Pretty in ... Blue!

I love listening to the news.  The weather, especially.  They make Idaho sound so exciting with the "STORMS!" that are coming through.  The other day, they said it again.  We were having a "STORM!" come through and to expect snow!

I woke up and wondered how I was going to get out of my house.  The SNOW! was everywhere!  Piled high!  SNOW drifts 15' deep!  You could barely see the animals in the pastures!  Forget about getting your vehicles out of the driveway without your own personal snow plow.

Yes, of course I took photos of it!  I only had about ten minutes to snap one ... before it all melted. 

Yeah, this will get us out of the "DROUGHT!" ... won't it?

Thank god for the weather man.  Don't know where I'd be without him.

Colleen came down for a couple of days.  Had a blast hanging out with her, as usual.  She had her first deer kill this year, so she brought down some venison steaks for me, Mary and Jaenne, so we all hung out at my place and drank and ate ... and ate ... and ate.  It was yummy!  Then Colleen and I made a deal.  I buy a gun, and she'll get a horse, and we'll go hunting, and then we can have the horses help us pack the kill out.  Much easier that way.

(Taken with my phone ... L to R:  Jaenne, Colleen [holding Jossie] and Mary)

Colleen and I went to the Owyhees the next day and took a few dogs with us.  It was nice to go and hike a little bit and loosen up my back a bit.

Reese and Jammer came along and were good girls.  Jammer wouldn't stop moving, so I took a photo of Reese by herself.

Colleen went home this morning.  Till next time...

Stopped at D&B and picked up a Christmas present for Kahlua.  She seemed to like it!  The older halter I have for her is not adjustable, and it is pretty tight in some places because her head is a little ... um ... large.  This adjustable halter fits her better, and is easier for me to put on and take off because of that cool little clip on the side.  And can't have a new halter without a matching lead rope!

She is not nuts about the posing-for-the-camera thing.  I brought some lettuce out to her and got some close photos of her, but she does not like the sound of the motor on my camera when it flips the flash up.  Here's a pretty good illustration of how she throws her head on occasion. 

Sometimes she just gives me dirty looks.

Other times, she's just plotting her revenge.

Makes me wonder if she's just waiting for me to hop on her.  LOL!  I told her how pretty she looks in her new garb.  I hope I scored some points.

The Day After

I did it.  I made it through another Jeff-less holiday.  (Deleted a rant.)

First, Mark and I went over to my neighbor's house.  Diana has a gorgeous house (and the bathroom is to die for), and it was nice to see her and her family.  Dean and Brooke were there, and Diana asked me to take some photos with her point and shoot camera after the Pendleton was already swimming around in my belly.  I failed miserably.  Sorry, Diana!  Had a lot of fun having a couple of drinks, and then stole some of the cheesecake on my way out.  I just ate it for lunch today, and let me tell you ... that was YUMMY! 

Came home and started preparing dinner.  Justin (my son) came over for a while (because that's about all he can stand and will come up with every excuse to leave...) and I took some photos of him.  I told him to come prepared to have his photo taken because he never lets me take any of him.  Well, I don't have very many.  So now I have a few.  Here are the highlights of the photo shoot.

We exchanged gifts and had dinner.  Mark got me a new breadmaker!  Woo hoo!  My poor, 12 year old squeaky breadmaker can have a much-deserved break now.  I can't wait to try out the new one.  He also got me a sound bar for my new TV!  I haven't figured out all that the sound bar can and will do just yet, but I did find out that it has a radio receiver in it, and I've been playing some good country music all morning.  Love it!

Took Zip and Echo out to feed this morning, along with my camera. 

Echo took off up on to the irrigation canal and went down and visited the neighbors or something.  In the meantime, I took Zip into Kahlua's pasture with me to see what he'd do.  When we first got in there, the first thing he does is try to herd her.  With much less effort than the other day, I was able to call him off, and from that point on, he left her alone and was content to eat all of the little prizes he was finding in the pasture. 

