Our Neck of the Woods

She is here!

2012-02-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

Our little Jayney Joy was born Tuesday, February 7th at 6:38am
She weighed 8 pounds 13 ounces and was 20 inches long!

We are so happy to have her home with us now. I am hoping to be able to tell more about her birth story in the upcoming weeks as we get our sleep schedule a little more defined. Until then here are a few pictures of our precious bundle.

Babies Have a Mind of Their Own

2012-01-28T19:08:00.000-08:00

(38 weeks 3 days, and looking like I'm ready to pop! You can also see the pretty roses Dusty gave me tonight before our date)

I am learning before our little person even arrives that shedefinitely has a mind of her own. Not a big surprise given the example has inus for parents. For better (Dusty) or worse (Erin) we both tend to be strongwilled, or possibly even a bit bull headed. Well, this little one is making methink she has picked up those traits from us already. She has made it fairly clear she is quitecontent where she is residing and doesn’t have plans to join us out here untilshe is good and ready.

I have been dilating for several weeks now and effacing too,as is needed to get all the labor processes moving along. My doctor has saideach time we have been in that it “could be any day” and baby is MORE than bigenough to be ready to meet the world. We are doing our best to progress thingsby walking, keeping ourselves busy and well…staying active! Most of which seemsto be having little impact on the movement of baby.

Now this does not mean that baby s completely ignoring me. SometimesI wonder if she thinks she is pretty funny playing tricks because she has takento doing it fairly often. Currently she likes to sit on my hip bone at nightmaking my leg feel like it is asleep or numb. This is tolerable at first butafter a few hours it makes sleeping out of the question. I also believe that she may have taken up boxing,and has decided to use that little squished bladder as the punching bag. Thegame we played yesterday was to start some fairly strong contractions going,get them in a nice regular pattern, then out of nowhere just stop and continuewith a quiet night. It was very exciting for the hour or two that thecontractions were getting closer together and stronger, thinking that we wouldget to meet this stubborn little person soon. Then the contractions subsidedand left me wondering when the big day will be once again. Oooof, it appears we have quite the independent thinkergrowing away and in the game of making life uncomfortable baby is winning by along shot!

P.S. A few days ago Ialso thought my water had broken. As it turned out I just didn’t put the lid onmy water BOTTLE tight enough and it had leaked all over my lap. False alarm…

A Space for the Bump

2012-01-24T23:29:00.000-08:00

Since Erin is always so good about keeping everyone up todate about what I am doing, I thought it was my turn to brag on her a bit. Evenbefore her craft cottage was complete Erin has had a vision of a beautifulspace for our little one. I have been amazed at how beautiful she has been ableto make our nursery without buying all new furnishings.

Once we found out we were expecting a girl, Erin and I fellin love with a cute crib bedding set. I especially appreciate that it has justthe right amount of pink. My dad and I were able to order it for Erin’sbirthday and as soon as she opened it her vision for the room began to takeshape. It was amazing to see her eyes light up when she opened the bedding setup.

We had decided to use my old crib and dresser, but theyneeded a coat of new paint, so with bedding set in hand off to home depot wewent. As you can tell from the pictures Erin did a great job of taking my uglyold dresser and transforming it into a perfect dresser for a little girl. Ilove her taste in colors. With the dresser painted and the crib adorned with anew coast of white paint to whole room really tied together. Now that thingsare all arranged Erin and I both catch ourselves stopping in the hall and justlooking in the room.

(Yes, the wood sign on the wall is backwards. It has a baby's secret name on the other side!)

I am so blessed to have a wife who is so excited to be amom. While waiting for our little one to arrive is full of unknowns andpotential worries, the beautiful nursery fills us with joy and reminds us ofthe blessings yet to come.

A Warm Winter Shower

2012-01-12T17:35:00.000-08:00

Although the name for this particular post may fit our unseasonablywarm and somewhat rainy weather, it more importantly describes the wonderfulbaby shower I was given. My mom and sisters hosted it for me just before Christmasat my parents’ house. I loved how festive everything looked with all the baby stuffand Christmas decorations.

Dusty and I were blessed with so many adorable outfits for our little one, most of which were pink of course! We also were given many other baby essentials that, although may not have made me squeal as I was overwhelmed with cuteness, I am sure we will be extra thankful for very soon. For example, I know we will be happy to have received diapers, diaper rash cream, and a Diaper Genie once our girl is here and starts superbly stinking up our house.

Dusty played a part in helping make my shower special too! He knows my favorite place to get treats in town is a little shop called Sweet Dreams Bakery. So he went to the bakery picked out and secretly ordered a cake for me. Then he coordinated getting the cake to my mom’s house without me knowing about or seeing it. When shower day arrived I had expected to see a simple Costco cake on the table but I was delightfully surprised to see this beautiful picture of deliciousness waiting for me. The frosting is absolutely amazing!

Last but certainly not least, I was so excited that some ofour out of town friends were able to join us in the celebration. We had gueststraveling in from all over Spokane of course, some from Post Falls, and a few made the trek from Pullmanand the Tri-cities too! It was a wonderful day and we really appreciate everyonethat was able to join us or sent well wishes for baby!

New Years Eve

2012-01-02T04:11:00.000-08:00

This year we had such an awesome New Years Eve! For the pastfive years or more we have been hosting a party this night but typically there isenough snow that we spend most of the time outside sledding, snowmobiling andof course around a bonfire. However, this year snow play was not an optionbecause there was no snow! We realized we would have quite a bit of time on ourhands between when our dinnertime potluck got over and when we celebrated thestroke of midnight.

Eventually we came up with a plan to play some fun minute towin it games. If you haven’t ever done this I would highly recommend it. It wasmuch easier to set up than we first guessed. All of the directions are easy toprint off right from NBC’s website. Then that just left us to gather suppliesfor each game. This was super easy because everything needed was common household stuff so we only had to buy a very few things and had everything elsearound already. I recognize that many households may not have as much random “treasure”as is around ours, and I’d like to blame it on the farm not us personally butit is more likely an even split!

Here is a quick look at some of our fun from the night. Weespecially want to thank those that came for being such good sports and puttingup with our crazy plans. The night would not have been near as much fun if we didn’thave friends willing to look pretty silly for the sake of a game! We hope youall had as much fun as we did, we think you are all awesome! Happy New Year!

Got Green House?

2011-12-20T12:14:00.001-08:00

We have a green house! Well, actually it belongs to Dusty’s dad, Tim. However, I have a feeling we will probably be “stealing” some of the space inside next spring to start plants for our garden. Therefore I am going to continue using the words “we” and “our” when referring to the green house. Regardless of ownership title I am really excited to have it around!

A blog dedicated to bragging on my wonderful Dusty!

2011-12-19T23:42:00.001-08:00

I am so proud of how handy and industrious Dusty is with his work. What is my current example you may be wondering? Recently he took on the job of installing a new beam under my parent’s lake cabin. This may sound like an easy task but I assure you there was a great deal of skill and risk involved.

The cabin was not set on a foundation but rather it was built on top of an existing deck. The last 40 or so years have taken their toll on the three big support beams under the deck. Over the years the front two beams have been replaced but the back beam, the one getting buried by the erosion of the bank behind the cabin, has been skipped over. That is until Dusty went to work on it.

To accomplish this task Dusty dug out the beam from where the hillside had filled in around it, built supports to jack up and lift the cabin, removed the old rotten beam and replaced it with new pressure treated lumber. Amazingly, to my skeptical-worrywart nature this was all done without cracking the walls/interior structure of the cabin, dumping the cabin into the lake, or smooshing anyone underneath the beam wicked witch style. That is a pretty good report if you ask me!

While this is meant to be a show of how fantastic my husband is, it is only fair that I mention he had two great friends (Nick and Otto) accompany him in the work on this job. I think this is also a credit to how great Dusty is in picking friends too… well there I go back to boasting on him again! I suppose this is where I should stop with my big talk. Not because he doesn’t deserve more, I just don’t want to make anymore husbands feel inadequate or wives feel jealous!

Counting weeks in single digits!

2011-12-09T23:33:00.001-08:00

Oh yes! We are on to single digits in the countdown of weeks. Of course that is supposing that this little girl takes after her dad and arrives on time or a smidge early.

Since I was given more of a due window as opposed to the singular due date, it does make calculation of her expected appearance a bit more difficult. Our original figuring of a timeline said one date; the first ultrasound said a different date and a later ultrasound went with another; all within a total span of about a week.

In an effort to be optimistic I am counting down to the soonest date possible. That it is a little less than 9 more weeks, when it really could be closer to 10 on the long end of our due window, without even adding any days for being overdue.

Now, before all the experienced moms start explaining to me that “baby will come when she is good and ready….” and a bunch of other sage advice on the timing of labor, please just let me say I know this timeline could be far from accurate. However, I would much rather be ready (as one can be in this situation) a bit early over scrambling to gather diapers and car seats at the last minute.

Your input/opinions/guidance is, as always, still welcomed. Just don’t burst my happy little “less than 9 more weeks” bubble!

Looking Back at Halloween

2011-12-07T14:31:00.001-08:00

In the spirit of catching up this blog with real time here are some pictures of our Halloween party this year. As always, we had a blast and we were glad those that came to join us were able to be a part of the festivities. In addition to the beef stew, copious desserts and fantastic costumes, we built a maze in the one of the barns. Between the twist and turning of hay bale stacks, a fog machine, several strobe lights and climbing up into the loft, I would say the maze was a success!

Babymoon

2011-12-07T01:41:00.001-08:00

Earlier this Fall Dusty was able to take a few days off andso we could sneak out of town for a little while. We took the opportunity tomake a trip to Glacier National Park in Montana. It was a new and greatexperience for both of us. We love an excuse we can get to go camping in ourfifth wheel! Here are some pictures from our time traveling around the park.

The first night we stayed at Apgar Campground just insidethe West entrance. Our camp site was beautiful with all the trees aroundturning bright yellows and reds.

We drove around and explored the area near our campsite.Then before settling in for the night we went down to the see the lake. Wecouldn’t not have timed it any better! It was a gorgeous view of Lake McDonald.Can you believe how calm that water looks?

The next morning we explored a few more spots nearby, talkedto the visitor center, found some goodies at the gift shop and then decided tomove to the other side of the park. I was so happy about two adorable outfits wefound for our little one to wear next summer!

On our way to our new camping spot we found some of the parklocals. This was a seriously big bear and I was very glad I noticed him fromour truck, not hiking on a trail!

Here we are setting up in our new spot on the other side ofthe park in Many Glacier Campground. One of the perks of camping in the fall isthere are no crowds like summer. It felt like we had the whole campground toourselves.

Next we took a drive up the Going to the Sun Road. Although therewasn’t much in the way of crowds, there was still road construction. That meantwe couldn’t go from one end of the road to the other like we would have liked,but we were still able to get to this visitor center at the top and look aroundthere. It started looking like it might rain and it was already fairly late inthe afternoon so we decided to come back and do our hiking in this area anothertime. We were able to still see some great views and take a few pictures beforeheading back to our site for the night.

In the morning we took our vacation international and wentto see the adjacent park in Canada. We had a lot of fun exploring north of theboarder. We enjoyed seeing more mountain views, the Prince of Wales Hotel(where it was ridiculously windy) and the shops of Waterton.

It was a perfect sunny warm fall day and we had a few placesthat we wanted to try to hike around while the weather was nice so began ourtrip back to the south to see try out the trails. First we went to a CanadianLake. I decided this was not a place I wanted to hike. It was stunning but Ihad just finished reading an informational sign bragging that the meadow alittle ways down the trail was regularly frequented by grizzly bears and therewas hardly anyone around (there is safety in numbers) to cross paths with whilewalking. Dusty was supportive of my irrational fear to hike this area (akabecome a juicy snack for a bear) so we drove on to our next spot.

