Our updates for all of you

VERY COLD, even for us! After restocking the fire wood and since I was still all bundled up, I took took these photos. All taken around noon, the tempreture had "warmed" to 5 above zero. At 7 am it was 5 BELOW zero. Top photo is of the cold and clear day with the smoke of the living room wood stove. The second two photos show the still loaded with snow trees. Since it snowed the over a foot of snow a couple of days ago, it got way too cold for any snow to melt so the trees stay loaded, at least for a few more days . I think it makes them the most picturesque though! As for today, too cold to do much outside so we're spending the day with indoor projects and couch 'potatoing' catching up with last few months worth of programs on the DVR. Tomorrow is 2011! So early happy New Years to all who read this!

And it is snowing A LOT! Like over a foot in less than 18 hours. After work I had to fine tune the plowing our neighbor had done during the day while we were at work. It is light fluffy snow so it plows pretty easy. The quad actually does a better job than our neighbor but our neighbor thinks he's 'helping'. The forecast is for the snow to stop overnight then a "bitter" cold is supposed to come in during the night tonight and hang around till mid next week. The prediction is for low teens tonight and tomorrow then below zero by tomorrow night and for a few nights. More later! - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Taken on December 22nd, the top photo shows an unusually busy Main Street with people out and still shopping or getting those last minute gifts. Normally downtown is dead and vacant after the sun goes down, but not this night! You can see the town Holiday lights and the town Christmas tree at the far end of the street. The next photo taken the same night is of the very large American Flag the town flies at the veterans park next to the Library. It was a very cold breezy night! The bottom photo was a long exposure of our place with the few Christmas lights Stacy put out on the porch. It is still snowy and although it was even sunny for a while on Christmas Day, the 26th it snowed much of the day.

During the cold snap the Kootenai River would 'steam' from the temperature difference between the water and the air. In addition to the overall look of the clouds of fog right there at the river, the trees in the area of downtown became flocked with ice crystals which can be seen a bit in the top photo of the train crossing Riverside Road and across the railroad bridge. The power lines also become covered with the ice. Not so fun when it gets like this is how the roads and sidewalks also become covered with a sheet of ice crystals as the steam rises and then almost instantly cools and falls back as ice crystals which look like it's raining light glitter or diamond dust. You can't see that in these photos but it was happening the entire time I was out and taking these photos as well as others. With the sun out the blacktop would melt the ice layer. In the shade or on cloudy days it is just a very slick layer of white ice! The above also shows more steam and the area of

Walk out to the street, look towards the West and see this view. Beautiful or what!!! Especially in the Winter. Next photo is on the property and I thought it was interesting how the one tree in the group got snow all the way down the trunk it while the others didn't given all the trees around that one. Last photo was taken in early December. After the sudden heavy snow and ice of November, a record of cold (almost a week of below zero at night!) and snowfall (almost 3 feet at our house alone!) for the month in this area, the temps had warmed up to the 40's causing a fast melt of the snow pack. Ultimately all the over two feet of snow came off the roof but at the point of the last photo, the house had teeth as the snow curled over from the roof. The ice sickles got almost totally horizontal before I thought it best to keep from somebody getting clobbered by a large hunk of the roof snow/ice falling on them and I knocked it down.

So I found an "app for that" to use my iPad with our blog. I'd also found a nice application for sending many of this years Christmas cards out on Christmas Eve, gotta love the instant of email! Overall a really good Christmas, this one of 2010. I haven't had a lot of extra time to update the blog the last few weeks. It is nice to use the iPad at home and not have to get the laptop or work on the desktop at home so this app will help, even with the on sale price of $2.99. Stacy's father had gotten all three of us iPads when they came out last April. I don't think I'd call it "magical" as Steve Jobs did at the introduction, but it IS a very, very good device! I agree with the idea that the iPad is a media consumption device more than a creation device, but whatever you'd find you can do with yours, if you have one or when you can get one, it works very well and we really love ours! With just a couple of programs, one even free, you can get an

Heading South on I-15 in Utah. I'd kind of missed these 100 mile views as I saw them again while driving through this and our old high desert areas of California. It was still cool here but I got to our old area as I went through San Bernardino at the height of a heatwave with temps in the 90's! All the traffic and congestion of being back in that area for the first time in over 3 years made me glad it was just a visit! I only wished I hadn't been on such a tight time schedule and had a day free to visit with people I hadn't seen in person in almost 5 years! I was so surprised to see Primm (or Stateline Nevada) so deserted! This photo of Whiskey Pete's all but empty, it used to never be this empty, any day of the week! The Hotel is closed except for weekends anymore, only open for gambling and the McDonald's inside was the only 'restaurant' open! I'd gone there first to get a room on the way down to San Diego. I Guess most people just drive the 40

