Back on Track

I wanted to share a few pictures from recent events. The girls had such a good time (along with their parents) at the Portland zoo and Cannon Beach. It was cold at the zoo but spirits were still high. Hadley was so excited to see zebras and Kate liked the giraffe the best. A summer trip to the zoo is a must for this year.

I think I mentioned in the earlier post that my grandpa celebrated his 91st birthday this week. He had a really nice party at the Country Club for friends and family. Someone was kind enough to snap this picture of me and my mom and sister, Lisa.

Saturday was a beautiful winter day on the farm. Doug Lowe came and joined Doug and I for some trap shooting. I can't wait to do some more shooting soon, it was fun!


Saturday night we went to the Evening of Elegance which was a fancy benefit dinner for the local Hospice, an organization Doug supports strongly. It was a special event for sure, we sat at a table with Doug's nurse, Janet and her husband who is on the board for Odd Fellows. After bidding in the silent auction and enjoying some of the valley's BEST wines, we sat down to a four course meal while the live auction took place. You could tell by the generosity of donations this is something others felt passionate about also. As an early Valentine's Day present Doug surprised me by bidding (and winning) a trio of hand made tribal baskets. :)

I am glad Saturday was so beautiful because today is that dreary freezing fog out here and a good day to sit inside and reflect on life, which I might add, is only possible to do because Betty kept the girls overnight.

One Month Closer to Spring

I have taken quite a little break from the blog. I apologize for the vacation. When I am gone so long then there are so many things I feel like I need to report but so little time to write it all down. I will give you the highlights.

* My parents have returned from their trip to Sedona, Arizona. Their horses had lived with us while they were gone and were happy to see them return. They are currently in the process of trying to buy a home in Goodyear. Hopefully that will work for them.

* We had to say good bye to a long long time friend, our 19 year old cat named Haley. She was a fun cat who got us through our college years and made all the moves through our life.

* We took a trip to Portland and Cannon Beach last weekend. It was the first time the girls had been to the coast and I tried to prepare them by explaining several times that this was NOT going to be like Hawaii. The weather ended up being beautiful and mild. They didn't seem to be bothered by the cooler temps, they loved playing on the beach and making sand castles. We had a really nice room right on the water. Downtown was 2 blocks away and it was an easy walk. The food was great, I love seafood and indulged in my favorite....oysters.

* While in Portland we made a trip to Lloyd's Center so Hadley and Kate could see the ice skaters. Hadley especially is infatuated with the beauty of ice skating. On Friday everyone joined me on a trip to Powell's bookstore. I love love love that place!! Oh my gosh! However, as soon as we got inside Hadley pointed and said "MAMA, LOOK!" Great. A little person. Midget. I don't know what the pc thing is to call him but I was thoroughly embarrassed. Hadley didn't mean any harm, she just doesn't get to see that kind of variety in people on the farm. And then we took the girls to the zoo, it was surprisingly fun considering the cold temps. I will share pictures later. Before we headed out of town we took Doug to the Triumph motorcycle dealership in Beaverton and drooled over some high dollar street bikes.

And with the kids bouncing off the wall and "playing" the piano I will take my cue that I need to finalize this post and look forward to staying on top of the farm life in blog form from here on out.
* My grandpa celebrated his 91st birthday at the Country Club on Wednesday with about 50 friends and family members. It was so fun to see all of their friends and everyone enjoyed a slide show of his life and family. My grandparents are amazing people.

That should pretty much bring you up to speed of the high lights. Forgive me if I forgot something.

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.

Christmas In My Rear View Mirror

We are faced with about 20" of snow and freezing temps daily. I can't remember the last time we had snow for Christmas. I think it must have been in the early 90's when Doug and I were in college. I know I am among the few but I really love this weather. It is different and challenging but despite having to haul water for horses and goats and chickens it makes me feel alive and invigorated.

