Bigfork Summer 2016

Actually, it's Ferndale.

(For those detail people, you know...)

We flee the prairie in July every year and head to the mountains where it's cool and damp. You've already seen Glacier, but this is how we spent the majority of our time in Western Montana...

We build on to the ever-evolving magical tree house.

This trip, a lookout ledge was added! 

(It looks like a good spot for mommies to take cocktails up and stare at the stars while talking of big dreams to one another, too....)

Every project needs a supervisor who has no idea what's going on.

Mud pie pastries are concocted.

(The really do look like the fancy chocolate confections in nice restaurants!)

Hummingbirds are admired.

This is quite possibly the best representation of my daughter that I have...

She'd been clumping around in Grandma's heels, so we found her some glittery Dolly Parton ones of her own in which to practice graceful walking.

A troll hunt was postponed for the next series of pictures...

A handsome escort was procured...

(Reluctant, but not out-and-out rebelling at the idea of it all.)

Some instruction given on those tricky turns...

 One of the best moments of our visit, in my opinion.  

 Let the wild rumpus begin!!!

We have built-in, next-door "cousins".  Talk about HANDY!

They're not going to be next-door in a week or so, so I'm glad we had this relaxed time in July.

Houdini, patrolling the grounds...

 More "cousin" time, with different pals.

We're so blessed to have lots of loved ones in all corners of Montana!

Quinnie had his first loose tooth while we were there! 

I just want to squeeze him, every time I see him...

He usually lets me.

I love that kid.

Beethoven, killin' it in his cowboy hat! 

This is a chronicling of the Best Day of The Troll Hunters.

All I know is that trolls are repelled by soap, which is why everyone needs to take a bath before bed!

The hummingbird got TIRED.

It's crazy, to see them resting!

Sara 

My soul sister.

And then there's bike games! 

We LOVE the lions! 

One day, I happened by to see that one of the kids had carefully placed a bouquet on one of the lion's paws. I think the other one was laughing at him, but I can't swear to it....

In the lookout ledge!

Here's the playhouse kitchen, all tidied up.

They made peasant-style open shelves cool way before the trend hit HGTV.

As we leave, the kids say goodbye to every, every, EVERYTHING...

the mountains, the playhouse, the trees, the signs, the old guy walking his dog.

We leave a little benediction and prayer of gratitude behind every time we drive away, always conscious of the gift of love and joy in a blessed place of retreat.

Postcards From the Prairie

I was looking through the photos I'd taken in June. June is when Montana puts on her finery and rewards us for living with her in January. Truly, I think the people who settled here probably got to the area in June, decided they'd found paradise, changed their minds in January, and by the time they got packed up to leave, it was June again and they forgot about January.

My Grandma roses! I don't think I've ever seen them bloom like they did this year.

The bush was weighed down from the blossoms and when you drove in the yard and got out of your car, the rose smell was just amazing. 

The road up to our house.

My Jodi roses! 

(My dad used to name his horses after the guy he bought them from. The "kid" horse I learned to ride on happened to be bought from a guy with the last name "Gross", if you can imagine. It was fairly rough when someone asked me what my horse's name was...

Anyway, I've taken to naming some of my plants after the people who gave them to me. This rose was from Jodi Pierson and neither of us have any idea what variety it is, so I just call it the Jodi rose.)

This was right before she took a huge hail pounding...

On the way home from Miles City, close to Angela and looking south at a storm blowing into Miles. We'd just finished a baseball game when things started getting stormy so we were glad to be out of there. If you look very carefully at the center of the picture, you'll see a slight ghost of a rainbow!

 Maggie and I love our antelope.

They're difficult to photograph, though, so anytime I get some image that's reasonably decent, I feel triumphant.  Kind of like taking pictures of a toddler.

Montana skies will wreck you for any place else...

The trees in our shelterbelt look to me as though they're always telling each other secrets. 

And when the wind blows, their "tummies" shake with laughter!

I wish I knew what was so funny.

There's no way to do a full moon justice in a photograph.

This one was particularly lovely in its flamingo pink tone!

(Okay, they call it a strawberry moon, but I like the flamingo pink idea better.)

Heartwarming

The blog challenge assignment today is to write about five ways to win my heart.

I'm changing it to five things that warm my heart.

It's my blog. I'll do what I want! 

