Things that delight me:

1. We have a puppy! She is asleep on the floor and is learning to be good at getting her toys out and entertaining herself. She is getting good at cuddling. She loves hanging out with Grandpa and he seems to like her too. She makes us all feel even more like a full family.

2. I have a job! I have three jobs! Two that are ending and one that is starting. One that is starting that I am excited to do for reasons other than money. One that involves caring for adorable sweet cuddly children, playing outside in the sun, and remembering my mums tales of counting sprinkles for equality.

3. There is food growing in and around our house! My seeds in the Extra-Special-Farm-Room (that still needs a real name) are growing! Little specs of green are visible through the dark dirt. Also, I think Tilly bit off the little green leaves that were starting to show from the potatoes but I have confidence the potato will recover.

4. Tim is working again! And makes more money than me! And probably always will! Tim makes more in a day than I make in a week, which frees me up from doing things just for money and instead because they are fulfilling and hopefully also pay something. It frees me up to use some of my time for money-saving ventures like making and growing rather than strictly earning for which I am very grateful. Tim and his dad are back to working on the Kachink-Kachink getting it for-sale ready and sound like they've made awesome progress in just their first day. Tim says his had is at about 80-90% and all day working he hardly noticed any problems with it.

5. Our house is the family hostel! Over dinner of cod chowder prepared by Joe, we reflected on how nice it is to run the family hostel where all the people we know and love sometimes stop by for a few days and help out around the place and visit while staying in their increasingly familiar room. Joe is here for a while, then in March we look forward to seeing Alice again and in April Mum plans to come down, as well as any other friends in the near future. I think I heard Grandpa continuing to make plans for his friends to visit in the future.

Healing

Yesterday Tim headed to Seattle for his very last physical therapy appointment!!! The physical therapist looked over his hand and decided it was healing nicely and good to go. One more doctors appointment in a few weeks and life will be back to normal after 3 months (currently at 2 1/2) of recovery. The last physical therapy appointment was also the first I've missed, but tag teaming with Tilly worked pretty well - Tim was heading for the ferry right around when I got home from work, so after a quick shower on my part and nap on Tilly's part we were out the door for some errands and the beach. A woman was kind enough to point out the largest jelly fish I have ever seen before Tilly was close enough to find it. Meanwhile, Tim headed out from his doctors appointment in Seattle to meet up with our recently transplanted friend, Zac. It sounds like they had a pretty good time, but I was glad to get my husband back this morning.

Two-foot plus sea creature with dog food heart for rough scale

Speaking of this morning, it started off so badly! I woke up after a full 8 hours of sleep for once and was cleaning up the house before heading out for work. Tilly was hanging out with me while I washed dishes and ran the laundry. I then discovered a terrible design flaw in our kitchen - as I was removing dishes, I bent down to get a plate and stood up, smacking my head firmly on the corner of the cupboard door. Tilly thought she'd come play doctor while I sat on the floor feeling sorry for myself - not helpful! Well, when the pain subsided, it was time to head to work! Wednesday is my busiest day with back to back jobs from 8am to 5pm and a very tight turn around between the two. After all my cleaning efforts, I rushed to get to work before I was too late and managed to make it by 8:07. I flipped on the lights and started putting dog bowls down when Geri, the other employee, walked it. Evidently today wasn't my day after all! Delighted, I hoped back in my truck and headed home for a cookie baking marathon and some errands around the island before my next job.

Over the weekend

Friday I went to my first Whidbey spinning group! Finally, after months of meaning to go, I was free Friday afternoon and motivated to load my spinning wheel into the car and go out. I sort of tried to look up where the meeting was, but didn't find it very easily on the World Wide Web, so I set off in the car with a vague notion that the spinning group was either meeting at a library or senior center. I stopped by a retirement home, where they told me the "senior center" was down the road a ways, so I headed there next only to find musicians all set up for a concert and a very confused receptionist. With senior centers out of the way, I headed back to Freeland to try out the library. The very quiet library with a meeting in the conference room didn't look promising. The librarian informed me there was no spinning at any library she knew of on the island at 11am on a Friday, but opened up her link to the World Wide Web and quickly found the answer I sought; the meeting was in the "library" of the senior living center in town! I managed to arrive right on time back to the first place I went where they showed me to a group of ladies and wheels streaming in and setting up. A kindergarten-sized boy came by and recognized our spinning wheels as something to do with wool and quickly hopped up on my chair and started running my wheel. Amazingly, my yarn was just as thin and consistent with him working the pedals and helping with the draw as I'd been doing on my own. Maybe I'll spin with him again next week.

