How do we start the New Year in Idaho? Well, there are icycles and snow of course, but then the greatest treat of them all: the Great New Year's Eve Idaho Potato Drop. Eat your heart out, Times Square. We've got the Great Potato.
Spring Spring is the time to fix everything that's broken in the last six years.
The Great Irrigation Ditch Wars of 2022 Reclaiming the irrigation ditch from its rush to go back to the wilds of cattails and wild roses. aka Bill gets to play with matches
The Year of the Pump
It was a tough year to be a pump at our house as they failed and were replaced one after another in a seemingly endless procession: in March the truck's fuel pump, in May the irrigation ditch pump, and in July the travel trailer water pump. What's next? What genius decided that it was a good idea to install the fuel pump of a pickup truck in the gas tank and then bolt the bed of the truck down on top of it so that accessing the pump requires major disassembly of the vehicle? Who, I say, who? Strong letter to follow. Fortunately we had Shirley's mighty finger to quickly and easily re-install the truck shell when the pump replacement was complete so the job wasn't as rigorous as it might have been.
Summer
The highlight of our summer, maybe of the year, was a family retreat in July with our son, daughter and three of our four grandsons in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. Good times.
That's the third generation of our family to paddle off in the good old Blue Canoe. In the center is Riley discovering for the first time that she can swim... and she likes it. On the right, Kristin looks on as Erich fishes for dinner.
Erich, Luke and Kurt (and Riley, Milo, and Phoebe) enjoy dinner from Erich's mobile galley.
Kristin and Hudson prepare for campfire time.
Erich, Shirley & Phoebe explore the Mud Lake flat.
Then came August.
The cake and the dinner that came with it almost made it worthwhile to have a birthday but that number, oh, that number...
Autumn
In October we re-visited a long-time favorite lake in the Salmon River Mountains north of Boise for a few days to unwind and tuck "our" lake in for the winter. .
...and now, once again, it's Christmas time and we are home doing inside things as the landscape outside has turned white once more. It's been a good year, all things considered, and we are feeling fortunate and blessed to be warm, comfortable and healthy as we read our books, watch our movies and play our music.
Fortunately we had Shirley's mighty finger to quickly and easily re-install the truck shell when the pump replacement was complete so the job wasn't as rigorous as it might have been.