Maybe it was the fact we had been up to the visitor centerat the top of Going to the Sun road they day before so I knew what to expect. Orit could have been there were no signs boasting of grizzlies along to woodedtrail. Or… well the list could go on but whatever the case the trails leavingfrom the visitor center were much more appealing for hiking, despite theirlonger length and higher elevation. We decided to try hiking to the Hidden LakeOverlook. We took it slow and steady up what seemed like a never ending set ofstairs and boardwalks. I was glad we stuck with it once we got to the top. Theview was dazzling. Dusty and I concluded while hiking that this set of picturesshould be called “bump hikes the continental divide!” That is a name that wasdefinitely earned not just given away on this hike.

We even got to see mountain goats, which were wonderfullywilling to stay put and be models for pictures. On the way down the path we sawa big horn sheep which scampered off without letting us get a good shot of him.I suppose that is why we have mental pictures!

Before we made it back to our site we spotted anothercreature, a BIG bull moose. He was very comfortable with us watching him butwas far to content with where he had bedded down for the night to stand up andlet us get a full view of his size.

In the morning we looked over our maps and made sure we hadvisited all the places in the park on our hit list then packed up to head backhome. Just to prove our amazing luck in spotting animals here is one more lookat another bear we saw as we headed out. It was a bit farther away but stillclearly a good sized bear.

It was a fantastic trip and I am very thankful we were ableto take the time to go! But what trip would be complete without an incrediblesunset? Here is the one we got as we drove back through Post Falls on our wayhome.

A Little Space to Call My Own

2011-11-01T21:34:00.000-07:00

At the start of summer I came across a Better Homes and Gardens special publication magazine that had some great garden ideas and adorable ideas for rethinking the traditional garden shed. At seeing my interest spark with the amazing designs for turning a shed into miniature versions of an office or an art studio or a book nook or a comfy sitting room, Dusty decided we should have a neat space. So he set to building one himself, designed just for me! Isn’t he sweet?

Well that was in the beginning of May. As you may know, that time of year means lots of spring farm work, getting our garden planted and hay harvest just around the corner. So while progress started out great with designing/ideas, picking up supplies and getting the construction phase underway, things slowed a bit as June showed up.

We had a plan for our shed to just be a fun place to hang out on the little porch and enjoy the yard, unwind inside in the shade on a futon, or cozy up with some pillows to read a book up in the little loft. Its sole purpose was for lounging and relaxation. Any thought of working practicality or storage use was an afterthought at best. At that point in our thought process we had no reason to need the space the shed could provide for anything other than fun!

Then in the middle of June we got some news (much much sooner than we had expected to receive it) that we were going to have a baby. This meant we would need the second bedroom in our house, which we had been using as an office/craft supply storage room, for a nursery! After letting that information settle in a bit we were left with a big question, where were we going to put all the stuff that was in the currently occupying the bedroom to make room for baby? Despite its half finish status my “fun place” shed seemed like the only logical answer.

Realistically it wasn’t such a bad answer to switch the shed’s purpose to more of an office or craft studio, given that the shed had already been designed with big beautiful windows to let in lots of light and close in proximity to the house. Once we started rethinking our design and tweaking it a little for less lounging and more paperwork and crafting, the storage and workspace opportunities seemed delightfully plentiful.

Towards the end of October construction was finished! It is true that many full scale houses have been built in the same amount of time it took to finish a little shed but they didn’t have wheat harvest smack dab in the middle of their foreman’s work window. Needless to say I was eager to move in my things starting with the desk out of the bedroom along with my scrapbook papers and such. We dug out the work bench which Dusty had in his room growing up and it was a perfect addition to the space. The loft provided a great place to tuck away some of the vases and buckets that I use with the garden in the summer.

Conveniently, most all of my craft goodies were already in plastic totes and plastic stacking shelves to protect it from occasional bug or dust that could find its way into the mostly sealed shed. The one drawback to the shed design could be that since we originally planned to use it mainly in the nice weather months we didn’t insulate it. We did fill any minor gaps in the tongue and groove siding to seal it up from the elements and icky critters but not the cold. I am hoping that utilization of a good space heater will help me to extend the time each year that I will be able to use my space for crafting.

Once we got everything tucked away in the shed we realized we have way more useable work space and storage for materials than the previous location in the little bedroom in our house could possibly provide. Before moving things to the shed this lack of workspace led to me working mostly on my big kitchen table or the coffee table by the couch and having materials scattered everywhere in between. I am so excited to be able spread stuff out all over my desks and tables in the shed and just be able to walk away and come back to it as I have time without getting annoyed at how my mess is cluttering up my house for the sometimes lengthy duration of my project.

Really, I think the shed will be more fun to use this way than the original plan would have been. I am so glad Dusty decided to build it for me and became even more so once we found out we would be in need of the extra space. It was a blessing in disguise that is how it happened. If we had known we were going to have a baby we may have chosen not to spend the money on the originally frivolous shed, but then we would not have had any easy solutions for how to conveniently relocate and still be able to use the office/craft stuff.

Now the only question left is what to call it? It is clearly doesn’t fit the standard definition of a “shed,” since that creates the connotation of rakes, shovels and other typical tools hanging from the walls. I am going back and forth between the names “Craft Cottage,” “Hobby House,” or simply “Erin’s Happy Place.”

Keeping Secrets

2011-09-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

I think now most people know we have been keeping a BIG (and getting bigger every day) secret for the better part of the summer. However, for posterity’s sake I wanted to mention it here on our blog so when I look back some day and read old updates and remember what was going on in our lives. Just in case you have been out of our circle of communication via either Facebook or in person, here is picture of our recently declassified covert operation.

Yes, that is an ultrasound picture and we are having a baby! We found out last week that it is a girl, although you will have to wait until February to know her name. We are still keeping that a secret until we meet her and make sure it fits her.

So far, I have had a fairly easy pregnancy by most standards. Early on I was absolutely exhausted (as in moving from the bed to the couch was a big accomplishment for the day) and had bad headaches more often than I would have liked. I was lucky in the fact that while I was regularly nauseous I never actually got sick from the feeling. Once I got into the start of the second trimester things really started improving.

Now I am about 20 weeks! It is hard to believe that we are at the half way mark. I think I may make 23 weeks my own unofficial halfway point though, as that would be the actual middle mark from when we found out until full term. I feel like counting the first six would be cheating since we had no idea I was harboring a little stowaway human.

I have just started to feel the baby move around in the last week or so. I had felt some fluttering prior to that but never anything I could be sure wasn’t a bit of my lunch talking. At our ultrasound I was able to clarify that distinction between baby and bubbles, when the tech told us she could see a kick on the screen and I could match that up with the feeling I was getting on the other side of the magic ultrasound wand thingy. It was pretty cool!

The next thing on our baby to do list is a camping trip to Glacier National Park; before I am so gigantic I wouldn’t enjoy a lengthy road trip. Then when we get home we will be starting to work on repurposing the room that is currently our office into a bedroom and of course decorating it with lots of pink!

Camping again!

2011-08-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

So here I am realizing that I have once again gotten behind on my blog updates. I am going to pretend that it was intentional and I would appreciate if you would play along. Just think of it this way, instead of posting right after a fun event when I am already on a vacation high, in my lack of timeliness I will say that I am pleasantly reflecting on recent events. In a way this spreads out the excitement, making it seem to last longer. As opposed to posting immediately and crashing back to reality upon noting that we will have to go back to regular life with work and laundry. Or if you see through all that smoke and mirrors, you will know I am still a procrastinator with things that don’t have a hard and fast deadline, such as this blog! Whatever side you feel may be the truth, here us an update on our camping trip from a few weeks ago.

The bulk of hay harvest was wrapping up, finally! Dusty and I were hoping to sneak in a few days in our favorite local camping spot before he got wrapped up into wheat harvest. However, since finishing up hay is sort of an intangible thing and there were a lot of factors playing into when the guys would call it quits for a few days, knowing when exactly we could go was a bit of a mystery. With farming there is always a long list of things that “should” be done but could wait if they are less of a priority to other things on the list. We knew we would take the 5th wheel and go camping north of Sandpoint for about three days. We didn’t know exactly when those three days were going to start.

At the time we were working through all of this information (or lack there-of) we had some friends from our church mention they were planning to go camping too. They had a location in mind but didn’t have it set in stone. Dusty and I thought it would be fun if they came camping at our spot and since our friends are very patient people they waited around to hear word if our camping timeline would line up with theirs! By some sort of farming miracle, and Dusty working more hours in two days than I thought humanly possible, everything timed out perfectly.

We all caravanned north and set up our site. There were eleven big kids, nine little kids and two dogs all running around in the woods. It was a busy place and we all had a great time. The majority of our group (especially the littlest bunch) could be found in the creek or at the pond for a large majority of the trip. The men also worked on a dam and managed to make a pretty significant pool of water. Of course there were campfires, s’mores, and time to just relax. The kids even made it through the vigorous hike to the waterfall! I was really impressed with their endurance considering the oldest of the kids was all of six years old.

After a wonderful weekend, our friends packed up and headed home. Dusty went up the cabin to visit his Great Uncle Everett and see if he needed help with any projects. While they were working I got our 5th wheel ready to travel. Then I took a nap. Before I hit the couch I put the dogs in their kennels, which were tucked in the shade under the hitch of our trailer, so I wouldn’t have to worry about them wandering off. This is where things got really interesting. I’d been lounging for a while and had just left consciousness when I woke up to one of the dogs barking. It seemed strange because it wasn’t a bark I heard very often. Coby barks at just about everything; however the sound I was hearing was Moosey. I sat up and I saw moose… not our Moosey but a big honking mama moose! She was huge and standing just a few feet off the end of our trailers awning. I sat there frozen for a moment, very glad I had put the dogs in their boxes and even more relieved that I decided to nap inside as opposed to on the hammock outside! Then the moose darted off towards the thick brush. Her movement unfroze me and I darted too, for my camera. I watched and waited, trying to catch a glimpse of the moose peeking from the bushes. I had just given up and went back to cleaning when the pups both started barking again. I looked out the window and saw the moose slowly skirting the edge of our campground with her baby. She was much further away this time but clearly visible. It was so cool to watch her move through the trees and out of sight. A little later, Dusty came back from the cabin and we too started our trip back home, but unlike everyone else I had moose pictures!

Our yard cow...?

2011-07-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

Yes it is true, if you drive by our house you can see a cow in our yard. No, we haven't totally lost our minds and mixed up our "vastly spacious" yard with the cow's pasture. We did have a mama cow that wouldn't "take" her calf after it was born. Why would that happen? Well, to make a long story short, their was a boy calf (a bull) a while ago that was slightly resistant to the banding that should have turned him into a steer. So while this bull calf no longer has "a pair" he did manage to sneak by with one dangler. Which is where the problem started with the calf in our yard. That lucky little not-so-fixed steer was let out with all the cows and hefers (young female cows) and managed to do the job of a big bull. Not only that but since our lucky fellow was still small in stature thought he would be best suited for the young lady cows in the bunch. That's right he is a craddle robber! This lead to Mr. Lucky fathering a calf with a VERY young hefer. In our culture this is commonly refered to as a teenage pregnancy! When that poor hefer become a mother she entered cow-hood not near mature enough to have the instincts to take care of her baby when it was born, meaning we had to do the mothering for her. So that is why we now have that baby cow in our yard. Well, I guess that wasn't such a short story afterall, but just incase it wasnt enough wordage here are a few more in picture form.

This is our "yard cow," Gertrude. We call her Gerty for short.

Gerty follows Dusty EVERYWHERE

Ahhhh, Vacation

2011-07-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

What do you do your husband is working too many hours go on vacation? Just write about when he wasn’t so busy!

Just before the end of the school year our friends Craig and Michelle invited us to come on a fun trip with them and some other college buddies to the Washington coast. Craig’s family has a great cabin right on the beach with a large section of waterfront. Even better, it is on a sweet island, Harstine Island to be exact!

Even though there was a sizeable cabin, Dusty and I opted to take our fifth wheel camper for our sleeping quarters since there were quite a few people already bunking in the cabin. As if we needed another excuse to use our new toy!