Over the weekend, Tim helped me set up some seed trays on the counter of my "sheep room" (the funny little windowless room between the house and the shop - I still haven't settled on a proper name for it) with a light to help them get started. I went through my whole seed collection, sorted them by type, and made up a list. I'm ready to start planting now! Though it's January, it's been about on par with many days in a Juneau summer and in 6 weeks or so when the plants are ready to go out side, I'm sure it will be sunny and warm. Our neighbor said we could use her fenced yard to start a garden and our friend Fritz has a roto-tiller we can borrow to get things started. So far, though the seed trays are filled with dirt and laid out under the light, the only thing I've planted is an old potato that was beginning to sprout. Hopefully soon I'll get planting.

We've been taking Tilly on some good outings the last few days; playing hard at the dog park, going on a long run through the woods we me, another dog, and her owner, and today Tim took Tilly on an adventure hike through the woods around our house. When I got home, we jumped in the car to run to the grocery store and when we came out from shopping, Tilly had jumped over the back of the seats and eaten the remaining pound or two of Yummy Chummy dog treats that were in the car. Oh my goodness! So far she has been amazingly not sick and I'm hoping that will keep up. The suggested serving size on the bag said 10 pieces... I'm pretty sure she's set for a month.

Family

Our landlords are our parents, our housemate is our grandpa, and the previous owners are being wonderful aunties to us. I went by to give Heidi and Lani a thank you card and some cookies to thank them for the Christmas present they sent us, only to leave with an arm full of warm sweaters, our picture from the news paper with a frame, and files full of information on the house.

Day off

Well, I didn't get a whole lot of cleaning and such done today, I thought about starting seeds soon but didn't make any moves on that either, but I did go for some lovely walks today including a stroll with Sandy and family and a walk down Double Bluff Beach with Tim and Tilly followed by napping and cookie baking - all in all, a good day! (I think that run-on sentence has proper grammar...) I wish I knew what I did with my sewing machine bobbins. Despite digging through boxes I didn't have any luck uncovering them or I would have done some sewing today.

One Car Family

Wow, I'd like to note that I've broken 100 posts according to my blogging platform. Crazy!

Today I did double-duty on my jobs. This morning, I headed out bright and early for my job at the dog kennel. While at work, I got a call from my grandpa stranded on the side of the road with a broken down car. I took the car because I left the lights on in the truck and it's decided to retaliate by declining to start, though otherwise I don't think Tim's arm is quite ready for truck driving yet, so I swung by the house, picked up the handy mechanical husband, and went to rendezvous with Grandpa then returned for the last of my day at job #1. After work, I made the mad dash home for a quick shower where Tim had hot, delicious and nutritious lunch waiting for me on the table like the hero he is, then Tim drove me to job #2 and dropped me off so he and Grandpa could run the Lexus up to Coupville for some work. After job #2 providing home care finished up, I walked up the street to hop in the car and be whisked out to dinner by the fine men of my house. What a lovely day it ended up being! We've voted and unanimously decided that Grandpa is our favorite housemate to date. Though it would seem we'd be in very different places in our lives, in a lot of ways it feels like we have more in common. Aside from our three old, unreliable vehicles, we all are new here and getting settled in after a big move from a very different life. Tim has been helping Grandpa by checking out his car and Grandpa's been helping us out by looking after Tilly and changing over laundry when he sees it. When Daniel and I were little, I remember us talking about how we wished we could spend more time with Grandpa and get to know him better. I'm so glad I'm getting that time now.

Another room loses the dust

Again, like yesterday, I feel everyone who sees this picture of this couch really aught to be much more impressed than they likely will be. This morning, this room was covered in boxes, and now you will see the organized shelves of camping and ski gear in the closet and the couch has been relocated. I am thinking of hanging more things on the wall tomorrow. One thing did go up on the wall today.

