Christmas photo's

Susan, Payton, Mark's mom Karen and Mark

Payton and Emily

Mom and Dad

David and his soon to be bride Mara

Mike and Amy-

-I'm so disappointed in my Christmas pictures, The picture of Mike and Amy and the kids in front of the tree didn't turn out....Amy's eyes were closed. Tucker I only got 2 pictures of him and neither are very good. Okay the are awful. I tried, to get good pictures, but I ended up with the back of heads, or they would put up a hand.
Maybe I should just post the bad pictures....that'll teach em.

Exploring with Kelly

On Christmas Eve we go exploring with Gary's daughter Kelly, (last year I fell in a creek) the picture above has nothing to do with the outing, but how cool is it to see this going down the freeway.

Gary and one of his daughters

This year we took a drive to Hagerman to see the frozen water falls. There are thousands of them....maybe not, but that is the name of the area.

Have a Merry Christmas

Sunday, Gary needed to get away. He was tired of dealing with plumbing problems (the plumber comes tomorrow) he was tired of the fog. So we went in search of the sun. We headed out highway 95 and 7 miles from Oregon we left the fog.

So we took the ATV's for a winter drive. I wasn't sure I was up for the cold, but it wasn't so bad. It was a short ride only 16 miles round trip but it was worth the effort.

Time to go home, back to the fog.

Payton's 1st Birthday

Yesterday was Payton's first Birthday. Her mommy made her a cake. I think Susan did a great job. Payton had her first piece of cake last night...I forgot my memory card so I didn't get a picture of that.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY--CUTIE

She's not so sure about the hat.

RAINING IN THE GARAGE

Yep, it was raining in the garage, well sort of. We have a hose hooked up to the water system, the water system that keeps everything it touches from turning orange, and smelling like sulfer. Gary uses the hose to wash the Land Cruiser and the ATV's. He rolled it up and brought in the garage...he left it hooked up. I'm thinking the hose and squirter nozzel might have been frozen in the on postion, because last night we heard water running and finally figured out it was coming from the garage, water was everywhere, that squirter works just fine. Then this morning, more water problems, this time, it was the lack of water. Something froze up (maybe due to the soaking it got last night). Gary used his heat gun and we got our water back. Which is a good thing, right? Maybe not. Because tonight our kitchen sink over flowed. Water running everywhere. The water system, does some sort of cleaning action and runs water thru the kitchen sink drain, unless the drain has a clog, then it just fills the sink and runs all over the floor. It took pretty much every towel we have to clean it up. But it could be worse. Yep a lot worse.

Christmas at the Orchard House

The Orchard House decorates the garden

They Invite Clyde the Camel

Then they invite everyone to come and share the fun. I Love the camel and I'm pretty sure he loves me too. However, the camel licked Tucker, so Tucker thinks the camel likes him the best.

Mrs. Santa takes pictures and then e-mails them to you----grandma takes pictures too!

Payton didn't like Santa, she refused to sit on his lap, she liked the camel better than santa. I had a lot of fun and I'm going back on Sunday and taking my parents. And this time the batteries in my camera won't die.

Oh Great!

Do you like my Fall Layout?..............you better, because I can't figure out how to change it to a Christmas layout. You'd think if I could change my layout to Fall I could put on a Christmas or winter scene, but no. I was clicking on buttons the other day, and now I notice I have ads on my blog.......I guess they (whoever they are) don't realize that I have about 4 people that read my blog.
It's really cold in Idaho, it is expected to reach 18 degrees tomorrow. BRRRR. Oh did I mention we are going to a neighborhood ---Diner, Drive in, or Dive. I can say that because that guy...Guy from the TV show came to visit the restaurant. Anyway they go all out for Christmas, they put up lots of lights in their garden and bring in a Santa, and they have a camel and a bon-fire.... but still...brrr. Well anyway I guess we are going to go and check it out, Amy and Mike and the kids and Mark and Susan and Payton, and Gary and I. Brrr.

THE BLUES

I have been feeling sad, depressed, blah, blue. When Gary feels like this he says he feels DULL. I thought I was coming down with something. I figured it out, not sure why it took so long, but I pretty much start feeling this way every November and I don't start feeling better until spring. I'm Sun deprived. Going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark, I guess that means I need to spend my lunch hour outside whenever the sun shines brrrrrr.
Dear God: how about a fog/inversion free winter, please.

Payton's Last First

Susan was feeling a little sad this Thanksgiving---because, she said that this was Paytons last 1st Holiday. Susan started scrapbooking after Payton was born and has enjoyed scraping all of Payton's firsts. I did remind her that Payton had one more 1st coming up----her 1st birthday.

By Special Request

Gary Asked me to post more pictures of the Moab area. I tried to e-mail them to his friends, but for some reason I just couldn't get the e-mail to send. So here are a few more.

We had a Great Time

I deleted this photo, by mistake as I was writing the story of our trip. I love this eagle rock so I needed to put it back on the blog. Also wanted to let you know that, I'm taking ATV pictures with a new camera a small (deck of cards small) Panasonic Lumix 5X zoom 12 mega pixels. I'm not used to it yet, I haven't even read the manual. So I had a few pics that needed to be deleted. I can't take my big camera any more, it needs to be kept in the case, in an ATV bag that has a zipper and velcro and snaps. So many times It is just too much trouble to get it out. This little camera can be kept in a pocket.

The first thing that Gary and I did when we got to Moab is buy a trail guide. "ATV Trail Guide Moab, UT" by Charles A Wells. The trails were marked by Difficulty. I wanted to stay on the easy trails, at least until we found out what

Charles meant by easy, moderate and difficult. The first day we picked out Gemini Bridges.




