Snow and Sunshine

It is definitely April in Montana, woke to snow and the day will end on a sunshiny note!

Michael gave me more blog material yesterday—we are sitting with our coffee, I am reading a seed catalog talking about gardening and I say, “I would sure like a greenhouse.”  He replies, “well get yourself a paint brush and some green paint.”  OK, was he just being funny or was he totally not listening to our previous conversation about gardening???  I threw the seed catalog at him!!

Spent the afternoon getting the longarm ready to sew again.  Jim and Sandie (well, I think Sandie) asked what “to longarm” means in a comment left a couple days ago.  A quilter pieces a quilt—she cuts all the little shapes, sews the fabric together and creates a quilt top.  The longarm owner takes that top, adds a layer of batting and a layer of backing fabric making a quilt sandwich.  Then the longarm quilter loads this sandwich onto a huge longarm quilting machine and quilts a design over the entire quilt securing the three layers. 

I placed my seed order with Fedco Seeds today—I like their product because the seeds are not genetically modified.  As a kid in Arkansas in summertime, we grew up in a vegetable garden—Mom and Dad had a huge garden and of course we three kids weren’t thrilled about helping—needless to say our wants didn’t matter and we did help!  My sister Ann and her husband Danny have a big garden in the same spot now.  I get all excited when the gardening season starts, order seeds and start planning.  By September when all I’ve gotten is lettuce, radishes and the occasional cucumber or squash, I wonder—was it worth it???  Montana’s weather just isn’t conducive to gardening unless you like lots of lettuce!

A poor photo of a golden eagle I think!

A Beautiful Day

It was such a nice day I hung my sheets outside to dry!  About 50 degrees and sunshine, not warm enough to sunbathe like Kelly of The Bayfield Bunch was doing but nice!

Michael started a huge project today.  When we built this house we made our parking area too small.  In addition there is an area down by the creek I wanted to turn into a little garden area with plants and a place to sit, maybe a picnic table—I couldn’t do any of that cause the horses have access to that spot.  So, today Michael started preparations to move the cattle guard and fencing down from the house about 200 yards giving us a better parking area and fencing out the horses.  There is probably about 400-500 yards of fencing to do—so he has started a huge project.

I finally unpacked the last bin and box today in the quilt studio and tackled all the dust bunnies there which accumulated over the winter.  Maybe tomorrow I will get to do something fun like quilt!

Lonn, LoraLee, Katie and her Michael are coming for dinner tonight, I made spaghetti and homemade bread. 

Talked to Gina today and she is feeling a lot better. 

Emmi loved being outside today and was a good girl—she didn’t wander off anywhere, I need to get her electronic fence thing up and running.

We Have Sunshine

A cold nasty wind but with sunshine!  Some of the mud left today and things started drying out.

Michael repaired his broken air compressor, discovered the little sports car wouldn’t start--dead battery (that makes three batteries we need now, the diesel needs two) and started taking down some fencing in preparation for remodeling our yard area.

I attempted to start unpacking the quilt studio but something kept coming up.  Nat has a really bad cold so I felt I needed to go into town and check on him.  I whipped up some of his favorite cookies and some soup and took off.  Spent a hour or so with him visiting and he is actually feeling and looking better.

Stopped at Barb’s and picked up a quilt she wants me to longarm for her—it will be an easy one, she has it pinned to the zippers and a large portion all ready quilted.  It is a fourth of July quilt, lots of red, white and blue—Barb wanted feathers in the white parts and didn’t feel confident enough to quilt those so I will do that for her.  Last fall at the quilt retreat all the ladies got their names on a list, lining up for longarm quilting services when I returned this spring.  Started on that list today—ladies, do you know where you fall on the list—are your quilts ready??

We can hear the sandhill cranes all around us, this is a photo I took last year—this couple was doing a fine mating dance!

My dear husband is really good about providing me with blog material.  As I was mixing cookies in my handy Kitchen Aid heavy duty mixer today I remarked, “this mixer is another thing I miss when going south.”  My dear husband says to me, “well if you only took three pair of shoes instead of dozens, you could take your mixer.”  I considered throwing the mixer at him but it is too heavy!  Hey, a girl can’t have too many pairs of shoes, especially flip flops!

Life is good!

More Spring Cleaning

Except we aren’t seeing much “spring” around here, maybe I should say winter cleaning???  Anyway, I spent the day cleaning and doing laundry.

Michael cut some firewood and finished storing the items he removed from the motorhome.

And that’s it for our day here in Montana.  We did take a walk in the semi sunshine this morning.  Emmi is glad to be home and loose even if it is loose in a snow drift!

