4 posts from October 2009

We had a beautiful day today; got up to 70 degrees and was nice and sunny.  I spent the morning weeding the lawn, pruning trees and bushes, raking leaves, mowing the lawn and then edging the lawn.  Yes, I am mowing the lawn in 70 degree temps at the end of October!  We LOVE living down south!!!  Emma and Juleah did a lot of helping (playing).  They spent a lot of time with maple seeds; tossing them in the air and watching them helicopter down.  We also saw a praying mantis which was fun.

Yesterday Dohnele made an awesome dinner; creamy carrot soup with scallions and poppy seeds!  It's such a beautiful soup (bright orange) and is (was) really tasty.  Tonight we're breaking down a whole pumpkin and making soup out of it.  It's a recipe we've been making for the past few years and is delicious!
When everyone else went to town to go shopping today (not sure what they do in town every day, but the still go) Emma and I stayed home and built an IKEA foot stool to match an IKEA chair.  Emma had ice cream and I had Gorgonzola cheese with a ripe pear.  Mmmmmm!
Have a nice night!

We've been soooo busy these past few weeks that it's hard to figure out where to start.  And unfortunately, I've only got a few pictures from work to post.  I'm going to try and be brief since I need to get to bed.

I finished up a big restoration contract at work; at least the tough work is done.  The only thing left is to plant a thousand willow saplings, but I'll probably try and do an "office planting day" or something like that in order to get it all done in a timely manner.

I ripped up the entire front garden which was planted with crappy little one-bloom-wonder plants.  I split apart a huge cluster of day lilies and made four smaller day lily clusters and still had enough bulbs to bring and share with a guy from work.  After ripping up all the crap, I tilled and mulched the soil and then planted 75 daffodil bulbs and 32 iris bulbs!

Yesterday I ripped up two of the back gardens and tilled and mulched the soil.  I planted 15 Tahitian daffodils and 15 pink daffodils back there.  I also drained the fountain for the winter since all the fall leaves were starting to plug the filter.

I figured out that the underground sprinkler system isn't pressurized, so I'm not going to worry about insulating sprinkler lines or flushing the system.  I've talked to some neighbors and they don't worry about it either.

With Dohnele's help, I hung a peg board in the tool shed for all of our gardening tools.

Hopefully I mowed the lawn for the last time this season a few days ago.  Dohnele and Emma have been madly raking leaves trying to stay on top of things.

Dohnele's mom and youngest sister have been visiting for the past couple weeks during which time we've spent a day in Medford, a day in Eugene and two days in Portland shopping and seeing the sites!  Portland was especially fun; we got together with Dohnele's brother, Josh, and we went to Voodoo Doughnuts and a few other great places to eat.  The shopping was good, but exhausting.  Among the highlights was a marble rolling pin that I bought for $9.99 (should have been closer to $40!)  We also finally got to the zoo which was OK; not nearly as good as the Seattle Zoo, but still fun for Emma and Juleah.  We also went to the Farmer's Market at Portland State University which was fun to see since all the fall squash were on display.

Fall weather has started in earnest; lots of rain and cool nights.  Tonight the snow level is actually supposed to drop to 2,000 feet!  I doubt we'll see anything around here though.  While we wait for the white stuff, we've been spending plenty of evening snuggled down around our fireplace enjoying its warmth while we watch movies!

We've been having fun cooking lots of tasty gourmet meals for everyone, but really can't wait for Thanksgiving in Spokane.  Personally, I can't wait for time off.  I've got a lot of assignments due at work, so I've been spending a fair bit of time in front of the computer typing up reports.  It's not a bad bit of work, but tedious at times.

