What a view!

I caught a beautiful evening to capture the view from our living room window. Actually it is the same view from the kitchen and all of the bedrooms too. It is the first mostly clear night we have had in a long time. Did I mention that I am sick of winter! Just to the right of the tree you can see the top of Three Sisters .

With a telescopic lens you can see the Crooked River valley better. Just beyond the flat butte on the right you would see Smith Rock.

The view a little more to the north shows this great view of Grizzly Mountain. The other 200 acre piece of property that the boys hay is just at the base of it.

With a telescopic lens you can see the top of Sisters mountains better. You can see the top of Jefferson from other points on the property too.

We Moved!!

After 21 years at our Lookout Ave. house we have moved to a farm just outside of town. Last September, "the boys" and Curt and I bought a 143 acre farm, with 40 more acres leased. The house has been empty for months until we had the time and a little money to do some work on it. There is LOTS more work to do, but it is livable now. I did not take any photos of the outside yet because it still looks like a construction site and there is a lot of crud in the yards, plus it is winter and not looking spiffy. I will take some photos of the gorgeous view soon. So here are some photos of some of the rooms right after moving in... so excuse the boxes and mess. There aren't any curtains up yet either, but I am thrilled with the paint, carpet and windows.

This is the master bedroom. I decorated in a tropical theme. It was completely gutted and has new sheetrock, carpet, lights and one new window. It has a sitting room area that I can keep my bike, inversion table, a comfy chair, table and TV. I did striping on the walls to match the comforter.

This is the master bath that I did in peach and sage colors. It got a new window that is HUGE and faces the front of the house. Can you imagine stepping out of the shower and facing the front of the house? I hung a sheet until I can get curtains! We also have a walk in closet. A first!

The house is all stretched out with a long hallway. All of the rooms have a view of the north and Grizzly Mountain... except this hallway bathroom. I did it in lavender and has pansies for decor. You can see in the mirror another door that leads to the "mud" room. It has another outside entrance and is where the furnace and freezer is.

This is the guest bedroom and office. They are both painted brown and the office has hardwood floor. Both rooms need the windows replaced. They are the last two and we hope to do that this summer.

This is the living room. I LOVE it! It is painted in two shades of brown. Curt is going to replace the woodstove insert with a new one. The large window and french doors are new.

This is the kitchen. It is a beautiful shade of light green with the accent wall by the dining table a darker shade of sage. It has a center island and lots of cupboards. Next to the window seat presently is a built in desktop that we are going to tear out and build a pantry cupboard to hold my canning and food storage. All we did in here was paint. (And by "we" I mean Jenniann and me. Curt doesn't paint.)

Christmas...a little late

Here is our annual Christmas Eve photo. The guys grumble a little about doing it every year, but they still do it! We are without Amanda and her family because they stay home and come see us after Christmas. This was our last Christmas in our house on Lookout Ave. The 1200 sq. feet has served us well for 21 years. We had a simple, practical Christmas this year since we are all cash strapped. I gave all of the kids some food storage!

Standing L to R: Sam, Jenniann holding Macquarie, Angela (pregnant with Reagan, due April 6th), Sunny, Curt with Johnnie in front, Me.

Front: Lia (striking quite a pose!), Brigham, Emily holding Hyrum.

More fun with Amelia

Today Amanda called so I could talk some sense into Amelia about wearing black pants. Amelia thinks that is "a boy color"and won't wear them. I told her that I have 2 pairs of black pants and they are my favorites! Girls wear black pants all the time and you can wear any color of top with them and I was wearing black pants right then while we were talking! I don't know if she put them on after we hung up... but I was amused at the influence I could have on my granddaughter's wardrobe. I wonder if that will still work when she is 15!

The Girls and Grandma

Amelia was really missing her Grandma and persuaded her parents to make a trip to Prineville so she could get a picture of us together to hang in her room. What a sweetie. I always hate to get my picture taken, but maybe she will remember me more kindly than I do myself!

We always have fun together. I probably am the "craft" grandma because we make things together as often as we can. I really look forward to every stage of my grandchildren's lives and hope that when they are teenagers we can still have fun!

