Our updates for all of you

As I'd mentioned in a previous post, due to a primarily stationary high pressure 'bubble' Winter has been bypassing the North West of the country and dropping down from Canada into Montana and all points South and East from there with the accompanying record cold and snowfall for many unaccustomed areas. Well that bubble has moved just a bit West and this area got a bit of snow, about 4 inches total for the last week. Yesterday, Sunday, was actually a beautiful day with a constant light snowfall all day long. Just a few flakes falling all day long with no real accumulation. Just a few minutes ago I got this email from our local online news site about the upcoming cold weather that's expected the rest of the week: The National Weather Service has issued a wind chill watch effective Tuesday night through Wednesday morning predicting numbing temperatures and even colder wind chill. In Boundary County, Tuesday should bring a high temperature of 11 degrees, and drop...

Yes cabin fever, and it's all due to our non winter this year. Not non winter because of the cold, it's been that and continues to be cold. Non winter because of no snow,  less than a foot total so far and there's almost none left.  A more usual winter in our neck of the woods should be about 3 or more feet of snow by now. And the cabin fever part is that it's still too cold to be out and about very much, even with no snow. It's been almost a week of an an air stagnation alert for the North West. In many areas that's meant days and nights of freezing fog, in this area it's meant constant overcast with lows around 27 and highs around 30, just constant cold. So Stacy and I can look around outside and can see things we could be doing since there's no snow, but being out in it for any length of time gets cold quick.  If we had the snow all over that we should have it would be different, it's the visual thing of it I guess. But Stacy and I both are feeli...

Thinking back, as so many people and places do, to the highs and lows of the year just past. And at the moment as I'm sitting with Stacy as she's starting a new quilting project so I can get her comments too. Our high points- Stacy's last year of constant involvement with the IJJA, that's a YEA for both of us with her term as President over,  so a lot fewer trips to Boise this year. Sandy visited twice in 2013 with Justine, most recently was 4 days at Thanksgiving. In September our 2 weeks in Hawaii visiting our son Sean, and Sandy and Justine were there for a week of our visit too,  that made us both very happy! Stacy making all her projects. I was asked to be the photographer for a friend's daughter's high school year book photos.  As well as getting requests to use my photos in others projects. We got my Solstice all paid off! We're both still here to be talking and writing this! Daughter Laura loves living in Texas much more than Iowa! Tyler is...

Since it's only the second of January, 2014 doesn't look any different to me yet than 2013 did. Yesterday being a holiday, we spent most of the day at home but with a good chunk of it on a short trip to Scott and Cheri's place about 30 miles from our house. Scott is Stacy's older brother and they have some property near the Montana line. They were having a little New Year gathering with their two visiting daughters, and with their local neighbors in attendance with us at their house. Scott was very proud and showing off his recent purchase of a 1993 Corvette. He has always loved Corvettes and is very happy to have another. He still has his 'race car' Corvette that he used back when they all lived in Kansas but he'd wanted one to drive around, not race, and found this car on line over in Washington near Seattle. It was loaded, in very good shape and with only about 40,000 garage stored miles on it. It has the convertible soft top as well as the hard top wit...

I came across this the other day in a box of some of my 'old tech'.  How many people reading this post used something like this?  "Back in the day", the 1990s I'm talking about here.  It doesn't seem like a long time ago just thinking about it, but it sure was! 20 years ago now!  This was an era that can't be hardly remembered on calling people because everybody has cell phones, but still, this was quite a while before everybody started to use cellphones.  Pay phones were the rule back then and pay phone gadgets like this one became available to help you 'speed dial' your way to a phone call.  For me, I found and bought, I think it was around $15.00 for this device, because quite often when I was out at night and 'on-call' I'd get a page (with the on call "beeping" pager) and had to go find a pay phone and call in to get the new call, it was a lot of phone numbers! This was several years before everyone ...

Some photos from the last few weeks starting with Christmas Eve with the presents all set for the next morning.  Below our holiday dinner  Below, my best present from Stacy and a gift and for both of us,  a water dispenser just like Sean has at his place in Hawaii.  Hot, room temperature, and cold water from a 3 to 5 gallon container inside the body.  We love it!  Below,  every year the Courthouse has a employees breakfast for the holidays.  This year's was another good one!  The photo below is part of our driveway showing the small amount of snow we've had so far. It has been cold and there was a good sized snowfall in October that had many long time locals saying it is going to be a bad winter!  Well, so far it has turned out to be not so much.  We had a week of near and below zero temps,  but almost no snow yet. And it was the first Christmas that it didn't snow at all in the last few years.  We'll see tho...

In our Christmas letter this year Stacy had made a point to mention this Blog page, so I have to get on it and get back to posting! So, with Stacy throwing down the Gauntlet that this Blog exists I'd better get some current stuff posted! With today being the 19th of December, we are happy that all of our gifts to send are on their way or have arrived. DONE! We did cards differently this year and used the Android/Apple application called Sincerely Ink to create and send out cards. I took some photos last Saturday and we picked the one we liked, then Stacy wrote the great poem and assembled on the iPad then it's just add recipients, billing info, and send! They do the rest including telling you when the cards are sent out and then again notification on the day they'll arrive at their destinations. A really great app, yes these are more post card style then card in envelope style, but completely customizable and for about $2.00 a card, including the postage, we think it is ...