A New Year

Hello 2013!
The AdventureFamily wrapped up 2012 with a Christmas at home, which was lovely, although tinged with a lot of worry as Grandpa ended up in the ICU following emergency cholecystectomy, renal failure, and pancreatitis on Christmas Eve.  Nana had a short stay in the room right next door with a bowel torsion as well, so it made for a bit of a cliff-hanger.  Thankfully Grandpa is well into his recovery now, Nana is working her way slowly and painfully toward medical management of some motility issues, and life at the Grandparent's is slowly reaching an even keel.  Whew!  It made me realize that this is the first time that I can recall Grandpa ever having been hospitalized, ever.  Pretty good for a guy who is turning 75 in a few days!  It was also the first time that I have truly feared for his life, which is not a nice feeling.  Similar to when Nana was diagnosed with breast cancer, it really made me reflect on my relationship with my parents and brother, and how close we all are as a scattered but loving family.  We are certainly not ready for anyone to go, and with this behind us, it should be a good long time before we have to face "any of that".
One bright side of the tumultuous holidays is that Grandma Honey has once again joined our family for a prolonged stay.  She made an expedited trip out here to pinch-hit for me if I needed to make a rush trip to be with Nana and Grandpa, and agreed to stay to help me through the recovery for my knee surgery.  That means that we celebrated New Year's Day with Grandma Honey, as well as a wonderful visit from AdventureDad's brother Michael and his family.
So we in the AdventureFamily have also had a medically active New Year.  AdventureDad found out early in January that he needed several crowns and some other dental repair work.  He HATES having dental work done, and unfortunately for him, a lot of it has been done in foreign countries or in temporary circumstances that became permanent, so now it is time to fix it up for good.  Of course in the military system, why do in one trip what you can do in three?  so the frequent visits to the dentist began.  He showed up expecting a crown, and left without a tooth after it disintegrated while they were exploring.  After a really rough extraction due to all the pieces embedded in his jaw (thank goodness he was sedated), he was sent home to recover, looking like he came out on the wrong end of a boxing match.  After the site heals, it is back again, and again, and again (I think we totaled at least 6 visits coming up) for the other crowns (hopefully no further extractions), a post and implant, and filling repairs.  Poor guy!  Oh yeah, and they still haven't done  his cleaning!
The AdventureGirls both caught a nasty cold a week ago, which then spread to myself and Grandma Honey (GH from now on).  GH and O are on antibiotics now, while M and myself seem to be recovering.  Thankfully AdventureDad was spared, because he has been working extra hard during my recovery.  That leads to me and my knee.  I ended up getting my ACL reconstructed using a piece of my hamstring tendon on Tues.  This is a very common and straight-forward repair involving drilling a hole in the femur (above the knee) and the tibia (below the knee), then threading a piece of harvested tendon through the holes and securing it there with a button on top and a screw below.  They are able to pull and tunnel the hamstring tendon out through one of the drill incisions when they harvest it, so there is a minimal number of cuts in the skin.  They also removed some bony scar tissue developing on my patella.  The good news is that the meniscus looked great, which made me happy I did the surgery now, since it risks tearing every time my knee goes out.  So, now I am four days post-op (I won't even talk about the first two, which were pretty awful), hobbling around when I need to and elevating/icing the rest of the time.  I start physical therapy on Monday, and I am looking forward to the day when my knee is a bit more recognizable and a lot more functional!
Of course dispersed through all of the medical mayhem, we have been making progress on Nine Trees.  We met early in January with the owner of the company that we chose for our house construction and staked out the house with him.  Now THAT felt like progress!  It was our first visit to the farm that time of year, and was only possible because our wonderful neighbors had cleared the road of the three-foot drifts that had piled up.  Life is certainly going to be a lot more "elemental" when we live on the mountain!  We also got conditionally approved for our construction loan, which, while not yet a sure thing, is a huge step in the right direction!
We also added two new horses to our herd, while losing one.  A dear friend has been in the horse rescue field for a long time, and had built up quite a herd of both rescue and owned horses.  With the poor economy she has been unable to do enough work to support them all, and was faced with rehoming as many as possible before her hay ran out.  Lisbonne and Seville were two babies born last spring, that are half arab, half mustang (my dream mix!).  They are still a few years away from rideable, which is perfect for me and the ages of the girls, and in the meantime I can do all of the groundwork and gentling and have them ready to ride when the time comes.  So, the little ones (which are hard to find homes for because they can't be ridden right away) came to me, and Apple went back to Aunt Jess's.  (Jess was the one who initially enabled my getting Apple all those years ago, talk about a full circle!).  Apple is a stubborn girl, and not kid-horse material, and she will stand a much better chance of finding a good working home in that part of the country.