Sunday

I feel like this photo should speak for its self, though I realize logically that is an unreasonable expectation. We've been cleaning! We have been undertaking the massive cleaning operation that is recovering from a month of visitors, a month of doctors visits, two months of living out of a suit case and living in a construction zone with everything we own in one room, two months of all our stuff being in a storage unit in another state, a week or so of frantic packing/cleaning/moving out after putting it off until the last second to try to have some security about our future. That's all in backwards order of course. Our home has gotten more and more ours, more and more livable, every week since September 1st when we arrived. The above picture is our pantry closest to the kitchen which we finished installing shelves in today and got kitchen things, emergency things, extra things, and recycling things all organized. Tim came up with a brilliant plan to move the two couches and foot stool out of our room and into the living room and move the couch and chair from the living room into the back bedroom with the projector and sound system and set up a little home theater in there as well as making two usable guest rooms in our house instead of a storage room and a futon in the glass living room. I am surprisingly excited about this plan and got busy unpacking boxes and hanging up artwork. I'd say the back bedroom there is about half way cleaned out from its previous storage-based existence.

Oh! I almost forgot! This morning, as with most Sunday mornings, Tim and I ducked over to UU where there was a guest speaker from out of town who had great readings but not particularly resonating things to say for us. After the service there was smoked salmon and ginger cookies. As we were milling and socializing, I saw a familiar looking head across the crowd. I have a bit of a history of not recognizing or misrecognizing people, but this morning I put reluctance aside and presented myself. "Are you Gordon?" the man said yes and I quickly introduced myself and that my parents were friends of his when he lived in Juneau long ago. I don't think I've seen this man since I was about 10 years old, but somehow I recognized him out of context and all else. It was great to catch up with another ex-Juneauite and he said his family currently have two milking goats who are bread ever year or two and the little girls are given away and the little boys are eaten. They've also had chickens and turkeys and pigs and ducks in the past and have a beautiful garden. I think they may be an excellent resource for us, particularly when it comes time to have goats and follow suit with milking and breeding and eating.

I normally try not to talk about the future, but just this once I want to give a little summary of what we have planned. Mostly because I am very excited for something in March.

The Future:
This week - Ariel continuing to meet in-home nursing patients.
Next week - Tim will hopefully be at 80%-90% on the hand front and ready to start working on Joe's boat.
Next month - Ariel begins the Master Gardeners program (hopefully) and Joe comes back to help finish up the boat.
March - THE BABY CHICKENS COME!!! (hopefully) Also, Alice will be in and out in March and April.
May - Ariel must be finished with Masters in Teaching and ready to apply for more relevant work.
June - Bristol Bay is looking like it might have a winning fishing season this year.

Direct inverse correlation between number of house guests and frequency of posts.

I think this is the first day I have worked and come home to only Tim, Tilly, and Grandpa. The day had intermittent pouring rain and sunshine meaning I put the dogs out to clean, then had to rush them out of the mud as rain came pouring down. Every time I came in, I left a new set of muddy footprints to mop up, and the owner of the business planed the seed in my head of cleaning the areas that would be darkest in a power outage first. I came home and was glad to curl up on my warm dry couch with hot food and take a long nap.

I woke up to a fuzzy warm puppy curled up next to me and my awesome husband riding circles around our house on our little red mo-ped.

Tim sounds like he and Tilly had a pretty good day. Tim got the brakes working and took it out for a successful test-ride. During the brief appearance of the sun, Tilly and Tim ran down the 150 incredibly slippery steps to the beach and ran the little one out of batteries. What a delight it is to come home to a warm, fuzzy, sleepy puppy and an excited and delighted hubby with a new and improved toy. Oh! And speaking of that husband of mine, his hand is looking so much better! After only one long night and day of torturing his finger straight, it is looking so much better and so improved. His new torture-splint isn't much fun, and the pain-dough wasn't such a delight to play with after all. I think in no time he will be feeling much better and having even better use of his hand. He's already able to ride the bike using left-hand controls, and work with his tools again. Horray for recovery and healing!