What I Miss

Well, I sure don’t miss this when we are gone for the winter.  Woke to about 5 inches of new snow this morning—it has snowed all day but was so warm most of what fell melted.

We miss our Wilcoxson’s ice cream, only available in Montana.  Even the low fat version is good!

And one of the things I really miss while we are down south is my kitchen—counter space, oven, lots of running water, lots of hot water and my dishwasher.  I love to cook and cooking in a RV kitchen just doesn’t cut it sometimes!

Since being home we have enjoyed long hot baths and showers, our big king size bed and our comfortable chairs.  And really fast DSL internet! 

We spent the day spring cleaning and putting stuff away.  Took a couple walks with the Emmi girl and that’s about it for our day here at home.

We Are Home

We arrived home on Tuesday after a totally uneventful travel day on Monday. We pulled into Southside RV Park in Dillon, MT just after 8pm Monday night and the lady at the desk said, “oh, it’s after 8pm, you only have to pay $25.”  OK, I can live with that!  This is one of the few RV parks we can tolerate probably because we are always staying only one night on our way one direction or another.   Even though it is a very small family owned park it is one of the few parks we have ever been in that recognizes what you mean when you say “big rig.”  The site we were given gave us room to spare for our 65 feet in length. 

Parked next to us was a huge tandem axle Monaco motorhome, one of Al and Kelly’s Ontario neighbors and around the corner were all the Alberta folks, five fifth wheels.  When we stopped at the quilt shop in Whitehall, the owner said Monday’s sales were to one Canadian lady after another!  It’s a mass exodus of snowbirds heading north!

And while checking us in the owner mentioned, “Pizza Hut delivers here to the park.”  Music to my ears!  I will never forget the incredulous look on my dear husband’s face many years ago when we pulled into a RV park somewhere and the desk clerk told him he could get pizza delivered.  My country raised cowboy had never heard of such a thing!  He needs to get out more, doesn’t he.

It was a pleasure to pull into our little town about noon Tuesday, Emmi was very glad to see Granddad and he was very glad to see her!  We all went to lunch and visited, running into many acquaintances and friends of course!  The weather was looking a little iffy up our way so we said our goodbyes to Nat, picked up our income tax return at the accountants and headed up the Boulder. 

Got that big old motorhome all the way to the back door—a little muddy but parked beside the house so we could unload easier.  We made a huge dent in the unloading process, cooked supper and took a walk. 

Our only coming home glitch was I forgot to call the telephone company in time to have our DSL service reactivated for Tuesday, was promised service by Wednesday morning and here it is Thursday and our DSL was just restored.  The local telephone co-op was having trouble deciding which hand to use the left or the right! 

It is really, really nice to be home in our log cabin by the creek.  Very little snow around the house but big drifts in the coulees. 

Went to Billings Wednesday—my hairdresser had a cancellation and I took it!  It was a sunny day and not only did I get my hair done but we replenished the pantry and got sticker shock when we checked out at Costco.  I did purchase a couple bigger ticket items, one of them being an external hard drive.

Today, way too early this morning, it was back to Billings again (remember this is a 200 mile round trip) with Nat—he had a dermatologist appointment with a Billings Clinic doctor.  The guy performed SEVEN biopsies on Nat’s face and ears and is fairly certain he will have to have at least two MOHS procedures pending biopsy results.  We made a quick stop at Sam’s Club and came home.

Weather is its usual crummy self for April in Montana, rain/snow all day, the snow is starting to stick as I write this.  Michael finished unloading the motorhome and our house looks as if a bomb went off—stuff everywhere, but there is always tomorrow!

Mike Clark Is Going Home

Are all men the same???  When one of you says the words, “let’s go home,” the pedal is to the metal and off we go, straight home, do not stop, just keep driving!  We left Moab, UT a little after 9am this morning and as I write this at 5pm mountain time, we are still driving and will be until we reach Dillon, MT at about 8pm!  Our plan was to stop for the night in Pocatello, ID and then I heard the dreaded question, “what would you think about driving on?”  I just know he passed Pocatello by cause I wanted to stop at the quilt store—do you think???? 

So we went from this to this today, GRRRR, I hate to give up my flip flops!

Our camping spot last night!

Nice scenery today.

And John and Brenda, you better hurry, we are sure most of the Canadians left today as we have played tag with the majority of Alberta today.

And we thank the good Lord our friend Gina came through her surgery with flying colors today!

So, we will be back in the state of Montana in less than 2 hours.