I clicked off a ton of photos of Kahlua, and was able to get a lot closer to her with the camera this time.

One of these days, I'll take the camera off the "auto" setting and take some real photos of her.  We're getting closer.

Here's a photo from the street.  My black and white life.  Black and white house, white truck, black and white sheep, black and white horse, black and white dogs, etc.

Went and found Echo and took some photos of her and Zip.  She was not impressed.

Going for a drive later, so hopefully, I'll have some good view photos.  Then back to my house for prime rib leftovers! 

J

I guess that answers that!

Last night, I took the camera with me to feed, and had it on auto, had it pointed at the ground, and "clicked" it right before I was going to toss her food over the fence.  The flash went off and she jumped pretty good.  I threw the food over immediately, and she didn't really want anything to do with it.  So I backed up ... and she came into the food ... I clicked the camera again ... the flash went off, and again, she jumped.  Wanting to see where her threshold for the flash was, I backed up again, and got a pretty good distance from her, and still pointing it at the ground, clicked it again.  She didn't completely ignore it, but she didn't jump, either.  So I pointed it at her, took a flash photo, and she looked, but didn't do anything.

 I called it good.  Went in the house, fearing a major setback.  I had completely forgotten about the flash.

Then this morning's feeding ...

I've been introducing Kahlua to the dogs slowly.  In fact, the only one that has been on the same side of the fence with her is Echo.  Echo doesn't really "see" her and pays no attention to her other than to get the hell out of her way.  So, this morning, I armed myself with some warm clothes, my camera, and Echo and Zip.  I grabbed a flake of hay, had the dogs come through the gate with me (where Kahlua met me) ... stupidly turned my back and closed the gate.  Realizing this could have been a disaster in the making, I turned around to find Zip trying to "herd" Kahlua.  He's being quite stupid, right up on her hooves, went completely under her when she wouldn't move, and continued to "herd" her.  She did not move.  Did not care.  How much of that had to do with the hay in my arm?  I'm not sure, but I don't think much.  She does not at all seem to be bothered by the dogs.  Anyway, once I shut the gate, I called Zip off her and he got in big trouble.  I am not sure he was particularly wanting to "work" her, but was doing it because he thought that's what I wanted.  Once I told him to get outta that, he was happy joining Echo off at the other side of the pasture, eating horsey dingleberries.

Yuck.

I clicked the camera and gave Kahlua her food.  Not so much as a flinch from her.  Woo hoo!  So I took the opportunity to step back a little bit and take a couple of more deliberate photos of her.  She was very relaxed, despite the look on her face in this photo.

You can see in these next few photos, she's pretty relaxed, even with the two dogs in the pasture to my left (out of the photo).

We're getting there...

Don't have a whole lot planned for tomorrow.  Spending the day with Mark and Justin and making a simple dinner.  Just laying low.  Maybe go for a drive or something.  It's hard to believe there's no snow yet this year.  Hopefully soon.  They are talking the "d" word on the news already.  That's not good.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

The Morning Feeding

Yup.  There's going to be lots of photos of the same thing for a while.

I walk over to her with the hay in my left, and the camera in my right.  She is not nuts about this idea.

Clicked the camera, and held the food, and she decided she didn't like this game and walked away.

Notice how she's standing there carefully watching what is in my left hand.

I toss it over the fence, and suddenly that annoying clicking noise just doesn't matter.

Sorry, Kahlua, it's part of the deal.

You're a good girl.

She is going to get a new food trough of some sort for Christmas or New Year's or something, or as soon as something decent lands on Craigslist.

Some Early Success!

So I grabbed my camera tonight and went out and fed the sheep.  I got the hay into my hand for Kahlua, and she started doing her dance and the little grumble-chat she does when I am about to feed her.  I took a photo of her, which she did not appreciate ... (these are just random click-in-her-direction shots and I capture what I capture ... I'm not even looking through the viewfinder...)