Last Thursday at work, on a field tour, I managed to lock the keys in the rig.  It's one of those new, fancy rigs that automatically locks the doors of the vehicle after you close the door.  I had left the keys in the ignitions and only walked 20 feet away to look at a culvert and the truck locked us out.  Fortunately, one of the guys had his cell phone and was able to call dispatch and have a second set of keys driven out to us.  That particular field tour was originally to show a bunch of soil scientists and hydrologists the recovery of a big landslide that happened about 15 years ago on steep, unstable ground that the BLM had clearcut.  It was a great day, beautiful scenery as we were high above the North Umpqua River, far from any paved roads.  The whole area was very unstable and there were lots of landslides originating at roads and in clearcuts.

Things are also looking up that I may get the position of statewide representative for the Roseburg BLM and a human resources development committee.  Only a dozen people from across the state sit on the committee and I'm trying to represent Roseburg.  There are two other people who I'm competing against, but I heard back this morning from my supervisor that he and another manager put in really good recommendations to the district manager on my behalf, so I'll keep you posted!

It's been a super busy past ten days!  As soon as the grandparents left, Dohnele's dad showed up for ten days of riding his Harley all over the state (well over 1,000 miles in a week).  When he wasn't riding his bike, he was helping around the house.  He and Dohnele painted the garage floor, him and I installed two new shop lights in the garage and hung an eight-foot section of peg board.  He patched an old outlet opening in the garage and changed the lights in our ceiling fan (we literally looked everywhere for the right lightbulb).  Seriously, try finding a 25-watt nightlight-style bulb!

The day that Dohnele's dad flew out of Eugene, we had to leave the house at about 4am in order to get him to the airport on time.  Since it was so early and we were already an hour north of town, we just kept driving to Yakima to visit my grandparents.  Of course we hit Portland right at lunch hour which was lame, but didn't completely stop.  Since we had all gotten up at about 3am, we had to stop along the Columbia River to take a nap which was nice.
We spent a couple fun days with the grandparents - mostly because it was Grandpa's birthday!  Hopefully Emma didn't exhaust them too much.  In the highlights of that trip we went to lunch at Poochies which is the tastiest hot dog stand in the world!  We also went to a few produce stands which had amazing corn, peaches, apples, pears, tomatoes, onions and pumpkins.  We filled the back of the car with that stuff.  On the drive back to Sutherlin we spent some time at the Columbia River Gorge south of Goldendale investigating the mass quantities of new wind-energy mills.  There were so many more that have been built in just the last year; many are being built right now.  It's amazing how big these things are when you're up close and personal.  The bases of each tower are about 12-15 feet in diameter!  I convinced a security guard that I needed to get right up to one to take pictures which was really neat.
Also on the drive back we stopped off in Portland to visit a friend of mine from high school who know runs an optometry clinic in the Alphabet District.  We'd never been to that part of Portland before and it was amazing!  All sorts of small, but upscale boutiques and eateries.  We went to Moonstruck Chocolate which was expensive, but amazingly delicious.  I would highly recommend the Mayan Truffle (check out the lineup)!  Then we went downtown to Romano's Macaroni Grill which was one of the nicest restaurants we've been to.  An excellent balance of affordability, kid-friendliness, quality service and dang good food!  We finished up at Papa Haydn - a fantastic dessert shop where we had some incredible cake.  Emma was having sooooo much fun, but we were disgustingly full by the time we were done (in a good way).

Then last night we had a handful of friends down from Portland and Corvallis for a BBQ which was really fun.  We cooked a ton of food on the grill and slowly ate away at it all night long.  We cooked up Swiss beer bratwurst, smoked beer bratwurst, jalapeno-mango sausage, corn on the cob, beer-can-chicken, potato salad and a mushroom-squash medley with a teriyaki marinade.  After our loooooong dinner we spent the rest of the evening playing cards and catching up (we all went to Utah State University together and worked together up in Alaska for a bit).

Today we're just relaxing and doing little indoor projects since it's only 50 degrees outside and has been raining off and on all day.  Back to work tomorrow.  Ick.  OK, not really "ick," but I'd still rather be enjoying a weekend!  Fall colors are starting to show, there's always fog in the morning and I can see my breath at night!  Here comes fall and winter I guess!