Clear, Crisp and Cold

That heading about sums up the last couple of days. Though this morning it is -6.
I got a fire going in the wood stove about 30 min ago. It wasn't to bad in here when  got up 62 after having a night log burn for most of the night. 
Plus Dave got up and put more wood in when he got up in the middle of the night.
He just bundled up to go out and do morning chores, come Monday it will be me again going out in the morning to do them Monday through Thursday and a few evenings as he has more meetings at night now after work.


I spotted part of our creek about 40 feet south of the house.

Yesterday morning Dave spent 4 hours plowing the excess snow on the driveway and around the house plus up where Kathy turns around in from of the barn before the next storm hits us and we are buried even more. 

 

It is pretty good now :). Good job.

 Our daughter Coral, son in law Kirk and their 2 children will be in the Fiesta Bowl parade today, look for the Star Wars group.

New Snow

We woke up to 8 to 10 inches of new snow with some good sized drifts this morning. Dave was out side by 7:30 starting to plow so Kathy could get out of our long driveway to go to work. 
The county snow plow came by so the roads out here were passable also.

Picking up stray piece of wood that fell off the truck.


Kaylee Birthday pictures.

Well the net is having problems loading pics with the snow storm going on.

Guess I will go for now and post more at a later time.

Merry Christmas

A windy white cold Christmas day here. We are snug and warm here in our little home with the heat fueled by our wood stove.
Baby Kaylee is playing with her musical bear, over, over and over again lol. 
Daughter Christine and her family are supposed to be here anytime for a short visit before they head back to Elk City. They had to come down to the valley and pick up her daughter Mercede from her dads.


Dave got a new computer chair, our other one was pretty broken and hurting his back. Half price :) was even better.


We made a Christmas basket for his secretary and 3 others.

 

Pumpkin butter, mint, lemon, balm, oatmeal bath salts, jar of cookie mix, crocheted slippers and hand spun wool scarf

I forgot to take a picture of the one we made our daughter Terra to go with her other gift.

We shopped a little and delivered gifts to some of the kids homes on Thursday evening. We had a furneral to attend that morning and Terra baby sat Kaylee in the afternoon until we could pick her up. Was a very full day.


David Jr and his 2 children are supposed to come on Monday we hope they will be able to make it for a short visit.


Again Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.

Tree up

We finally found the small fake Christmas tree. I looked 2 days for it and Dave finds it behind the chimney up in the attic. Wouldn't ya know lol.
So the tree is up decorated and plugged in.

 

The tree looks better at night lit up.

Dave got more wood put on the porch and grain into the coop barrels.

 

Kaylee looking at the wood papa brought in the house.

Dryer wood inside so the wetter stuff can dry out on the porch. Dave is taking from the snowed on pile for now, he wants to use that up before we start on the wood in the wood shed.

My mom came out this afternoon and visited so Kaylee and her great grandma got to visit.

Oh the pumpkin butter turned out wonderful. It is canned up and ready to give out.

Pumpkin Butter

I got a small batch of pumpkin butter going this morning after Kathy and Kaylee were out the door.


Crock-pot pumpkin butter

6 cups cooked and pureed pumpkin (use canned if that is all you have)

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup lemon juice
Put in your crock-pot and cook 6 to 8 hours or until it is as thick as you want.
Freeze in small containers or pressure can in small jars to hand out as gifts. If you prefer you can make this half apple puree and half pumpkin.

They have pushed the cold front up to coming in tomorrow now.  This morning it rained then turned to snow and now that is melting. Lol all I had to do is wait 5 minutes, now is is snowing to beat the band.

I got the Christmas cards here in front of me and am going to try and get them made out today.

35 years tomorrow

Tomorrow is our 35 th wedding anniversary :).
Those 35 years have seemed to have flown by. There was a point when we had all of the 10 children at home with 6 of them under 9 years old that I didn't think I would ever live though it lol. (3 in diapers at a time for years.) And 4 teenagers to boot.
Dave says I left my sanity back there lol.
We will go to town later to do a little shopping and maybe eat somewhere as a celebration. He says Costco lol.


He brought in more wood to the enclosed front porch this morning before it got low and would be a major chore.
He is now cleaning the barn. He can use the tractor to clean out the large middle but the 2 stalls the cow has been sleeping in have to be shoveled out by hand. And they are deep and messy.

Wind, rain, wind & more wind

We have had quite a few days of pretty good winds this week.
That sure makes it colder when you are out with that wind whipping off the snow. 
The good thing is the warm front that came in this week. We have had 30's during the day and that has melted off about half our snow.
But it rains/sleet in the late afternoon early evening and then freezes over night. Makes it pretty treacherous the next morning.
Been thinking I need to start getting things going for Christmas and with my health problems it sure seems harder.

