First Snow!

 

It snowed here last night!!  I couldn’t believe we already have snow here!  We got about 1/2 an inch on the ground, so not much, but it’s exciting! We even lit our wood-burning stove in our living room this morning (mainly just to make sure it worked, but it sure is making me excited for the Holidays!).

We also found a skunk living under our house last week!  Now we know why the skunk smell never went away (even with new carpet).  I heard something scratching in our bathroom wall that sounded big.  When Andrew got home from work he looked under the house and sure enough there was a skunk staring back at him.  So we trapped it!  It took a couple of nights to get him, but we finally did! Boo Yeah!  No more skunks under our house, Happy Day!

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.)

We’re Moving!!

 

In less than a week we’re moving to this beautiful place!!

Roaring Springs Ranch in Oregon!!

http://www.billyspostcards.com/Postcard/20500_Postcard_Roaring_Springs_Ranch_Burns_Oregon_OR.html

Andrew got a job to be the Wildlife Biologist on the Ranch there!  I have always wanted to live on a ranch so I am really excited, and nervous to move.  It will be hard to leave my family in Utah, but it’s a great opportunity for Andrew that we couldn’t pass up!  Plus I know it will be good for us too and that we’ll learn a lot of from this.  I am excited for this new chapter in our lives and I can’t wait to see where it leads.  It’s about 70 miles from the nearest town (which is Burns, Oregon), so I’m going to have to find a lot of things to keep me busy in order to keep my sanity haha but it’s such a beautiful place and the people there are so nice and friendly.

Crafty Crafty

 

While Andrew was hunting I went to get an eye exam (they’re always so awkward) in Kaysville.  My mom and I decided to make some cards with the washi tape I bought a little while ago.  If you’ve never heard of washi tape it is pretty much one of the coolest things ever.  It’s decorative tape that sticky, but it’s really easy to remove from things too.  Here is a picture of some of the cards we made. 

  Sorry the picture is blurry, my phone doesn’t take the best pictures. But they turned out really cute and they’re fun to make (and easy!).

 

Yesterday Andrew’s sister, CarolAnn, and I went to a boutique and saw these really cute Halloween shadow boxes.  We really wanted one, but CarolAnn suggested that we could make them.  So after leaving the boutique and grabbing some lunch with Andrew’s mom and Sammy’s (yum!) we ran to Hobby Lobby and made some shadow box Halloween decorations! 

We have these two older chairs that are really good sturdy chairs, but they didn’t match the chairs have now around my table.  So I decided to refinish the old ones to match the new ones!  I had no idea the work that goes into refinishing something.  It’s a lot of work, especially trying to sand down the chairs all the way.  But I was really happy with the results!!  It was a lot of fun too.  We went to Andrew’s parents house and worked on our projects (Andrew is making us a log bed! Yay!! I am so excited for it to be done, it looks so nice!)  So we both got to work sanding chairs and logs haha.

Sage 1 (sanding)

Stage 2 (Spray painting)

Stage 3 (staining)

Finished!!!

Billy

 

This is Billy…the billy goat.  Andrew’s been watching him all summer.  He’d wake up at 4 am to get to the right spot on the mountain just after sunrise to watch Billy and make sure he was in the same spot.  I have countless pictures and videos of this goat from all summer.  I’d come home after work everyday and he’d have some new pictures of video of Billy for me….I was starting to get attached haha.

On the morning of September 18th, Andrew and his hunting posse were up above Silver Lake Flat…and this is what happened to Billy.

Needless to say…..Billy is now dead and is hanging up in Andrew’s parents shed.  Andrew was so excited to get his goat though and he definitely deserved it after all the time he put into scouting for this particular goat.  They estimated him to weigh around 300 pounds and his horns are around 9 inches long!  It’s definitely a mature billy, around 8-9 years old!   His friend Vince said he got a Polar Bear not a goat. 

Thanks for the help from Andrew’s brother Nathan, his Dad, and his friends Eric, Justin, and Vince.  He really appreciated all your help!!

Bye Billy….

Labor Day

 

Every year my mom’s side of the family goes out to Strawberry camping over Labor Day weekend because my grandpa’s family used to run sheep all up in that area.  It’s a blast and I always look forward to going! 

This year it rained pretty much every day we were there!  Saturday it rained all day, it was insane!! 

Andrew made snowballs from all the hail that fell.  Just look at the ground in this picture, it looks like a swamp!

My mom and Aunt Judie waiting for the endless rain to stop. 

All of us going on a hike!  Minus my dad and mom who were behind me at the time I took the picture (sorry! haha).

My cute nephew Nathan walking to Point of Pines.  He kept finding sticks to use for hiking and then he brought one that was just right for his little sister.  He’s a great kid

My adorable niece Morgan.  She really liked all the wildflowers there were out camping.  She wanted to pick everyone and take back with her.

Brandon and Andrew stirring up trouble as usual. 

Gus even came out with us this year!!