I am sure I have missed oodles of things, but that is the major-item summary of the year so far.  Happily for us, things are unlikely to slow down as progress on the house picks up in preparation for construction this Spring.  AdventureDad has an important job interview coming up in February, so keep your fingers crossed and I will hopefully have something to report on that next blog!

O and Lisbonne meeting for the first time

Left is Lisbonne, 6-month filly,  Right is Seville, 8 month colt

Meeting Apollo

Fuzzy winter coats.  This is a heat-wave for them!

The monster that ate my knee

Good Night Nine Trees (and Halloween Pics)

Time has once again flown by in its usual way.  Mid-November has arrived, and is emphasizing the difference between our farm in Eastern WA and our home in Western WA.  Here in Gig Harbor, the trees have mostly lost their leaves, a few hard frosts have arrived, and winter seems to be tapping at the door.  On the farm, winter has "done ready come".

We made our last journey to the farm for the winter (delayed by a few weeks while AdventureDad was playing in "the box" at Yakima), and put in a very productive four days.  The bulk of our time was spent putting French drains around 3 sides of our barn, in an effort to keep the dirt floor inside a little drier and channel the run-off from the roof (no gutters).  AdventureDad got to put in a couple hours running and excavator, which always makes a fun day for him.  The fun pretty much stopped there though... we worked in a driving snow storm as the mud got goopier and goopier, as only clay can.  However, we got the ditches dug out, and the gravel and pipe laid in, so we will see how effective it is in the spring!   In addition, AdventureDad winterized the tractor, and I tucked the orchard in for the winter with some dormant oil and burlap. 

It is funny, because despite how filthy, cold, and tired we were, we still enjoyed our time on Nine Trees.  (The girls are already begging to go back!)  It was amazing to see the storms come in.  We are on a high ridge in the foothills, so we can see the clouds sweep up the valley, and suddenly, they are around us.  This time it was an almost solid demarcation between storm and no storm.  One minute we were in the sun, and the next we were in the middle of a fleecy cloud with 5 feet of visibility and driving snow.  Pretty awesome!

Another awesome thing was seeing the well sitting there.  We ended up having to drill 890 feet, which is very deep for a well.  Most in the area are closer to 750 feet (still very deep), but we didn't hit much flow.  As I insinuated in my last post, we were pretty stressed.  With a well that deep, we were close to the end of our available funds, and the flow of 4 gallons/min was barely enough to claim a viable well, much less run a household.  However, the traditional method of measuring flow via pressurized air displacement is not as accurate in deep situations, so we opted to pay for a more expensive pump test.  Boy are we glad we did!  The pump test yielded a flow of 15 + gpm (probably over 20 but the driller's generator went out).  More than enough for a household.  Yay! and HUGE sigh of relief.
To wrap it all up, we hauled the camper home for the winter, where we can winterize it better, and I can clean it more thoroughly with the amenities of power and running water.  We felt really lucky, as this was probably the very last weekend that we could have gotten our work done before things freeze solid.

Of course before our jaunt to the farm we celebrated Halloween.  AdventureDad was able to come home 2 days early from his training exercise in Yakima to celebrate with us.  It was a pretty big deal, since he has only been home for 3 Halloweens (counting this one) since we have had kids due to deployments.  We had two little mermaids this year, which was incredibly adorable.  The city closes Harborview drive here every year, and all of the quaint little businesses stay open to hand out candy to the kids and cider, cocoa, etc. to the parents.  I will really miss this tradition when we move. but I know we will make new ones.