While Amelia was getting her picture taken Hayden and Lia needed to be a part of the fun too! I made Hayden and Amelia's matching dresses recently. It was fun and brought back memories of sewing for my own girls. I need to do more of that again. Lia let Aunt Amanda put braids in her hair, which is quite an accomplishment! The funny story from this weekend was when Lia was helping Amanda make cookies and she told her that she liked Amy (Amanda's cousin). She said Amy tells stories without books, she tells stories with her mouth! Amanda told her, "That's because Amy can't read!" Of course, that all got back to Amy and the battle is on! You gotta love our family!

Another tragic loss

This is my mom doing one of her favorite things. She didn't ask for much out of life and never complained. She worked hard all of her life, retiring when she was 8o years old! She still bowls on a league and does volunteer work

On Oct. 20th she was in an accident and died the next day from her injuries. I was able to spend the morning with her and talk to her, with her responding with a shake of the head before she started to fail. I was not prepared for this and I am having a very hard time dealing with it. I have a lot to take care of now and I struggle through each day figuring out what to do. Not to dwell on the sadness, I thought I would include some other photos:

This is two weeks before mom died. We took a trip to California together to attend her younger brother's 50th wedding anniversary. We got to make a long ride down from the mountains where they live, into Stockton in a stretch limo. This is her brother Jim, mom and her sister Doris in the limo.

All of our children were home for the funeral, as well as two of my three brothers and mom's brother and sister. This is from L to R: my sister-in-law Elaine, my brother Steve, Me, Curt, my brother Kent, mom's sister Doris, mom's sister-in-law Paddie, and her brother Jim

It was fun to see Emily and her cousin Megan get together. This is the first time since they have become "adults". Megan just turned 22 and Emily is 27. They are a lot alike.

It seems like I only post a new blog entry when I have something fun or exciting, or something sad to ad. I will have to examine my life and find something worthwhile to share more often. I will miss my mom.

Bula!

Bula!













(That's Hey!...Hello!...Greetings!....Aloha!, etc. in Fiji)
We have returned from a two week vacation to the beautiful islands of Fiji! It was wonderful, fascinating, restful, exciting and all those great descriptive words. I would definitely recommend it. This trip came about as a result of the passing of my Dad. He always wanted to travel when he retired. He planned to buy a sailboat and live on it and he never was well enough to do it. He planned well financially for his retirement and his children are now reaping the benefit of his investments. So I decided that I wasn't going to wait for "someday" to visit a South Sea island like I have always dreamed of (Hawaii doesn't count!) I wanted to go before I am too crippled up to enjoy it. So here are some highlights of our trip!

We went on a couple of day cruises to outer islands. This one is Robinson Crusoe Island, where we snorkeled, ate Lovo lunch (buried bar-b-q), watched dancers, and had crab races. It was a fun day.

This was our view from the beach in front of our bure every night at 6 o'clock.














One day we went to a "bird park" where they help many kinds of colorful birds re-populate the islands. We were actually inside most of the cages with them! They had some fruit bats that we saw up close. We had seen some flying while we were on a raft trip earlier. This is my new friend, Mr Iguana. Kind of funny that Curt wouldn't touch them!









One they same day, we also visited a local village that they call the Pottery Village because the women there make a living by collecting red clay from the river bank and make pottery to sell to the tourist. They held a Kava ceremony for us,which we didn't drink because it is a narcotic and probably against the Word of Wisdom. It is a REALLY big deal there, and you are supposed to bring some Kava to give to the village chief and partake with him before you are welcomed into the village. They gave a demonstration before showing us their things to buy. Curt couldn't buy just from one woman and not the rest, so we came home with enough little turtles and frogs for all our grand kids, plus a pot and a few other things.




These two little girls were there at the pottery village and they were SO cute! When we were done there we discovered our driver had a flat tire, so we got to hang out in the village longer while he got it fixed. The little children were so sweet. The little one in the red shirt, Angela, became my friend. She came to sit by me and kept putting her feet up where I could tickle them! Curt learned all their names and what grade they were in. I was wishing I had some candy with me!