Christmas eve was spent in with at my aunt and uncles house with my family. They always host a beautiful dinner. Candles, good wine, lovely china and warm lighting...it is a lovely evening that can be topped by few. My grandma looked memorable in her new sweater and I enjoyed a glass of wine while visiting with my grandma about the price of hay while looking out on icicles hanging at least 4' outside the window. The roads were as slick as could be but well worth the drive into town. I try to rarely miss an opportunity to spend time with my family.
The girls were radiant in the dresses Hadley picked out this Christmas season. I try to get them something special to wear and they LOVE to spin around and show off at every holiday event. I was surprised Hadley broke out of the tradition of matching pinkish dresses and opted for something elegant in black and gold. It was a challenge to get them to settle down for a picture and after a couple of shots Kate was becoming something that resembled more of a burglar than a Christmas sweetheart.

Here and gone in the blink of an eye. Everyone's dreams came true. Well, at least for Hadley. She got the chest xray she had been dreaming of. She also got a blue "diamond" she had asked for but it was nearly as exciting as I think she had dreamed. Mostly because budget and dreams didn't necessarily match up. And lastly, she got her accordion and is making beautiful polka music. Ahhhh...life is good.

After the sunset on Christmas day, we rolled down to Betty's to fill our bellies with the traditional comfort foods. Doug's aunt joined us from town.

With Christmas already behind us, I spent Friday filling water troughs by bucket because our stand pipes are frozen. What a drag!! And then we got one unthawed but didn't have enough hoses to run to the troughs from its location so I hauled buckets with the pick up to fill up Cruiser's trough. Elvis will have to wait for another day, he has a couple days worth of water left. While I was filling their troughs I let them out on the pasture to romp around. Cruiser just looks like an accident waiting to happen. He just looks like he is trying to find trouble and I can't relax so he lives a more sheltered life than I would like. Elvis, on the other hand, has lived in countless situations from running with bucking horses in the mountains to life on the open range with other groups of horses so he poses little stress for me. He is tolerant of Cruiser and his obnoxious ways, just one more reason I love them.

After 32 days of work, Doug finally signed out for the weekend. Signing out means he lets the on call doctors cover his in patients and he can mentally let go of care giving. Even when he is not officially in the office he has their needs and concerns on his mind because he might receive a call regarding the patient in the hospital at any time during the day. That also means he needs to be of sound mind (no beer!) and within 15 minutes of the hospital in case he needs to go in. Whew!! He deserves a long vacation.

So we wrap up this Friday with disc 2 of our new favorite series, The Office. This is the funniest series since Seinfeld. Check it out. Because I just got turned on to it by my sister I am getting caught up with seasons gone by from discs from netflix.

Feliz navidad amigos!

Snow storm 2008

Well it hit. A day later than expected. I suppose we were more prepared? This morning we have about 15" of snow. That is, for your information, taller than any of my snow boots. The care of the animals is always the most interesting aspect of winter weather. I have been feeding the horses a little more than usual to give them something to burn with this weather. Last night when I went to feed I had to change their blankets because they were like conformed sheets of ice over their backs. I think what happened is the snow landed on them and their body heat melted it and then as the temps dropped the moisture froze again. But when I stuck my hands under the blankets I decided they weren't keeping them warm enough so I brought round 2 of the winter blankets. Thankfully I have an abundance of nice warm blankets so they will be fine.

The chickens have not left their little barn for days. I have to bring food and water to them because they usually free range for both. The goats have moved in with them and I leave it open 24/7 so they can come and go as necessary. The tough love of goat hay is temporarily on hold because I feel sorry for them. They don't seem to tolerate adverse weather as well as the horses.

My biggest challenge will come today. The water troughs are to the point that they need to be filled again. They have trough heaters which keeps them drinkable all the time so I don't have to break ice but the bad news is all three of the stand pipes are frozen and I can't get water where my horses are. So now I will have to figure out how to run miles of hoses from something close to Betty's house or our guest house to get them the water they need. It should be interesting. Wish me luck.

My little Subaru has scored even more points with me this winter. Last spring I bought a used Forester to beat the cost of diesel in my big truck and no matter how plain or simply equipped my little car is, it ROCKS in this snow! It gets around better than my little Toyota pickup and I am so tickled with it.

Hadley and Kate had their good friends Luke and Gavin come out a couple days ago, before the big snow hit, and they had a great time sledding. Gavin wins the competition of being the hardest core snow kid. He stayed out longer and was more content to sled all day long than any of them. Gavin is a fire cracker. The kids had a good time and then came in to enjoy some hot cocoa and a lunch before Luke had to head off to preschool. Sounds like they will be back later today for some more winter fun.