Happy Halloween

I’m not much for decorating at the holidays. Don’t get me wrong, I love the holidays, I just don’t like to decorate. Halloween has come, and almost gone, and the extent of my decorating is the candleholder in the center of the kitchen table. I honestly can’t believe that tomorrow is November 1st!

Holidays at our house are pretty low-key. The boys live on their own now; our extended families have never come for a holiday; and heck, most of the time Scott has to work.

This Halloween is no different. Scott is at work in town and I am at home doing laundry, watching game four of the World Series (go Giants!!!); and looking for ideas for this year’s Christmas card.

I did get inspired today and I managed to round up all the ingredients to make sugar cookies.

I can’t say I completely didn’t feel the spirit of Halloween. Now what to do with these cookies? I guess I will take them to work tomorrow and share them everyone. I might even wear my Halloween shirt, which I totally forgot to wear on Friday.

I told you, I am not much for decorating for the holidays.

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!!

The End of an Era

Scott has been talking for a while about getting a new truck. This was a pipe dream for a while, and then he started doing the math and figured that if he sold his current truck and our extra Santa Fe, he might be able swing the payment.

We had tried to sell the Santa Fe a couple of years ago, but had no luck. We tried a couple of different ways, but had no interest from anyone.

The other day he worked on cleaning up his truck and taking pictures of it. Sunday night at 10:00pm he posted an advertisement on Craig’s List. By noon on Monday, he had the cash in hand and watched his truck drive away with its new owner. I am pretty sure that he is still in shock/denial that he sold it and it’s gone.

The dogs claimed the bed of the truck as theirs.  Most days you could find them there if the tailgate was left down.

Every Christmas tree we've had since we got married came home in the gray pickup.

We visited numerous camp spots hauling the trailer here and there.

The truck doubled as a water stop along the Sawtooth Idaho relay race.

Bringing home all our "finds" from the Sumpter Days.

Lots of memories were made with this truck. Both boys learned to drive in this drive in this truck. Many dead animals were hauled home in this truck. We lost track of how many trips were made to Ontario and back to visit family. The number of miles added up to 169,026, but the number of dirt roads, gravel roads, and even some unmarked “make your own” roads, are countless.

We will miss you gray truck. You gave us some of the best memories. Hopefully your new owner will love you as much as we did.

So Much for Fall

A couple of days ago I talked about the seasons changing around here. In the blink of an eye, it changed again.

One real day of fall and now it seems winter is here. This was yesterday morning.

This was this morning.

The high today was 42 degrees. I am hoping for a mild weekend so that I can finish getting everything put away outside. I am figuring the flowers are done blooming. Who knows what will be left of them by Saturday.

A Definite Change in the Seasons

One thing about living on the east side of the mountains is that we have more defined seasons. Well, actually we have hot, hot summers and cold, cold winters. Spring and fall are just the week between the two.

I come from the west side. The summers are milder, but fall, winter, and spring are also known as the rainy season. It’s starts raining in October and doesn’t stop until June. The days are gray and wet. No one who hails from the west side owns an umbrella. Because this is the world I come from, I love the few days around here where it rains. I am so much more productive. Everyone else mopes around whining about the rain.

Fall comes on all the sudden. One day you look out and the leaves have changed colors and started to fall from the trees. Then the next day, we get a rainy wind storm and the leaves are no longer on the trees. It’s time to clean up the yard for the winter. I hate to pull out the flowers when they still have color on them, but if I don’t do it now, the snow will be here soon and it will be too late.

We refilled the bird feeder today for the last time this season. Later, we discovered why the feeder empties so fast.

It appears that mama found the feeder and helped herself. She didn’t even flinch when I yelled at her. She almost dared me to come out there. Meanwhile her babies ate the last of the apples that blew off the tree today.

The snow will be here before we know it. The days of going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark are just around the corner. But so are Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. I love this time of year!

A Friendly Visit

As I mentioned earlier, Dawn, Cameron, and Grant came to visit this past weekend. It’s hard to get together as much as we would like. With work and school and other obligations we finally found three days that they could come down and visit.

These boys are not as innocent and they look



I love these freckles



Feeding the fish at the hatchery

Cameron talked his mom into buying him a soccer ball and a football the first day they were here. We spent some time outside playing with those. Cameron’s pretty good at sports and I am pretty sure he and Dawn beat me and Grant at soccer.

We visited Scott and his crew at the fire station

The guys at the fire station thought it would be fun for the boys to work the fire hose themselves.  It was cute until they turned the hose on Dawn and I

I think Cameron is under all that

We went on several scouting adventures to find the deer around our house. Scott took the boys down to the river the first day and they reported that they saw doe and buck tracks in the trees beside our house. The next day, Dawn and the boys saw some deer in the trees. That night we ventured deep into the trees and chased several deer through the trees and into the neighbor’s yard. Later when we were sitting in the living room, some of those same deer came back and laid in the backyard right under our window.

Grant likes to get up early. We’re talking 6:00am early. Dawn told him that he had to wait to get up until Scott came home from work around 7:30am. He was so happy when Scott finally got home. I woke up Sunday morning and could hear Grant and Scott out in the living room having a conversation. Grant was telling him all about our trip to the pumpkin patch.



Daisy got loves all weekend long

Don't worry Mack got his fair share of attention

It’s fun to have little kids in the house. They don’t ever stop. They play with the one thing you don’t want them to (hence the indoor dodgeball game they had with my 8 pound exercise ball), they watch Disney Channel and Nickelodeon (who really understands Sponge Bob), they draw you incredible pictures of the place you have gone, they tell funny stories, and they constantly say things that make you laugh. Sometimes you probably shouldn’t laugh, but it too hard not to. And five minutes after they leave, you miss them so much and wish they would come back!

