It's all about family

When I look back over the last month, it's stunning to me everything that has happened. We sold our house, celebrated two family birthdays (my son's and my sister's), had Christmas, New Years, and...the best part, my brother-in-law came home from Iraq.

My sister and he have three kids, ages 2 1/2, 5 and 8. They are a military family. He's in the Army. My sister has been raising their kids on her own, off and on, since they were born, as her husband is deployed every two years to various parts of the world. At the end of December, he finally came back home after serving a year (his second tour) in Iraq. Fear, concern and worry were feelings we all became very familiar with while he was gone. The joy on his children's faces when he came back was awesome to see.

I thought I'd share some of those pictures today and say how thankful I am that he's back home safe and that my sister has her family all together again.

Signs for Papa:

Doing a good job being patient while holding the signs for Papa:

Is that him?:

Here he comes:

Group hug:

Smiles everywhere:

I think my sister is pretty happy:

They're baaaack

I used to love looking through the "Where's Waldo" books with my kids when they were little. Can you spot the mama deer and her baby eating the vines in my backyard? I caught their motion out of the corner of my eye when I was getting coffee this morning.

Look at that sweet, white spot on the fawn's nose between her eyes. I'm going to miss this little face.

Somehow, though, I have a feeling that where we're moving, there will be a whole new family of deer to become acquainted with (and attached to). :-)

A day on the mountain

I was excited to go to Mt. Hood today, about 90 minutes east of Portland. It was my son's first ski race of the season and our first trip up to the mountain in about nine months. Although there were no clear shots of Mt. Hood due to weather (it was overcast, foggy in spots and a bit windy), it was still beautiful up there:

Here's my boy at the start of the race. It's cute because he's always a little nervous:

But once he's going, he's in his element:

If you're not from Oregon, yet this building below looks familiar to you, you might recall it from the movie "The Shining". This is Timberline Lodge and exterior shots of it were used as the hotel where Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall's characters act as caretakers in the movie. It's absolutely gorgeous on the inside.


Our faces started to freeze much too soon and it was time to head home. Today was a good day - no thoughts of all the packing and organizing and moving logistics needing to be done. It was really nice to take a little mental break.

There's this thing I don't like doing

So, maybe it did need to be done. It's possible I was having to use my body weight now to close the cupboard door on the items stored inside. Perhaps a good Winter Paperwork Purge is always in order, whether one is getting ready to move or not. But somehow, going through piles and piles of records, bills, bank statements, and other miscellaneous documentation to determine which must be kept and refiled and which must be shredded and disposed of is my personal hell. I hate it. It takes me days. Papers will be strewn through the house, across the floors, over counter tops, even in the laundry room, while I try to get myself through this seemingly endless task. It seems that not only have I saved every single thing sent to me over the last year, but when I do finally tackle this project, I unintentionally take a trip down memory lane. I'm one of those write-notes-to-myself-on-the-outside-of-bill-envelopes kind of people, so going through this pile now, I am forced to recall each and every payment, argument, minor dispute, and change of service that has happened since the last time I did a purge. I also remember, upon seeing a particular envelope, how IRRATIONALLY ANGRY it makes me that Qwest sends me their statements with the envelope upside down now (if you have Qwest for phone service, you'll know immediately what I mean). But, now that I've started, there's nothing to do but plow through it. I will feel so much better once this is done. And, as always, I've got my faithful pup by my side who, every time I sigh heavily or start muttering to myself, jumps up, walks through the mess, and crawls into my lap.

Look who came to visit me...

Even though we currently live in an urban neighborhood with busy streets and many houses, deer are a familiar site here. To see a fawn this late in the year, though, was surprising to me. This little beauty had no fear. She jumped right down from our upper level backyard onto our patio to eat the leaves off my jasmine bush.

Even when she saw me, she wasn't particularly worried:

My husband couldn't believe that I was letting her have her way with my prized jasmine. He has witnessed my many tantrums and fits over the years when the deer have devoured my roses. "It's cold out and she's hungry" was all I could reply. She's just a baby. And she stripped those branches in seconds flat:

It didn't take me long to find her mama keeping a close watch from a distance:

Then my pup, Roxy, saw them and started to bark and claw at the glass door. This is the last shot I got of the fawn before she turned and ran away:

Jim's new toy

When I first met my husband years ago, I never cared much about temperature and barely paid attention to the extended forecast. Today, if there isn't a temperature gauge next to our bed, in the master bathroom and downstairs in the dining room alerting me to what the temp is in the front *and* back of our house, I feel positively out of sorts. This is Jim's fault. He loves to discuss the weather, in particular the temperature. Inside and outside temperature are equally important. Discussions of minimum and maximum temperatures as well as temperature trends, barometric pressure, and the differences in calibration from one thermometer to the next are routine in our home. We all know, for example, that the upstairs bedroom temperature gauge shows the inside temp just little higher than the magnetic thermometer 10 feet away on the wall leading to the bathroom. Fortunately, my sons and I feel comfortable adjusting accordingly and simply round up or down to the nearest degree, but I know this sort of irrational imprecision must drive Jim crazy.

