Sunday (Monday) Brunch

I know we are a day late meeting, but yesterday was Easter Sunday and we were busy visiting family.  Stay tuned for more on that adventure.

This past week was Crazy (yes Crazy with a capital “C”)!  Meetings, meetings, and more meetings.  Fortunately, a lot of good things are going to come from these meetings, so in the end it is worth it.

Wednesday I made an up and back trip to Salem.  Some people think that it’s crazy to drive nine hours in one day for a four hour meeting.  Believe me, there are some days that I think that is crazy. Lucky for me I was able to catch a baseball game along the way.

My nephew is playing high school baseball for the first year.  I was so proud to watch him play.  He is definitely one of the leaders on the team.  I can’t wait to see where this goes for him.

I just need a minute to get past the fact that he plays for the high school that is my high school’s arch rival.  It’s still a little hard to cheer for the Bulldogs.  Good thing I have a few years to get used to this.

The only night that I was home this week, Thursday, I was able to get out and enjoy a little bit of the sunshine (yes, it was still only 46 degrees). 

Sometimes when I need a brake, Mack steps in and does some digging for me.  Sometimes I don’t actually need a brake, but he wants to help anyway.

Daisy’s not into that so much.  She’s more embarrassed that people driving by probably think I am a crazy homeless person.  I really didn’t know I looked so crazy until I saw these pictures.

Saturday we drove North to celebrate Easter with my family.  Saturday was spent catching up on our shopping.  Thanks for buying the full-size truck honey.  Somehow I still managed to fill it with a trip to Costco.

Once again, my mom cooked an awesome dinner!

What would Easter be without an Easter egg hunt?  My sister brought the eggs and after dinner, she and I ran outside to hide them. 

Hmmm, and we thought that no one was watching! This is how my sister hides eggs:

This is how my niece finds eggs:

My nephew’s a little more easy-going about it:

My niece may get her competitiveness from her dad:

She was the first to find her limit of 16 eggs.  (Did I mention that there was a limit of 16 eggs per person.)

Everyone participated in the festivities.  There was good stuff in them eggs!  I do wonder now though how it is that my dad seemed to end up with all the eggs that had money in them.

All of the easy eggs had been found, and now the seriousness took over:

It’s a big party foul to have more than 16 eggs.

The final egg was found by my mom:

We were so lucky to have about a fifteen minute break to go outside.  Everyone had a great time.  I enjoy the time I get to spend with my family.

But today was back to the grindstone.  Kim and I are participating in Operation Prom Night at work and we spent four hours this morning standing in the middle of the high school track while it rained and hailed and snowed.  Then it rained and hailed and snowed some more.  My body feels like it will never get warm again.  I think I will take a nice hot bath before going to bed.

Have a great week!

Sunday Brunch

Oh, another week down and a very busy week to come.  Scott and I didn’t even bother going to the grocery store today because we won’t be home any nights this week together.  We are pretty excited that we get to see our family next weekend for Easter!

How was your week?  If we were meeting for coffee today, I would invite you to my house to enjoy a cup made fresh from my new Keurig Coffee makers.  We have drank more coffee and tea in the last couple of days just because it’s so easy to make!  It’s nice to not have to make a full pot just to have one cup.

This past week seemed to be all about work.  Tuesday night I went to a meeting regarding our upcoming “Operation Prom Night” presentation.  I will post more about this in a couple of weeks.  It’s kinda top secret right now.  Friday I spent the day at work all by myself.  it was so great to get a ton of stuff done.  Friday night I went to a training regarding creating and planning for non-profits.  We are currently creating a Foundation at work and this training was excellent.  I only wish that everyone on the Foundation attended the training.  It continued on through all-day Saturday.  Really felt like another day at work.

Saturday night was a retirement dinner for two of the Captains that we worked with.  Coincidently, they also happened to be brothers.  The night was great, and ended with one of them proposing to his long-time girlfriend!

It was perfect and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

One thing that came out of Saturday night was an impromptu reunion of the “old city guys”.  See, there used to be two fire departments in our town, the City and the Fire District.  About 18 years ago, they merged to make the Fire District that we currently have.  There are very few of the “old city guys” left.  In fact, there are only four still working.  Yes, Scott happens to be one of them.  He is in the running to be the last one, and I am encouraging him to stick it out and be the last one.

Back to this reunion, since there were a couple of the guys that had come to town just for the retirement party, they decided to get together this morning and take some pictures.  Sadly, there were a few that could not make it.

These guys would have stayed all day, swapping stories.  It was so good to see the young guys work their way in on the storytelling.  I could see that they were listening with a type of jealously, wishing that they could have been there too.

These guys are pretty proud of the legacy they left for others!  Not to be outdone, the wives also had to have their picture taken.

We were really having a good time, but we had to cut it short and head to a wedding.  To add to my day of firsts, I actually attended a wedding in a horse arena, where the bride came down the aisle on a horse!  There were horses in the bridal party!  One on each side, which the bride and groom then rode out on.  That was definitely a first for me.

Don’t worry, I did have some time to get out in the yard and do some digging.  I did warn some of the neighbors about what I am doing.  I am getting some strange looks from people driving by.  A few have even slowed down. It’s an adventure and I can’t wait so share more pictures with you.  Scott is threating making me get a tetanus shot with all the cuts on my fingers.

I should get going.  The laundry isn’t going to do itself.  I can’t wait to meet next week and share all the adventures that I have planned for this week.

Sunday Brunch

Hi there!  Join me for a fresh cup:

How was your week?  Were you able to get out and enjoy the sunshine at all this week.  The sunshine is deceiving around here.  It may be one of the famous “300 days of sunshine” we have around here, but we were lucky this week to get above 45 degrees.  That doesn’t make it real welcoming to go for a walk after work.  I know, excuses, excuses.

