Dusty Drives the Boat

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.

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

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!

       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

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!

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

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!

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

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.