My husband is also an equal-opportunity weather instrument appreciator. While we certainly enjoy the technology of the 21st century, we also utilize a weather tool from the 16th century:

This particular device is called a storm glass or "Goethe barometer" and is regarded as the oldest barometer in the world. It allows simple weather forecasting by showing pressure changes as water rises or falls in its "spout." My aunt from Berlin gave this to him as a gift when we visited her a few years back and it really works.

But on to the new toy. Because of his weather interest, Jim has wanted a home weather station for years. In preparation for our move to the country in less than a month, it seemed a good time to finally get a home weather station. Understandably, Jim wasn't able to wait until we got to our new property to set it up, so this is the view from my kitchen window currently:

Yes, the weather monitor is stuck into the umbrella opening of my patio table.

Mental note to self: Write to Oregon Scientific, the makers of this weather station, and suggest that they make this device a bit more visually friendly in the future, perhaps choosing a color that actually exists in nature, like brown or green, to allow it to blend in with its surroundings. Right now, it gives me a shock every time I look outside.

But I guess this doesn't really matter. Jim is very pleased. He's like a kid with a new toy. He IS a kid with a new toy. He follows me around the house telling me all the latest stats. This morning, while I was brushing my teeth, he stood next to me the whole time telling me how (and how frequently) the rain gauge self-empties. Just now, I got a lesson in wind speed and direction.

Who would've ever thought I'd become so interested in the weather?! :-)

Did I mention how sweet my man is?

Noticing how many photos I had been taking lately with my little pocket-sized digital camera and how I've been branching out a bit with my photo-experiments, my husband gave me a new digital camera for Christmas this year. It's a Nikon D40x. It came with two lenses, an 18-55 zoom and a 55-200 zoom. Clearly, I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of all it can do yet - I have a thick users manual and 2 tutorial cds (how funny) to get through - but here are a few example shots I've taken so far with just the "point and click" method.

Roxy, my pup, who immediately begins to pose whenever a camera is pulled out, will be in absolute doggy heaven. Until she has competition from my farm critters, anyway.

My guy also gifted me with a year's subscription to the "Backyard Poultry" magazine as well as a lovely dark brown canvas coat that hay and straw won't stick to. (I would call it a 'barn coat' but this implies that it's one of those city-person fashion trends from a few years ago - mine is meant to be functional!) :-)

Of course, the biggest gift of all to me is this move to the country, the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. His willingness - and excitement - to completely change our lives to do this is an incredible present to me.

I feel so fortunate to have this wonderful man as my husband.

Wordless Wednesday: Finally, a lazy day...

It's a white Christmas for Portland!

This is so exciting! According to the National Weather Service, between 1940 and 2003, snowflakes have fallen in Portland, Oregon only 5 times on Christmas day. So we Portlanders are having a ball, even though it's barely more than a dusting on the ground at this point. At least it's sticking! We in the Land of Drizzle tend to go a bit crazy when the white stuff begins to fall, so who knows what the day will bring.

It's so pretty!

The fire towel

It seemed like such a good idea at the time: heat a towel in the microwave so I could wrap frozen butter in it to gently warm it for my son's 16th birthday cake frosting. Of course, I had forgotten to take it out of the freezer the night before. I needed *softened* butter, not melted, so what better way to quickly do this, I thought. So, I hit 30 seconds on the microwave and pressed "Start". After 30 seconds, the towel was warm but not quite warm enough to make a dent in the butter. So, I readjusted the towel, entered 2:00 minutes on the microwave and pressed "Start" again. I was in another room when it dinged this time and I didn't immediately go to check on it.

Then I started to smell something burning. By then, my distracted mind had forgotten about the towel in the microwave, so I was surprised when I walked into the kitchen and saw billowing gray smoke pouring from the microwave vents. Worried about setting the smoke detectors off, I quickly opened the back door (right next to the microwave) before I opened the door to the microwave. Little did I know how good a move this was. Opening the microwave, I see the towel smoldering on the carousel. Still only worried about potential smoke damage, I grab the corner of the towel, take one step to the door and literally FLING it outside. Here comes the good part: As the towel is flying out the door, it bursts into flames. It lands on the patio and continues to burn while I'm standing there with my mouth agape.

Since I only had slippers on, I couldn't stomp out the flames and had to turn on the patio hose to douse them with water.

This was such a signature Farmgirl_dk-move: juggling too many things at one time and trying to take a short-cut. I am so lucky - this could have turned out much worse!