As Stacy and I work on getting back to our usual routine, Winter of 2010 has decided to start off hard and over a month early this year. While I'd hoped to have the usual until Christmas for snow and cold to 'stick' to be able to finish up with some pre-winter prep, not happening this year. Top photo was taken the morning of the first snowfall that stayed. November 17th. Not too much that day about an inch and it didn't stay on the roads at all. Compare that photo with the photo I took Thanksgiving morning. By this day it had been snowing almost continuously for about a week. Luckily I had gotten the Polaris quad ready early with the snowplow blade and tire chains and spent a little over an hour that morning clearing out around the house and the driveway and also making it so the postal carrier can drive up to our mailbox. Bottom photo was this morning. Still snowing then as now, and Stacy and I had plowed and cleaned away snow again today before I took the photo. It&

Quite a lot has been going on since October 22nd and the last post! Laura and Tyler were with us the 24th to the 31st, Sandy and Erik came up the 29th and also went home the 31st. Erik was getting over being sick and Sandy had the brunt of the illness that Saturday. And being the caring daughter she is, Sandy gave us the gift that keeps on giving- her illness! She was only with us such a short time but within just a few days after they'd left I was sick and so was Stacy's father. The problem with that was, Sean had been offered and had excepted the position with his company and had a very short time frame to get relocated to Hawaii. So sick or not things had to get going to get him moved. Stacy and I talked about how best to facilitate this task, and agreed to make it a two part job. I would take the truck and trailer to California, get all their belongings and bring them to Idaho to keep and ship to Sean and Brandy in Hawaii over time. Stacy would take Brandy and go to Hawaii

It is getting more like fall to winter now in our area. All the weather forecasts give the possible snow levels and altitudes in the recordings. The temps have been in the low 50's for the past week which is the normal temp range. It has warmed up at night to the low thirties from the low twenties of last week and earlier this week. Next week it's forecasting only low to mid forties! For the high temps! In looking at photos and the older blogs, last October 27th, 2009, was the first snow of the season back then. Will it snow around the same time this year? Stacy and I are both off work next week because our daughter Laura and her son, the only grand kid so far, will be flying out this Sunday for a weeks visit. Stacy and I are really looking forward to the visit. Last time Laura was here was in the summer of 2006 for a couple of weeks. Quite a lot has changed in her little family since then! And Tyler is 4 years old now so he might do more than sleep or cry as he did last visit!

Top photo was taken during our warm week of mid 70 temps. I drove out to the Kootenai Wildlife Refuge and took this and some other photos. From this angle you're looking West-North West and out over the now pretty dry wetlands of the refuge. The entire park is very large and is all you can see in the view (except the car, I'm sure somebody would have said something about that!) and more! Most of the flocks of geese have already headed South and the ones left have hopefully donned their flak vests since its not too much longer for hunting season. And actually to help prevent illegal hunting at the refuge it's illegal to stop and be out in the park during that time of hunting season. So no photos then. The rest of the year there are many walking, hiking and even a driving path in the refuge. The bottom photo is the day it opened of the "new" "Akin's Harvest Foods" that was till the last day of July, the old Safeway in town. It had only opened about

Although the date this says 'posted' is from a while back, I'm online to type about theses photos and get this posted for you to see today, October 12th! I'd uploaded these and the next post couple of photos fully intending to get right back to it in a day or so, it just didn't happen like that. Stacy's father took a trip to California to visit family out there and since he was gone (he's getting back tomorrow night) we've been very busy working at home as well as stuff going on at work. So it's been busy, busy, busy! Stacy left this morning to fly to Boise for meetings (again!) and will be back late tomorrow too. On to these photos; top one is actually on our property, just out back in the forest. The fern was just going yellow to gold then, on this fall morning, it is really golden and rust browns now just a couple of weeks later. Middle photo is a road a little over a mile away in the early evening that I liked with the late day sun on the Aspen