It was a wonderful long weekend full of exploring the sea life at low tide, biking, good food, kayaking, bonfires, racquet sports on a real court, reading, ladder ball, and lots playing with the dogs. There were plenty of dogs on the trip too; thankfully they even managed to get along most of the time. Our Moosey loved playing fetch on the beach, even though the shells made her paws sore at times. Dusty and I loved having other people who didn’t mind taking a turn at throwing the ball for her so our arms could have a break. Here are some pictures showing all our fun!

Memorial Day Weekend Camping

2011-07-01T00:42:00.000-07:00

Here are a sampling of pictures from our camping trip earlier this year. It was a great trip and we loved hanging out in our camper in the evenings when the spring air made it a bit chilly out and the damp surroundings from recent storms made conditions for starting a fire less than than ideal. Despite the rains before we arrived, a sprinkle on the way there and a warning of precip from every weather website, we had glorious weather! It was sunny and warmer than any days in our recent memory.Unfortunately most of our friends we scared off by the weather mans doom and gloom forecast. As it turned out there was just three of us on this trip, yes that does include Dusty and me too! Otto, our one guest, was very disappointed he didn't even get to test out his new hiking tent and rain fly seeing as we did not get a drop of rain after setting up camp. Every one had their own reasons for missing, all sicere and understandable. The sad part is when friends tell us they will go "next time." Why is that sad, doesn't it sound like a good thing? In a perfect world I would be thrilled to hear that and look forward to then. However, in reality, since I know my farmer husband will now be working his tail off till next fall, that "next time trip" isn't likely anytime soon. Yes, we may sneak in a overnight in the camper here or there but since we typically don't have more than a days notice when the stars align for such an event, which means most friends schedule is not flexible enough to come along. Oh well, we had tons of fun and we can cross our fingers and pray for another shot later in the summer! Hope you enjoy the pictures!

The Hawaii Novel

2011-04-22T23:46:00.000-07:00

We had a wonderful time in Hawaii. Here is an overly detailed rundown of some, ok most all, of the fun things we did while there. If you are not into reading right now feel free to skip ahead and just look at the pictures. However, the pictures are not in chronological order due to the fact that we were using two cameras that happen to have ended up on the same image numbers. This recount of our adventure is more for us to remember all the details when we are old, than anything else, but we thought others might find it interesting.

Wednesday I went to school in the morning to teach my 5th graders. The when I got home I double checked our bags for the zillionth time and hopped in the truck to go out to the airport. Somewhere along the way we miscalculated when we would need to leave. Now, don’t worry we didn’t miss our flight, quite the opposite really. We checked our bag, got through security, found our gate and I looked at my watch to see that we had two hours and ten minutes until our flight... What?!? We are still not exactly sure how we ended up so far ahead of necessary, but I suppose it was better than the opposite situation. All the free time gave us a chance to play games on my iPod.

Once it was finally time to board our flight, the experience was as expected, long and slightly cramped. We landed just after dark and took a shuttle to our hotel. We wanted to get out and stretch our legs some so we took the opportunity to do the first of many wanderings along the beach shops. Our jaunt out required a very important stop at Yogurt Land for some pineapple bliss in a cup. We were fading fast despite all the energy around us because it felt three hours later due to the time change, so then it was back to our hotel to crash.

Thursday morning we were up early (again because of the time change) to go to Pearl Harbor and the battleship Missouri. We were very impressed by the battleship because it was so big and had a wealth of history to go with it. The information our tour guide gave us about the cannon like guns that stocked the ship was astounding. Each of the nine deck guns supports a 16 inch barrel and can deliver a 2000 pound shell 23 miles. Every 30 seconds the nine rounds from the ship can level an area the size of a football field. Since we did the battleship first, then went to the sunken Arizona we had a much clearer picture of some of the boat components that were laying in the murky water below us in Pearl Harbor.

After leaving Pearl Harbor we stopped at the grocery store to stock up our little kitchenette with a few basic necessities like diet coke, bananas, bread, milk and peanut butter. It was very nice to have our own little fridge, microwave and toaster. I am sure it saved us a good deal of money since we didn’t “have to” eat out every time we were hungry. Once we filled our fridge we put on our swim stuff and walked to the beach just a block and a half away. The next hour or so we soaked up the sun (and plenty of sand too) before going back to our room to get cleaned up for dinner. We ate at Chili’s then walked around the international marketplace.
We kept our busy pace Friday by getting up and out the door to the Dole plantation. I was worried about the weather since it poured rain the whole time we were riding the bus there. I should clarify, this was not your typical little Hawaiian mist; we are talking windshield wipers full blast and puddle sized raindrops kind of rain. As we made the short walk from the bus stop to the main entrance I was lamenting the fact I had forgotten to bring my rain jacket or any other manor of sleeves, since the weather near our hotel had been lovely. I decided I didn’t want to be cold in the rain the rest of the day so I went about picking out a lightweight sweatshirt. I found a really cute green one and had no sooner finished paying and exited the gift shop when the sun burst back through the clouds. The rest of the day was beyond warm and I had absolutely no need of my cute new sweatshirt. Did I appreciate the weather’s sense of irony? No. But did I tolerate it due to the fact it helped me gain an otherwise completely unnecessary new sweatshirt? Yes! Now, on with the plantation tour. We found the train which took us around the farm a bit smaller that we had expected but equally fun. It was really interesting to hear how pineapples are farmed and see the variety of colors, sizes and shapes they come in. I never knew pineapples came in a pink variety too. After the train we wandered through the various garden areas, got our fill of informational signs, bought a yummy Dole whip (pineapple soft serve ice cream) and went catch our bus to the North shore.

The North shore had very quaint little shops but neither of us felt like spending time inside now that the sun had come out again. So we went to Waimea Valley botanical gardens for a little hike. The gardens and the unusual plants were gorgeous! The highlight of our walk was seeing a waterfall at the end of the trail. I was surprised to see people swimming in the pool below the falls. There were lifeguards and everything. The lowlight of the trek was when I fell and seriously scraped up my knees. Apparently I am not capable of looking up at a tree, walking down a hill, stepping on a small stick, and keeping myself upright all at the same time. Luckily my awkward blunder and subsequent childlike whining was only witnessed by about 3 people (one of which was Dusty) and the previously mentioned lifeguards had band aids! Despite having a very five year old like spill it was a fun hike.

It was still mid afternoon and fairly sunny as we walked down the road and found ourselves a nice spot to watch the big waves roll in at Waimea Bay. To keep in form with the “acting like a five year old” theme I had established with my fall, Dusty had a good time playing in the sand, making a giant mound and trying to protect it as the waves washed it away. I asked for a castle and instead he makes me a pile, stating he didn’t have the appropriate tools, aka a bucket, to make castle. Before too long it got a little overcast so we got on our bus and enjoyed a view down the windward side of the island. We stopped at Ala Moana shopping center and looked at a few stores before buying dinner and Cinnabons to take back to our hotel.

Diamond Head volcano crater was first on our hit list for Saturday morning. Although the climb is just under a mile each way, it is plenty strenuous. There is a 560 foot elevation gain from the base and the trail is jagged stone and dirt mixed with tunnels and stairs, with the last tenth of a mile up being all stairs. The view from the top of the old military bunker is well worth the hike. To be honest, the way down was worse than the way up since my legs were a bit shaky from the stairs and I was afraid I would trip again.

From Diamond Head we went to Sea Life Park. The dolphins were amazing to watch. We could have paid to swim with the dolphins and although it looked fun it was more expensive than we were willing to pay. We were more than content watching their show. I was so impressed with the show they put on. They could do so many tricks and stunts. I was also perplexed by the resident Wholphin. Yes, that is a whale crossed with a dolphin. It is the only one known of in the world. It was neat to see penguins, sea lions, monk seals, sharks, rays and tropical fish. I also liked the park because I got to feed sea turtles. What can I say; I am a sucker for animals.

We rode the bus back home but the day wasn’t over yet. That night we went to a luau! I just can’t believe the way that those hula girls can shake it! We both really enjoyed the dinner. It was neat to see them take the roast pig out of the pit in the ground and nobody ever complains about an all you can eat buffet.

Sunday morning we took the bus to Haunama Bay to swim with the fishes. I had a defective snorkel mask or possibly a defective forehead. It gave me all sorts of trouble by putting pressure right in between my eyebrows when it was “suctioned on.” I seriously thought I was going to have a bruise. When the mask wasn’t on super tight causing the pressure, it had a very slow leak. Just a few drops of ocean at a time would sneak their way in but eventually those little drops would start to gang up on my eyes and then I would have to stop and let them all out. Thus, I would have to put my mask on really tight again. Most of the time it worked well enough to get by and allowed me to see lots of awesome creatures. Some of the notable animals we saw were multi colored sea urchins, an angel fish bigger than any I have ever seen in a pet shop, the Hawaiian state fish with a name longer than this blog (but only by a little), a puffer fish as big as my parents dog Bandit but without legs, a striped eel that made me really freak out as it slithered by, and a sea turtle but unfortunately we were no longer in the water when we spotted him. Best of all we discovered Dusty can almost float in salt water.

We were so worn out from swimming all morning we HAD to go and take nap before dinner. I think Dusty spent most of the nap watching Deadliest Catch but how would I know, I was lights out. When I woke up I was refreshed but starving. We got dressed up and went to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. There was a wait to get seated and that made me hungry-grumpy. We couldn’t kick the hungry part of that but while we were waiting we got rid of the grumpy with a little retail therapy. Dusty informed me that his dad had slipped him some money before we left Spokane and told him to surprise me with something on our trip. And Dusty did just that when we found a beautiful but slightly pricey hair barrette I really liked. Soon we got called to be seated for dinner and man, did it hit the spot!

Sleeping in was our only plan for Monday. We had toyed with the idea of hopping to another island for a day but since our pace for the trip had been quite brisk we decided to just relax and enjoy the area near our hotel. We spent most of our time Monday sitting on the beach, lunching on leftovers in our room and looking through more shops and it made for a perfect day. Later in the afternoon we walked to the Hilton Hawaiian village and had fun taking pictures by the lagoon. After that we walked to the beach to take a few pictures at sunset. While we were walking on the docks in the marina we saw weird looking ripples in the water. Upon closer inspection we could see that there were jelly fish shuffling around beneath the surface of the water. Tons of them! It made me very glad I didn’t act out my plan to sit down and dip my toes in off the edge of the dock. After our photo session we had dinner at Red Lobster and then walked home along the beach.

We had so enjoyed the day of relaxing, that Tuesday we basically had a repeat of Monday with just a little less sleeping in. We tried to go to the restaurant in our hotel lobby for breakfast and were most surprised to see the doors closed and menus all taken down. I asked the gal at the front desk if it was going to be open later that day and she said in an excessively cheerful voice “No they are closed. Never to be open again!” Her chipper tone made me curious about the quality of the restaurant. Apparently, the hotel remodel was not going to include it in their new design. We turned our misfortune into joy after eating at Lulu’s on the beach walk instead. It is a really good thing we hadn’t found Lulu’s sooner or we would have had to eat there every day. The second story -bar style seating faced the ocean for a beautiful morning view. Additionally we had a front row seat to watch workers scale the palm trees for their regular trimming. It may sound annoying but it was actually really cool to watch the guys shimmy up the tree trunk, no ladders, and just start chopping older palm fronds and heavy coconuts out of the tree tops.

Our afternoon consisted of more time at the beach and one last walk through the international market place for all of our must haves souvenirs. Then we spent some time sorting and packing up in our room. I wondered if we would be able to fit it all in to take back home. It’s a good thing for me that Dusty is a superb packer and made it all fit with room to spare. So what did I want to do? Well fill it up of course! I kept myself in check though, adding a few last minute items like a calendar and photo album. For dinner we walked to Cheeseburger in Paradise. It was one of the biggest cheeseburgers I have ever eaten and we found a funny t-shirt to take home to my dad that said “Shut-up and eat your burger!” on the back. I also required one last stop at Yogurt Land; (I spared you the knowledge of how many other times we stopped in during our trip) I truly love pineapple yogurt!