1. There's something very dear to me about children's hands being held by old people's hands, or vice-versa. Actually, now that I'm typing this and getting it out of my head, I think ALL hands warm my heart! So much of your life story and personality is right there at the end of your arms.

2. Genuine, happy laughter!

It's just the best!

3. Special songs from good times in my life warm my heart. Especially if they show up from out of the blue.  Yesterday I got in the car to head over to Vern's to work cows and a song from Grease was on the radio...it was like a gift, and it made my heart happy! Here it is, so your heart can be happy, too: (click here)  (Go ahead and dance...no one's looking.)

4. Baby calves. Baby anything, but baby calves have big, curious eyes with 2 inch eyelashes, sweet little noses covered with feeler whiskers, knobby knees, big stick-y out-ie ears....little heart warmers, right there.

5. Oh, man...I can't decide between a fish on the line or homemade bread, here.  

Glacier Park

I'm not going to write much in this post. I'll just post pictures and let you imagine what a delightful day we had celebrating Maggie's 12th birthday in one of the most breathtaking places in the US.
Enjoy! (We certainly did!)

Lake McDonald

We like to "skip" (translation:chuck) rocks.

Hiking to the falls, through the fairy woods.

It was SO LOUD!

He explains with great authority things he knows nothing about...

He explains with great authority things he knows quite a lot about...

Something big has been here!

Like, a bear. 

A tall, very strong bear.

Not so very long ago, either...

Maybe we should go another way!

You can see the burned trees on the horizon...

That was the side of the park the bears lived on, but they moved looking for food. 

Obligatory wildlife shot...

I didn't even get to the pictures of the lodge or the ferry boat!  Glacier saturates your brain with its unparalleled majesty, leaving you to just stagger open mouthed out to the "real world". We just saw a teeny tiny part of the park; next time we think it would be fun to ride the red buses up Going to the Sun Highway.

Let's Not Go There

Today's assignment is to list five places I'd like to go. 

Since I want to go EVERYWHERE, it's easier to list the five places I really never want to go. After that, I'll show you pictures of Glacier Park in a following post. Everyone wins! 

Five places I never care to see:

1. Las Vegas. Don't even begin to defend it or encourage me to be open-minded about this city; I just don't want to go. I'm sure there are very interesting people and things to do there. There are ALSO very interesting people and things to do everywhere else in the world, so I'll take my carry on elsewhere.  

2. Barrow Point, Alaska. I had family that lived there when I was a kid, so I read up about it in National Geographic. I can very confidently say that there's nothing there for me....especially since my cousins moved further south.  

3. Yankees Stadium. Meh... see the note on Las Vegas.  (Really, this is just to make sure my frienemies are still reading my blog and to get them stirred up for Tuesday's rivalry series.)

4. Death Valley. I just told a friend of mine that I didn't want him to send any photos from his recent stay in Los Angeles because Hell shimmers in the background. Later, I realized it was not Hell but Death Valley. Same difference. 

5. Caves. No caves. Not even blanket caves. Just no. I went to Lewis and Clark Caverns with my friends the Yosts and realized about 15 minutes in to the tour that caves were NOT for me. 

Whew!  Glad that's over!

How Inspiring!

Yes, it's late, but I'm still getting the post up! 

The assignment was for me to write about someone inspiring, and I find it hard to narrow this down because I'm inspired by so many people. 

Really! 

And as I was riding on the four wheeler behind so many cows that make me happy, a couple thoughts occurred to me about this.

Here's the first:

I'm inspired by people who don't keep very close track of their chronological age, choosing to quit things because they're "too old".  Several months ago, I read an article about a woman who was 101 years old who broke the track record for her age group (anyone over 100) for the 100 meter dash. I was enchanted! 

There are so many cool things about this. The thought that there's an actual category in the record books for those over 100 years of age in track and field...that's pretty remarkable. The fact that someone over 100 years old is "dashing"...I'm still working on that notion. And she didn't start running until her 70s when many catastrophic things happened in her life. She began running in her 70s, y'all. She didn't say to herself, "I'm 73, my body is old and fragile and hurts, and I could fall and break a hip.".  This woman ran ANYWAY. There was a lot of tragedy in her life at the time, she really had nothing more to lose from what the article said. 

She just did it.

Nike should have her image on every box of running shoes they sell. 

