Home Looks Great

Who doesn't like gravel?

OK, so lots of people don't.

It does look a lot nicer than tall grass growing up the side of the house and rotting the outside wood. 

No one likes rotten porch rail either

So its now repaired and painted with a fresh white coat

And the floor is clean and treated

Inside the house I took down Uncle Mels blanket and put my favorite horse picture up on the mantle, Its called 

Morning At Lumahai Beach by Kim Star

I need to vacuum the bricks and clean the fireplace

And the driveway is about 20% bigger now that Lan has cut the grass off the asphalt. We knew it was a bit bigger but in the 4.5 years we've lived here we never bothered to clear it off. Now its all spiffy.

Took this yesterday morning and sad that my phone didn't get the actual colors of this BEAUTIFUL sunrise. It was blue & gray and the cloud made it so we could look directly at the sun for a minute.

I'm going to miss this when we move.

Aw, here's Gussy. It had rained on him a bit and I had just spent and hour giving him a spa treatment. He just GLOWS with good health.

It was so good to have quiet time with him. He was nice and calm and enjoyed it. He didn't call out to the other horses and paid attention to me.

I haven't been able to spend much quality time with him with Soren here because he is so loud, he runs in the barn, screams, makes a ruckus. The other day he chased Gus out of the arena and made Gus slip on the concrete & hurt his legs. I was pretty fucking mad since I had JUST told him NO RUNNING in the barn. Sent the kid into the house screaming.

Gus has a muzzle he wears when hes out on the pasture but he got it off twice while in the back pasture so I've been leaving him in the barn in a run with a little grass in it. Tomorrow I'll leave the big horses in the middle pasture and hope no one does anything stupid.

I emptied the water trough in the front pasture yesterday and it had an inch of sludge in the bottom of it. Tomorrow I'll scrub it all out and refill it. Its so icky I don't know if the horses were even drinking out of it. There were two 6" gold fish in there a month ago, they were 4 years old but gone now. I'm sure that was local raccoons; little assholes.

Soren

Soren is 7 1/2 years old and he is staying here for the summer. 

He is my great nephew, grandson of my twin brother.

His mom has to work a lot so I get to spend massive amounts of time with him.

I'm trying to make this a memorable time and Lan & I both hope he leaves here happy and with great stories to tell. 

Here I had him help groom the horses. Every day he enjoys helping to turn the horses out to pasture and its now his job to turn the chickens out and give them their scratch.

Last week we went to Waterman Dock to look for the Orcas that were in the vicinity & while we didn't find them, he still made a monkey out of himself.

Soren likes Spiderman so when we went to the dollar store we picked up a Spiderman kite and he learned how to fly it. I should take him back down to the dock, it was perfectly windy there. Here, it would blow every different direction so he ended up running with it.

But it flies.

On Sunday, June 30, 2019

the might ferry M/V Hyak ran her last crossings Bremerton-Seattle so I made arrangements for us to go up into the wheelhouse and visit with Captain Steve. It was SO MUCH FUN and all of us got a chance to drive the ferry.

WE DROVE THE FERRY!!  

And Soren got to blow the horn.

This next photo is cool because just as Steve let go of the telegraph, Soren accidently moved it & a chime sounded, in the wheelhouse and in the engine room. We all gasped in surprise, Soren was scared & almost cried but Steve just communicated for them to disregard. Then we all laughed.

We got him a bike. 16" used, perfect. 

Lan built him a jump.

Then we got him a new bike and its perfecter.

Today he & I went out to Banner Forest and had a blast riding tails.

If we have enough warm sunny days, we can go for more rides in the 65 Mustang. 

We've got about 5-6 weeks until he goes back to Minnesota to live with dad for the school year. I wonder how many more really cool things we can do until then?

36 Hours To Montana

At 6pm June 27th, 2019 we headed out on a quickie trip to Montana to check out that house we like.

We stopped in Coeur d'Alene at midnight and with arrangements to meet the realtor at 1pm we had time for a side trip to Cataldo Mission. It was beautiful outside and inside the buildings

Some of these photos are from the two previous times we were there but I only took 153 this time so had to borrow.

This triangular shape building is technically a fruit cellar I think but for shits & giggles I call it the UNDER GROUND BUNKER.

 The owner used it for storing paint and it doesn't have built in shelves. I does have a drain in the floor but the floor is still damp/wet. 

Going down...

It was about 70* outside and a good 20* cooler inside

It measures approximately 8' X 8'. If we could find a way to get it dry inside, I think adding a bunk bed on the back wall and maybe a teensy chair & table + overhead bare bulb light would be fun. I think people would pay for spend the night there.

The Columbine & Iris along the front side of the house are beautiful

We took a hike up to the top of the ridge on the back of the property and kept finding jaw bones.

Not entire skeletons, just jaw bones.

Many, many jaw bones.

Like 50 jaw bones.

This awesome gate blocks the road so not just anyone can drive on it. It goes through our the property and winds up the hill to the ridge.