Wednesday was our day to fly home. We had such a great time and nearly perfect weather, it made me want to stay forever. I was so sad that our vacation was over. I teased Dusty that I was going to let him fly home alone and I would just stay awhile. As I was joking about that we watched the news and heard a storm was coming that would be bringing heavy to torrential rain and flash floods. If it was going to be rainy I figured I might as well be back in Spokane with Dusty and the Moose pup. From there our trip home went well including our flight and when we landed back in Spokane we were not greeted with any rain at all! Instead we had hail and snow! Welcome home.

Living in Each Moment

2011-03-13T18:16:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I often forget to enjoy each day as it has been given.

This realization came when I was counting down the days until our upcoming Hawaii trip, 16 day in case you were now wondering. I am so excited to get to go on vacation that sometimes I wish it would get here faster. In this wishing things would get here faster, I forget to look at all the great things that are going on right now. I am all for having things to look forward to, that is not what I am critiquing about myself. Rather I am trying to remind myself that the journey should be just as important as the destination. It is good and healthy to be mindful of the future; it helps us to keep making forward progress in life. Yet I am realizing it is also important not to get stuck thinking about things that will come and forget where we are at right now.

I also know that it is a slippery slope to start wishing life away. I noticed that I will often start thinking about the even the little fun events that are coming up, soon my mind wanders to upcoming seasons of the year, then I start thinking about plans we are working on for a house, which lead to thinking about a future career or family and before I know it I am wishing I could see the path for the next five years all laid out on a neat tidy map in front of me. I think even if that was possible, I wouldn’t want it - despite my wishing for it at times. That is because when I think back to five years ago, I see how many things in my life have changed or turned out in amazing ways I could never have believed possible. I know that if I was given a look at my future, it wouldn’t look the way I expect it to and really that’s not what is important anyway since it is often the journey that shapes our lives more than where we end up. This is a very tough concept for a planner like me to wrap my brain around. It is so easy for me to think of things in the future and start wishing for them then that becomes a goal and eventually a precise outline of where I want my life to go.

You may be thinking, “So what. There is nothing wrong with that?” and while I agree, If there is one thing I have learned about my life it’s that the more you try to plan, the fewer things go the way I expect. Lately I have found myself making plans for a year or more down the road that aren’t always founded on very sturdy ground. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad plans, just that I don’t have enough info about where I will be in that time until it gets closer. Life can change so fast, you can’t always have a specific plan and occasionally you just have to act. I need to remember sometimes it is ok not to have all the plans for life and just see what happens on the journey.

I am trying to be more “present” in each day and think about how I can enjoy and make that day better rather than just thinking about what is coming up. So in an effort to look at each day as a part of the journey here is a list of the blessings I’ve seen in my life lately:

- We had a beautiful Saturday morning, almost warm even, and Dusty had time to go on a run with me. It was more fun after than during for sure.

- The seed order for our garden arrived and we can start planting as soon as the mud dries a bit.

- The daffodil bulbs we planted last fall are finally popping up. I love daffodils!

- My Moosey puppy and her insatiable desire to run and play fetch helps “force” me to spend time outside. She is obcessed with sticks!

- Our great friends come over or invite us to spend time playing games and eating dinners together.

- I can get in touch with my inner fish since I have had sub free Fridays to go swimming with the girls and their kiddos.

- Report Cards for my 5th graders are nearly done and we can get back to our regular schedule, sans tons of assessments.

- There is a thick crop of Snow Bells blooming to brighten up the entrance to our tin box.

- My Dusty is the most amazing man I could have dreamed of and supports me in every way imaginable.

Friends

2011-03-13T00:28:00.000-08:00

Dusty and I are so thankful to have such amazing friends in our life, both new and old!

A few weeks ago I had a three day weekend. It was wonderful to have a little more time to catch up with some of our out of town friends. We had planned to visit Chris and Carla at their house in the Tri-Cities but they were actually headed North to go skiing for the weekend in Canada. This means we got to start our “parade of friends” on Thursday when they stayed with us in Spokane.

Friday I had school and Dusty spent the morning helping move some of the bigger items to Craig and Michelle’s new house! After school Friday Dusty and I packed our bags and hit to road on our way to see our friends CJ and Libby in Pasco. We went out to a great dinner, played games and enjoyed relaxing at their house for the night. In the morning Dusty and CJ went and played disc golf while Libby and I visited and caught up on each other’s life.

In the early afternoon we moved west to Prosser to visit Grant, Andrea and their new little one, Noah. Noah was very sleepy while we were there. It was fun to watch him make little tiny faces and hear about life as parents from Grant and Andrea. We left Prosser with perfect timing to have a gorgeous sunset as our backdrop for our return trip to Spokane.

Sunday and Monday we went to Craig and Michelle’s new house to help them get settled in. I enjoyed helping Michelle organize and decorate their awesome new house. I was so amazed how perfectly all their furniture and decorations fit in their new house. It definitely is the perfect house for them and we are so happy that they finally found “the one” after looking for over a year… even if it is ALL THE WAY out in Liberty Lake.

Sunday we also went to a birthday party for Sami and Alan’s little boys. It was at a gymnastics facility so the kids there all were having a great time going crazy on the toys. The gym had tubes, slides (like McDonalds) and a bunch of other gymnastics specific equipment. Including a giant pit filled with foam. I seriously wished I was a little kid again so I could have my birthday there; it looked like so much fun. Dusty was excited to have an appropriate excuse to buy some cute little tractor toys for the boys gift, and I think the boys were just as excited to get them.

Overall the weekend ended up being much busier than we originally thought it would be for us. Nonetheless, it still seemed very refreshing as our hearts were fed by getting to see so many of the important people in our life. We are so thankful for all the great people we have in our life!

Winter Work on the Farm

2011-02-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

As a farmer, this time of year I field the question, “so what do you guys do this time of year?” fairly often, so I thought I would try to share some of what keeps me busy during the winter. One of our main projects in the winter is fixing all the equipment that broke the previous summer. That way it is ready to go and break again next summer. Some of our bigger projects this winter are to rebuild the engine in the 8630 (John Deere 4WD). Last September it dropped a valve and beat up a couple pistons. We also had to replace the clutch in our 1974 Chev C60 truck, Find the internal oil leak and change the brakes in the 2240 (John Deere small loader tractor) We also have been working on all the regular maintenance on the other tractors and pickups.

As with every other day of the year, the cows still need to be fed all winter. When it gets really cold, I have the privilege of thawing frozen water troughs for them in the mornings as well. The Moose usually comes with me to help feed, but usually gets distracted by fetching a stick, or any other object she happens to find. In addition to feeding our animals, a lot of our hay customers also have animals to feed, so Dad and I load out hay several times a week. It takes a long time to get rid of 1200ton of hay a pickup load at a time. We spent a lot of time in November and December plowing snow to keep access to the hay open.

This winter we have also worked on restructuring the farm. In 2010 My Dad and I farmed separately and worked together, but keeping track of what is whose was kind of complicated. After talking with out accountant and lawyer, we decided to put both of our operations together and form TD Walsh Farms, Inc. It should be easier to keep track of books and things. That is most of the work related things that keep me occupied, and then there is hanging out with Erin and the dogs, church and small group, and snowmobiling. It is nice to have a more flexible schedule in the winter, makes up for some of the long hours in the summer.

Back to the pace of life

2011-01-22T23:17:00.000-08:00

Since Christmas is well past I will just give you a few highlights from the holidays.

We realized we had no plans for Christmas Eve. No one wants to sit around by themselves on the night before Christmas, but it looked like that could be what would happen. Dusty and I got talking and decided we had plenty of steaks to BBQ. So that is just what we did! With just one days notice we threw together a big potluck dinner at Tim’s house with my parents, sisters, grandma, Dusty’s dad and grandparents all in attendance. I have to say I was impressed with my creativity to make non traditional side dishes since I didn’t have time to go to the store and stock up on such short notice. Also, Christmas Eve Day the twins came over to snowmobile and had a good time before helping get dinner ready.

Christmas day we planned to do our usual running around to all our family gatherings. This plan had to be changed however after Dusty attempted open his new snow shoes and ended up opening the heel of his hand instead. – A word of advice, don’t use a sharp knife to try and cut zip ties, get the scissors! – Dusty managed to control the bleeding long enough for me to clean the blood spurting spots off the light tan couch and then off to the E.R. we went! I know this makes it sound like I wasn’t worried about Dusty. I was but since he seemed to have things somewhat controlled, I decided I did not want to return to our house after Christmas and have it look like a crime scene in our living room. There was blood spatter everywhere; apparently that is what happens with deep puncture wounds near main arteries. The hospital was (thankfully) very empty so Dusty was able to get right in and stitched up. The nurse even gave him an extra big gauzy wrap so he could get additional sympathy for Christmas! Dusty was given another gift from the hospital, a lovely pair of surgical tweezers and forceps. Just what he always wanted! After our E.R. visit we resumed our plans. First we went home to get presents, next we went to my parents’ house, then Dusty’s grandparents, and finally back to the farm to Dusty’s dads. In all the day was great! We got to see nearly all our family and received some awesome gifts. I do have to brag on Dusty a little bit he gave me my favorite present this year, a vacation to go somewhere warm!!! Look for more about that in future posts!!! The cool part was he hid the money he was giving me in a bunch of little gifts. For example, he cut a little slit and inserted the money into the packaging of a new stamp set. So at first I think “oh awesome new stamps!” Then it gets better when I see a hundred bucks inside the package! Isn’t he great?!

On to New Years highlights. The day before New Years Eve (I guess that would be New Years Eve eve) my friend Sami invited me to her gym which was a lot of fun! Although I was so sore I could barely walk the next several days. I have since gone back and had better luck with the soreness afterwards. After trying it out for a week or so she even convinced me to join! I especially like it because it is just a few blocks from my work and the classes are great. But I am getting ahead of myself, back to Friday, New Years Eve when our friends Chris and Carla came into town a bit early. As my kiddos at school would say “we got to keep them” for the rest of weekend. A bunch more people showed up later that night for our party. Despite the below 0 temperatures we had a bonfire and some even bundled up enough to go snowmobiling. There was lots of food, games and kids inside to warm up with when it got too cold to be out. I think we may have actually been a little late noticing it was the New Year at midnight because we were having so much fun. Shortly after our midnight-ish toasts some people started to head home since they had young ones to get to bed and the rest of us had an ABC gift exchange. It was very amusing to see what people brought for their gift. The one that got the biggest laugh was Fauske and his giant jar of fiber, but they were all great! New Years day was much warmer at a high of about 15 degrees! Chris, Carla, Dusty and I took this heat wave as an opportunity to get in some snowmobiling in the sunshine! It was so gorgeous with the bright blue sky and sparkling snow. The conditions, although cold, were perfect for riding. After New Years the last little bit of break went faster than I could believe and I was back in my classroom before I could even blink.

Testing out our new snow shoes

Moosey loves to play in the snow too!

New Years eve party with friends.

Since we have been back to “regular” life we have enjoyed a bit slower pace than the holiday season. It can be nice to just be back in a routine. Here is what our routine has looked like since break. Both of us have been trying to catch up with work. I have had a great time planning our upcoming vacation. I have continued to go to the gym and even talked Dusty into going some too. We have enjoyed visiting with friends and. I hope our 2011 continues to be as great as it has started.

A Note from Dusty

2010-12-23T13:55:00.000-08:00

As winter sets in we move the majority of our lives inside. We are great fans of the outdoors, but this time of year the inside of our home becomes full of beautiful decorations, great food, and family and friends. One of the most striking differences that has come about since Erin and I have been married has been the appearance of our home here on the farm. Erin has taken a hodgepodge of furniture from the 60s and whatever decorations I happened to collect over the first 20 years of my life and rearranged a little here, packed away a few things there, bought a couple matching things for this room and that and transformed our “tin-box” into a very welcoming home. As we were putting up our Christmas decorations this year I noticed her ability to make things look really nice, who knew coordinating colors could make such a difference. I have always loved Christmas decorations and so here are a few pictures to bring our home to yours.