On a New Years note, Mom was reminding us of all the changes from last year at this time. A year ago, Tim and I wern't engaged yet and I was fretting away wondering when the day might come. We had given up on getting the Honeymoon house as someone else's offer had been accepted. I was filing in as the middle school Life Skills teacher for the first two weeks of the semester and planning my weaving unit for the Art class. I hadn't yet committed to a litter of puppies for Tilly even! What a year we have had! It is so wonderful to be here now, settled in to this good life that seems so normal and right.

Ps. A while ago, I wrote an entry about the perks of getting a puppy in fall. I'll add to that list that she sleeps when it's dark out so in winter she has trouble staying up till 7pm and is happy to go straight back to bed if I take her out at 7 am. I love my puppy to pieces, but it is nice to have a few quiet, calm hours in the evening without a little one to worry about. If only children had the same 14-hour straight plus naps sleep mechanism, new parents would be delighted, well rested, and minimally stressed.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! and a summary of this last month of holiday business and many visitors

It's been a busy month with family family family! 

Mom, Dad, Daniel, Amanda, Dan, Joel, Min Min, Alice, Brother Tim, and Krista all spent some time at the house in the last month, plus we got to go to Aunt Beth's pre-Christmas party and see even more family, and a few trips up to see Uncle Loren. Christmas day, Tim and I flew down to Tuson, Arazona to meet up with the Childers family for a couple days before heading back up to the Honeymoon Bay family gathering in time for New Years.

I left off on the 19th when Daniel and Amanda took Tim and I for a day at the Seattle Zoo where we saw lions and giraffes and hippos - oh my!

Lion

Giraffe

Hippo

Tim and I befriended the birds

Amanda took lots of good pictures

There was an enormous spider on display NOT behind glass

This most impressive man called all the penguins by name

A giraffe crossed the street while another ate things from the ceiling on the other side

There were some big cats and dogs

Daniel sized up a dragon

Someone kept careful watch over us and his sleeping pals

It was hard to tell if the signs were sarcastic...

Daniel and I decided we would stay and join the exhibit.

Jumping ahead to the 21st, I was driving home from work when my road was blocked off and detoured. Nichols Bros finally finished the top half of the ferry they'd been working on and were ready to send it away on the barge to meet up with the bottom half and be put to work. They wait for high tide, then block off the road and roll the whole structure across with the aid of large cranes, trucks, and the like. 

I found someones driveway to sneak down to try for a better picture of the launch to show Tim in case he missed the spectacle.

While I was snooping through their yard, I noticed they have an awesome living fence started - something I hope to eventually try out.

While I was taking my time to get home from work, the rest of the family was already out on the porch with a great view to watch the boat parts cruse by.

The view from the porch

Christmas Eve dinner on Whidbey

Christmas eve, we had an excellent dinner with the Whidbey family and had a little White Elephant present exchange where Amanda got to open almost all the presents since hers were so good that everyone kept steeling them. Tim and I spent most of Christmas Eve day driving to Seattle and back for another physical therapy appointment. Tim worked extra hard as we had less that a week between appointments and he wanted to be ready for the next step before our trip and break in PT. 

After Christmas Eve dinner, Tim and I packed a few things for our trip in the morning to Tuson, Arazona to see his side of the family and the largest Childers family reunion in history. Tilly got all ready to go hoping we might ship her along, but as we were only going to be gone for about 3 days, it seemed like a lot of extra hassle and expense to bring her. My family graciously accepted responsibility of her for the weekend and she carried on playing in her boxes all the same. 

Christmas dinner on Whidbey (Tim and Ariel replaced by Joel and Min Min)

We had an excellent Christmas breakfast and opened presents with my family before driving to the airport, leaving the car for Joel and Min Min, and flying to Tuscon for Christmas dinner with the Childers' with another round of White Elephant gifts and some unconventional toasts.

I am happy to be one of four new women to the Childers family in the last year including Joe's wife, Roni, Matt's girlfriend, Paula and their daughter, Denali. 

Matt and Denali

In addition to getting to know the excellent Childers family, we also got to know a little about Tuson by heading out to their Desert Museum where we found incredible animals, plants, and minerals. Raptors flew low over the crowd, cacti promised not to poison us, and we bumped in to the Bosworth family (minus Adrienne) from Juneau.

Joe decided to take his trailer home and giant truck on a road trip to the family reunion, so Tim and I finally got to see his place and had a bed to sleep on with hot chocolate in the morning. Hot chocolate in bed has got to be the best perk of sleeping in the living room and makes it a very appealing place to be. 

