Seasonal Greetings

 Winter starts tomorrow.

Three days later it's Christmas Eve.

One day later it's Christmas.

Five days later its New Years Eve, aka our Anniversary.

One day later its New Years 2026 Day.

Two days later we fly to Las Vegas.

One day later we drive to Palm Springs.

Two days later we drive back to Las Vegas, catch a plane and come back home.

135 days later our vacation begins and we SHOULD be hauling Ambleside to Hyak & North Bend area to begin my bucket list ride across the state. If she or I am not ready then we will be hauling the truck & sxs down to Pioche for a nice three week long vacation.

Busy times ahead.

Another Year Older

and deeper in debt.

I turned 63 years old yesterday.

I've never been so far in debt in my entire life; first ever brand new car payment, a second home that's a total rehab, medical bills like I've never had before and a horse in very expensive training.

But the brand new car is our truck and its a tool much needed on the farm. We've hauled/pulled trailers more miles than without, its got 4x4, A/C that works, 4 doors for ease of access, 12 cup holders and already its got 10,000 miles. 

Our second house, in Pioche, Nevada

And medical issues

Ambleside is now ridable but I have to upgrade my tack to go forward. 

The house is coming along, the truck is holding its own, my belly is all better and Amble needs a few tack changes before I can attempt to ride again. Her bit isn't big enough, she needs a 6" and her saddle needs to fit better.  I had a gal, a trainer, come give her a lesson and she got bucked off. I thought it was her just asking too much too fast, now I think maybe the saddle hurt or the bit pinched. 

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

 

When Is Our Next Vacation?

 Our next vacation is in January 2026, when we will drive down to middle California to meet up with Michelle & Guy, our England friends. They will be on their own vacation, in Cali for a few days after a week in Maui and before they return to Gateshead, England.

They go on a couple very extravagant vacations each year.

Guy is an engineer, and Michelle owns a pub; she's also an interior designer so everything she touches turns to gold. I'd LOVE to have her pick the finishing touches for our Pioche house.

This is their guest bathroom.

Vacation Days

 I keep thinking all my time off for the year has been taken but then more and more things come up. Yesterday we got an invitation to go to a family gathering on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Centralia with Lans dads family, then last night Lan told me his dad invited us to go Merrys house for Thanksgiving, and Lan agreed, telling me after I got home from work. 

I just want to be home. I don't want to go to work but I must, so I go. Right this minute I'm sitting here thinking about going back to bed but that's not happening either, since I have to get into the shower in 15 minutes. 

I have a part time shift at work right now with Thursdays and Fridays off, so Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas and New Years Day, all the holidays off. That's great, till I WANT the extra pay to pay bills and have enough to save for expenses and feed us. I'll have to find out what time Merry is thinking about having Thanksgiving and if its later int he day I could work a morning shift then COMP the free 10 hours of holiday pay to use at a later date.

In January we're going to be driving to California to meet up with Michelle and Guy and I'm excited for that, just a few days to mess around. 

I've got May 21st through June 13th, 2026 off for the cross state ride, a bucket list item for me. If I can't do that ride, I'll haul my mare with me down to Pioche and ride her in the desert.

Last night after work I went to a meeting with the 40 Something Cowgirls and they couldn't stop talking about how much everyone loves this one guy who lives in eastern Washington and is the best trainer and we should go to the cowgirl camp they have there mid-summer and only costs $1,600.  Right. I need a local trainer I can haul to that doesn't cost hundreds just so I can learn how to make my mare move forward. I don't know if this group is going to be right for me.

A Trip To Whistler, Canada

We've been invited to visit our cousins in Whistler, Canada for Thanksgiving for many years and we were finally able to make it there.

On the way up we stopped at the Britannia Mine and took the tour and it was pretty good. They do a 70 minute live guided tour in a haulage tunnel, then into the big mine building where they have a cute video with things happening inside the building, like the whistle goes off, a large trolly goes up these rails and steam and sparks fly.

This building is huge. They stopped mining here in 1971 and within a couple years they opened it up for tours, mostly for the kids to learn about mining.