Despite decorating indoors, I always look forward to cutting a Christmas tree out of the woods for the farm house. This year Erin came with Dad and I on the hunt for the elusive perfect… well, the elusive good enough fir tree. As Dad said, they start looking better and better the longer you are looking. We only added three branches to fill in the tree we found this year, so it was a pretty good find. Since Erin came, we have photo documentation of our adventure.

Finding our groove, without feeling stuck in a rut.

2010-11-13T14:23:00.000-08:00

Fall farm work is done, school is just chugging along, and it feels like we are now mostly settled into our little tin box house. It is nice to finally have a somewhat regular routine. How is it already the middle of November?

We are still keeping a full schedule in the end of October and the start of November. Our Halloween party was a blast. We have some hilarious pictures from pumpkin bowling and the photo booth we set up. Here are a couple of our favorites from the party.

Dusty and Tim just got done with fall work recently. Dusty kept thinking and telling me they were almost done then they would think of another project that should be done before the weather turns. I am sure that the guys have been busier than they like for this late into fall. I know dusty said many of the projects they have done lately are things that haven’t been done in several year because Tim needed help and Dusty was away a college. It is so wonderful to know that things with the farm will slow down a little bit. It feels like they have been going a million miles an hour since we got back to Spokane in June.

Last weekend was Tim’s hayride, potluck, and bonfire. He had an amazing turnout with about 80 people joining us for some or all of the evening. I was especially glad that the rain held off this year even though they were forecasting we might get a sprinkle here and there. (Last year it poured on us; people were soaked to the bone!) Everyone seemed to have a fun time and we only ended up with a few dishes to return to their owners so in all it was a great evening.

We also started a new church recently. Well, more like the same church in a new location, since it is a branch of the same church we went to in Pullman. We are really enjoying having it back in our routine and our new small group is great too.

This week I finished all my grades for report cards. I am very thankful to have that off my plate. Now there is just under a week before conferences to get the student portfolios ready; that is plenty of time for a procrastinator.

Next to do on our list is to figure out what we are doing for holidays. It feels like we just got done with our Halloween party, but I know Christmas and New Year’s celebrations are just around the corner… To party or not to party?

Fall = Busy, busy, busy!

2010-10-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written in a while. In the past that would have meant that I had nothing to write about. However, that is currently the opposite of reality. I have had so many great things going on since the end of August I haven’t been able to write about it. So due to the laps in time this may be a bit shorter than most but probably still much more lengthy than necessary. As Dusty would say I don’t have a very good sense of economy with words. If I could say something with three words I will most likely still use ten!

The 25th of August I had an interview at Brentwood elementary for a second grade job share. It sounded like such a great opportunity to get my foot in the door to the Mead school district, even if it was only a half day position. A day later I found out I got the job! It was so perfect for me since my main teaching areas would be math, science and social studies with second graders. Wasting no time at all, I met my awesome teaching partner, Tracee, at school to look at my new materials the next day. The next week consisted of meetings and a few last minute preparations before the kids arrived.

School started on September 7th and things continued to pick up pace as I was offered another teaching opportunity in Brentwood. Mead district does this great thing when they have a combo class and I get to be a part of it. There is another teacher with a 4/5 combo, instead of making her go through two totally separate math lessons, one for each grade, they hire someone part time to teach one of the grades. That part time person is me! I have the fifth grade half of the class for their math every morning. They are a great bunch of kids and I love the individuality that shows in the older grade. It works well with my afternoon positions and I have some prep of time in between “shifts” to stay on top of everything. The only slight down side is that I can’t sub around and get to know teachers in other schools. Another positive note about it is that financially this situation is better than subbing so that is exciting for our savings account.

September is also busy because it is a birthday month around our house. This year was a big year as Tim turned 50 and Dusty turned 25! So of course we had to have a party. Originally Dusty and I had planned to invite Tim’s sisters from out of town to the normal family gathering. Then we thought it would be fun if we invited some of his really close friends too. We had though to try and surprise him but didn’t want to miss anyone important on the invite list so Dusty and I decided we better ask Tim even if it did ruin the surprise. Well let’s just say the guest list discussion went from about a dozen invitations to over sixty! And I just kept thinking “I am going to need more food!” It turned out to be a great party. Tim and Dusty were really glad to see so many of their friends. Among other September birthdays my grandpa Tom turned 80 and my Grandma Bev turned… well, she had a birthday!

In the end of September and early October we has a few semi-relaxing weekends, going to the lake with my parents for a boat ride, visiting with friends over dinner and working in our garden. We even opened our garden for U-pick flowers. The pictures speak better for these events than I can so I will let them do the talking.

Before I knew that I had a job, Dusty had said he would take me on a vacation to Cannon Beach. Since I (thankfully) have a job now that plan didn’t work out as well as we once thought it might. When I realized I had an extra day off from school last weekend, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to sneak out of down for a short trip. I have been to the Oregon coast once before but don’t remember it very well which made for a great new adventure this time. We left right after school Thursday and drove mostly in the dark. Friday the weather was about as perfect as you could get in October on the coast. I loved exploring the tide pools and searching for shells. Saturday started out drizzly and proceeded to turn into torrential downpour, but it was perfect for exploring the shops in Cannon Beach and Seaside. Sunday was overcast but not a hint of wind, which was actually disappointing since we bought a kite the day before. We went for one last walk on the beach and I played in the waves like a little kid then we grabbed our stuff and hit the road.

Sunny enough to make a shadow!

This is the view from our hotel balony

Low tide

Yesterday, we were worried about the frost warning and cold temps predicted. Last night, my parents came over to take a few pictures of us in our garden. I love having photographer parents because they always get great pictures. We also harvested most of our pumpkins, even though they are still not quite orange. Looking at the leaves in the garden this morning, I think that we made the right choice about getting our pictures yesterday. Today, the leaves of everything are shriveled and brown from the frost last night. Not so photogenic! Here is what they looked like before the frost. *please note that the next set of pictures was taken by my parents :)

Now we are gearing up for other fall activities like apple picking, pumpkin carving, my birthday, and Halloween. Could September and October possibly be any busier? Sometimes I wonder why we do it to ourselves to be this busy, but I love the fun that each activity brings and couldn’t imagine getting rid of one!

Seattle Weekend Trip

2010-08-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

Here is a mini diary of our mini vacation. I am very glad Dusty made time to take the trip before he had to start wheat harvest.

Friday Day 1: The 5th Wheel made it with no problems or suprises. However, I do not want to do the math on the fuel milage to get here. Driving over the pass I could almost hear the truck rumbling "gulp, gulp, gulp" as it sucked up the fuel. After unhitching, we went to the Woodland Park Zoo and I got to feed a giraffe. Then we went to the Ballard Locks where we saw big salmon and a seal. Tommorow is going to be even more fun because I am NOT going to mistakenly think that my good walking shoes were in the truck when in actuality I had left them in the camper... Stupid Sandals!

Saturday Day 2: Today was awesome! The Seattle Underground tour was so great. Our tour was followed by a crowded walk through Pike Place Market to find some lunch. Then it was on to the Aquarium where we saw all kinds of creatures. After that we went on an Argosy Harbor Tour. It was neat to see a different perspective of the Seattle skyline and catch a little breeze. Next we went to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. It was SOOO good; I wish we had one in Spokane. But then again, I don't because I would want to go the way too often. Lastly we squeezed in a bit of shopping before finishing our day by going up the Space Needle at dusk. We even watched some fireworks off in the distance.

Sunday Day 3: Our Space Needle tickets were good for two trips up in a 24 hours span, one day/one night, so today we started with another view from the top. Then we went to the Pacific Science Center. I absolutly loved the butterfly house. I could have stayed in there all day. Next we went to the Boeing Museum of Flight. They have some cool exhibits about the history of planes. It felt like we went back in time a bit. Last we went to visit our friend Nick where he lives in Mukilteo where we saw an adorable little light house, ate seafood for dinner on the beach at sunset and I found a huge sea shell. We went back to our 5th wheel and went to bed for a few short hours before getting up hitting the road so Dusty could make it back to work Monday morning bright and early. The End!

Whew! When we take a vacation we make it count. I do think it is funny the weekend we ended up going to Seattle (partialy to get out of the heat Spokane was getting) there were record high temps on the coast... but it does make me feel a bit less wimpy for saying "gosh it is HOT today!" about a thousand times on Saturday while we were walking all over downtown.
P.S. As soon as we got back into Spokane Dusty had to jump right into the combine and start cutting. So to clarify the last few pictures in the slide show are from the first day of harvest.

Yellowstone Again

2010-08-11T22:31:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the opportunity to sneak away from Spokane for a week with some great friends. Our friends Craig and Michelle had planned to take a trip for their one year anniversary with a bunch of friends. They had invited Dusty and I to go along weeks ago and we had to say no because Dusty would be too busy farming at the time it was planned. Friday, just two days before Craig and Michelle were due to leave, Dusty got the idea that I could still go on the trip even though he couldn't and called to see if that was possible. Since our friends are so amazing and incredibly flexible they made it work for me to go along on their trip. So Saturday I started to throw my things together and coordinate what I would need for the trip... and then proceed to throw in a zillion other things which I would most likely not need but still felt compelled to take along, just in case. Then Sunday morning after some swift (and slightly frantic) packing I headed off to Wyoming with the rest of the traveling gang. It was a great trip and I had so much fun. The only bad part was that Dusty couldn't come along. Hope you like these pictures, it is a beautiful place to visit!

Dusty Drives the Boat

2010-08-09T14:01:00.000-07:00

This summer haying season has been pretty intense; we got a very late start due to the wet and rainy June. Three weeks and 20,000 bales later, Erin and I headed to the lake for some fun in the sun last weekend. We loaded up with our stuff Saturday morning and were about to leave when Coby jumped in the cab of the truck and looked so ready to go that nobody had the heart to tell him he had to stay home, so we all, Erin, Coby, Moosey and I headed for the lake to cool off and relax.

I can’t say much about what went on Saturday afternoon because once we arrived at the cabin and got unpacked… which involved a fair amount of packing stuff down the trail… I was forced to catch up on some much needed rest. Maybe not forced, but I was tired enough that the 4 hour nap seemed impossible to fend off. Saturday evening Erin’s sisters arrived and so the whole Price side of the family was at the lake.

Sunday was another beautiful sunny summer day, and I slept in till 7:00am then went out to hang out with the dogs for awhile. I had informed Steve that I wanted to enroll in Steve’s Captain in Training program, so early in the afternoon we went out on the lake with the Velocity to start teaching me about the wonderful world of watercraft. After a cruising around the bay for awhile, Steve coached me as I brought the boat in to dock. After a couple attempts I think I am starting to get the hang of boating.

Erin enjoyed the day sunning on the dock, swimming with me, and trying to convince the dogs to like water. Moosey just isn’t sure about the wet stuff and defiantly would prefer to be on dry land.

Here is a update on some of our recent highlights.

2010-07-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

I have been having a great time “working” at having a relaxing summer. I tell you it is a rough job trying to think of ways to keep yourself busy all day.

Moosey’s training seems to be benefiting from me not working. Her attention span is finally getting long enough to listen to commands I am trying to teach her. She is growing so fast, at 13 weeks she is a solid 29 pounds! Her latest accomplishment is learning to roll over. Sit, lie down, come here, and fetch are mostly mastered but stay and walking on a leash still need some work. Oh, and she figured out how to get things off the top of her kennel/the kitchen table, not sure how I feel about that new trick.

My garden is growing very well too. I have even gotten some pretty bouquets from the perennials Jane gave us from her farm. Everything else is a good sized sprout but no blooms yet because they got started so late. We should have some great flowers the start of September! I had hopes of selling some flowers at the farmers market. That is looking less promising at this point in time but maybe in the future will work better. Oh well, this was supposed to be a learning experience after all. We are going to have plenty of variety once they are all up. I think I am most excited about the sunflowers and pumpkins. I planted seven kinds of pumpkins and 4 kinds of sunflowers. I am also excited that the water system Dusty built for me is working out great; it makes it super easy to move hoses from one row to another.