Dave heads to Spokane again today  and will be home around 1 AM.
I have a chocolate hot water cake in the oven for him to take with him today to share. It sure is smelling good lol.

Another week already

The first week of December is almost gone already, boy is time flying. Hard to believe 2010 is almost done with.


I didn't realize it had been 6 days since I posted here.
It has been a busy few days.


Dave spent 5 hours outside on Friday most of the time plowing snow. He did the driveway, the parking area and turn around area, in front of the barn and had to take grain to the chicken coop so he plowed his way up there as well.  
Getting across the creek bed was a struggle.

He got the front deck all shoveled off and the ramp/bridge to the front deck so he could bring wood in to the wood rack on the front porch, here is the bridge before it was shoveled. You can just barely see the ramp. One has to cross the ramps that cross the creek to get to the house.

Here is the drift we have building around the back of the house by the dog house.

 

There is a warm front in, it is 30 degrees already this morning. Supposed to be in the 30's during the day all week this week. That will mean wet, slushy, mushy snow.

But the warmer is nice.

I got the wood stove going about 5:25 this morning and it wasn't real cool in here at all with the warmer temps outside.

Happy Birthday to those that have gone

Today is not only my grandmother Icie Fern's birthday and Dave's dad Harold. She passed in 1963 and was 52 years old he passed in 1983 and was 71 years old.
I am now older then my grandmother, weird thought. 

I wanted to post Dave's mom's recipe for Ginger bread for Christmas.

Gingerbread Cake by Gene S.
Bake  at 350 degrees for 35 minutes or until done.
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs beaten
1/2 cup molasses
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 & 1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1  ground cloves
1 teaspoon allspice
Cream the shortening with sugar. Then add beaten eggs, mix. Add rest of the ingredients.
Serve with ice cream, whipped cream or white frosting.


I wanted to post the pictures from the last few days.

Kaylee playing in the snow and a few from Thanksgiving.

 

Our Thanksgiving table

Kaylee and Sander

Drift around our old grill, we are still trying to figure out what parts of this can be used for.

Blizzard out there

Dave had a hard time seeing to get home from work once he got to the top of the grade, it is just a white out outside. He also helped a u with a truck and trailer chain up the guys truck after he hit black ice and the wind blew him sideways right off the road.
He and Kathy just took her car down to the state shop to park the car for tomorrow him going ahead n the truck. Then I will go with him to work in the morning, bring the truck back to drive her down to the state shop and her car tomorrow so she can get to work. The state shop is right by the highway.


We had a good Thanksgiving, some of the kids were able to come up. I sent a tray of food down to my mom and her boy friend and son Khristopher and his wife Amanda dropped it off to them. Mom was hurting and didn't feel up to coming up.

Snow is here

 

This is this morning and it is still snowing.
Hopefully Kathy won't have a problem getting out. Dave had the truck as the Escape is in the shop until Wednesday so he had no problem at all.
I haven't seen or heard the snow plow yet on our country road, he usually gets here by now.


This weekend we worked on getting the wood shed tarp fixed and the one on the old RV that the wind practically blew off and no way we know how as it was tied down and etc. well now its really tied down, every grommet has a rope tied down to under the RV on the frame.
We also worked on getting the wood shed all filled before the snow got here. We made it. I helped load the truck once even with my bad cold. And started to help take it into the wood shed when Dave ordered into the house as I had been out there in the cold for 3 hours.

 

Full wood shed.

On Saturday Dave arranged the old paint/water containers as a snow fence.

. 

Here is the storm coming in.

Passing of my wonder friend

Rebecca (Becky) of Iowa known as Shepherd on the net passed away the 15 of November 2010. She was 58 years old. She had been treated for lung cancer last year and beat it. But it had already presented in her brain and no one knew that until this past summer. 
I will miss her greatly.

Becky and me in 2005

 It is snowing today and we have like 1/2 inch so far along with being windy. But not as windy as it was yesterday or the day before thank goodness.
As of last night there were still some small towns without electricity in the area.

I am still down with this stupid bad cold but have most of the outside chores done. I still have to fill the cows water trough in the barn, as the water is half way down. Kathy was in the shower and I couldn't fill the trough while I was at the barn this morning. lol, would not have been nice.

Trying to make plans for Thanksgiving and it is so hard when you feel so under the weather. We have decided to do it up here this year and have been getting the word out here and there. Still have a few of the kids to tell and see who wants to come up here on Thanksgiving.