And last week I read an article about a nurse in Montana who finally retired after 65 years of nursing. Like...she started nursing back when they invented it, right?!? 

She was 87 and had nursed all her life, raised a family, buried a husband and kept on going.  Guess what she's going to do in her retirement?

That's right. She's volunteering at the nursing home to help all the "old people". 

She'll probably read about our 101 year old racing friend and begin training to usurp the record in 20 years. 

The number one barrel racer in the country right now, earnings-wise, is 67 years old. 

No one told HER that the statute of limitations was 50 years of age. She's smoking all those 20 something darlings at the Cheyenne Frontier Days! 

THAT'S inspiring to me. 

Secondly, there are the quiet inspire-rs.  

I encounter them when I'm at the grocery store or in the parking lot (when I go to town) or in the library...in everyday life.

 They're the ones who send ice cream cones to a young mother with a toddler and a baby and a grandma at McDonalds on a hot exhausting day. (Bless you, sir; whoever you are. I'll never forget that 10 years ago.)  

The ones who unobtrusively pick up things that fell in the aisle at the grocery store rather than walking around it and pretending it's someone else's problem. 

The people who take time to say "hi" to a baby who just learned the word and has been saying it to everyone she sees all over Home Depot with no response, save one kind person. (Again, thank you. I was near tears because no one would say "hi!" back to my baby.)  

The ones who faithfully and kindly read blogs about cows and flowers and dogs and shoes and recipes and children...for YEARS...and never fail to encourage or comment. 

You inspire me. 

I want to be one of those people.

Look around you this week, please.  Read articles not of political or economic interest, but of good people doing kind things. Look for people who forget they "should" be in the nursing home who are still rocking their running shoes or horseshoes. 

Prepare to be inspired!

Peeved

Today's assignment is to write about three pet peeves.
Just three.
A study in restraint, I see...

My first pet peeve is chewing gum.
Very few people who chew gum know how to do so with class and good manners. There's smacking mastication. There's tiny in-mouth bubble popping. It's all funny in the movie caricatures with loud talking waitresses, but in real life it's pretty annoying.
I could tolerate the personal rudeness, but the thing that REALLY peeves me is that no one seems to know how dispose of the stuff discretely and unobtrusively. One of my first jobs was as an assistant janitor at my high school between my freshman and sophomore years. Let me say right now that I believe EVERYONE should have to janitor their own school for three months as a part of their class load.  Once you've scraped dried gum off the bottom of every desk in the building (save the secretary and principal's desks), or cleaned and waxed all the bathrooms, or repainted the lockers...ALL the lockers...much greater care is taken of the educational resources you're provided with.  That's why I can't stand gum.  I cleaned up so stinkin' much of it!  This isn't even counting the gum I cleaned off shoes from the random spitting in the parking lots. Or the gum out of my kids hair.

The second pet peeve on my (rather extensive) list is "I seen".
I really and truly try not to be a grammar Nazi, brace myself against the misuse of "their", "there", and "they're" in writing, but my palms absolutely sweat when I hear someone say "I seen them cows..." or "I seen a big cloud over..." etc.
"I saw..."
"I have seen...."
"I will have seen...."
But not "I seen".
I don't know why this bugs me to the dying end, but it does.

Thirdly, (and blessedly, FINALLY) is when people who are shopping decide they don't want a product or find a better deal on a similar product, and leave it in any old random place in the store. Or their empty Shlurpee container.
Again, this goes back to retail work experience from a job I had with Jo-Ann Fabrics.
It's quick and convenient for the customer, and what's the big deal, right?
It's a big stinkin' deal to the college girl who is working three jobs and has to sweep/organize every aisle after the doors close before she drags off to home for another 3 hours of homework, only to start it all again at 6 AM. Or the retiree who is putting in the hours on this job to afford rent and little Christmas gifts for their family with this job that runs until 9 PM; their legs ache and they can't understand what happened to common courtesy.
It's a big deal.
It's rude.
It's unnecessary.
Take the product back to the aisle it belongs; it's another 5 minutes out of your leisurely shopping day. Take the empty container to the trash at the front of the store that you walk past ANYWAY to leave. Just do. Be decent. Be a good person. It's not that hard.

Tomorrow is "Someone inspiring"!
I will lose sleep tonight over this! So, so many inspiring people that I know of...