Dusty is a crazy farming machine and he can be all the time now that he is completely done with grad school. I am considering calling him Master Dusty from here on out. We went to Pullman this Thursday for his defense of his research. He did great passing all required elements and now can say he is totally finished with class work at WSU. He is so thrilled to “just” be a farmer. While most people might take this as an insult, Dusty has wanted to get to this point since he was about ten years old. Now that Dusty is on the farm full time he is working more hours than I can count each week. I am glad when he keeps his work day under 12 hours. I don’t know many other professions besides ag. where people put in 12-16 hour work days for a month or more straight. I know if my dad reads this he will tell me “Deadliest Catch does that!” I have put in my fair share of long hours grading or getting school stuff ready, but like most jobs it doesn’t go on day after day like farm work. After watching the guys work I can say I fully understand the phrase “make hay while the sun shines.”

The guys are excited because the crops are looking more hopeful than recent years past. They have also picked up more leases on land which will help support the addition of us to the farm. Some of the new land is very hilly, so the guys are looking into buying a new hillside combine that will be safer and handle better on the steep terrain. I can tell Dusty is very excited at the thought of a new toy to tinker. Now if you ever thought cars were expensive go look up the cost for a brand NEW combine, it will blow your mind! Once you see the tag on one of those you will understand why the guys are looking at well used machines.

I won’t encourage you to look at the costs of farming for too long though, if you do you may end up frustrated for farmers. Sometimes it just makes me so mad thinking about how hard the guys (like most farmers) work for pennies in return, costs are ridiculous and returns can be so low. Sometimes the media portrays farms in the worst way. They makes it seem like farmers are all out there spraying chemicals on anything that moves just for fun, not thinking about the consequences at all. There is the added perspective that farmers are all trying to steal money from the government and take unnecessary subsidies. If you know Tim and Dusty, then you know that is not at all how they live. All the while our culture (myself included) is paying millions to people in the entertainment/sports industries. When I really think about things, it just doesn’t seem make any sense to me. Dusty doesn’t do his job for the money and I am willing to support him in doing whatever he loves regardless of finances, but I do wish that it would be easier for him. I am very thankful to have a husband that I know can work that hard and persists through challenges of broken equipment. Dusty’s work ethic is impressive on any scale. But I am glad that he doesn’t work ALL the time so we have can make room in our calendar for fun too.

We spent last Sunday at my parents’ cabin! I had gone out to the lake with my dad Friday afternoon and spent the day at the new big boat. Then Saturday we took dad’s other boat across the lake to our cabin. Lexi and her boyfriend Chris were already there so we hung out on the dock until the clouds rolled in a bit too much for our sunning desires. I was very excited to see Dusty Sunday morning but I think my dad was even more appreciative to have his help. While I sat on tried to get my little lab Moosey to swim (she hates it, how weird is that? But my mom's one pound puff of a puppy loves it!) Dusty helped my dad build a boat lift. Dusty did take a break to get in and swim, he likes it just a little bit more than Moosey. Maybe we should get her a little puppy life vest so she can match Dusty. Then I won’t have to worry about either of them swimming like a rock. I don’t think it will be too much of a problem as both of them would prefer to have their feet on the land rather than in the water. All in all it was a really fun day at the lake.

Summer has started out as a season of change

2010-06-22T01:36:00.000-07:00

So many things have changed for us in the last month or so, I can hardly keep track. Some have been exciting, others have been sad and all have been quite stressful at some point. Here is a rundown of some of the happenings as of lately.

May 30th my little sisters, Alli and Lexi turned 21. This event was exciting for the twins and maybe a little sad for me because when I went to buy them a nice bottle of wine the cashier didn’t even look like he was considering carding me. I was a bit surprised, maybe it is because I am used to Pullman where they card everyone. Either way, I didn’t like it because I felt very old all the sudden.

Another thing that happened that day, was Dusty’s mom passed away. It wasn’t exactly expected, but with all of Debbie’s health conditions not much surprised people. For about a month she had been having massive amounts of pain because of torn tendons, muscles and rotator cuff in her shoulder. The night before she passed away, she started having more pain in her leg as well, likely from a broken bone. The stress on her body was incredible and her breathing, which already was labored from lung issues, began to become even worse than normal. In the morning it had gotten so bad that she could not even talk. At that point Dusty’s dad Tim called for the ambulance. Once at the hospital, they put her on straight oxygen and tried to get her hydrated. This was difficult because her veins didn’t take well so it was tough to get an IV line started. Once they had her somewhat stabilized she was able to talk a little and seemed to be in less pain. The nurse took Debbie to get some x-rays to check what was going on with her leg and lungs. Shortly after she returned to the room from x-ray, Debbie began to have serious breathing problems. Because Debbie had a DNR order in place there was not much anyone could do at that point. The doctors said it was probable she had blood clot move from the injured shoulder into the lungs making it so she just could not get any air. Although this has been a HUGE change, especially for Dusty, it is also a comfort to know that she is in a better place and is not hurting like she was right before she died.

May 31st was our two year anniversary! This was definitely exciting, but given everything else going on we decided to wait and celebrate sometime after life slows down a little bit. If that ever happens, I will write another post in the future about what we decide to do.

June 1st Dusty and I headed back to Pullman so I could teach and try to get my class ready for the end of the year. I ended up using most of my time after school Tuesday and Wednesday writing sub plans so that I could take a Thursday and Friday off to help get things ready for the funeral.

June 3rd we went back to Spokane to help with arrangements and getting everything organized. Our parts in this included scanning old pictures and creating a slide show, printing pictures for memory display boards, putting together a playlist of Debbie’s favorite songs, and arranging bouquets of flowers to be used on the tables during dinner at the farm following the funeral .

June 7th Early Monday we drove back to Pullman for the last time (for a while anyways) to finish up my very last week as a teacher in Pullman. The week was so busy! Thankfully Dusty was a huge help, I don’t think I would have gotten everything done without him, since the week/weekend previous had gone so crazy, I was running a bit behind. During this week (in addition to packing up the rest of things in our apartment) I had to get my end of year assessments all graded, and everything put into grade book format so I could use it to fill in the students report cards. Once that part was done I had to inventory things in my room and get it all cleaned out for summer. Wednesday night we had a great dinner at sangria with some of our small group friends.

June 10th was the last day of school. It was so much fun but I will surely miss my class and fellow teachers in Pullman. After school was out for the day we went to a get together at my master teacher’s house to celebrate the end of the year. It was a tough day for me packing up the last of my school things and saying goodbye to all the friends I had made in the last two years teaching at Jefferson. Later that evening Dusty and I started cleaning our apartment hardcore. We had some wonderful friends come a help us out for a bit. Dusty and I cleaned late into the night and got up to start again Friday morning.

June 11th we finished up the last little bit of cleaning and packing in our apartment. Our land lords came over to check the place in the afternoon. We were glad to see they were pleased with our cleaning job, and even happier that we got our whole deposit back. Most rental places in Pullman people are not so lucky. On that note we loaded the truck and car and hit the road.

June 12th originally we had planned to go to the Combine Derby in Lind. However, many of our friends that we had made tentative plans to meet there ended up not being able to go for one reason or another. Dusty and I talked about it and realized that although we like the Derby we were mostly going to visit with friends. We skipped the stop in Lind and went straight to Prosser to pick up my new puppy, Moosey. Once we had her we drove back towards the Tri-Cities to eat dinner at our friends Grant and Andrea’s house. They have a cute little dog named Milo, who is just a little smaller than my puppy. I am very glad Milo was such a good host to Moosey by giving her the full tour of the yard, about ten times at top speed. This made for a very sleepy puppy on the ride back to Spokane.

June 13th LET THE UNPACKING BEGIN! We started to sort things out and arrange stuff into the single wide where we will be living for… awhile. We jokingly call it the “tin box.” I wish I could report that we got it all done in one day but that is far from the truth. After high school Dusty lived in the tin box while he was home for summers and there is plenty of stuff that was in the tin box prior to Dusty even moving in, we each had our own fully furnished apartments in college, then we got a bunch of new stuff from our wedding for our apartment together, don’t forget about some of our “growing up” stuff that we can’t seem to part with anytime soon…. So basically we have stuff and things coming out of our ears! Lucky for us the farm house has a big basement Tim is letting us fill up, for now.

June 14th Dusty started work and the crew is busy cutting hay already... so it can get rained on of course, ugh! I am hoping to get going on our garden soon. We sort of put it on hold when things got so busy, and now it is a bit muddy. I am very much looking forward to not having a job this summer and being able to try and catch up on some of the projects on our infinite to-do list.... but who can get anything done with this little furball around, I just want to watch her and take pictures of all the cute things she does!

Puppy Update!

2010-05-19T20:47:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my favorite pictures from our visit to the puppies in Prosser last weekend. It was very hard to pick which one I wanted, because of course I wanted them all! I Hope you enjoy them! Only about 3 more weeks until I get to bring my little Moosey home!

Half Moon Blooms

2010-05-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

Cross your fingers that we will have green thumbs because Dusty and I are attempting to plant a sizeable garden. I am a little intimidated by the size and weeding which I know will soon plague us. However, I think over all it will be a lot of fun.

The inspiration for this project all started with a simple summer job. Last summer I worked (and Dusty "volunteered") at a U-pick flower farm just about a mile out of Pullman. It was a great environment and I loved how flexible the owners were with our schedule... if you could even call it that. Here are a few pictures of Sunshine Crafts and U-Pick flowers. This is what we hope our own garden will look like some day, but that might take a while.

If you are in Pullman and want to get some of these gorgeous flowers in your house, this is how it works: Jane has three main ways that she sells her flowers: 1-Prearranged bouquets at local farmers markets. 2- A delivery routes in town. 3- U-pick style cut flowers directly from the field. Here are a few of Janes farmers market bouquets from early last summer.

For this summer Dusty and I will be trying out the two of these three. I don’t expect to make a ton of money this first summer, but if I do it would be okay too. I hope to learn what grows well here and if there is a market for the business in the area. If all goes well we may expand in future years, however this year is “just a test.” Mostly my reason for having the garden is that I was thoroughly spoiled last summer with my own bouquets of fresh cut flowers every week. While buying flowers from Jane is a great deal if you live in Pullman, it is not very economical to drive there every week from Spokane just to get a bucket of blooms. So the gardens primary purpose is to provide my kitchen table with pretty flowers. Hopefully that reason will be important enough when the weeds start sprouting up. So anyway, back to how we are going to test the market. The main way we are planning to sell flowers is to take bouquets to the Montfort School House Farmers Market from 4-7 on Thursdays. Dusty’s grandparents have a tent for their business Paul’s Wood Things and they have said they don’t mind if we share a corner of their booth. It should keep us busy enough for this summer. (Look in this picture to see how bee-z Jane's garden was last year)

I also plan to put up some kind of “Open” sign up to let people know if flowers are available for the picking. I have a feeling this may be sporadic at first, but as I see how regularly things are coming into bloom I may set specific days for people to visit the garden. Eventually if we keep growing the garden, I hope for it to be open any time people want to stop in like Jane’s farm. Quick size comparison, Jane has almost 2 acres of flowers, we have almost 2 tenths of an acre.... we are little. That is why I am not sure how much will be available for public picking this summer. The good news is we should have less weeds to deal with in our garden, I don't want to scare myself away afterall.

Here is where we are at so far: Our soil has been thoroughly fertilized with steer manure, gross I know but it will mean bigger flowers. We have a fence around our garden thanks to the help of our friends Craig and Michelle. The PVC pipe is set up for our soaker hoses and watering system. There are about two and a half 50 ft rows of perennials (“donated” by Sunshine Crafts and Flowers) planted in our garden. Last but certainly not least, Dusty build a cold frame (think mini greenhouse with natural heat) to get our seeds started in. Up next: Weeding, and transplanting… then more weeding.