Overlapping all of this was an unfortunate knee injury for me.  I was washing our little horse trailer before parking it farther away for the winter.  I stepped off of the fender, as I had done several times already that day, but apparently my trajectory was wrong.  I felt my knee shift, heard and felt a loud pop, and fell the rest of the way to the ground.  I immediately knew something was very wrong, but all I could do was lay there for a few minutes and gather myself.  Livvy was cluelessly playing a few yards away, M was in school, and AD was in Yakima.  Needless to say my mind was racing as I suddenly felt very helpless (our house is in the country and isolated from our neighbors), although I had a feeling that I knew what had happened.  I managed to limp to the house (with Livvy solicitously and adorably holding my hand), take some ibuprofen, tuck her in for her nap, and rack out with some ice and an ace wrap.  This was only 2 days before Halloween and AD's return from Yakima, so I roughed it out until then, with my knee looking like it ate a cantaloupe for breakfast.  Of course as soon as AD returned from the box, he did an expert knee exam (one thing he's seen plenty of!), and confirmed my fear that I had done more than just sprain it.  An MRI early this week seconded it; a completely ruptured ACL and MCL, and compression fractures to my upper tibia.  I am currently impatiently working the military medical system with AD's help, which started with getting my robo-brace today (thankfully, as my knee has randomly and painfully been going out).  Next comes physical therapy and an orthopedics consult to decide when surgery will be (the sooner the better as far as I am concerned... I really want to just start the healing and rehab, a 6 month process!), but knowing this system, I doubt anything too exciting will happen until after Christmas.  Of course full updates will appear here :-).

And that is about that.  We are preparing for a much-anticipated journey back to Nana and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving, where we will be sharing our thanks with my parents, my brother and his family, and in an extra-nice surprise, my Aunt and Uncle that I haven't seen for several years.  Of course more posts will follow that adventure!  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone near and far.

The Mermaid Sisters

The Start of the Snow on Nine Trees

Falling into Fall

With our first days of torrential downpour, fall has officially arrived in the Pacific Northwest.  The push to get things done before winter is here, and I am woefully behind on all of those things I meant to do before it got soggy and muddy again, but here it is, ready or not.

October has been a delightfullly busy month for the AdventureFamily.  Early in the month we spent a wonderful long weekend on 9 Trees.  AdventureDad got a new layer of grass seed planted in the hay pasture, and we met the driller and started the well drilling process (it has turned into a bit of a saga, but I am waiting until it is all done before I divulge more... look to the next post for updates!).  This is huge for us... where we are the wells are incredibly deep, so it is an impressive investment in the farm.  It is also necessary to have the well so that we can get our building permits in the spring.  The thought that next year we will have our very own running water is awe-inspiring at this point.  Yay us!  We also took a "break" from work immediately on the property, and did some work clearing out the easement that accesses the bottom portion of our property (our acreage is almost 1/2 mile long, down a steep canyon, so an access easement comes through the neighboring lots to reach the bottom).  We hacked foliage, sawed trees, and cleared obstructions until we were exhausted, but we also got to spend a day in the woods, which the girls loved.  We also found A LOT of bear sign, re-confirming that the presence of black bears will be a part of our existence there.

After our sojourn in the farm, it was back to life on the wetter side of the state.  We went to a pumpkin patch as a field trip for Livvy's preschool, and then carved the pumpkin that evening before celebrating Livvy's 3rd birthday (AdventureDad had to leave the next day to be in the field for awhile, missing Halloween, so we did it a bit early).  My sweet baby girl is 3!  I can't believe how much life this happy, opinionated, silly, serious, loving little being brings into our lives every day.  There is no vestige of baby left in her, as she easily holds her own with her big sister and the rest of us as well.  Sad for mommy, but part of life, and it is a joy to witness her discovery of the world.

Last but not least, fall brings the close to my vegetable gardening season.  I am still hoping that a few of my heirloom tomatoes will ripen (although I did also do an early harvest and we had some DELICIOUS fried green tomatoes a few nights ago), but in general the crops are coming to a close.  The cool, wet weather invites mildew, and between that and the cool nights I am slowly losing the battle.  So, time to bring in the last few green beans, the last cuttings of broccoli raab, and the last zucchinis.  The brussels sprouts are swelling, the carrots are sweetening, and the potatoes are waiting patiently for me to dig.  I was hoping to store my parsnips in the ground a while longer (frost can mellow the flavor), but a suspicious wilting of some of the chard (as if the roots were gone), followed by a tell-tale hump in the dirt made me do a little exploratory digging, and I discovered that a busy gopher has been helping himself.  Most of my biggest parsnips fell victim, but I still harvested about 10 lbs worth... not bad for a square yard of ground!  (Parsnip is one of my very favorite winter soup ingredients, yummmm!).