They use a lot of the original tools and machinery, this train being one of them.

This is where we came out. I didn't take any photos inside.

After the tour we headed to the Hilton in Whistler for our 2 night stay.

We shared a room with Kari & Eldon; their 'kids' Joli and Jason were both there with their spouses and a bunch of kids.

These are Winter and Anna, Lan and baby Louie.

Louie is dang cute!

There was a bunch of family drama which made me a bit uncomfortable.

Kari is VERY self centered and easily angered and she just couldn't let it go, meanwhile Jasons wife couldn't let it go on her side either.

So Kari had made plans for her birthday with 3 of her friends to go to a resort for Karis birthday. Joli and Gelaine had made plans for a double baby shower since they both had new baby boys but they didn't invite Kari till 2 days before. Kari told them she had plans and she went with her friends, not to the shower so Gelaine was butt hurt and Joli was a little too.

The kids all think Kari is having an affair because she goes off on weekends alone often and never invites any of them. Kari says shes tired of having the little kids coming to her door all the time since Joli and her husband & their 3 kids live on Kari & Eldons farm.

Whatever it is, they all need to get over it. If Kari and Eldon have issues, its up to them to figure it out, not their kids.

We did have a good time, I got to hold the babies, they bigger kids we all super loud and obnoxious, the food was good. I did dishes a lot. 

After we got tired of being there, we left to come home but drove up toward the Olympic Park, which was closed, but we got to enjoy this sign.

It took a couple hours to get to the border and we came right through, then a few more house to get home. 7 hours to get all the way home with stops for food etc.

This is ALWAYS a good thing to see.

Lan wants to go back next year but I'm not so sure about that. Kari is high maintenance, shes a bully to her own kids and their families and the drama isn't how I liked spending my time. My PTO from work isn't easy to earn and wasting it on this crap is no fun. 

 

 

Another visit to our Pioche House

Here is our 'lovely' house in Pioche as we pulled up to it at almost midnight. 

We're both surprised that solar light is holding up. It's always on at night on a dim setting but as soon as it sees movement, it gets brighter.

Heres the front yard, growing a good bunch of tumbleweeds, there were about 50 bajillion of the dang things around the house. Lan said he's just spray them, but I wanted them gone as they are a terrible fire hazard. 

So, I pulled them by hand. 

We took at least 4 truckloads of them to the dump and that wasn't even all of them. I pulled them for a couple hours at least every other day, my hands were so sore.

Lan did work on the basement, installed LED lights, we got it cleaned up, he moved the freshwater line from the right side of this area to the left, attached some of the new PEX lines to it and has a distribution board set up and attached to the wall. We'll need a new water heater soon, even if we can't use it yet.

This is the old water heater and the pipes under the kitchen area of the house. This stuff is all going to be removed eventually.

This is going from the 'finished' part of the basement to the stairs that go to the house. The bright spots and open to the outside, so vermints can get in.

Since we're now making a truck payment, we don't have tons of cash to throw at this house, so we had plenty of time to explore. This was Condo or Condor Valley and it did not disappoint!

Brian Head in Utah was gorgeous with the fall colors.

I love Aspen trees

Another day we were trying to get back home before the storm came in but got a flat. Rain ended up getting us pretty wet.

This is inside the Jackrabbit Tunnel, last time we were there we only went to this deck area, we didn't go down the ladder. Down here there are SO MANY cool places to go.

Next time we plan on going much, much farther down that ladder, it goes about 50 feet farther before we couldn't see it anymore.

This isn't the best photo but here is a male tarantula I almost stepped on when I was entering a mine. I ended up screaming like a little girl and didn't go into that mine.

As we were getting packed up to come home, this happened. To the brand new truck, didn't even have 7600 miles on it yet. It was an accident.

Before we were 100 miles away from Pioche, Mora had found another tailgate for sale in Portland, Oregon so we went there on the way home & bought it for $300.  It's also from a brand new 2025 truck so matched perfectly.

Heres the leaving Pioche photo. I hope someday I'll have the opportunity to stay longer & not have a set date to leave.