We had a raging wind and rain storm last night. Power went out around 2 am and didn't come back on til 1:33 PM.
All of Moscow ID. was out and 1/2 of Lewiston ID. 
Trees down all over Lewiston my hubby said when I called him at work. 
His secretary had one down right in front of her house.
Snow coming in tonight and for the next few days with a big drop in temperatures again.
A few things will have to worked on tonight tarps were ripped off in the wind last night things like that.


I had to go up to the well house and get the pressure tank filled up again after we got the electric back. 
Then I took a shower, threw a yak roast in the oven and got a load of clothes going in the washer.


Looks like Kaylee has shared her cold with me, my throat is getting really rough this afternoon.

New storms coming

Well chores are done this morning. While out there I plugged in our diesel truck so it will be all ready for me to go get Dave form work tonight. The Escape goes in for its latest fix from the deer running into the right side today and will be at the shop all week.

Dave filled the chicken coop barrels on Friday and a few other chores. It was cold and windy, the same for  Then we left to go to the Spokane Temple about 12:15. 3 hour drive as usual, he got home about 1:45 AM.

Saturday but with sleet, rain and snow at different times added in with the wind. He said we would load the back of the truck with 2 loads of wood and throw it in the wood shed to stack. 
Welllllll that turned into 4 loads and I had to stop after 2 and half loads. My Fibromyalgia will only let me do so much and later in the day and the next I paid for what I did do. lol.

These piles are now in the shed.

Dave took 2 hours to stack that. We were hoping that the wind would die down do we could get the new tarp over the back end of the wood shed, but no go. That doesn't look good for the next few days either later today we have high winds coming in with winds to 40 mph tonight.

I think most things are battened down.

Our daughter and son in law in AZ sent us a couple pictures of them and the 2 children. They make most all their own costumes. But I don't know about Kaiba's this year.

Kylee & Kaiba

Coral & Kirk

Here is Kirk again.

Icy

Its a cold icy morning here, it rained like the dickens all day yesterday and most of the evening. Then it stopped raining and cleared and we got up to 28 degrees at 5 am. Everything is frozen hard as a brickbat out there.
Okay I had to look up the definition of brickbat. 
http://www.word-detective.com/2009/06/02/brickbat/


Dave had to scrape his windows before leaving. I know the roads had to be icy as well.
I got a fire going in the wood stove while he was getting ready for work.
He will be gone for two days as he has to represent the city at a meeting in Newberg OR.

This past weekend we had to rent a wood splitter. I hate spending the money but sometimes there isn't any help for it. Dave had felt bad for so long he  wasn't up to hand splitting this year. He usually does that through the summer and fall.
In a day and a half we split 10 cords. It is sitting in huge piles all rained on. Needles to say his back and quite a few other muscles are suffering from all that since he had to do the major amount of work. The wind was blowing pretty good to which didn't help Dave as he was just getting well from some illness he had picked up at work.
He feels like being out in the cold wind set him back but we didn't have any other choice in the matter.
I normally operated the splitter and was the all around go-fer. We took it back Saturday morning. And did our other errands while we were in town.

I should do some more canning this week, I want to can up the squash we have as they don't last long in the garage, to moist out there. 
We have made plans for digging a root cellar. Dave made out the plans and all that's needed for it. Something to have on our wish list.
I also bought a used book called Root Cellaring :). Getting ready for the future event of having one.

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables


 The last weather report I read said snow is predicted for the rest of this week and into the weekend.

I wanted to add a picture of little Kaylee and her Red Riding hood costume.

Storms and new paint

We got our first snow on the 26th of October; snowed for about 3 hours.

It has been a very busy couple of days here.
Yesterday Dave just got wood into the front porch and unto the wood rack and not 15 minutes later the winds kicked up and it started to rain cats and dogs; sideways rain. That went on for a few hours.
Couldn't really do any more outside work during that so we pulled everything out of our small bathroom and started to paint. Light yellow walls and a very nice light cream on the window and door frames. They were both Behr Premium oops paint, $5.00 a gallon can. Sure looks  different from the lavender.
Today we will do touch ups; let dry and then hang the medicine cabinet back up, shelving and move all the towels and etc back in.

 

 I picked up some material for a new curtain a week ago; that sure has gone up in price. The cottons that used to be $1.99 are now $3.99 a yard. I found some with a $1.00 off a yard. I still to wash it before i sew the curtains up.
This bathroom had no shelving at all when we moved in. There was no place to put anything with a pedestal sink to boot. We replaced the sink 2 years ago.

I have been crocheting socks lately. 

One of our older daughters came up and brough her 2 daughters, she got them ready for a Hollween party while here.