Gathering Pumpkins is Serious Business

M's Pumpkin Was Easier to Subdue

The Family Lantern

Let the Drilling Commence!

As Three As Can Be!

The Parsnip Harvest

Apparently gophers don't like the skin...a perfect parsnip shell was left behind!

Sunny September

It just amazes me how fast this summer has gone.  How is it suddenly September?!  We have been keeping busy as usual, with life centering around both Gig Harbor and 300 miles away at Nine Trees.  The girls continue to be stellar travelers.  I am glad this crazy part of our life is happening when the girls are so young and take everything in stride so well. This summer the farm has been much more manageable as we are able to put some things off until next year when, things going as planned,  we should be moving into our brand new house in the fall.  After the initial hay-making flurry this spring, we are in a maintenance cycle at the moment, with the most pressing task being to keep the trees watered and alive through the heat of the summer.   Thanks to our generous neighbor's well, so far so good!  We also got the play structure finished, much to the delight of the Adventure Girls.  M has decided that it is the perfect house for her pet praying mantises (the girl doesn't have a squeamish bone in her body!) Activity will pick up a bit next month with some seeding and fertilizing, then we will be tucking the farm in for the winter.  The most exciting development is that we had a site visit from one potential builder last week, and we are talking seriously with another builder this week.  We should be making up our minds and moving forward with the initial steps toward construction before the new year starts.  I can't tell you how excited we are!
Back at the "other farm" in Gig Harbor, upon our return from a long weekend at Nine Trees, we were delighted to find that Marshmallow (our coronation sussex hen) has started laying.  We now have three laying hens, just waiting on Ava, the last one.  It is cute to see the tiny eggs that the youngsters are laying now.  I will have to show a pic one of these days!  I also discovered a nice large zucchini in the hoop house.  It has been so cool this summer, I am just not having a lot of success, but we did get our first ripe tomatoes, a couple okra, the big zuch, and a ton of green beans, so I guess I can't complain!  Time to get the fall cool weather crops in the soil too!  Just ordered the seeds, so once they get here I will have to hurry a bit to get them going.  Thankfully the hoop house should extend my growing season enough that they will do OK.
Saving the best for last, M had her first day of kindergarten yesterday.  Talk about a bittersweet moment.  How is it possible that my little baby can get on a bus, ride to school, spend all day away from me, and magically show up on the bus in the afternoon, all by herself?  Of course I couldn't make the change that quickly, so after putting her on the bus, AdventureDad and I drove to the school and met her at that end.  I am glad we did, because her class was certainly a bit crazy, and the help from me and a few other protective parents was welcome.  O missed her "sissy" all day long, but I get the feeling she was starting to see the up side to having mommy all to herself.  O starts pre-Preschool next week, 1.5 hours one day a week.  Not much, but a little start on socialization for her and a little bit of freedom for mommy.   Life just keeps changing!

Summer in Full Swing

I feel horrible complaining about our prolonged cool spring, given the sweltering heat in the rest of the country, but IT IS ABOUT TIME we had weather above 80 degrees for more than a single day at a time!  Yes, sunshine and temps above 80 for the WHOLE WEEK!  Now, in mid-July, it finally feels like summer.
So what have we been up to?  Well, after putting up hay on Nine Trees, which I think I mentioned last blog, the spring work was done on the farm.  We went out there again last weekend and set up a drip watering system in the orchard that is gravity fed from a cistern that our neighbor generously lets us fill from his well (until we get a well drilled next year).  The trees should benefit from the more efficient use of water, and I have hopes that the wind-break hedge that I planted this spring might actually survive and grow.
 Despite the hours in the car (six each way), the killer gas bills, the "roughing it" in the camper, and the consumption of half of our weekends during the summer, every visit we make to Nine Trees is like a balm for my soul.  It is such a fresh, beautiful, free place, and we are all in our element. I love that our girls are happy as clams playing out in the weather, the most thrilling things being a tiny spring with frogs in it and of course the gravel pile by the barn.  I love that we go to bed when it gets dark and wake up when it gets light, that we fall asleep listening to the crickets and owls.  I even love working on the land in the sweltering heat or the gusting wind. It is impossible not to stop and smell the roses.  It is also impossible not to dream.  This is where we are going to settle down for good! I love so much of what the military has given us... the friends, the overseas experiences, the perspective on life, but I will be SO happy to be able to stop saying "goodbye".   I will be able to plant a garden and watch the plants mature, make friends and watch our friendship mature, watch our family mature without the stop-hitches caused by deployments.  I will enjoy our last few years in the military, but I will enjoy it even more when we are done and living on Nine Trees!
OK, enough pontificating on my part.  The last thought of the day... thank you to my dear husband for putting the second planter box in my hoop house this year.  With the cool spring nothing would be growing yet, and here I am harvesting.  We have been eating lettuce and turnips for weeks, the peas are in fine form, and we had one of my favorites... stuffed squash blossoms... for dinner last night.   I love fresh produce!  Combined with the fresh eggs from our chickens, I can feed our family 1/4 of what we eat in a week right from our garden.  Enjoy the pics!

