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A week ago I posted that I could see the nutcrackers whole hat, check him out today…The snow shrank about 6″ this week… And to see any of the lighthouse this time of year is unheard of! The creek is loud, sounds like April! Nice to have a mild winter.
We would like to send out a big huge thank you to Sandy Hucman and Terry Isaac for the wonderful wedding gift! Terry did this beautiful pencil sketch and Sandy had it beautifully framed… Thanks so much you 2… We are feelin pretty special! Having an original Terry Isaac has been a dream for both of us, we are overwhelmed! We have it hanging so it’s the first thing you see when you come into the house… We will cherish it always.
We have never seen the property like this! We had a few weeks of warm weather and rain and Everywhere that we have ploughed or shovelled turned into an ice rink. And I mean ice… Inches thick, clear just like an ice rink only slanted… Very challenging! The dogs couldn’t walk on it, they looked like Bambi on the frozen lake. Lily took a spill one day, she was a bit sore for a few days so we had to stop putting seed out so the squirrels stopped coming so she didn’t have anything to chase… Too dangerous. The dogs couldn’t go down the driveway, they just slide around… Kind of comical but at the same time we don’t need a injured pup so the walks and ball playing had to stop. The snow itself was way too soft to walk on as well so we were getting some restless puppies. We both have spikes for our boots and they were mandatory! Even with my spikes I’d have to go down the driveway and then back up to my office door, going straight across was not possible, I would start sliding sideways. So yesterday we woke up to about 4″ of snow on top of it and boy did that make it worse! With every step you had to try and get your spikes onto the ice otherwise you would slide for sure… It was still above zero so the snow would pack under your boot and it was treacherous to put it mildly. Barry went to town and drove the truck up before he went well I wish I had a video camera on him because the truck was sliding in slow motion all over and was pretty funny looking. Absolutely no traction! Luckily the highway was bare. We are hoping today is better, I miss my after work walks with the dogs… Stay tuned.
On his way home one night right before Christmas Barry came around a corner to find 2 big moose on the road in front of him. They both started moving off to the left so he slowed right down but wasn’t cranking on the brakes when at the last second … The big one… Decides to double back RIGHT in front of him! So now he has to stomp on the brakes and as the moose jumps over the snow bank on the side of the road he kicked the bumper of the truck… Phew! Left a dent in the bumper! Holy, that was a close call!!
Because there weren’t any photos to document this event, Barry recreated the scene on the brim of his hat with the miniature moose he got for Christmas.
More to come so stay tuned…
I finished another pet portrait, this is Katchoo.
I love the Barkerville photo so I wanted to still write this blog even though it’s January 24th. It was a really warm sunny beautiful day this year for Barkervilles Christmas. It was a pretty big deal, they had the Hanson Family singing (not the hockey players). A lot of shops were open, we got to see a lot of locals and Darren came out to spend the weekend with us so he came along too. We’ve seen a lot of Darren lately, it’s really nice!
We had a nice quiet Christmas this year as usual. We really missed Shooter opening gifts but we found that he has passed the tradition on to His sisters, they are both pretty good at it so we had a good time. I didn’t cook a turkey, I had some frozen from Thanksgiving so we had Turkey sandwiches for lunch and steak for dinner… It was delicious! Yum!
Darren came a spent New Years Eve with us so we had some fun but I was asleep before midnight.
More to come… Stay tuned
I sort of go thru writers block now and then, there is almost always something that I could be posting but periods of time will go by and I won’t write even one post… It’s not that I don’t want to, a lot of times I sit down to blog but get distracted easily or just cant come up with the words. I go thru times that I only want to be painting when I have a few minutes. Sometimes I wait until I can get a photo to go with my story and then more often than not, I end up not ever blogging about it, need to learn to just blog it without the photo. I hope I don’t loose too many of you during my blocked periods.