So, this is the bridges, it looks like one bridge, but when you walk across the top you see there is a crack/hole that turns it into two bridges. We watched 4 or 5 young men/boys (mountain bikers) explore the area, they laid down and looked over the edge, I heard them, talk about jumping the smaller (not that small) opening. They didn't. Moms? Do you know where your kids are?

This is the view from the bridge, looking down into Bull Canyon, another trail from the book. We drove that trail at the end of day 2.

After Gemini Bridges we went looking for Four Arches Canyon. Not sure if we found it, but we did find a nice cool place for lunch. There were patches of snow on the ground.

The second day of riding, we picked another easy route.....well except for the small stretch of moderate. You know the part that goes straight up over rocks, you know the part that seems like you are climbing stairs ----the picture below is the very first part, I didn't get pictures of the rest of the hill climb, cause....I was praying

I wasn't scared. Well there was this one part that made me whine...a lot. Gary finally said we could turn around and go find another trail. Great except that would mean riding back down. So I decided that I would rather go forward, I didn't think it could get worse, and I was right. The next part of the trail was sandy and fun to ride on.

I saw on the map a place called WIPE OUT HILL. I told Gary "we are not going there" but we did. We are not the best map readers. Gary is looking at the trail that crazy people drive their 4-wheel drive trucks and jeeps over.

We watched some dirt bike riders cross this slick rock....we didn't.

The trail that we were on was the Determination Towers trail. My header is a picture of the towers.

We tried to find Tusher Tunnel. We didn't find it but we found this slick rock, and a great photo op.

The next day of riding, was the best. We were lucky that we did our rides in the correct order. We saved the best for last.

It started out on a nice easy, safe, flat and pretty road.

The trail we were on was the Hurrah Pass trail. Gary pulled off to look at the view. This place gave me the creeps, not sure why, it was wide enough.

doesn't look very wide from this view point. See that "V" cut out of the cliff.. near the ATV? Gary said " Oh I didn't see that when I stopped the ATV"

Once we got to Hurrah Pass we had to go down the other side to get to Chicken Corners, the next stop on our ride. I found this part of the trail very scary. Have you ever heard of the ROAD OF DEATH in South America? You should google it. Anyway that's all I could think of.

We took a wrong turn (I told you we're not good with maps) It was a nice ride, until we came to this, I decided to wait at the bottom, Gary decided to turn around and see if we could find the right trail. The end of the trail is Chicken Corners. It has a beautiful view of the Colorado River, and somewhere across the river is Thelma and Louse Point. The ATV trail ends but a hiking trail begins the map says it is a Dangerous hiking trail, the author calls it a daredevil hiking trail. So we had to hike the trail, you know for about 10 feet. Or was that 10 baby steps.

I made Gary stand there, he wasn't crazy about doing it.

View from the hiking trail.

This is a terriable picture but it does show what the hiking trail looks like. See that gray bush, that's where we were standing. There is a black bird sitting on the edge of the rock, the trail goes around under that rock, at least I think it does, I didn't check it out.
We will be going back to Moab, we have a lot more trails to ride.

Bad Luck- Or Good Luck

It might seem like bad luck when someone drives up next to you as you are driving down the four lane highway and points and yells for you to pull over. "Gary, I think you need to stop, there must be something wrong with one of the trailers" Gary gets out to look....the car changes lanes, pulls over and comes back to talk to us. In the mean time Gary comes back to the truck with a strange look on his face and says "It's gone, The ATV trailer is gone" all that is left of the trailer is the tongue and hitch and tool box, we've been dragging them down the highway. The people in the car said the trailer came off about a mile down the road, they also said it came to a stop off the road, that was good luck. So we unhitched the tongue and dragged it further off the road, we turned the truck and 5th wheel around good luck we are on a 4 lane highway. When we got to the atv trailer it was good luck that there was a place wide enough so we were able to pull off. It was good luck that the police officer was already there with the lights blinking warning the on coming cars. It was good luck we had the problem in the small town of Helper Utah. Because everyone was very helpful and kind. The police officer called the tow truck, and couple of guys found the tongue and hitch and picked it up and brought it back to us---how lucky is that. We were lucky to have such a great tow truck driver, he called around and found a place to take the trailer, found someone to weld it back together the next day. We asked him where a RV park was, he didn't just tell us, we followed him to the park. The next day the welder said that the trailer couldn't just be welded back together, it wouldn't be safe. He said it could be fixed,but it would cost a lot more and would take more time. The owner of the repair shop said we could leave the trailer in his back lot, until we came back for it. Gary bought another trailer. (see picture above) and we headed to Moab. See we are pretty lucky................ we feel very lucky that no one was hurt or killed when the trailer broke off. No, we are not lucky, we are blessed.



So far the best part of the trip was seeing these wind machines up close, they were right next to the road in Spanish Forks UT. They are huge. We don't have them in our area of Idaho, the ones we do have are many miles away and up on a bluff.

Trick or Treaters

So far we have had 7 kids come to the door to trick or treat. These are the neighbor's grandkids.

Emily ---Peace!!!

Tucker is GI Joe-from the new movie?

My great nephews

AJ as ....well you know

Patrick as a Mario Brother--Right? I'm not into the video game thing.

Did you know that chickens can drive lawn tractors?

Yes, I know that farmers don't look like Mark and Susan. I used to be a farm wife, never did see a farmer wear overalls-but ..............................Farmers are outstanding in their field.

Cute Chick

So, I came out of the house with the camera to take pics of Payton on the tractor, and I stepped in a hole (Gary had dug out one of the sprinklers) and I fell....no one noticed cause they were watching Payton. So at least I was saved from that embarrassment. But I'm gonna hurt in the morning, wait, I already hurt.