This is the view up there, pretty amazing.

We followed the road to its natural end, at our the neighbors house.

This is the view of the front pasture from his place.

And this is the view from the road at the corner down from the entry gate.

We took John Henry with us and she must have run about 10 miles. I know she went farther than I did and I got more than my 10,000 daily step goal.

She was one tuckered out girl.

We returned home Friday night just before midnight.

We are more than ever ready to move and have been packing more boxes. Lan thinks we're 2 weeks away from listing our house & making another offer to the owner.

Annual Pass

Mount Rainier in 2001

Mount Rainier 2019

We bought an annual pass to the National Parks

Took a wonderful trip there today with the hubs

And it IS PARADISE

The Lodge is beautiful. I want to stay there someday

Reflection lake is beautiful. If it were a clear sunny day in western Washington we'd have seen the mountain in it.

Took a short hike and found this

Kitchen Finished

We've been working on the kitchen for a couple months now and today it is 

FINISHED.

My brother helped install the range fan/vent yesterday

We saved $1,200 by putting the tiles up ourselves. 

See that little cabinet on the far side of the stove? 

It doesn't match but we needed that exact size and Habitat For Humanity had it 

& it looks pretty dang close to our other cabinets.

This is the view people will see when they are walking into the house.

This was the view 2 years ago

This is the first time I ever saw the kitchen

Nope To HGTV

We decided to not use the HGTV lady to sell our home & not have it on the show. She was too pushy and didn't know enough about equestrian properties. She had zero interest in the Comfort Stall matts, didn't care about the quality of the stalls nor the barn itself. She looked at it but didn't 'care' about it. I want someone to sell my farm that loves it for what its worth and brings a buyer that will also love it for what it is, an equestrians dream.

Today I had an appointment in Woodinville for the deposition for the accident that happened 5 days after IMAZ when I was in the back seat of the car, an innocent passenger. We spent ALL DAY getting to & back from Woodinville & the fucking attorneys didn't have any record of my appointment. FUCKERS. This is the second time they have screwed up; last time was March 29th & they called me while I was in Idaho & said the attorneys were all there waiting for me to show up. The letter they sent me said MAY 29TH and when I got home I found it & called them back. Fuckers didn't even apologize for screwing up. If there is another screwup of any kind, I'm going to get another lawyer & if they try to make me pay them 1 red cent, I'll sue them for being incompetent. Fucking idiots.

The kitchen tile work is all finished, now we're finishing installing the plug ins & dimmer switch. We still have the hood fan to install too and then it will be finished.

Since my niece is here there have been a few changes. Shes got the cool room with the nice barn door closet. Now her son, my great-nephew, is coming soon too. She hasn't done a damn thing for him, she thought he would just sleep in her room with her in her bed. But hes 7.5 years old & boys that big don't sleep with their moms, they need privacy and a place of their own to play. She hasn't gotten him any toys nor bought him any new clothes. She seems to think his dad is going to bring ALL his toys & clothes here with them in an electric car with the step mom & step sister but I am thinking he going to have a grocery bag of dirty clothes & thats it.

I found this free captains bed & went & picked it up, then last night Lan & I put it together. He had to fix a bent nail & glue a broken piece of wood. I also had to go pick up the mattress. I spemt $287 on Spider Man sheets & a blanket, plus another blanket, Spidey beach towel and several more shirts & pants. I'm got about 10 toys for him, a few cars & trucks, some legos, a couple other things.

He needs a lamp, a toy box, more toys, new undies and I NEED to remove that window blind & find something different. Kids & blinds with strings don't go together.

I'm trying to make arrangements for him to go to a week of summer day camp. My friend Tina has a horse day camp for kids & that might be fun for him. 

HGTV Shows

I was on FB last week and LIKED a post about a TV show

 selling homes in our area & they called me last week. 

This morning the realtor, Courtney McClasky called & set up a time for her to come out & see our farm and possibly film it for the show. 

She want's to film this week.

Um...

We aren't ready to film anything, the house is full of our junk.

The kitchen countertops are being tore out this week and new quarts being installed Friday and most of the house is dusty from this. 

The wall mount stove exhaust fan is in the box, needs to go up.

Plus just our junk, everywhere. I'd need a POD right this MINUTE to full with the crap.  

I don't even have boxes yet!

The outside is looking good because I had a gardener come over & weed the flowerbeds & put down beauty bark. Lans been working his ass off to get all the junk gotten rid of & burnt a huge pile of brush. He removed one wall of the old barn & its now an equipment shed. 

I do have a few new plant pots I borrowed from friends that I'm going to put plants in & use as curb appeal. Once the house sells I'm going to give the pots back with the flowers inside. 

IN OTHER NEWS: 

We put in an offer on the Montana farm but haven't heard back yet. I doubt the owner will accept it; he was asking $475, dropped it to $350k and we offered $320k, 

contingent on the inspection and our farm selling.