We are having a hard time calling it winter with such mild temperatures! We have about 2.5 feet on the ground, for long time followers…. I can see the nutcrackers whole hat. We usually have more like 5′ on the ground this time of year. It isn’t that we haven’t had the snow, it just melts fast because of the warm temps so we aren’t worried about the well level as a matter of fact yesterday it poured RAIN all day… Would have been a hell of a blizzard! We have used very little fire wood… Yay! One fire in the morning and one at night is all we need some days, we don’t need it to burn all day and night. Every year is so different from the others. Very interesting.
We would actually like it to be a bit colder so everything wasn’t dripping but at the same time it’s kinda nice to be wearing just hoodie in January. We’ve had 3 or 4 big dumps of snow and we have ploughed about 6 or 7 times already. Fun times!
Stay tuned…
Last month I was in Penticton when I got a call from Barry in a complete frantic state. He had lost Lily, it was cold out and night was coming soon… He was freakin out! He called Hildur to come help with her tracking dog, she came right away. He had been over to the studio and Barry was carrying something so he wasn’t paying attention to the dogs, when he got to the shop, only Mini was there… Where’s Lily? He had just got his fitbit and had it on so we know that he put on 18,000 steps frantically running around the property looking for her. Long story short, he went back to check the studio again and looked in all the rooms upstairs and found her in one that if you go in, the door will close behind…. Ugh! She needs to be more vocal! He had gone into the house over and over and called for her and she didn’t say anything. Since this incident, Lily has become a lap dog and nobody argues with her. We love our Lily!
We removed the 2 big trees in front of the house last summer and now winter is right at our doorstep. Those trees kept most of the snow away so now we have new challenges. Mini spends most of her day on the deck, keeping watch over the yard but with a larger snow bank in front of the deck, she can’t see anything so she gets up on the snow bank but that is super dangerous because the house now sheds the snow with the tin roof. Also this started happening…
So we built this and the problem has been solved… Mini loves it and spends all day on it, out of harms way. Lily is never away from Barry’s side so she was never a concern.
We are happier as well because we can see her from inside and know she is safe. She was pretty excited when she saw that she could see inside the house too! Very spoiled, yes!
Next summer Barry will build a pony wall so the snow doesn’t come onto the deck like this.
More to come so stay tuned…
Living here is so much fun, there is always a challenge presenting itself and it has become fun (doesn’t always feel fun at the time) trying to solve the problem. I have always thought of myself as a bit of a problem solver and it turns out Barry is one too so between the two of us we can sort anything out… So far.
When the studio died, our laundry facility died along with it… Big sad face!! Going to town to do laundry is just no fun at all so it had to be figured … This is what my smarty pants hubby came up with…
If you look back on this blog I talked about getting the laundry going and having a line outside for summer… Worked great, love it but we can’t use it in the winter so we brought the dryer over and hooked it up. Everything worked but it wouldn’t get hot… Barry tested every part and everything was working, he was stumped. One day when he lost Lily (a story for another day) Hildur brought her sniffer dog over to help look, found out we were having problems so later she sent her electrician over to take a look (she’s such a sweetie!) and it was the wiring that was not done correctly so once that was repaired, the dryer was working perfectly! Yahoo! All was going along nicely until it got cold… The water line froze! Crap! So we went out and purchased a big blue plastic barrel from the fireworks store and a cattle water heater from the co-op. We set it up outside my office and Barry shovels snow into it to melt then pumps the water into a tank inside that feeds the washer and presto… Landry facilities once again! Until spring that is when things thaw, no more snow and possibly cracked pipes but we will take it one problem at a time… For now we’re set up.
Lots more adventures ahead so stay tuned…
Eric, the owner of the Jack O Clubs General Store in Wells vowed to jump in the lake when he reached 650 “likes” on Facebook and he was true to his word. He scheduled it with the opening of the pub a few weeks ago during the day and had a big comedy show that night for the opening… Although we did not attend the pub opening we did enjoy watching Eric and his buddy take a dip. He also served free hamburgers and hot chocolate afterwards… Small town fun!
