Out on a Limb Part Deux: 2020

Wasn't planning on letting this much time pass, but I get so busy with no job and no real commitments. Some of the busyness included these things of note:

Golfing. We took a day trip out to Mackay to golf their nine hole course and have lunch. We have golfed some Saturdays and at the cabin when we've gone there. Drove to Payson, Utah, and spent the night at Kara and Terry's house and golfed Gladston Golf Course nearby. It was a beautiful day and we saw too many deer to count. K&T rented a cart and rode along with us the last nine holes. Quinn did especially well the first nine getting only two over par. The last nine was the most scenic part of the course and I think it threw us off our game because we lost balls and stopped keeping score. Afterwards we all had lunch on the balcony overlooking the course. Lovely day of golf and fun chance to catch up on life's happenings with the Bjarnsons.

The deer were thick in this grove of trees. As you drove by, you could see ears and rears of multiple deer.

From the tee box, Quinn had to hit over the canyon to get on the fairway. I saw the ball make the canyon and cross the cart path, but when we got over there the ball had disappeared into the back forest. The green is at the top of the hill if you follow the cart path up. The fall colors and view were stunning. I maintain we golfed nine holes and went sightseeing for nine holes.

The last green on the course was surrounded by a moat (this isn't it). I had been having trouble the whole way down the fairway, so I just dropped a ball and told Quinn, "I am going to hit this ball over the water if it's the last thing I do." I then promptly lofted the ball and it splashed into the moat. Me walking back to the cart, "I'm done." Kinda sums up my whole game that day, and I still enjoyed the round.

Sewing. Didn't accomplish a lot in this department, but did make Taft a pillowcase for his baptism and worked on a windowpane denim quilt for myself. The quilt isn't far enough along yet to show a picture, and I must have forgotten to take a picture of the pillowcase but the fabric had cacti wearing sunglasses.

Trips to the cabin. We didn't start out intending to make so many trips to the cabin, but one thing led to another. During the trip to see the fall colors, as we were cooking a lasagna for dinner, the 69 year old stove caught on fire. Once the fire was out, we discovered the element was completely severed. Once back in Blackfoot, Sandra found a new stove (not a lot of choices with COVID shutdowns in manufacturing), but that meant another trip to bring up the new stove and replace it.

Hello new stove, good bye old:

Next, Sandra decided she didn't like a white hood over the new slate stove. She purchased a new hood to match, but then we discussed how nice it would be to install a microwave/fan in the space above the stove. Trade in new hood for new microwave and haul it up to the cabin. Once we had the instructions etc. we discovered the new microwave was missing a large screw needed to help anchor it to the top of the cabinet plus the thread assembly that was suppose to be inside the top. Even a Youtube video proved something was defective. Haul the new one back to Blackers so they can fix it and then back to the cabin to install (which brings us to today--we just got it installed!) and it looks amazing!! Now we will haul the old counter top microwave back home and maybe winterize the cabin before we leave for a more extended time (maybe).

Harvest. It took Matt three weeks to get the potatoes harvested. The weather at first was a little too warm and made for some short days because of the heat. Chad stayed and drove truck for all three weeks. We took many drives to check on progress and the harvest looked pretty good to me. Quinn also cleaned out the garden and picked all the apples that were fit to eat. We had a great apple harvest this year.

Reading (and watching). I hosted book club this month. We watched the show Enola Holmes on Netflix. Enola is Sherlock's little sister and seems to possess similar brain power. We all enjoyed the show and I got my house cleaned and afterwards had the carpet downstairs and on my stairs cleaned. It is a great improvement. We were to read a Sherlock Holmes book to go along with the show and I chose his first book A Study in Scarlet. I was shocked when I got to Part Two when I found it was all about Mormons and Utah and was NOT complimentary. I didn't know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had such a poor opinion of Mormons and he didn't fact check because he got a lot of the facts wrong.

Watching also included all of season one of Stranger Things.

St George. I had to go see my doctor in St. George to check on my estrogen levels and made a long trip of it. Drove down on a Tuesday, saw the doctor on Wednesday. Spent my days visiting with Kristine and her family--Tina and kids came, Aubree and kids, and Brent & Mary. It was good to see everyone. I also watched all of season two of Professor T in between going places, shopped, got a pedicure, went to dinner at Viva Chicken, hiked to Scout Cave with Chad and Peachy, and they fixed me a huge dinner Friday night and Saturday they cooked brats. I drove home Sunday with SNOW between Cove Fort and Payson.

Scout Cave is behind us. The steps below are part of the hike. There had to have been 60 steps. The overall hike was 4.4 miles and the temperature was a pleasant 71 degrees.

This cave is close to Scout Cave but I don't know its name. We also couldn't climb into it.

Above is Chad at the back of the cave. The picture below is the opening that reveals sky that you see when you look up where Chad is looking up.

Standing at the back of the cave and looking out at the valley below.

Dinner included HUGE pork chops, barbeque, asparagus, pork belly, and dynamite made the Keto way: Half a jalapeno pepper filled with ground pork and veggies then cheese and all wrapped in bacon.