Up next: Weeding, and transplanting… and more weeding. You can see Coby really wants to help!

Puppies!

2010-04-16T00:17:00.000-07:00

My Puppy was born yesterday! I am so excited about this fact I just had to share it with the world. I feel a little bit like a new mother. Minus the pregnancy, morning sickness, weight gain, pain of birth, and....well basically all the difficult parts, ha ha ha. I guess it is not so much like having a baby except for the REALLY happy part. Which is more than enough for me.
I haven't seen the litter of pups yet because they live in the Tri-cities. I am hoping Dusty and I will be able to go visit them very soon though. The litter is a mix of yellow and black lab puppies. I am getting a yellow female in about 8 weeks. If you want one too just let me know and I can help get you in contact with the right guy. If you are looking at the calendar right now, you will notice that date is approximately one day after school is out for the year! Could this have possibly have had any better timing? I think not.
Here are a few pictures but they are not actually any of the puppies I will be picking from. However they are the pups from the same parents, just a litter that was born last fall, not the current puppies. None the less they will look exactly like this and be oh so cute!

UPDATE: These are pictures from the current litter born on 4-14. One of these little yellow ones is going to be mine!

HAWAII

2010-03-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from the all girls trip to Hawaii. I got some great pictures of fish and a turtle with our new underwater camera. On that note, a special thanks to Michelle for a great recommendation of a camera so I could get some awesome pictures while snorkeling!

What a week!

2010-02-11T21:17:00.000-08:00

Four days in the Life of Erin's Classroom ...

This Monday my class celebrated the 100th day of school even though it was really 101. This caused mild confusion and major frustration among my second graders. (Last Friday was the actual 100th day of school but we had scheduled a guest speaker visit in the afternoon.) Once we were all on the same page about why we waited a day to celebrate, it was a great day centered on the number 100. We counted out 100 marshmallows and made towers with toothpicks, graphed the color distribution of M&M's, and searched for 100 paper chicks hidden in our classroom; some of which have yet to be found. In the afternoon we did a timed math test with 100 problems and read for 100 minutes. Our special 100th day activities made for an eventful Monday.

On Tuesday we had a somewhat normal morning. In the afternoon we started making our card holders for the Valentine’s Day party. And that seems like about all the structured teaching I got in this week.

Wednesday morning we had a short visit from some pre-dental health students from WSU. In the afternoon we did some fun activities related to Chinese New Year, including making paper Chinese lanterns. They had a great time making different figures with Tangrams too. We talked about how the Lunar New Year is different than the January 1st New Year. In a vote, my class thought the longer Chinese tradition with dragons sounded way better than just staying up past bed time to watch a ball drop.

The kids have Friday off while I have a teacher in-service so Thursday was the day of our Valentine's Day party. In the morning to get into the spirit, we read the book Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. Then we talked about families and people we love. Last we wrote letters to people we love. In reading and checking the letters before sending them home, this one stood out to me as really funny. I thought some of you might get a kick out of it. So here it is as written by the student.

Dere Big Brother,
i love you verry much. Even if you kickt and punch me.
Love,
Your Little Brother
P.S. i stol your munny and i cept the chang. and good luk on valentims day!

As you can see my skills as an educator are really coming through in this child's writing conventions! After lunch and music class I was time to start our party! I have some very wonderful parent volunteers that helped me a bunch by organizing a great craft activity and snacks. The class was so cute to watch as they exchanged Valentines. The kids beamed each time one of their classmates came and put a card in their mailbox.

Over all it was a great party and a good week. I think we worked on a big craft project for four days in a row. It was neat to see the more creative students in their element, cutting and pasting up a storm. However, I am hoping that the next couple weeks are not this busy everyday!

PS. Check back soon for pictures!

Leavenworth Trip

2010-01-14T21:22:00.000-08:00

We want to share a few pictures from our trip to Leavenworth from a little over a month ago. We left Pullman right after I got out of school Friday afternoon and had tons of fun. It was a nice way to have a weekend away and relax before the craziness of the holiday season.

The first night we met up with a friend from college, Diana, and listened to some fun live music at restaurant called South. The next day we all had lunch together at the Soup Cellar. Both places had great food and even better company. Dusty and I were glad to catch up with an old friend too.

Saturday night we staked out a spot to watch the lighting festival. We got a great perch under an awning and up a short set of stairs in front of one of the shops. I liked the view because being up a bit higher than the crowds I didn't have people standing all around. Here is a picture of how packed it was in the streets as people were waiting for the lights.

There were so many lights on the shops and trees. We had originally been a little disappointed about the cold weather and no snow, but right at the end of Lighting it started to snow! By the time we walked back to the hotel for the night we there was a dusting of white everywhere. Sunday morning we woke up and got ready to go back home to Pullman. When we went outside to load the truck and found nearly two inches of snow. The weekend was a great way to get into the Christmas spirit.

Alaska Memories

2009-12-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

Dusty and I noticed that we didn't add pictures from our Alaska trip in our pictures from last summer. I would guess this is because I was thinking of all the warm memories from our summers past. So now as it is snowing again in Pullman, I have come to the fact that winter is here to stay. Here are some photos that look a bit like winter time but they are actually from our cruise to Alaska last June.

We had some time to kill while we were waiting for the ship to leave port in Seattle. The first thing we did once we were on board was go and find somewhere to eat. Then we went made our way on a little self-guided tour around the ship while we waited for our stateroom to be ready. Then after we set sail, we got to settle into our room. We went back on deck to watch as the pretty Seattle skyline faded away. Can you guess what we did next? You got it, back to the dining hall for more food. So what if it was just shy of four hours from our last meal, we were just trying to get into the cruise spirit!

Our second day, (the first full day) on the ship was spent at sea. It was nice because we had lots of time to wander around and get to know the layout of the boat. We found one of our favorite places on this day. On one of the top floors they have a big lounge area with odd shaped, peacock blue couches and floor to ceiling windows. It was a neat place to just sit and watch the world go by. We did just that quite often, despite the fierce competition for a couch.

Monday evening we went to an early dinner and then a dance show in the theater. When we came out of the theater we were surprised to see an amazing sunset. It was quite a shock because we had assumed it would be dark out already. What I had forgotten to consider was that our ship was traveling north. Every day we moved north we gained a few minutes on our total daylight hours. Our trip was the middle of June so I was used to long summer evenings but Alaska took it to a whole new level. It was so strange to wake up early to see bright daylight, and stay up late but still make it to bed before the sky was totally black. Just think of how much you could get done outside in an Alaska summer! We are dressed up because it was formal night.

The next day, Tuesday, we made it into Juneau. It was a very neat town. While we were there we wandered through the shops. We hadn’t planned an “excursion” in Juneau. However we came across a tram that looked like fun. It went straight up the side of Mt. Roberts. From the top there was a little walk to a viewing platform. We almost didn’t take the short ½ mile hike because the trail was so muddy. I was very glad we did though! From the platform we could see the town and our ship docked down below. It was absolutely gorgeous. Here are a couple pictures of us at the top and our photo tip of day: look around to find the person with the nicest camera then ask them to take a picture with yours. Chances are it will turn out pretty good. As you can see it worked well for us on this day.

Wednesday, we stopped at Skagway. Literally, our boat dock was practically on the main street of town. When we stood on the deck in the front of the boat, you could actually see people walking in and out of the shops. I felt like I was watching an ant farm. You can see in some of the pictures here it is really close. We had signed up for a great excursion in Skagway on White Pass Rail Way. The train ride was awesome. It took us up the same path as the miners took in the gold rush. Except they did the treacherous trip without a train. Parts of the original path were still visible from the train. Dusty and I couldn’t believe how rough the land looked. I couldn’t imagine walking a short distance on the uneven terrain, not to mention the trek it would be from the town of Skagway to miles beyond the Canadian border. It was very interesting to see a bit of history first hand.

Our next stop, on Thursday, was Glacier Bay. When we first got into the area we had a few park rangers join our boat. They made regular announcements over the intercom system about our gorgeous surroundings. There were more glaciers than I could count but the main glacier we stopped at was so blue and the air was so cold. The rangers also told us there was a chance we could see sea lions lounging on the ice. We did see a couple swimming in the water but they never stayed on the surface long enough to catch a picture. The ice fields, while still moving, made it much easier to get a picture.

On Friday we went to our favorite place in Alaska, Ketchikan. We went on an awesome excursion; it was on a crab fishing boat. Although it meant we had just a little time to run around town it was totally worth the time and money. I would highly recommend it to anyone taking a cruise. The now retired, crab fishing boat that we were on was called the Aleutian Ballad. It was briefly seen on the TV show Deadliest Catch. Our guides were so amazing. They made our tour really feel like we were on the Bering Sea, minus the gigantic waves and freezing ocean spray. They made it feel real with their stories of adventure from years on the ocean.On our tour we got to see a humpback whale, three types of crabs, an enormous octopus and bald EAGLES! There were so many eagles. We were told that there were somewhere between 35 and 50 eagles swooping around our boat. Our guides provided fish for the little kids to throw off the edge of the boat. Between the eagles’ competitive natures and the kids’ short tosses we had birds flying right over to our boat. It was the coolest thing we have ever seen! I can’t even begin to describe how great it was, so take a look below and see for yourself! Oh yeah, and we got to sit in the captain’s chair.

The last day of our trip we stopped at Victoria, British Columbia. It was a warm sunny day as we sailed south. Dusty took advantage of the nice weather and tried the climbing wall onboard our cruise ship. It was really fun to watch him. Dusty did so well on the medium difficulty wall that the cruise staff manning the climbing wall “made” Dusty climb again on the most difficult. The worker, with his strong Caribbean accent, encouraged Dusty all the way up the second wall “Go Spider Man, go!” It was seriously funny. I almost didn’t get a good picture of Dusty ringing the bell because I was laughing.

Once we got docked in Victoria, Dusty and I took a pedal cab tour. It was a nice pace to see a lot of the town but not so fast that you would miss things like if you drove around in a car. Since it was just the two of us we got to pick what we wanted to see, which made it very personal. When our tour was over we walked around downtown and visited a local street fair on the pier. There must have been some sort of special demonstration going on earlier in the day because there were old fashion pirate boats docked in the harbor. Just before dark we headed back to our cruise boat and got to look at the well known Empress Hotel and the capitol building with their lights on. Both looked beautiful all lit up.

As we boarded our ship for the last time, I couldn’t believe our cruise was almost over. The cruise was so luxurious and relaxing but if, no, when we go back to Alaska I think I would like to fly in and to have more time to explore. We had a great time, and are sure we want to go back someday!

Thanksgiving Business

2009-12-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

This is Dusty's first blog, so go easy on him, please.

Hello, so it's been awhile since we started this blog, and I haven't made a post yet, so here it goes. We've been really busy the past few weeks and have much to share with you. Look for another post by my beautiful wife later in the week.

I was lucky enough to be able to get the whole week of Thanksgiving off from school and research, except for giving a short presentation Monday morning. It worked out really well because I had a big project to get done back home on the farm.

My high school 4-H project cow herd has gotten a little out of hand over the years and has grown from 7 head to 20 cow-calf pairs, a bull, and 8 steers, that's 49 animals all together. As anyone who has dealt with cows knows, their destructive capacity is unrivaled except by a bulldozer. Lately the cows have been taking their aggression out on my feeders, which means I needed to build another feeder for winter.

Tuesday Erin and I picked up steel in town then Dad and I started construction. With all the other activities around Thanksgiving we had to be quick at building the feeder. We made pretty good progress by Wednesday night we had the frame together and painted. Then Erin and I went out to dinner with friends and played games.
Thanksgiving day was a great day of good smells, good tastes, and good times. Erin cooked a great turkey and some awesome pies, and we had both of our families over to the farm for dinner. It was really great to get everybody together.
Friday was back to the feeder and we got all the wood in the feeder and attached it to the barn.

