Little Montexan

On October first, our good friends, B&T, had a little boy now named Noah. Since T is also from Texas she had brought a ziplock bag of Texas dirt so that her son could be born over Texas soil. The hospital staff put it under the operating table and they dubbed Noah a "Montexan" since he was born in Montana over Texas soil.

T has been generous to offer to share her soil with me should we decide to have any babies in Montana. If we come to that point, I may just take her up on it.

Here's little Noah the day he was born. We were his first visitors!

T wanted to take some baby pictures to send out for Christmas, here are a few of our attempts yesterday.

Farewell to Jana

My friend Jana moved. This is distressing to me as she is one of my friends in Montana that I can say "hey, let's grab coffee," or "let's hike in the Glacier" at the spur of the moment and she is usually up for some girl time.

But since she is leaving no matter what kind of fit I throw, I decided instead to throw her a going away dinner. Here is my lovely table set for fall. I was going to put applesauce in the little pumpkins, but they are too cute to butcher, so they are gathered around the candle.

Bye, Jana! We will miss you!

(I apologize for the fuzzy picture, I won't let Mr. M take them in the future.)

First Snow

Yesterday morning I looked out my dreary window and saw for the first time this winter, snow. It melted in a few hours and I didn't even have to wear a coat today.

My rosemary bush is still going strong.

I put some red stars up in the window, but it's hard to photograph them.

Character

Most of the time, the only time that one hears character referenced is in regards to politics and even then, only at election time. However, the other place it is referenced, though not discussed is in sports. There is a show on Saturday morning called the "Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year". It's a nice show about what football coaches all over the country are doing to help their teams. It's also an advertisement for Liberty Mutual (whom I hold no ill will since they did feed my family for about 10 years).

The thing that gets me, is during the show's introduction the talk is all about the brave and wonderful coach who has so much character and leads his men to victory. He has character to keep being a football coach. This is the point when I roll my eyes. Sure we like it if the coach who wins is also a nice guy and his players go to class, but the reality is we like a coach who wins.

Players talk all the time about a fellow players great leadership and "character." OK, but this same guy may play great ball, but he has how many kids by how many different women and how much time does he spend with them?

Everyone loves Tom Brady. "What a great guy." "What a leader!" What character!" What if Tom Brady announced tomorrow that being away from his infant son is not good for him. What if Tom Brady announced that he was going to live near his son and work a normal job and be a real and consistent father to his son? Can you fathom the outcry? No one would be talking about character. They would be saying "what a waste."

Or how about a more down to earth example. What if the local high school football coach decided to just be a teacher in order to have more time to be a better father and husband? Why he would be "letting down the community."

What shows more character, doing something you don't like day after day because it is good for you or your family or doing what you love and running over everybody in you life in the process?

*Disclaimer: I know that there are many wonderful people involved in sports and I think that often sports can be a very positive thing. But sports like many things has a dangerous side that our culture refuses to look at or deal with.*

Congrats!

Congrats to several people in my life.

First, to Mrs. Juicebox for passing the bar exam. She is now a real live lawyer.

Second, to my friend Sarah, who got engaged. I am in the wedding in June!

Third, to Betsy, who is going to be an aunt in May!

Wii Update

I am in the castle of Bowser, but it is tough to throw those little guys at him.

Tiramisu

I recently inherited a collection of ladyfinger cookies and did what anyone else would do in my position: made tiramisu. Barefoot Contessa cookbooks are some of my favorites and I decided to use her recipe. Glancing over the recipe before going to the store, it calls for mascarpone cheese. I forgot to write down how much cheese I needed which I usually remember to do.

So I got to the store and found mascarpone cheese. Turns out that it is an Italian cream cheese and it is being sold for $4.oo an ounce. Now I am willing to spend some money to make things right (never use dried basil when you can use fresh is my motto), but 4 bucks for 1 ounce of cream cheese is a little much, even for me. So I bought a can of 8 ounces of light American cream cheese (a store brand) for $1.19. When I arrived home, I read that I needed 16 ounces of this stuff. To make the recipe the way it called for required at least $64 to make the tiramisu according to the direction. That doesn't even take account for the rum I bought too!

I will never do anything useful in life again...

Yesterday Mr. M and I set out to get me a birthday present. He had given me the choice of pearl earrings or and old super Nintendo set to play super Mario brothers on. I, being the strange creature that I am, chose the video game.

Turns out that the store didn't have any in, but then we found out something else. You can buy all the old games from the old Nintendo systems and play them on Wii ! You just download them for a few bucks off the web. Oh, oh, oh! We had looked at Wii before and thought it was a cool system and looked fun, but we didn't know that little tidbit. It pushed us over the edge. We had some birthday money from different relatives and buy the Wii system we did. It is even cooler then we thought.