Before taking off back to the far contiguous North West, we went out to one final dinner with the family, then drove Grandma and Grandpa back to their place in Las Vegas. All in all, a very fun trip and good family to have. Joe has made an excellent ambassador for them for the last 5 years.

Back on Whidbey, Brother Tim and Krista came for the night before New Years Eve, then headed back to Seattle as our family celebrated with fireworks, sparking cider, and movies on the big screen Mom and Dad gave us for late Christmas. The family was a great help ever continuing to improve our house and spent their last night on the island helping us put of light fixtures and shelving. Tim's shop is now looking particularly spectacular with an antique moped, freshly repainted, sitting proudly in the center waiting for spring and breaks.

I must include my mom's list of everything she could think of that Dad and the rest of the family did during their three-week "vacation"

• Collect and haul to transfer station 1,000 pounds of leaves (thanks Daniel and Joy!)
• Replace kitchen faucet (thanks Dan!)
• Repair dryer and remove pocketfull of very battered change (thanks again Dan!)
• clean out gas stove lines
• fix hole in entry floor
• add non-stick mats under all area rugs
• paint and install handrails to downtstairs (thanks Tilly and Uncle Dan)
• install light 10+ light fixtures upstairs and down (thanks Daniel, Tim, Ariel, Joel)
• Refurbish wood stove, put in new piping, stoveblack, polish windows and brass, clean out several pounds of nails and ash
• Unplug main shower drain and fasten drain screen
• Replace shower curtain and bath mat (thanks Joy and MinMin)
• Clear several alders on slope to vastly improve the view (thanks to three ladders, pole saw, chain saw, and careful placement on the bank)
• Install blinds in library and downstairs master bedroom (thanks Joel for installing the other four!)
• Adjust all blinds for length (a tedious process!)
• Replace downstairs bathroom shower rod
• Install downstairs bathroom closet doors 
• Install fan timers in upstairs and downstairs bathroom
• Clean windows downstairs
• Fix multiple outlet covers
• Fix oven light
• Install under-counter lights in downstairs kitchen
• Install 4 shoplights (Yay Daniel and Tim!)
• Design and install shelving systems in upstairs bedroom and 3 downstairs closets
• Also supervised completion of:
• Repair of flooring in downstairs bathroom
• Installation of internal jacks for internet and phone

It is good to come from a family of such busy, helpful, productive people!

My parents and Daniel and Amanda headed back to Alaska last Saturday (the fourth) and Tim, Grandpa, and I got busy resetting the house for Alice's arrival the following day. 

We did spend a little quiet family time walking the beach between guests. We've now discovered the many joys of Double Bluff beach, one of the many fabulous dog parks of Whidbey Island.

I don't think I actually took pictures in the last week while Alice has been in town, so I'll summarize among the pictures of our lovely afternoon at the beach while we were trying to exhaust Tilly in preparation for Alice's arrival.

Unfortunately, I had a lot of work all week while Alice was here. Tim and Alice spent time taking Tilly to parks, shopping, working on our lion puzzle, and hanging out. We had some wonderful dinners at home and out, and yesterday I had the day off from both jobs to spend with Alice and Tim. I now have a second job working providing in-home care to patients in need through Island Home Nursing in addition to my previous job cleaning kennels. My busy and exhausting work life had to compete with all the family visiting for the last month, but I think both jobs are going pretty well.

Today, Tim had double doctors appointments scheduled, so Alice and Tilly hung out with friends in Seattle while Tim and I went to Harborview Medical for a couple hours. Tim now has the "green light" to do whatever hurts and doesn't work to his hand until it gets better - thinks like passively stretching and straightening and stretching his fingers, playing with magically hardening playdough, and moving one finger at a time. Instead of a protective splint for sleeping in, Tim has been fitted with a new straight fingered brace for eight hours of unconscious passive stretching. I'm still rooting for this week being the week he gets to start doing some work again, but we'll see how he holds up with this new phase of physical therapy.

Alice stayed in Seattle with friends for the night and a shorter drive to the airport in the morning and Tim and I have been relaxing in our quiet, empty home eating home made french fries.