A trip to the Pumpkin Patch

What would October be without a trip to the pumpkin patch? There is a pumpkin patch on the main road on the way to and from town. I drive by it every day but it sits back off the road behind some houses so we can’t actually see it.

Dawn, Cameron, and Grant are visiting this week so we decided to go by there today. We were so pleasantly surprised. There were a couple of acres of pumpkins, some still on the vine, that we walked through to find the perfect pumpkins. There were orange pumpkins, green pumpkins, white pumpkins, and mixed colored pumpkins.

Grant's first pumpkin that he picked

Cameron and the white pumpkin.  These were a surprise

 Cameron’s favorite part of the pumpkin patch was actually feeding the goats.

Is it just me, or is this goat smiling?

Grant collected five different pumpkins of all different sizes. Dawn’s favorite part was that we all wore our Oregon State University shirts in honor of the Beaver game this afternoon. I take that back, three out of four of us wore our Beaver shirts, Cameron wore his Ducks shirt but we couldn’t leave him home alone so we had to take him along.


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These will look great on our front porch!

All together we had a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins and gourds and some great memories.

Movin’ on up (to the East Side)

When I moved here, the only person I knew was my husband. After all, he was the reason I came here. It took a while to make friends. Some days it felt like I would never make a friend here. It has been six years and I am blessed to say that I know some really great people here and I am honored to call them my friends.

Tonja is one of these people. I met here when I started to work at the Fire District. We became fast friends and have remained that way for almost five years. We have been to movies, cook-offs, organized discussions, parades, BBQ’s, weddings, and numerous shopping trips. You know who your true friends are when you are standing outside Fred Meyer at 4:00am the day after Thanksgiving. I can’t count how many times we escaped for an hour to enjoy a lunch away from work.

A little over a year and a half ago, Tonja met Thomas. We could see the change that Thomas made in Tonja. To this day, she giggles every time she says his name.

This past March, Thomas got his dream job in Arkansas. Now, I know what you are thinking, how can the words “dream job” and “Arkansas” be in the same sentence. See Thomas works for the National Park system and Arkansas takes him back to where his family is originally from.

We all knew it would be a matter of time, but still it came as a shock when Tonja walked in a week ago Monday and announced that she is moving to Arkansas. Not only that, but they are getting married! What???? You can’t get married without us!

Tomorrow is Tonja’s last day at work. I know that things won’t be the same once she is gone, but I have to be happy for her. After all, I came here for a boy too.  I am so excited for her and her new adventure.

I wish Tonja and Thomas the best. I know that we will keep in touch. Since Tonja’s parents are here in town, I am pretty sure that I will see her again soon.

Travel safe Tonja. Watch out for those Razorbacks. See if you can get close enough to take a picture and send it to me.

My Husband

Today is a special day. It’s my husband’s birthday!!! He came home this morning to a house with a backed up septic system. After calling a friend over and fixing that little issue, he got to spend the day doing the things he wanted. I asked him what he wanted for his birthday dinner and he picked shoyu chicken, sticky rice, and mac salad. I was all about that since he is the only one who cooks that meal the way he likes it. Dinner was wonderful honey!

My husband is fun and adventurous. He knows how to have a good time.

My husband is handy to have around the house.

My husband is outgoing and doesn’t know a stranger.

I love my husband and every day I wonder how I got so lucky.  Happy Birthday Sugar Lips!!!!

A Day at the Station

I am blessed to have the most awesome job in the world. I work with firefighters!!! I can’t imagine doing anything else. I work with people who would sacrifice their life for the life of stranger. I spend my day trying to make their job a little easier.

Firefighter Poore, Firefighter Meyer, and their families

Once a year we open one of our stations and invite the public to see everything up close. It’s always stressful leading up to this day, but in the end, it is so much fun. To see the kid’s faces light up when they sit in the fire truck is priceless. Even the adults light up. Not to mention the firefighters. They love what they do and it shows when they interact with the public. Everyone loves coming to the fire station.

Kim is making sure that kids know their address in case their ever need to call 911

Don't worry, she's putting on a temporary tattoo.  I'm going to miss working with Tonja!

The crews plan activities and demonstrations throughout the day. It’s their way of showing off their tools. This year, our ladder truck did a roof rescue demonstration. Captain Clanton and his crew had an audience of about 100 people and they wowed them all.


Firefighter Chung showing off the thermal imager camera



Captain Clanton giving direction during the roof rescue

After the open house, we went grocery shopping and ran into some of the kids still wearing their plastic fire hats.

These boys came prepared to see the fire station



These girls have done this before.  Their grandfather is a firefighter



Everyone has fun at the fire station

 It made me smile and remember how blessed I am to work with these people.

Planning Ahead

I have been trying to live in the moment more and more these days. I found that by looking forward to everything keeps you from enjoying anything.

That being said, I am so looking forward to our annual (as in our second time) fishing trip to Idaho in February next year. Here are some pictures from this year:

Scott, Stacy, Laurie, Carl, Chad, and Heather enjoying a sleigh ride

The mighty fisherwomen!!!

The first two fish I ever caught

What brought this up? The girls had a meeting today to start making plans. Who is going, when are we going, how are we going? Not everything got planned today, but everyone did commit. I am excited about the six of us going this year. We are going to have such a good time.