We're in Boise now, on my laptop it says its 68 back home, here it's around 80. Boise has everything California does except smog! Lots of construction, malls, traffic, and seems like this week hot weather too! But on our down here Thursday and Friday, and on our way back towards home next Friday, we got to see much of why we really like living in Idaho now. The top two photos were taken Thursday, the bottom two Friday. Top photo is from the Lewiston Grade overlook and shows the city of Lewiston, Idaho as well as the river and the valley around it. We'd stayed at the Clearwater Hotel and Indian Casino a little east of Lewiston on the Nez Perce reservation. The second photo is right at sunset and was the hilltop just across from the Clearwater and only gold with the sunset for a few minutes. Looked really nice though. A stop on Highway 95 North of Whitebird, Idaho, shows a steep valley and talks of the short war in the 1870's with the Nez Perce tribe in the area. Stacy

Mainly because it has been busy and the 11 day trip that starts almost any minute to Boise for the annual convention. A lot happening that we've been trying to get settled at least for the next 11 days, it has been difficult to have that work out. Stacy has been stressed because the committee she's on for the convention has been dropping out, at the 11th hour! Latest is the group secretary that emailed Stacy yesterday afternoon to say she was no longer going to attend, and could she deal with all her work too? So Stacy has been trying to get almost 200 name tags printed and cut, we'll need to stop at Staples on the way out and pick up the holders, we'll be reimbursed though!, and still meet with other people along the way to pick up things they want taken since they're flying to Boise. At home the last few weeks, we've been going through our storage building and pairing down stuff that we haven't for the most part gotten into since we moved up here in 2006.

Last year August 3rd was a Monday and this year a Tuesday. But exactly one year ago today at lunchtime, about 12:20 PM, the still only car dealer in town had an upstairs fire and the offices and the old dry wooden showroom burned almost to the ground in a matter of minutes. It was ultimately in the local paper as being a overheated extension cord in an office that started the fire. The top two photos were taken only minutes apart ans showed how the fire looked at its height. The last photo was taken during the same time as the fire last year, but today. You can really see that Riverside Auto Center not only rebuilt but also took advantage of the disaster to make their facility better. The old building remnants were gone in about a month and the sales and offices were moved to RV trailers on the lot. The new building was moved to the back of the property and the used cars to the front where the old building was.The new building was framed during winter. It was slowly worked on duri

July 29th was the last day the old Safeway was open. They had a few great sales of some things, like fill up a bag of anything that fits from the produce section for $3.00. So there were a lot of bags going out and the produce section was about empty in less than an hour. Since the new store is already open and just a few miles away most could of the other stock be moved. These photos were all taken the next day, the 31st. The store was closed and people from the chain's headquarters were there to basically strip away every evidence that it was once a Safeway. The next photo shows a worker taking down the storefront lettering that has been up for several decades! The last two photos show the worker taking down the tall lighted store sign. He 'sawzalled' the plastic front to take out the 10 foot florescent bulbs then just cut up chunks small enough to handle and clear it out. The new owners of this old building from the 1950's will be remodeling inside and according t

Top photo was taken on June 18. Stacy had planted various things just a short time before. Bottom photo was taken on our way home Wednesday the 21st. Quite the difference! We've already been enjoying fresh squash and some small carrots. There will be a lot more squash on the way as well as tomatoes too! Yesterday turned out to be very heavy thunderstorms all afternoon so our watering on Wednesday was really helped quite a bit. By Sunday, Monday the heat is supposed to be on! Predicted to be hottest few days of the summer with local temps in the upper 90's. Where Stacy will be next week it should be close or low 100's. Stacy leaves tomorrow for the drive down to be in Pocatello by Sunday afternoon. Then back by next Sunday. I've got several projects for the weekends I hope to get done, depending on the heat! Luckily we have a couple of room air conditioners for the house. Many people don't because "it doesn't that hot that often". Well, those days it DO

Okay, last set of photos. I ran out of time last night as I was adding information to these photo sets. I took the photos on Saturday. I added all the photos and saved as drafts on Tuesday, added the words on Wednesday, and finished today, Thursday. The first two photos are a continuation of the last post and the stop on the way back down. Top photo, Stacy standing next to her favorite Honda quad. In the second photo I was trying to show how dirty the quads had gotten from the dusty trails. Even though it had rained a few days before, and there were some really nice stretches of damp and dust free trail, most of it was kicking up a lot of dust. Even trying to drift back and keep a distance between each quad, the way the wind was blowing that afternoon kept the dust clouds close to the trail and on us!Its easiest to tell on the little tail gate of the Polaris. It is supposed to be black and not tan! It was the kind of dust that you pat your leg and a small cloud would drift off! The l