabbed a little continental breakfast at the hotel before we headed into San Francisco, straight through to the shipping docks on the Bay, where we were catching the first boat out that morning for Alcatraz.  We figured that we probably couldn't go to San Fran without visiting what is probably the most famous prison in the history of the country, and we ended up being very happy that we went.  The island has a long and varied history, beginning as a Civil War-era fort, then a military prison, then a federal prison, then after a few years of being almost totally unused it became a hotbed for radical Native American action, before finally becoming a National Monument.  There are parts of each stage still viewable on the island, and history buffs that we are Jenny and I were fascinated by the entire thing.  This was the first picture I got of the island, which also illustrates one of the more frustrating aspects of our time in the Bay Area: It was foggy.  Our views were constantly obstructed by fog, which only lifted on the day we left:

This is the view of the dock were you disembark the ferry.  You can also see the lighthouse, part of the cell block and what remains of the warden's house:

This is a shot of the sign that announces your arrival to the island.  On the wall behind it you can see a remnant of the time when the American Indian Movement (AIM) controlled the island, where it reads, "Indians Welcome:"

Being the first group on the island for the day we thought it would be best to get our quick "welcome to Alcatraz" speech and then head staight up to the cell block before it got crowded, which turned out to be a great idea.  We walked around the east side of the island, where there is now a huge agave cactus grove and up the steps to the recreation yard before heading into the cell block itself.  Here are a few pictures, including one of Jenny and I in front of what you could see of the Golden Gate Bridge on that day:

This is a shot of the lighthouse and warden's house from the recreation yard.  The warden's house stood almost intact until the AIM takeover of the island, which began in 1969 and lasted until 1971.  During that period had a catastrophic fire, which left it gutted:

This is probably a good place to discuss the AIM takeover a little bit.  As background, you should understand that at the time there was a treaty on the books that said that all unused federal land would revert to Native American ownership.  Well, after the prison on Alcatraz was shut down, the island sat empty for many years.  In 1969 AIM, which was a group calling for more power to be given to Native Americans, decided to stage a takeover of the island based on this treaty.  Obviously this wasn't done through official channels, and the legality is pretty questionable, but AIM was able to hold on to the island until public interest in the takeover died out and their support and supply system began to fizzle.  The interesting thing about how the AIM takeover is viewed in the park today is that it is given a very neutral-positive treatment.  There are several exhibits on the island pertaining to those years, and aside from mentioning some of the damage that occurred then there is nothing negative at all about the tone, which I sort of expected there would be, considering the dubious nature of the occupation.  The AIM members who lived there are treated with respect, their motives and grievances are well documented and presented, and they even have a small ceremonial stone for Native Americans to leave prayers and offerings.  A very nice surprise for two teachers of Native students.

Our next stop on the tour was the cell block, where they give you an mp3 player with which to guide yourself through the building.  The main doors into the block:

This is a shot down "Broadway" the hall down the middle of the cells (which ends at "Times Square," so named because there is a clock there):

Jenny in "the hole:"

This is one of the cells where someone actually escaped from Alcatraz.  After fashioning dummy heads and using a spoon to dig out vents at the back of their cells, two men managed to get into the pipes behind their walls and disappeared.  No one ever heard from them again.  Officially they are presumed drowned on their way to land, so Alcatraz maintains its perfect "no escape" record, but one one actually knows what happened to them:

This is a veiw from outside the cellhouse down at some of the unrestored maintainance and support buildings.  Right now these buildings are pretty run down, but the Park Service is working on repairing them and they will be open to the public within a few years:

This is part of the island that is left over from the Civil War fort that sat on this spot before the prison.  These guns point down a short tunnel toward the boat dock and would have been used as a sort of "last resort" to fire on hostile forces already moving onto the island:

Jenny gazing back at the island on the way back to shore:

As a quick word of advice for anyone interested in visiting Alcatraz, get booked onto the "Early Bird" boat out.  Being the first group on the island meant that we had more room to move and and easier time getting around than anyone else did for the rest of the day.  I highly recommend it.

