Feelings of Accomplishment

Don't you love it when you get something done...something that you can see and shows for your effort? I have had feelings of ambition in the last week or two and have been wanting to put some different flooring in our laundry room for quite some time so I thought this would be a good place to direct my energy. It was an old concrete floor that was always cold and it needed to be repainted so I just picked up a few boxes of those stick down tiles from Home Depot and away we went! We, meaning me and myself. It feels good to have a mini face lift in the laundry room and now I am looking at the back entry way and our upstairs bathroom. I love love love the look of real tile but I realize my skills are not what they should be to take on such an advanced project so I will just be happy with what I have got right now.

The second photo also gives you a glimpse of the small princess dress wardrobe that the girls share. Who'd a thunk I would have two little girls that would love to dress up?? I swear to you, I never even owned a Barbie doll! But back the floor...looks good huh??

And with these exceptionally warm days I spent a good bit of time cleaning out my car and cleaning off the patio and raking wayward leaves and just enjoying being outside. It was 60 today and I was outside working in a tank top. Isn't that crazy? However, Kate can always top me when it comes to crazy. She was "helping" me hose off the welcome mat and next thing you know she is giving herself a shower under the hose and it soaking wet. It took quite awhile before she could be convinced it wasn't quite warm enough for such thing.

No matter how much I love to cook I never seem to learn that I really need to READ THE DIRECTIONS THOROUGHLY!! I had planned on preparing the leg of lamb last night for dinner but than I actually started reading through the directions and realized I needed to a) butterfly the meat and b) marinate it for 24 hours. Ok, I had to get my dear, extremely talented friend Brooke Maloney on the horn right away. What the heck is a butterflied leg of lamb?? She has answered COUNTLESS cooking questions for me in the past and I know there will be just as many in our future. She is AMAZING! She is a fantastic cook, really. I want her to move to Walla Walla and knock the socks of the wine community with her cooking. But that's kind of off topic isn't it?? The point is, my leg of lamb is wallowing in olive oil, garlic, lemon, rosemary and other tasty herbs just waiting for me to grill it up tonight.

That's all friends. Gotta get out and feed the horses before the sunsets.

Wolf Moon

Did you see it? Wasn't it amazing? Oh, I shuttered as I watched it crawl up over the Blue Mountains last night to show it's intense beauty. What was it?? The wolf moon! The wolf moon is the name of the January full moon named for the hungry winter wolf packs howling at the village edge of the Native Americans. Oh how I love a full moon.

And that, friends, is the most exciting thing I have to report...isn't that great? No flooding. However, all the flooding on the coast brings back vivid memories of the floods we endured when we lived right next to the Pilchuck Rive in Snohomish where we lived when Doug was in medical school at University of Washington. And the lay night drives his parents made to help us gather our belongings and stay with us to boast morale when we worried that all of our material things would float away. Thank God for higher ground!!

The sun is actually shining right now and the weather is mild. I love it. It is a shot in the arm. My parents are continuing to enjoy a restful and fun month in Sedona Arizona. It is great they get away every year at this time so they can enjoy the better things in life.

I have been cooking up some great stuff here. We had a really yummy chicken stir fry recipe from www.thepionnerwoman.com . A round steak from this years deer was also on the menu, a recipe also modified from her website. Tonight we are going to have a leg of lamb from a local farm. I haven't had lamb in a million years and I don't recall ever having leg of lamb so this should be interesting. Yesterday I made a fresh salsa when my sister and nephew came to visit. I think we knocked back most of the salsa and chips before the sunset. I am in the mood to COOK! Too bad I am not in the mood to EXERCISE!!

Ok, that's all. Gotta get back to running this joint. They are lost without me.

Shimmering January Morning

So I thought perhaps we had seen the last of our bitter cold winter weather but I was in for a little shock Saturday morning when I woke up to more snow. It was a nice dusting, the temps colder than anticipated but we had grown accustomed to it in December so I just pulled my snow boots on and trudged on. Saturday night I had the Mountain States Quarter Horse banquet in Pasco at the TRAC. My friend Tara joined me for the drive over. We stopped by Columbia Center and returned a couple of things and then went over to my friend Cathy's for a cocktail before we met up with horse show buddies for a year end celebration. The evening was fun, I enjoyed visiting with my buddies and I came home with 3 awards. I have to laugh though, one of the awards was a buckle for high point Amateur Hunter Under Saddle. They had made a rather major mistake by adding a Paso Fino for the English horse. Ummmm....no. They are sending all the English buckles back. The halter horses look something like a halter horse being shown by some man showing pigs. Instead of a lead shank he is holding a stick. So I am glad I didn't work all year just to end up with something like that! I got a very nice pair of cordless Laube clippers that I am looking forward to using and a saddle blanket carrier.

We had a couple of hunters staying in our guest house this week. They made us dinner twice and it was fun to go down and visit over a few glasses of wine and enjoy a really well made dinner. John is a fantastic cook and he made an elk meatloaf with turnips and then we had a pheasant stir fry another night. They headed out this morning after a week long of hunting. The bitter cold spell we had has been hard on the animals on the farm including the pheasants. They said many are missing their tail feathers which is the result of them being sluggish and weak and coyotes getting close to filling their bellies.

New Years was fun. Betty watched the girls. She took them to Milton-Freewater for a light show with her friend Marcia. The girls loved it. And that was followed by a serious game of hide and seek in Betty's house with flash lights. I can only imagine the thrill that must have been. Kate and Hadley are amazingly brave. But while they were having a wild time we were making a few stops at different friends house to bring in the new year. We finished up at the Kimball's with a lot of fun playing 4-5-6. Whew!!

This morning we awoke to some of the most beautiful frost I have ever seen. It was wind swept so it stood about an inch on the northeast side of all the branches and shimmered in the morning sunshine. Despite the beauty, the temps in teens called for another round of hauling water and dragging out the trough heaters and running extension cords. I have my mom's horses out here while they winter in Sedona so I have two more animals relying on my ability to keep things running smoothly. They are great guests.