Kitchen Dreams

I'd LOVE to have our kitchen end up nice and bright like any of these  

I like the white subway tile and our sink will be below a large window

Our kitchen will be all along a wall, not U shaped like this

I wish for a propane stove

I love these old wooden beams

The high shelving would be useful, IF I have a ladder to get up there

I do not want upper cabinets, I want minimal stuff in the house, since its so small.

Booked Flights

 Back in October I purchased the Frontier Airlines 

Go Wild Pass

for Lan & I, at $300.00 each. I figure if we fly once it would already be saving us money & today I purchased round trip tickets from SeaTac - Las Vegas for $126 in total, saving $63 by using their promo code. YAY. If I had been thinking I'd have had us leaving a day earlier so we could go get the rental car and drive up to Pioche, spending that night and the next at our house.  I tried to change the flights but its a $100 fee, making the savings moot. So no Pioche this trip unless we get the car & drive straight 2 hours up there, sleep, do anything around the house we need to do quickly and leave again, on a 7 hour drive to Palm Springs. That's totally do able.

We're flying out January 3 and returning January 6. 

Michelle & Guy arrive January 4 and continue on to Hawaii on January 6. 

We will have about 36 hours to spend with them and it will be a great time. I'm so thankful they invited us to meet up with them and hope & pray its not the last time we will ever see them but that's what I thought when we left England in 2019.

Now I can look for a place to spend the night that's inexpensive...

Planning

I'm planning my 2026 and it includes learning how to drive my mare.

Ambleside has had 6 months of professional training by people who know what they're doing but unfortunately I live 200 miles away from them so it wasn't easy to go there for MY lessons. 

So I've made arrangements for MY lessons with a local gal, Stephanie. She's actually the first person who let me drive her own pony and is the one who got me hooked. Our first lesson will be her coming here to check out my harness, to teach me more about it and tell me what kind of parts I need (tugs, I think) and what I might need for the cart. I also have the wagon and I'll need to make sure I've got the correct attachments for that as well.

This is my harness but in these photos I wasn't 100% sure how to fit it to Amble. Our trainer, Will, made it fit correctly and he is the one who pointed out what is missing.

Also for 2026, I'm going to be taking riding lesson as well and those are starting this week, 

December 5, 2025 with another local lady, Liza, who will come to our farm to teach me. I'm pretty sure I've got all the gear I need but I hope if there's anything I'm missing that she can tell me about it. 

This photo was taken before I cleaned the saddle. Its old and beat up but after all the saddles I tried on her, this is the best fit. Maybe we can upgrade in the future but for now I'm happy enough with it.

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More travel plans have been thought about: traveling to Palm Springs in January.  It is now cheaper to fly into Las Vegas and rent a car than it is to drive our own car down there, plus gives us a LOT more time with Michelle & Guy. 

 

Palm Springs in Winter

In January we will drive to Palm Springs & meet our friends, Michelle & Guy, there. 

They are staying at Arrive

We will stay somewhere like Motel 6.

I'll be looking for Marilyn.

You can pay $37 each adult to ride the tramway to the top of the mountain from town, 

or you can pay $43 for dinner up there with a free tram ride.

We're going to be speeding down there & back again, as we only have 3 guaranteed days off and its 20 ish hours drive time each way. They arrive on the 4th into LAX and we will leave home on the 3rd. The price of gas in California is higher than Washington and its going to take up most of our funds.

Michelle & Guy will continue their trip and head to Hawaii when we head home. 

There is never a good time to take a trip that someone else is planning part of.

 

Next Mini Vacation

 January 3-6, 2026, We will be heading south to Palm Springs, California to meet up with Michelle & Guy, our friends from England. It's going to be so much fun to see them again. I originally met Michelle when I worked at Camp Seymour when we worked in the kitchen. Since then its been a visit here or there.

Next Trip

 We've got 3 weeks of vacation next May-June and we have several choices of what we'll do:

1. Ride Amble on the John Wayne train cross state BUCKET LIST ITEM

2. Go work on Pioche house

3. Travel anywhere and do whatever happens

4. Stay home & save money

5. 

1. I've been wanting to ride Amble (had planned on Joey but that didn't happen) cross the state for eons and now I actually have the means to do it. I've got the horse, she's trained and will get more training before then, I have a job that pays me well enough to afford it, we have the truck and horse trailer and there are the John Wayne Trail folks who put this event on every year. I have two choices, ride or drive her since I've got the covered wagon.

2. If we choose working on the Pioche house it will be that much closer to being livable. We could rent the excavator and get the bathroom, utility room and kitchen removed and a new exterior wall put up. We'd need (guessing) the excavator for 3-4 days at about $300 daily, new exterior siding and the wood to make the walls, building plans, patience and so much more. I don't even know all the stuff needed for this job. You don't just go knocking down sections of a house and not foresee issues. What if we accidently knock down the entire house? 

3. If we choose to travel, I'd like to go see parts of North America that we haven't seen before. Driving along the Trans Canadian Highway might be fun, or all along I-90 from beginning in Seattle to the end in Boston, or travel more of the mid west. The options are endless.

4. Staying home... hhhmmm... We could still go do daily trips, go to Mt Rainier or the Olympics, go on some trail rides. There are so many things we haven't done in our own state. Staying home allows us to repair fences, work on cars, house repairs, visiting family.

5. I could simply leave it up to Lan and see what happens. 

Loss

Joey

Layin Down The Law

April 15. 1996 ~ October 31, 2025

My best boy