... and then I threw her food down.  She was going to show me.  She was going to avoid going to her food.

... but she couldn't stand it ... and lowered her head and took a bite.

She jumped less with each click.  So I walked across the driveway and took photos of fatty and friends.

That ewe is due probably in the next month.  (I can't tell if the other one is pregnant, but I suspect not since she's quite young.)  She is a bit of a ham.  She's had dozens and dozens of photos taken of her, and I think she secretly likes it!

Here's the resident, leftover duck.  This cute little pain in the ass leaves me gross little piles on my driveway pad.  I guess he hangs out on it because the concrete probably maintains some sort of heat through the day.  I will not be heartbroken if one day he disappears.  His other buddies flew off this fall.  Poor Runners can't fly, so he's on his own.  Hangs out with the sheep.

On the way back to the house, I pointed the camera in Kahlua's direction again and clicked it a couple of times.  She didn't jump at all.  Hopefully, this will be as easy as I think.  I hope.

Also, I went for a walk tonight.  This might not sound like much to anyone, but I walked two miles in about 40 minutes.  Getting my back moving again feels really good.  I am going to try to walk every day and increase the distance and decrease the time.

Click and Treat - KPR style

Look who came home today!



Don was hanging on to her for me since I hurt my back.   Now that I'm feeling better, he brought her home for me.  I took a couple of pictures of her and she jumps every time.  It's the only thing I've found thus far that unnerves her.  So instead of using a traditional clicker, I'm going to use the click of the camera, and treat her, and see if I can't get her over it.  It would be a drag to have a horse I couldn't take photos of! 

I'll report my progress.

If Tears Were Pennies ...

I'd be rich a few times over.

The world lost a true gem this year.  Did you ever miss someone until it hurts, and then miss them some more?  These are just a few of the gazillion that show who Jeff was.  He was always with people, and his girls (be it his sisters or his daughters) meant the world to him.  What I wouldn't do to have him back.

(These photos are scans of prints done by my very talented dad.  These scans do not do these photos any justice.)

Winter Blahs

I've been laid up for almost two weeks now with the injury to my back.  Today is the first day I haven't taken any meds and it's almost 11:00 a.m.  I'm hoping that was the end of them.  I can feel a bit of tightness in my back, but it's not uncomfortable enough ... right now ... to justify taking pills and suffering the stupid side effects.  We'll see how this goes.

Haven't posted much lately.  Haven't had anything going on for obvious reasons.  It's been a cold winter, and I'm already through almost a ton of pellets, so I'm having more delivered next week.  Mark came over and fixed the exhaust on my pellet stove.  The way it was set up, it was going to eventually burn my house down.  So Mark bought the parts and got it all fixed up the other day. 

You can see by the soot on the house how low the exhaust was previously.  This will be much better.  He also put up a smoke alarm for me.  Every night, I used to think to myself, "I have fire burning in my house and I don't have a smoke alarm.  I have dogs in crates and if something should ever happen, they cannot get out."  That thought haunted me.  Not anymore.  Mark, thank you so much for your help!

There have been a lot of people who have been a tremendous help to me through this back injury.  Jaenne ... she's just awesome, no matter what day of the week.  And my neighbor, Dean.  I don't know what I'd ever do without him.  He's taken such good care of me over these last two weeks, there's no way for me to ever repay him.

And these two have provided the best company in the world, and they keep the bed nice and warm, too.

He's always checking on me.

And once I'm feeling better, I have a huge job ahead of me of cleaning up from the fall mess.

Kahlua will be coming home from Don's house soon.  I've decided to lay low for the winter and let my back heal (we'll see how long this thought lasts).  Bummer for her, but she'll get plenty of work come Spring.

Oh and the best news!  Look what I got in the mail today!!!!!

I won this from the FV blog, and let me tell you, this is a very nice calendar!  The quality of the paper, the photos, everything ... it's one of the nicest calendars I have ever owned!  Thank you, Fern Valley!!!

Jodi