Beautiful Spring

Oh, Thank God for Nine Trees!  This last weekend we escaped the perpetual rain and sog on this side of the state for a gorgeous spring weekend on Nine Trees Farm.  Granted, it was our usual rush to get way too much work done in too short a time, but we sure did enjoy it.  We feel downright pampered in our new camper, and it makes our late-night arrivals so much easier when we don't have to set up the tent camper in the dark.  So, after an after-dark arrival on Fri night, we woke up to the calls of meadowlarks, warm sunshine, a slight breeze, and rolling hills covered in green grass.  Talk about good for the soul!  Unfortunately duty called, and we spent most of Saturday in the car, but for an exciting purpose.  We drove a little over an hour to the Tri-Cities (a conglomeration formed by Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick, WA) to interview/tour a company that is the top candidate for building our house next summer.  We liked what we saw, and we're about ready  to step off the ledge and get the whole process moving.  Exciting and terrifying all rolled into one!
After returning home, we went out to dinner with our only nearby neighbors and their visiting kids (they live about 1/4 mile away... the next closest neighbor is almost a mile down the road), and collapsed into bed exhausted once again.
Sunday morning was another gorgeous day, and AdventureDad hopped onto the tractor to begin a day of weed spraying in the hay field while I took the girls to the orchard to do some fence repair.  I got a section of fence that had blown over re-set, while M flew her kite and L pretended to be a baby deer in the tall grass.  Did I mention we have two of the most tolerant, toughest, most wonderful little girls on the planet?  Despite 6 hours in the car either way, they LOVE our trips out to the farm, and their enjoyment makes it that much more fun for AdventureDad and I.  We feel obligated to put up a play set for them at some point this summer, and that will certainly be a labor of love.  I won't complain about a little less playing on the dirt/gravel piles either.  The camper is awesome, but we still only have the water in our tanks to wash up with!
Luckily we were able to finish up and drive home Sunday night to arrive home at a fairly decent hour.  Hopefully that trend continues.  I long for the day when we make our final move out there and this craziness can stop!
Here are the pics from our little slice of heaven.  Enjoy!

Our Little Princess

This is just a quick post to put up the latest picture of our biggest AdventureGirl. She just started pre-ballet classes at the YMCA, and of course is thrilled with the whole proceeding. I on the other hand feel like a duck out of water. Not known for my physical grace, not a dancer myself, and having never taken a dance class (thank goodness for my own kinder-gymnastic experiences at the Y or I would be completely hopeless!), I was shocked at how seriously most of the moms are taking this class. The age range is 3-5 people! Come on!!! Luckily M is oblivious to it, and we are meeting our goal of her learning a little more "mind over matter" when it comes to coordination :-) We'll see where it goes from there, but it certainly isn't worth an ulcer.

Not much else has happened of late. We all got hit with a double dose of the crud, and are slowly ridding the household of it. We also learned an unfortunate lesson about Dora (the dog, not the cartoon) and chickens, so now I am in the chicken-nursing business and Glenda is missing a lot of skin off of her back. No eggs for now, and I will be surprised if she recovers, but stranger things have happened. Luckily Cheep, Peep, and Banana are doing well, so there is hope of more eggs in the late fall.

AdventureDad also started putting together the second raised bed for the hoop house, and I am chomping at the bit to start my spring planting. We got a crop of turnips and greens over the winter, so I have high expectations for the summer !