Yes, Virginia, there is a Beaver Round up!

There a few things the people of Dillingham look forward to: Fish camp, berry picking, Moose season & Beaver Round up. Beaver Round Up is the biggest festival of the year. People from neighboring villages come for the events. Such events include: Pizza Hut Dinner, KFC Dinner (Both air freighted in), Out house racing, chili cook-off, and much, much more. This being my first Beaver Round up, it only made sense that I (through SAFE) had to "host" a number of events.


The craziness started on Wednesday night. Instead of going to Dilicapers (think talent show), I was in my kitchen cooking 40 dozen eggs for the breakfast that SAFE was hosting the next morning. You might ask your self, how long does it take to scramble 40 dozen eggs in a tiny kitchen. The answer: 3 hours. I only used one pan and Aaron helped me crack and scramble (thank you mom & dad for my Kitchen Aid Mixer) the eggs while I was cooking. After all the eggs were cooked, we dropped them off at the Youth Center for the next morning.

Thursday morning started out way too early. I have having a hard time sleeping because I needed to be up at 5am to pick up some volunteers and open the youth center so we could start re heating the eggs and sausage. Did I mention we made breakfast burritos? I had wanted to get the huge cans of cheese sauce that you get from Costco or Sam's club, but they didn't come in. So I had to make Velveeta cheese sauce. Every good Southern girl knows the magic of Velveeta Cheese. It makes even the yuckiest vegetables taste awesome if you like the school bus yellow, molten cheese food taste. The breakfast was over with at 11am. Which was nice because I had already been up since 3am and I was exhausted.

After a 2 hour nap, it was back to work to get ready for the kids Carnival and the youth Dance. Thankfully, I did not have to work the kids carnival. I went there to make sure the staff that was working was doing ok. She was working the "marriage booth." For 3 tickets you can get married to who ever you like. For 6 tickets you can get divorced. I'm not sure what the lesson to be learned here is.

I left the carnival to start the set up for the dance. Can I just say that the kids out here are great! I had about 7 of them setting up the whole sound system and getting the middle school gym set up for the dance. Then at 11pm, I had about 7 kids help me tear all the sound equipment down and load it in to my car. I was out of there by 11:30pm. It was nice and again, those kids are awesome. I think they were just so excited to have a dance that they were willing to help with anything. The good news was that there was no cost to SAFE for the dance so it was all profit.

During the time of the dance, Aaron went with a few of our friends down to the local bar to watch the Wii Bowling contest and the Beaver boobs & buns contest. Yes, that is equivalent to a wet t-shirt contest and best butt contest. (Classy!) One of our friends came in 4th in the Wii bowling contest and thankfully, Aaron left before the Adult contests to help me pack up the sound equipment.

By Friday I was dragging. Wednesday & Thursday had worn me down. But there was still more to do. Friday was the Beaver Round Up Parade. That was interesting. I can't believe how many people showed up for that. I will try to get some pictures of that from the girl who was riding in my "float." By float I mean a purple van with cardboard purple ribbons taped to it. Very stylish.
Friday night was the KFC Dinner. They air freighted in 500 lbs of KFC chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and coleslaw. It was $10 a plate for 2 pieces of chicken, mashed potatoes, slaw, & a biscuit. I remember buying a full bucket meal for $10.00. After that, there was the Harlem All-Stars Basket ball game, during which SAFE (meaning me) sold concessions. We ran out of bottled water and capri suns before the game even started . (oops--I will know to buy more next year) By the end of the first break, we had sold out of just about everything. Which was fine with me because again, I was ready to go home. We were suppose to meet up with our friends, but I just wanted to sleep.

Aaron and I woke up Saturday morning and went to the breakfast that was sponsored by the headstart. For $5 you got a pancake, eggs, bacon, sausage and coffee. After that, we headed down to the local market to watch the turkey bowling. I kid you not, there was a turkey bowling event complete with a frozen turkey and 2 litters of Mountain Dew. One of my favorite authors, Christopher Moore, wrote about Turkey Bowling in one of his books, Blood Sucking fiends. It's pretty amusing.



Also on Saturday, Erin and I decided to bake a bunch of stuff for the bake-off on Sunday. We decided to try to make a 14 layer cake together. She made chocolate chip cookie cupcakes and I made apple dumplin's. This took us all day. I am not sure why any one would want to make that 14 layer cake at all. It is labor intensive. You bake 14 flat cakes--think pan cakes, make this goo that goes inbetween them and then top it with butter cream. We have no idea if it is going to turn out right. We will see today. I am hopfull about the dumplings and if the cake isn't a huge train wreck, it will be impressive.

Tonight is the bonfire and fireworks display at dusk, which thankfully is at about 7:45-ish on a clear night. Yes, the days are getting much longer now. D'oh. I just realized day-light savings time took effect today. I guess dusk will be about 8:30-ish. I really need to buy some black out curtains. That is all for now. I will post more about the bake-off and hopfully more pictures some time this week.