Between joining facebook and having the Wii system, I doubt that there is much usefulness left in me. That book I was thinking about writing has fallen by the wayside.

Week in Dallas

For those of you who are wondering, my mom is doing well. She probably won't be able to drive for a few more weeks and will go stir crazy, but her eye is doing excellent.

I had a blast in Dallas; I got a new haircut, my eyebrows waxed, did some Ann Taylor shopping, and got new makeup. I feel like a new woman. (yes, I did hang out with my mom as well, I did not neglect her.) I also got to see a bunch of people who I love and they love me. It was great.

I took a plunge and bought a starter kit of bare minerals makeup. Brushes and makeup are all included in the kit based on skin tone. It took a few days to get the application technique all worked out, but I love the stuff. It feels so light on my skin, washes off very well, and looks better the longer I wear it. I don't even have to wear moisturizer any more! (I am not quite sure why, but my skin is not near as dry.)

My brother convinced me to join facebook and now I will never ever get anything done again. It is way to much fun to look up people I know and see if I can find them. Turns out a guy I knew in college was up here a few months ago on vacation and I had no idea. But like I said, way to addicting. My brother's facebook page has a picture of him standing with Ron Paul. What can I say? It takes all types.

Change of location

I will be in Dallas from October 11th to the 17th. Turns out that my mom needs some eye surgery that involves a lengthy recovery and I am coming down to play nurse( I mean be a nurse, yes, I am one in real life).

I don't know if I will be able to get out much, but if anyone wants to swing by the house, we would love to see you. (Plus my birthday is the 15th and I know you all want to throw me a big party.)

Baby goats!

I am sitting on the floor next to my dining room table. Why you may ask? Because my back is sitting in front of a vent blowing hot air on me. It is my favorite place to drink my morning tea from September to mid May.

However, our summers are nice and in an attempt to get people to come visit me I am posting some pictures we took this summer.

Baby goats checking each other out.

Baby goat staying close to Mama.

Goat licking the parking lot.

Critter begging me for food (he is about the size of my hand, maybe a little smaller)

Mr. M and me in front of a waterfall on the road.

If you come see us in the summertime, we can take you to see the goats too. They live about an hour away from us. Come on, everybody loves baby goats!

Law Enforcement roundup

Our small town newspaper has the daily law enforcement round up. It is usually about the police telling the local teens to go somewhere else, but today's issue had 3 items of note.

1) "Flathead County sheriff's deputies recovered a gun stolen 23 years ago in Missoula. It was purchased by an unsuspecting buyer at the Kalispell gun show earlier this month. To play it safe, the man who purchased the gun called deputies and asked them to check the serial number. It came back as stolen, and the man was forced to turn it over to the authorities. He is only 20 years old , and thus not a suspect in the theft, investigators said"

I don't even know what to say about this. How does an investigator say that with a straight face?

2) "Deputies broke up a fight between two men, both set on possessing the same item recovered from the Columbia Falls dump."

Yet another place we can all go shopping, but hold on to your purse.

3) "Pink binoculars were stolen from an unlocked car on Kokanee Bend, the seventh reported theft from an unlocked vehicle on that road in the past four days. Deputies would like to remind the residents of Flathead County to lock their cars and take valuable items with them."

First of all, Duhhhhhh and second, who in the heck reports that your pink binoculars are stolen? Do the police really have nothing better to do then fill out a police report about your pink binoculars? (Then again, maybe they don't.)

Which brings me to point out the difference between people raised in a small town and big town.

Me: I have locked myself out of my truck at least twice in the nine years I have owned it (one of the times I was all dressed up for a wedding, wearing flip-flops and it was starting to rain, but I digress) in my knowledge that cars must be locked.

Mr. M: I once could not find the keys to my truck, after having looked for them in vain, I took the spares. I found my truck unlocked and the keys in the ignition! Now Mr. M states that he just forgot about them and I believe him, but it just demonstrates the intrinsic difference between us. There is no way I could just forget about it. I was raised in too large of a city.

Glacier in July

I know, I am a few months behind on my blogging. Mr. M's mum and step-dad came to visit us for a week. We took them up to Logan pass in Glacier park. Mum really enjoyed those steep mountain roads!

Looking down into the valley about half way up.

Mr. M's reaction to the beautiful scenery.

At the top of the tree line, the trees are all disfigured from the winter snow slides and wind. Looks like an enchanted forest.

I like this picture because you can see where the tree line ends. If you only looked at the top of the picture, you might think you were looking up from a canyon and not at a mountain peak.