Don’t worry, I was able to get out to the lower yard a couple of times this week to do some history detective work.  I am having so much fun finding bits and pieces of the past.  At this rate, we will need to rent a backhoe next spring and really start digging.  Scott says no, but he has to go to work, right.  You would be willing to come help me.  Heck, a backhoe can’t be that hard to drive.

I reached a milestone this past week.  April 1st was my five-year anniversary at work.

On Tuesday, my crew at work presented me with my certificate and pin.  It’s part of my job to coordinate everyone getting their pins, so it was enjoyable to watch the people that I work with try to figure out how to be sneaky when presenting me with mine.  There are days that I really love the people I work with and this was definitely one of them.  Thanks Kim for being sneaky!

You remember that movie Caddyshack?  Remember how Bill Murray’s character spends the whole movie chasing after that gopher?  We have our own version of this dilemma at our house; except it’s not a gopher, it’s a mole.

This mole has tormented Scott for several summers.  He (the mole) has torn up our yard, and in a lot of places it feels like you are walking on a sponge.  Every morning we look out to find another fresh mound somewhere in the yard.  Do you have any idea how many ways there are to kill a mole?  There is a whole aisle at the farm store dedicated to this task.  The catch is that we have two dogs and a cat that frequent the same areas of the yard and we have to be extra careful that they don’t get hurt in the process.

Scott and Dusty are trying a new method for us.

They spent the afternoon burying these foot-long spikes all around the yard.  These battery operated spikes omit sound waves that are guaranteed to scare the mole away.  Obviously these sound waves weren’t keeping Mack away.  He was more interested in seeing if he could get the boys to bury his toy. 

After a brief conversation regarding the appropriateness of burying things in the yard and then digging them back up, Mack and Scott were on the same page.  Now, we’ll see what tomorrow morning brings.  Will there or won’t there be a new mole hill?

As a side note, my favorite “mole killer kit” at the farm store consisted of a hose.  Yes, it was a fancy “guaranteed mole killer method” sold in this beautiful box with a dead mole on the front.  The box literally contained a hose.  The idea behind this method was that you stuck one end of the hose into the mole hill hole and the other end of the hose to the exhaust system on your car.  Basically, you killed them with carbon monoxide.  You know that someone just got rich off of selling nothing but a hose to a desperate man who would be willing to do anything to win the mole vs. man battle.

Where does the weekend go?  How can it be that time to start planning for another week?  I should be going.  I have a turkey defrosting in a sink full of water and I really hope that we aren’t eating at 11:00pm tonight.

Have a great week and I will see you next Sunday.

Sunday Brunch

Ahhh, another week over and a new one on the horizon.  Good to see you again my friend.  I can’t wait to hear all about your week and what you are up to.

The weather here is finally getting better.  I guess better is all a matter of opinion.  Some people actually enjoy the snow.  Not to say that I don’t enjoy it, but I am so ready to put away the sweaters and boots and break out the capri pants and sandals.  In fact, I spent half of my weekend getting out my summer clothes.  Closet space in our house is limited so I have to shrink wrap my seasonal clothes.  Two nice days of weather and I was ready to swap the sweaters for the tank tops.

The other morning I was ready to leave for work when I looked out the window to find some other creatures enjoying the newly uncovered green grass.

They were so excited to finally have this treat!  I figured they would run off when I opened the back door.  Nope.  I figured they would run off when I opened the garage door.  Nope.  I figured they would run off when I started to drive down the driveway.  Nope.  They had found what they wanted and they weren’t budging for anything.

The deer weren’t the only ones who enjoyed the good weather.  After a busy week, that included several after work meetings or appointments, Scott and I were finally able to get out and enjoy the sunshine Friday night after I got home from work.  We took the dogs out for a walk down the road from our house.  We usually head towards the river or back towards town, but this night we turned right and headed up the hill towards the other subdivision.

After walking for a while, we decided to cut back through the BLM land that runs along and behind our house.  This would allow the dogs to run free without having to watch for traffic.  There are several ATV trails that run through this patch of land.  Some of them were used as logging roads at one time.

As we were walking along through the woods, using one of the old logging roads that comes out right at the end of our driveway, I made a comment to Scott about the amount of trash along the side to the trail.  He pointed out the rusty tin cans.  I had noticed them, but never gave them much thought.  He showed me how they were leftover from the old logging camps that would come through temporarily while they were logging the area.  Looking closer, it was fairly easy to find other remnants of these camps.  Places where the land had been shaped to allow for a stream to be diverted and spots of the land that had been cleared to set up the camps.  The other thing that you can find, by moving a few pine needles and pine cones, are broken pieces of glass.

This discovery made me think about the times I have walked through our front yard, out along the road, and picked up various pieces of broken glass that I always assumed people had disposed of by throwing their trash out their car windows. I would go along the fence line and pick up the glass so that the dogs and horses wouldn’t hurt themselves.  How many times I have tossed this out, cursing the irresponsible person who just threw it aside.  When I said that to Scott, he was quick to reply that this wasn’t trash, this was leftover from the logging camp that at one time existed in our front yard.  What!!  Did it ever cross your mind to tell about this bit of history in our small piece of the world?!?!

Well, anyone who knows me knows that I love history.  Especially history of my environment.  At this new bit of information, I made a beeline for our house.  We made a very, very quick sweep of the front year, finding a few treasures.

In about five minutes we found these leftover pieces of history.

Who were these people who lived here before us?  I have found a new hobby in trying to find out a little more about them!  Oh I can only imagine what is out there waiting for us to find!

I need to get going.  The sun will only be out for a few more minutes and the yard is calling me.  Have a great week!