It was a great camping trip!  I love being out there and especially out at Strawberry, it is a really beautiful place.  It was great spending time with my family before our big move. 

Summertime’s calling me…

 

A couple of weeks ago my family went and stayed  with my grandparents at their beach house in Monterey, California!  This is absolutely one of my favorite places ever, and a highlight to my year.  I love waking up in the morning and looking at the waves crashing on the shore and falling asleep to the sounds crashing waves.  Plus I get to spend time with my family and my Grandparents!!  This year was great because I got to bring my husband along!!  Vacations are always so much more fun when you get to bring your best friend along.

  (Here are some Pelicans at the wharf)

One morning Andrew, Chris, Brandon, and my dad went deep sea fishing for salmon.  They left super early in the morning, so all us girls slept in.  We did however, drive over the wharf to meet them as they pulled back in.  And this is the site we saw as their boat was coming in to dock.

(The birds were just surrounding their boat!!  They were everywhere!  They must have been cleaning the fish and throwing the guts over the side on their way in.)

Here they are coming back in…they look so happy for not catching any fish! haha

The proud fishermen!

Brandon is the only one who caught a fish out of the guys!  He was the first one to catch one on the entire boat!  I think he’s part fish…pretty sure. 

His fish was 32 inches long and about 17 pounds!!  It was huge!!  Way to go Brandon!  I’m surprised it didn’t pull him overboard reeling that thing in.

While they were cleaning Brandon’s fish I looked over the edge and saw this MONSTROSITY sitting there among all the normal sized seals!!  I can’t believe any of the seals would even dare be next to this bull!

haha and then Andrew just had to pet the Pelican! haha

One night Andrew, me, Chris, Alison, and Brandon went on the 17 mile drive.  It was gorgeous!  I could not believe we had never done this before!  But then we had a little run in at the Lone Cypress which made me second guess about coming on the drive ever again…

This is the Lone Cypress on the 17 Mile Drive. After we took some pictures we were walking back to our car, when all of a sudden this random old guy comes up to us with a guitar and said that he comes here to serenade couples.  He asked if he could sing us a song.  To be nice we said yes and he sang us some song about Love being like an Evergreen.  To be honest it wasn’t that bad, but when he was done we were trying to leave…ya know, saying “well thanks that was great.”  But this guy just kept talking to us telling us how he’s this painter and has traveled the world!  He finally asked us to come to his house so he could take our pictures and he’d give us a free paining…we were like WHAT?! Red flags. Then he proceeded to ask our names and tell us this story about how he invited this homeless lady to come to his house and he had to perform an exorcism on her..uh…by then we were freaking out (well at least I was).  So we got the heck out of there, but he gave us his card before we could get away. When we got home we told my parents and grandma that story.  My grandma asked his name and said it sounded familiar so we googled him, and come to find out HE REALLY IS A FAMOUS PAINTER!  He has a shop in Carmel and lives on pebble beach!  So we totally passed up the opportunity to get free paintings from a famous painter haha!  I’m still convinced we escaped with our lives though haha. 

Chris and Alison’s expressions after talking to the guy at the Lone Cypress haha

One morning we all headed to the aquarium!!  This is one of my favorite parts of the trip!  Everyone should go to this place at least one in their life.  We were really excited because they were supposed to have a great white shark in their open ocean exhibit, but they said they just recently released it.  Lame sauce.  Maybe next time!

Here are some Avocets sleeping, so adorable!

Pretty much the coolest sea horse ever!

Brandon and Andrew looking at baby sea horse eggs…I think they fake though haha

Sea Otter outside the Aquarium in the Bay

A Harbor Seal that was swimming around the boats in the Marina

Andrew and I outside the Aquarium. 

Alison, Chris, me, Andrew, and Brandon

All of us outside the Aquarium!  Minus Jared, Jessica and family!  We missed you guys! 

The aquarium brought out an Albatross they have been raising behind the scenes!  It is such a pretty bird!  Definitely my new favorite! 

After the aquarium we rented this beauty to ride around cannery row!  haha was a lot of fun!  It even had a bell. 

This was a pretty cool motorcycle!  It was completely made out of horse shoes! 

The fishermen fishing from the beach back at the beach house. haha They used sand grabs as bait

The boys boogie boarding!  The water was so cold and the day before a 15 foot great white shark attacked a Kayaker just fifteen miles up the coast, otherwise I may have been in the water too haha

Safe on shore!

Andrew was doing this with a broken rib, and one time he was running out to catch a wave and this huge wall of water just knocked him down!  He just disappeared haha I was worried it hurt his rib more, but he just got up and went on boarding, the crazy!

Brandon LOVES the water!

Priceless face.  I think Brandon spent the majority of the time in the water!  I seriously think this kid is a fish!

Chris and I pointing out the cool Harbor Seal that was swimming around the marina!

I love my crazy family!  It was a great vacation and so fun spending time with family!  Can’t wait until next year!!