We made it!!

 

We made it to Oregon!!  We don’t have internet though except at the office on the Ranch Headquarters, so this is going to be a big post with lots of pictures from the last two weeks.  When we first got to our house we walked in and it smelled like a skunk and there was mouse poop everywhere!  Then my mom was cleaning out the kitchen sink and a frog jumped out of the sink and scared her to death, it was pretty funny.  But then we started to see frogs everywhere!!  We pulled out like nine the first night we were there (luckily I bought some drain plugs so I’ve only seen one frog in here in about a week and a half).  We cleaned like crazy to get that place livable.  I am so grateful that both our parents were there!  They helped us clean the whole house and move in our stuff!  I don’t know if I could have done it without them!!  Thank you so much!

We live on the headquarters of the ranch, so we’re not completely by ourselves in the middle of nowhere!!  I actually have neighbors, yay! Our house in the picture above is the one closest to the sign, but in the background….it’s called the rock house. My brother calls it Hagrid’s Hut haha.  It was built early 1900s. It has a screened in porch so we keep our dog Gus there during the day.  Which makes me feel better because he barks when people come to the house, so I know I have some protection while Andrew is at work all day haha.

This is the view from out front porch.  It is really pretty here!

We have deer that come into our yard everyday too!  Lots of them. There are two bucks that stick around as well.  One is a big 3 point!

They like to eat the apples that fall off the trees in our side yard.  We’ve got some to eat out of our hands too!  The secretary that used to live in this house trained them when they were young to eat from her hands, so I’m guessing they’re the same ones, just bigger now. 

Andrew hand feeding the big buck an apple.  It took a couple of tries, but he finally took it. 

I’m not brave enough to hand feed the buck…mainly because of his antlers…pretty sure he could kill me if he wanted to.  There is this one doe that isn’t scared of us at all.  She comes running up to us when we come out of the house.  The top part of her right ear is gone so we know which one she is easily.

 

Feeding deer in our side yard after church on Sunday.

The other day I heard a bunch of leaves rustling outside our bedroom window.  At first I thought it was a bird, but it was really loud, so I looked out the window and there was a coyote in our yard!!

After conference last Sunday Andrew and I went for a drive over the Steens Mountain Loop Road.  It took us about two and half hours to drive it and stop at certain spots, but it was totally worth the drive!  It is gorgeous up there!!  There were a couple of spots on the road I was nervous about, but luckily there weren’t any other cars on the road coming the other direction, so that helped.

I know it’s called the Big Empty out here, but it is really pretty in it’s own way.  Some really breath taking views!

Andrew was driving out in the alfalfa fields the other day while working and saw all these deer hanging out in there.  Crazy!  I love living here (minus the spiders in my house and frogs in my drain haha) but it is a really neat place to live!  It makes you appreciate the simple and little things in life that make you happy.  LOVE IT!! (and the house is MUCH better!  We got new carpet put in and fixed things up a bit that really needed it too.)