On September 8th, it was my 52nd birthday. (I can't believe it!) We went on a sailing trip to a couple of islands. There are over 300 islands, some of them uninhabited. We left from Denarau Island Marina on a large catamaran. It is like a large water taxi because people staying at resorts on the smaller, outer islands get to and from on the catamaran. It stopped at several small islands where there was only one resort on the island and picked up or dropped off people. It doesn't dock at the island, people are transported by motor boats to transfer. When we got to Mana Island, we got off and transfered to the Sea Spray, a 83 foot sailing schooner. We visited Yanuya Island where there was another Kava ceremony and women selling lots of tourist trinkets. We had a delicious lunch on board ship and sailed to Modriki Island.









This is the same island that Tom Hanks filmed Cast Away. Doesn't it look familiar? We snorkeled for a couple of hours there, and walked on the beautiful beach. There is nothing there but beautiful surroundings!













One day we hired our usual taxi driver for the day to take us to Suva, the capitol city. We decided not to rent a car and try to drive. It is quite an experience! There is a narrow two lane road that goes around the island. They drive on the left. There are a lot of slow moving trucks and buses so traffic moves slowly with only occasional places to pass. It is probably about 50 miles to Suva from where we stayed, but took all of 2 hours to get there. We went to the temple after which Krishna dropped us off downtown for a few hours. We ate lunch at KFC (it was just like home! Unlike the KFC in China!) and did some shopping and site seeing. It was a great day! We had already attended church at a small branch in Sigatoka and met many of the local members and a few American missionaries.



This is our bure. We usually prefer not to stay in hotels. This resort was about 25 bures and ours was beachfront. We crossed a small lawn and were right on the beach! This picture is also our traditional photo of Curt on vacation... on the phone! We went into town the first day we were there and bought a cell phone so he could keep in touch with the office... but not too much. The bure was just a square with a porch cut into one corner and a bathroom inside on the opposite corner. Inside was a queen size bed and two twins. There were no windows, just slats over screens that opened on both sides to get the breeze, along with a overhead fan. On the backside was a solar water collector for our shower, not that you wanted much hot water in that heat!

We spent many hours at this great pool. That is our bure through the trees. The canopies were real thatched grasses. The one showing was 4 years old and about to be replaced. We watched them build two new ones while we were there. The resort grounds had banana, coconuts, papayas, orchids, cactus, and many other beautiful flowering plants. It smelled heavenly and looked it too.




The main activity that I wanted to do in Fiji was this white water raft trip down the Navua River. We have been on other white water trips with bigger rapids, but never scenery like this! This was class 2 and 3 rapids and about 16 miles of beautiful canyons and waterfalls. Just the trip to the river was an adventure! We had about a one and half hour bus ride from our resort to the drop off site. Then about a two hour drive on a 4x6 bus on logging roads through a mahogany rain forest. (these were not American logging roads!) From some of the peaks you could see the ocean below. It was beautiful! Then when we got to the river... the real adventure began...and if I would have known this part, I probably would have backed out, and then I would have missed a great trip. We had to hike to where we were





getting into the boats. This hike was almost
straight up, and straight down, straight up and straight down with steps cut into the dirt/mud with boards packed in to make stairs. I am not kidding... these stairs were the depth of my whole short, terribly out of shape legs! I had to hoist myself up each step and try to step down with out blowing out a knee. I had to step aside to let the young people go by me. By the time I got to the river, my thighs were shaking and hurting. (Curt too, to a lesser degree) I told the group that I expected some applause... and I got it! The raft trip was wonderful. Curt got out and floated through some of the calm canyon waters. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get back into the boat! We had lunch here beside one the many waterfalls. We had a couple of rain showers but it was always warm. I had to be careful walking on slippery rocks with my shaky, sore legs so I didn't fall and break a hip! (Here I am looking like a drowned rat, but I guess that's how I really looked!)






Curt is showing us one of the many bright blue starfish

We took an underwater camera and took lots of photos of fish and coral. The fish are incredibly bright colors.

Curt is feeding the fish!