What the...?

My parents came into town a few weeks ago and spent 10 days with us. We had a fun time driving around and playing lots of Settlers of Catan.

Most of you have met my mother, but for those of you who haven't, my mother is one of the sweetest, gentle and caring people you will ever meet. We took my parents to church while they were here. There is a coffee and pastry time in between services at our church.

So my sweet wonderful mother sees a particular pastry she would like to sample and goes over to the other side of the room. She starts chatting with a woman she meets. She introduces herself as all normal ladies do and asks the other woman her name.

Response: "Oh, you won't remember it, so I'm not going to tell you."

My mother is a little flabbergasted at this point, but in the spirit of good manners attempts to continue the conversation. My mother enjoyed her bit of pastry during the conversation and decided to have another one. After she placed it on her napkin, she was told, "Oh, I was going to have that piece."

At this point, my mother really doesn't know what to do and offers the woman the piece on her napkin which the woman refuses.




And people wonder why we haven't made oodles of friends here in Montana. They don't want to share a muffin or a name!

Baby Bison!

I am a few months behind on our summer activities. Back in June, Mr. M and I wanted to get out of town so we went to the big city of Missoula (a college town of about 100,000). The next day we went to the Bison range where we saw lots of bison and various other animals.

Here is a big boy, doesn't he look friendly?

Here, is his closeup (it might be a different bull, but you get the idea)

Here is a buffalo chip, if you don't know what the pioneers used these for, you need a history lesson. (Hint, there is very little wood to burn on the prairie.)

Just some flowers growing in the rocks.

And the best thing about spring: BABIES! Here is a baby bison. Isn't he a cutie?

And then there was one...

After all my complaints about the heat, relief came for a short time last week. Mr. M and I had decided to run to Target for a few things. There were some clouds moving in, but nothing to be alarmed at.

Well, we being the intelligent people that we are, left the windows down in my little truck. Thinking that it needed to be aired out, it was getting a musty smell. We walked out of Target and it was PORING. The wind and rain were so hard that it was actually raining sideways. We looked at each other and

Me: Did we leave the windows open?

Mr. M: No. No, of course not. Well.....

Me: We did, didn't we?

Mr. M: Maybe, but I think I closed them

When we got to the car, every inch on the inside was soaking wet. We were soaking wet as we drove home because of sitting on our sponge like seats.

Then we turned onto our street and this is what we saw:



Estimated at $4,028 worth of damage. Sure put getting my truck soaked into perspective. (And don't worry, we have insurance.)

It's hot

Now I know that I am from Texas and I shouldn't be complaining about the heat, but take a few things into account with me.

1)The ice storms in Texas aren't that bad, we just don't have the right tools to deal with them.

2) Same thing applies here except the opposite way. Nobody has AC.

3) We live on the second floor of a condo with a flat roof (that's black). I have stopped running the dryer. It's not so bad until 3:00 and then it doesn't really cool down until about 9.

4) In Texas, if you walk into a Starbucks, you instantly wish you were back outside, because it is so cold (esp the one at Frankfurt and Preston. I think a guy in a wool suit works in the back.)

5) I am not so sure the lone Starbucks here even has an AC. It wasn't on when I was there.

6) So we flee our home in the late afternoon and go where there is AC. We are limited to Target, Boarders, and Best Buy. The problem is, we then tend to spend money. A few dollars here and there, but when you go to that store every day, it adds up.

7) I never had problems with my car overheating in Texas because it's flat. Here, whenever we go up a mountain, our Durango threatens to overheat. In fact, we were driving around the bison range with the HEAT ON when it was already 100 degrees outside to cool down the car.

Mr. M water skis!

Why you should not wear baskeball shorts and waterski at the same time.

New Job!

Two weeks ago, Mr. M started a new job. His stress level has dropped from "out of this world" to "fun to be around." He also has good benefits and gets off at 4 every day. He did take a pay cut, but it's worth it. Just thought I would update those of you who have been wondering about the job situation.

My Encounter with a Mule Deer.

My friend, Jana and I decided to hike a trail in Glacier park a few weeks ago. Here we are at the lake we hiked to. And yes, those are waterfalls that drop into the lake. It is about a 3 mile hike there and back and not to steep. One of my favorite hikes in this area. Plus you get such a great reward halfway through by getting to rest and hang out at this lake.

At the beginning of the trail is a beautiful gorge, this is a picture of it about at its highest water level during the year.

On the way there, we kept coming across a mule deer, but she didn't want to pose for us, this was the best shot we got.

Then on the way back, she decided to play nice and come about 5 feet away from us to nibble on some leaves.



We thought she may be preggers based on her tummy size.