News. Found out our "open" status has run out. My first clue was when I couldn't fill my prescription because my insurance was inactive. I came home and checked on the website and sure enough--no more Aetna insurance coverage. I called the mission department the next day and that is when I found out about the expiration of our status. Another discovery was that I had been overpaying for our mission by a LOT. Good news is most of it could be transferred into our tithing and fast offering account. Bad news, the payment we made in 2019 could not be refunded but will stay in the mission fund and we can apply it towards any missions we take in the future--more incentive to go on another mission since I am so cheap.

Wes is growing up way too fast. He now pulls himself up to standing and seems pretty proud of it too.

I have been going through old photos of Jacob to send to Amber and of course many of them include Chad too. When I stayed with C&P they also enjoyed going through all the photos. This one is in honor of Halloween which takes place this Saturday.

Since my last post, lots has happened--actually happened. I harvested the peaches off our tree. I got 7 bags to put in the freezer and each bag will make a pie or a cobbler. In addition, one bag of blended peaches for smoothies, two peach pies, and lots of yummy ones to eat.

I finished the last dress for Amber's niece and Marcus came and got the last of the baseboards painted. Now our flooring project is officially done and the grandfather clock is back home. I love the new look.

Additional sewing projects included pillowcases. I made one for Taylee for after her surgery and three for Kara's grandkids who all were baptized at the same time. Left to right: Lincoln, Rowan, and Jack.

Next came the BIG WIND. It started on Labor Day and lasted all night and into the next day. Trees fell everywhere and often onto houses or across power lines. There were power outages across the county for two plus days. We lost shingles off our house and our poplar trees dumped two pickup loads of twigs and branches on our neighbor's lawn that we cleaned up. School was cancelled for two days because of power outages. The road to Sandra's house where we dumped the loads of branches was blocked in three separate places by fallen trees. The cemetery had at least five huge pine trees fall. The top half of Sandra's big pine tree broke off and her ward members came and took down the rest of the tree. Clean up is still in progress everywhere.

The wind took the roof off of dad's lean to and collapsed one end.

Above is Sandra's neighbor to the east--he lost two trees out front and his roof is missing ALL its shingles and down to the plywood.

This house is near where we use to live on Hahn Road.

Sandra's pine tree broken in half.

Above is the tree that took out Sandra's power.

The day we cleaned up from the BIG WIND we also left on our golfing road trip to Montana. We drove first to Big Sky and golfed on the resort. They had snow the day before and that morning, so it was a little chilly. Beautiful scenery though. This church was near one of the greens:

The next day we drove to Flathead Lake. It is a beautiful lake and we walked out on a pier where we saw this osprey that kept an eye on us. We tried to see Kerr Dam, but it was closed because of COVID. We stayed at Ninepipes Lodge which we really liked (except Quinn complained because they didn't have the golf channel)--it had a little museum and gift shop next to it and a short walking trail to look at the small lake. I saw an otter swimming in the lake. The course we golfed was called Polson Bay and the views of the lake were gorgeous. After a stop to get a huckleberrry shake at Ninepipes, we were off to Helena.

I chose not to golf early the next morning at Bill Roberts Golf Course. Instead, I went to see the Helena Capitol Building. It was pretty well abandoned, so I got to walk around and take a lot of pictures. Once I had picked up the two golfers, Sandra and I went to see St. Helena Cathedral. We were lucky enough to run into a parishioner headed to noon mass who worked there as a tour guide, so he gave us some history and answered questions. We stuck around to hear the bell towers ring at noon. Our friendly guide told us the largest bell in the tower weighed 3,500 lbs. and 600 lbs. for the smallest. He also told us it was built with a 30 foot pulpit inside that one presiding priest decided to remove and replace with a much smaller one (he disagreed with that decision). After we explored the cathedral, we drove to Butte and ate at Dickeys then headed home.

Statue out front. There was construction on the front lawn so I couldn't get close.

Looking straight up into the rotunda.

Below are the pictures from St. Helena's Cathedral.

Arrived home and Chad and Peachy were already there. Chad came to drive potato truck for Matt in the harvest. We took Peachy to the gun range on Saturday where she fired a gun for the first time. She did pretty well for being a newbie. Almost got a bullseye. We all liked shooting the .22 AR 15. Quinn and I both shot the .38 pistol and I hit 6 out of 6 hitting the bullseye twice and Quinn got 0 out of 6. It made him so mad that is when he got out the AR 15 and went to the long distance range. We had everyone over for dinner Sunday before Peachy had to catch the shuttle home.

I also drove a load of kids to Sarah Jackson's gym to play for the twins birthday party. I think we had 20 children running wild and they had a blast. I then went to Audrey's house to chaperone a bunch of 12 year old girls for "movie night" while A&B did a night golf tournament. They were great girls and I don't think they ever actually watched a whole movie. The apples are ready and falling off the trees (with help from the BIG WIND), so I've made two batches of applesauce and dehydrated two batches so far. We have eaten a ton of them. I substituted for two days at Riverside Elementary this last week--first time this year. Yesterday after Quinn and Sandra finished their golf round, we drove to the cabin. I wanted to come because I saw pictures on the internet of the fall colors at Palisades. It was a beautiful drive, and when we got to the cabin and I opened the dining room shade, the owl was back on the beam. He didn't stay as long this time as last time. We have seen 11 deer, two rainbows, and lots of golfers go by.