After we got back on land we headed up the Bay a bit on foot and visited the Fisherman's Wharf area, where we ate lunch (Macaroni and Cheese with crab and a fresh baguette for me!), walked around a bit, and quickly got tired of all of the touristy shops and mobs of people, so we got back into the car and drove up to Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  We stayed on the south side of the bridge and hiked a trail along the bluffs over the ocean, up under the bridge and a little bit on the bay side.  Here is a panorama of the bridge and the area outside the Golden Gate.  Lots of fog, which admittedly made for great pictures:

A good chunk of the cliffs where we were walking were closed or not looking very good because the Army Corps of Engineers is in the middle of a huge cleanup effort, getting rid of a huge set of gunnery installations that were put there during WWI and never taken down.  So if you go in a few years that area will probably be a lot prettier than it is now.  Here is a shot of me standing contemplatively in front of the ocean:

Jenny with the shoreline behind her:

After we hiked around the bridge for a while we headed a little further down the coast until we found a public beach, where we hung out for an hour or so.  Here are a couple of pics from there:

After we left the beach we headed back into the city proper, trying to find the intersection of Haigt and Ashbury so I could get my picture taken there.  We ended up getting hopelessly turned around and gave up after about 20 mintues, since we were running short on time anyway.  On our way back to the interstate we, totally by accident, drove right past Ghirardelli Square, and being chocolate enthusiasts we decided to stop for a quick snack.  We both got fantastic ice cream treats of some sort, but we didn't have time to stay long, because we had to get over the bridge to Oakland for Katie and Mo's rehearsal dinner.  We picked up my folks from their hotel and drove to the hall where they were having their reception, strolled around a bit with Dad and Karla while they were doing the actual rehearsal (which we didn't have to be involved in), and then headed back for the dinner/New Year's Eve party.  We had unbelievably good catered Indian food, got to meet Mo and his family (who were fantastic), got to catch up with my extended family, and had a lot of fun laughing, dancing (well, I didn't dance, because I never do), and all of the women (including Grandma!) got henna tattoos.  Here is a shot of Jenny's:

We were having too much fun that night to take a lot of pictures, though, so I don't have much else to share from the rehearsal dinner (there will be more from the wedding).  We ended up leaving well before midnight because we were absolutely bushed and had to drive 45 minutes back across the bay to get to our hotel, so we rang in the new year together in our hotel room... well, Jenny was actually asleep, but whatever.  Plus Jenny and I were getting up early the next morning to head out to Ana Nuevo State Park, but I'll save that for next time.  I'll try to get the rest of California done this week so I can move on to more recent events next weekend, but we'll have to see how the week goes.  Regardless, next time you can count on elephant seals, Bollywood dancing, nuptuals and lots and lots of Hymans.

Love from Kayenta.

I'm trying to figure out where to start.  James here.

OK, so it's been way too long (again) since I posted anything, as Joanna keeps reminding me, so I'll just start with the usual work related stuff and go from there.  School ended last week, and both of us are extremely relieved by that fact.  Jenny and I ran the 8th grade promotion party on Thursday, sponsored the Student Council end-of-the year Hawaiian dance, and then I spoke in front of about 500 people at the promotion ceremony on Friday.  I'll have much more to say about those events in the near future.  We spent the rest of that day getting checked out and finished with everything, and tearing down our rooms.  It was a crazy, crazy week, but now I'm enjoying telling people that my next day of work in August 4th, and our big contract pay-out checks got deposited into our accounts today, which makes all of that work worthwhile.

Wrestling ended back in January with a two-day tournament in Tuba City.  We were thrilled when the team took second place out of nine teams.  All but two of our wrestlers ended up wrestling for individual awards, and we had two first place finishes, including one first-year wrestler, and three second place finishes.  We ended up missing first place by only 10 points, after starting the second day 20 points out of first.  Our 180 pounder, who is also our team captain and Student Council President, was named Outstanding Wrestler of the Tournament.  After the team started out so uneven, it's been great seeing them come along, and ending the year on such a high note really made everyone feel good.

That's pretty much it for work-related stuff, so we'll move on to the multitude of travel-related items I have to cover in this entry.  We had been planning to travel up to Colorado on the Monday before Christmas, but after the week of snow days we were feeling a little stir crazy and decided to move it up to Sunday.  So Jenny and I drove up into Colorado to visit Durango, our favorite little Yuppie resort town.  We decided the day before that we wanted to take a trip on the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway, which runs from Durango north to the sleepy little town of Silverton, through some of the most beautiful Rocky Mountain country available.  It was built in the late 1800s as a means to move the silver ore that was mined in great quantities in and around the town of Silverton during that time to Durango, which was situated along easier transportation routes.  It wasn't long at all, though, before people started to realize that the ride was absolutely gorgeous, and well worth the trip just to see the sights.  So even though Silverton was never home to much more than 1000 people (and only 600 or so now), the passenger train has been running on that line since the 1880s.  We had heard that the trip was something to experience, and since we both like our mountain scenes with snow, we decided to do it in December, even though the train only goes about half way to Silverton during the winter.  So after a stop off at Jean Pierre for breakfast (where else would you eat breakfast when in Durango?), we hopped on the old coal-fire steam engine (yes, I'm conflicted about supporting a polluter like that).  Here's a shot of the train at the station:

And the interior of our coach, which dated to 1886:

The train was actually very nice.  They've obviously taken very good care of it.  There was even a car that functioned as a snack bar, where they served extremely reasonably priced hot chocolate, other drinks and various snacks and light meals.  We sat in the car and looked out the windows for a short time, but as soon as we got out of town we realized pretty quickly that we weren't getting the views we wanted inside the car and went back one car to the open-air observation car, which was cold, but afforded us much better views.  We had barely cleared Durango to the north when we started seeing elk and deer in fairly surprising numbers.  We never could get a decent shot of them, though, from the moving train.  We did get lots and lots of shots of the landscape, however, and here are several of the best:

As I said before, during the winter the train only goes about halfway to Silverton, so while we did get fantastic views of the Animas River Canyon, some of which you see above, we didn't get any shots of the ruined old mines that dot the hillsides closer to Silverton.  We both agreed on the way back, however, that the entire trip would have probably gotten to feeling pretty long by the time it was over.  We were back in Durango by early afternoon, and the full trip takes an entire day.  The winter turn-around point is at a spot called Cascade Station, which is really just a turn-off for the train with a shelter-house and a big fire pit and a trail out to a bridge of the Animas River.  But the spot was gorgeous and we took advantage of the break to walk around a little and take some pictures:

We didn't really take many pictures on the way back, because we decided to stay in the car for most of the return trip (plus, it's just going back the exact same way we came).  When we got back to Durango we were still full from our Jean Pierre breakfast, so we just walked around on Main Street ducking into shops until we finally got hungry and stopped into the Diamond Belle Saloon for a late lunch/early dinner (lupper, for you Seinfeld fans).  The Diamond Belle claims to be the most authentically preserved Western Saloon still in existence, and I have no reason to doubt it.  The bartenders and waitresses dress their parts, and this is what it looks like inside:

Granted, the soundsytem takes some of the authenticity away, but you get the idea.  The major difference between how the saloon operated in the 1800s and how it operates today is the fact that the menu is slightly more upscale now.  Jenny had ravioli with cream sauce and I had a wonderful smoked salmon with lemon-caper sauce platter with a baguette.

Thursday of that week was, of course, Christmas.  Jenny and I spent it here, just the two of us.  It was the first Christmas we've had since we've been married that we haven't seen at least one side of our family, but we made it into a great day anyway.  I read periodically from Dickens' "A Chrismas Carol," we both made out like bandits with the presents, and once again I made a fantastic (if I do say so myself) meal.  Here's a shot of the tree on Christmas morning:

Guster got in the spirit:

We actually woke up to a fresh dusting of snow on Christmas morning.  Here's Cody and I looking out at it:

And dinner:

The menu was: turkey breast (for me and the dogs) (shut up dad), cheesy potato casserole, cider glazed carrots, creamed peas with onions, cranberry sauce, rolls and to drink Lindeman's Framboise for Jenny and Monty Python's Holy Ale for me.  It was one of the better meals I've made.

So, that brings us up to Christmas.  My plan here is to periodically (once a week or so) update the blog again with all of the information that I've got backed up due to my neglegence of the blog this spring.  Hopefully by the end of summer I'll be completely caught up.  The next entry will be a doozy about our big trip to California over New Years.  But that will probably have to wait at least a week and a half or so since I will be in Denver next week for the Presidential Academy seminars that you may remember Jenny doing last year.  Jenny is going to stay home, since she won't be as apt to walking around the downtown of a large city as I was last year.  I leave on Sunday.  I'll probably check in from there one of the evenings next week, but I won't have much to say.

I hope you haven't all abandoned reading us, and I hope this finds you all well.

Love from Kayenta.

I don't have a lot to say tonight.  After all, it's pretty much all been said at this point.  I just want to say that I have never been prouder to be an American than I am right now.  Suddenly so much of our nation's ugly racial history seems slightly less present.  But even aside from race, we saw tonight a nation that came together and voted for a man who ran on a message of hope, not fear.  He ran on ideas, he ran on trust, he ran on the American dream.  And he won.  He beat all of the odds, and a lot of hate.  He couldn't have been more different than most of the people who get elected president, but tonight Barack Hussein Obama is our 44th President.  I've cried more than once tonight.

Now comes the hard part: cleaning up the mess we've been left with by 8 years of incredible incompentence.  I will gladly be in line to do whatever I am asked to do.  I hope you all will too.

Love for America, from Arizona.