Said and done the feeder has 24 head stalls, is 16' x 5', and weighs in at 1,400lbs. The outside frame is made of 2"x3"x1/4" angle iron. The head dividers are made of 2"x2"x1/4" angle iron. Hopefully it will keep the bulldoze... I mean bovines, at bay for awhile.

Saturday night we went out to dinner with Erin's family to celebrate Kim's birthday at Prospector's. It is always fun to have dinner with my new sisters.Then on Sunday, Erin and I helped my grandparents decorate their house for Christmas. Christmas is my grandma Lois' favorite time of the year and it is always great to see her light up when we decorate for the holidays. Once the tree was trimmed and the stockings hung it was back to Pullman to decorate our own house, but I'll save that for Erin.

Overall it was a very productive break filled with lots of time with friends and family, and for that I am Thankful.

Reminiscent of Sunny Summer Days

2009-11-16T22:04:00.001-08:00

This weekend Dusty and I went to the Cougar football game. It was a fun game to go to because of the memories we have at the stadium and the lively environment. However, the game was a bit more depressing than some we have seen in the past and more importantly we were absolutely freezing sitting on the bleachers. The weather was a bitter cold reminder that summer is long gone and winter is almost here. So even though the warm days may be gone for a while, Dusty and I thought we would share some of our favorite "summer" pictures. This is also great because we can share some of our pictures from events prior to when we started our blog.

Before you look at the next pictures you have to promise not to laugh at how pale Dusty's legs look in shorts, he is very sensitive about this topic. Come on stop giggling, you have to admit it is hard for a farmer to get a tan! The pictures here are both of Dusty and me at my parents' cabin on Lake Coeur d'Alene. The picture taken inside is from two summers ago 2008 and the other, on the dock, was from the end of this last summer 2009. It is great to have a place where we can go when we want to relax and get out of town but only have a day or two. My parents' cabin is on the far side of the lake so it is much quieter than the area around the resort.

The next couple of pictures are from another place we love to visit when we have a little time off. They were taken while we were camping on Dusty's Great Aunt and Uncle's property in Sandpoint. It is a great place to visit when you want to go for a hike. It is quite the trek, but as you can see below, the awesome waterfall makes it all worthwhile. Dusty's dog Coby is in the first picture with us. He loves to go camping too. Just see how happy he looks. Oh, and we can't forget the huckleberries. They are the plumpest huckleberries I have seen anywhere. Apparently we are not the only ones that think the berries are tasty. There is a picture here of a young moose we spotted just outside of our camp site early last summer.

I hope that you have enjoyed these pictures. I know they warmed me up a little bit, at least on the inside. I guess we can't complain too much, as these pictures show, we had a great couple of summers. I just can't believe it is almost winter again! I am very excited for the holidays to get here but I could do without such cold weather. Although without the cold I know we wouldn't have any snow and I do love waking up to fresh white snow on the ground. So here's to the promise of fun in the snow!

Erin's Birthday and other gifts! AKA, longest blog post ever

2009-11-06T23:39:00.000-08:00

Whoops looks like I forgot to make a post in the last month or so... But we have been very busy! Would you like to know what we have been up to? Ok, here it is:

The weekend before my birthday we went to Spokane. I was a sub in Pullman on Friday so we got a bit of a late start hitting the road. When we finally got to Spokane we went straight to Prospectors where we had dinner with my parents and Grandma. It was really good food and my mom gave me bunches of cute decorations for Halloween! On Saturday, we got up and went to Green Bluff with some of Dusty's family. As always, Dusty had a good time harassing his cousins and juggling apples. Yes, actually juggling, this is not a metaphor. Then we went back to the farm and had lunch and I got to open some more presents. I got some neat supplies for stamping (cards/scrapbooks) and other great cooking goodies. Last but certainly not least, Dusty and I helped out with his parents Fall Hay Ride and Bonfire. It got a bit soggy with all the rain, but I think everyone still had fun. Sunday we had a relaxing morning and then went back to Pullman. Here are a few picture from the weekend.

Now the real craziness begins! Even though my actual birthday was on Tuesday, we decided to go out to dinner Monday. We went to Sangria in Moscow. I thought it was amazing, unfortunatley Dusty really didn't... but it was my birthday dinner after all. Our friends CJ and Libby went with us too. Libby surprised me with a present of more scrapbook goodies and some of the cutest papers I have ever seen. She knows my taste very well, and I can't wait to use them. Tuesday I spent the whole day fine-tuning my lesson plans. These were not just ordinary lesson plans. I had to have them perfect for a working interview. They turned out great. I was very pleased with them even if they made it so I didn't get to do anything super on my birthday. That brings us Wednesday. This was the day of my interview, eeek! (For those of you that I didn't already tell, I applied for a long term sub job starting in November and going to the end of the year.) The day itself was very stressful. I worked in the morning. I started with a working interview, which I taught a lesson in front of 25 little second graders and the interview committee. Next, I went and worked on a 30 minute timed write. Last, I had a formal interview with committee. Then I waited. ... oh and Dusty got me an ice cream cake to eat with our small group.

On Friday morning I found out that that I was picked for the job!!!!!!!! Dusty and I both did happy dances all over our apartment. I am pretty sure we woke up our neighbors with our squeals of joy. This means a couple of really good things for us. First off, I have a job for the rest of the year. I have a contract, which will help me get a permanent job someday. And financially we feel really blessed because this will help us get closer to having a house sometime in the future. Monday, I started observing the class and meeting parents at conferences. It was great to have time with Kelly to see how she worked with the kids, and understand different routines the class has had.

In addition to going to class during the day, Dusty and I were feverishly getting ready for our Halloween party. Now, to give you a bit a perspective I want to remind everyone that when we planned our party I had absolutley nothing else to do or get ready. So, suddenly we were crazy busy between preparing for the party and spending long hours at school. In the week prior to Halloween (I have lost track of days at this point) we made carmel corn, muddy buddies, sugar cookies, cupcakes, dirt and worms, Jello jigglers, pumpkin spice cake, two kinds of chili, three kinds of punch/drinks, and hung spooky decorations all over our apartment. Oh, and we carved pumpkins with our Pullman friends. Dusty was a huge help in all of the preparations. In the end our party was a blast. We ate a ton, had a costume contest and a scavenger hunt too. Check out the pictures below to see some of the silliness.

Now, I have just finished my first full week with my very own class of second graders. It was a great time and they are a bunch of adorable kids. Here are some highlights from my first week. There was no hitting or biting and only a few tears. Somebody barfed in class. Thankfully it was in a garbage can. Throughout the week, the class has noticed some of my facial clues which tend to let students know if they are on task. You would think this is a good thing, but I will tell you it is really hard to keep a straight face when someone pipes up over the chatter “SHHH you guys she is making the ‘I am waaaiiiting’ face again!” I was told by a seven year old "Mrs. Walsh you look like a bat! Ya know your shirt looks like you have wings" And no that was not on Halloween.. When I informed the class that their previous teacher had delivered her baby, one of the little boys actually jumped up out of his chair and yelled "Praise God!" It was really cute to see how excited they all were. Last but certainly not least, I had two different kids tell me it was their birthday this week and it wasn't. I should have known when they did not bring in any goodies. It appears as though they might be testing me. All in all, it was a great week and I look forward to many more.

That is about it for us right now. Now here is hoping that it won't be a whole month before we do another blog post. Maybe if Dusty is not too sick of writing, I will see if he wants to type up the next one.

Fall is here!

2009-10-12T22:42:00.000-07:00

We are loving fall. I have been having a great time getting things ready for Halloween. We pulled out some of Dustys old clothes and stuffed them with straw to make a scarecrow. This is how it turned out.

Last weekend we a great time at Silverwood. Except, in October they change everything to "Scarywood" and decorate for Halloween. We went with our friends Craig and Michelle; they are who told us about it too. And we are very glad they did because it was so much fun. I do think that they would have liked the haunted train ride and the maze to be a bit more frightful but it was plenty scary for us. Dusty and I are big wimps when it comes to haunted house and such so we liked the slightly more kid friendly version. We went on rides roller coasters during the day and that was plenty of excitement for us. Here are a few pictures of the fun we all had on rides. Thanks again to Craig and Michelle for letting us tag along!

Weekend Update

2009-09-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

We had a great weekend with our couple friends CJ and Libby. Friday night we all went out to dinner at Wingers. It was really good, especially since we havent been there in a while because of their kitchen fire. It definatly hit the spot after a few overly busy days. After dinner we went back to our apartment for ice cream and a movie.

Saturday, Dusty and I had a relaxing morning at home. Then we picked up CJ and Libby and drove to Garfield to press cider. Dusty and I have done this for 3 years now, and we are never disappointed. This time we got some very tart apples so the cider turned out quite strong, but I like it that way. The apples were Macintosh. They look like this.

It is crazy how much the grinder and press can make from the apples. We were at the orchard for a little under an hour, and the four of us made almost eight gallons of cider. I was quite impressed with our efficiency. Here are some pictures of what the grinder/press look like... no hydraulics here. All our cider was pressed the old fashion way, by hand!

We were having so much fun with CJ and Libby that we all got together for a delicious dinner (made by Libby and CJ) and games. Of course we had to play settlers :) but Dusty and I also tried a new game, Scategories. It was a lot of fun because we had never played it before. Dusty started out doing very well, but then hit his sleepy-time wall, right about when I started to warm up and do better.

Sunday we got up and went to church. At church we saw our friend Lindy. She is getting married soon so it is always fun to hear about how that is going. We also saw our friends Alex and Carissa. We were quite glad to see them there since their new little boy, Landon is just a week old. All three of the Little family looked amazing. I couldnt believe that Landon looks bigger already. We visited him right after he was born and that was just a week before. They do grow fast, and even faster when they arent yours because you dont see them everyday. LOL. After church, Dusty and I went home and he helped me try to catch up on my scrapbooking. We were very productive. I think we got about eight pages done, but look at the mess I made of our kitchen table. It is in the living room so we could watch a movie while we worked. You can tell by Dustys pose he is really happy about the situation. Ha ha just kidding, the table was actually his idea. I typically work on the little coffee table/floor. However, I do like this new system; I have soooo much space to work/make a mess.

All in all, it was a great weekend! Now here it is Monday again, funny how it always sneaks up on you when you are having a good weekend.

DUSTY IS 24!

2009-09-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, way too early in the morning, we left for Wyoming. Dusty and I decided to take a quick trip out of town for his birthday weekend. After 12 hours of driving we made it to the Tetons. It is one of the most gorgeous places on earth.

While we were in Grand Teton National Park we had the most amazing weather, considering it was the end of September. We had sunny skies every day. So sunny, we both got a little pink on our checks on Friday while we canoed around Jackson Lake. The sunshine looked incredible on the fall colors of the trees.

It was a good thing it was Dusty’s birthday weekend. Otherwise, there would have been no way he could have talked me into getting up before sunrise to go take pictures of a mountain. I am glad it was his birthday though, because the pictures turned out amazing. Take a look at the reflection pictures below, and I am sure you will agree.

Later that same day we drove into town to visit Jackson Hole. In the Teton Village we took a tram 10,400 feet up Rendezvous Mountain. I really felt like I was on top of the world, even though Grand Teton is another 3300 feet higher. Next, we went to the town square area and did some serious window shopping, and a little real shopping too!

Sunday, Dusty’s actual birthday and our last full day in Wyoming, we had a most relaxing morning at the Lodge. In the afternoon, we had lunch at the Colter Bay Ranch house then went on the hunt for a Moose. We got really lucky and spotted three near the Oxbow Bend overlook

We ended the day back at the lodge with a glorious sunset. A sunset, only second from the top to one we saw on our honeymoon from the exact same spot. After such a beautiful sight we wanted to linger a little bit longer, however, our stomachs were begging for dinner. So in the spirit of everything Birthday we splurged and had dinner at the Pioneer Grill in the Lodge before heading back to our campsite for the night..

We got up early again Monday morning to make the long drive back to Pullman but it was worth the three full days we got to spend camping in Jackson. And I didn’t get attacked by any bears!