Thanksgiving Farming

Finally, almost December, and I'm getting back into the farm work that's slowed down since Tilly came. Who knew Min Min would be such an inspiration!

The day before Thanksgiving, I finally got that garlic in the ground I'd been meaning to plant. I double-tilled a large strip in the center of the driveway turnaround, and started separating out the garlic cloves to plant. I soon realized there was way more to plant than I had room for! Even with the tightest spacing I thought was reasonable, I only managed to plant most of the Georgian Fire and most of the Chesnok Red, though I still have German Extra Hardy and Pskem River left. In preparation for Thanksgiving, Grandpa and I went on a last-minute shopping run for pie and ice cream, potatoes, gravy, stuffing ingredients, yams and marshmallows, cranberries.... and we did a little housework to get ready for my uncle and cousin. Our friend Fritz from Juneau stopped by to say hi as well. 

Thanksgiving morning, after a long bike ride with Tilly, I got the stuffing and marshmallow yams all ready before heading to Heidi and Launie's house (the previous owners of our house) for our first Thanksgiving. After some delicious crab cakes and a quick visit, it was time for Tim and Grandpa to head home to get the turkey in the oven and mash potatoes and boil cranberries, while I took the ferry to the mainland and headed towards I-5 to pick my uncle and cousin up from the bus stop. By the time we got home, it was well after 7pm and the turkey was just about ready. We had a family dinner, some local pie and ice cream, then with full bellies headed off to bed. 

Friday morning, the day of leftovers and crowded stores, Min Min, Tilly and I headed down to explore the beach, then Min Min, Grandpa, and my uncle headed across the water to retrieve the U-box full of Grandpa's things - which ended up being a full day adventure. I made serious progress on my schoolwork and Tim started feeling tingling in his fingers. 

When the trio returned from the mainland, Min Min came to find me saying "It snowed! There's snow on the porch!" We ran up stairs and looked out the back, but there was no snow. "No, it's only on the front. We came home and there's snow on the front porch!" I thought it was strange, but sometimes these things happen, so we opened the door and sure enough! Snow everywhere! Or at least in a big pile in front of the door. We threw snowballs for Tilly and built a snowman topped with raisins.

Min Min did a great job helping teach Tilly the right way to be, and after a long day of playing, Tilly finally collapsed on the floor happily asleep yet trying desperately hard to stay on her towel for some reason.

After stopping to admire mom's awesome packing job, I headed up the hill with the little dog and little girl for an outing while my uncle and grandpa continued ferrying boxes into the house.

Min Min had been doing an excellent job helping carry boxes, but was delighted to come along on Tilly's morning walk and my lovely uncle was delighted to have some time to focus on the move-in.

As soon as we got up the driveway, we ran into our wonderful neighbors John, Fay, Sandy, and one of their holiday house guests. We took our usual walk with the "precocious" seven-year-old in tow, and found ourselves wandering back past our house and down to their yard as John relayed stories of buffalo's and diaper changing to Min Min and I. Somehow the two little ones slipped in to the house in the blink of the eye, so with Fay's permission, we all stayed for muffins and play time.

Min Min only wanted to play tug with Tilly, and Tilly only wanted to snuggle with Sandy.

When there were clear signs of fatigue in both little ones, we gathered our shoes and headed home.

 Min Min lead the way down the driveway with a trail of treats.

Once home, Tilly took a nap and us human girls got to work in the yard. First, Min Min shoveled up 9 buckets full of pine needles - I did I think 2, plus the 4 I did the other day for a grand total of 75 packed gallons of needles!

While Min Min was filling buckets, I finally got my compost area straightened out. It's still a little fragile, but I'm hoping filling it full of compost will help stabilize things. If not, I'll have to figure something else out, but at least it's a start!

Once we cleaned most of the needles from the bottom parking area (oh yeah, 75 gallons just from down there without even clearing the driveway or upper parking), we headed into the grass armed with a bucket, hoe, and shovel, on the look out for deer poop. Together, we filled another bucket full of prime manure. I figure shoveling poo with a seven-year old-assistant is the one time it is entirely appropriate to crack as many doo-doo jokes as possible.

Oh! And I almost forgot! I finished my Alaska History class for my Masters today!! Now, only a fake research paper (very odd assignment) and my portfolio left! Woo hoo! I am hoping I will make the December deadline in two weeks. 

Homey

Success! Today's goals: find Tilly more puppy food, and find cheap furniture.

We swung by the thrift store by our house as a first attempt before dreading the long drive to Oak Harbor. I had looked before without much luck - most of their good shelving at the thrift store is NFS as they use it for display, but maybe I wasn't looking very hard last time as I was also surprised by their anti-puppy policy. This time, we came prepared with a bone to leave with Tilly in the freshly cleaned truck, and two of us to hunt down the good stuff. Upstairs, I found my dream shelf - 6 feet tall with puppy-resistant doors on the bottom shelf! A nice woman brought it down to the front for us as we kept looking and came across a desk! Tim has been needing a desk to settle into his own space and get his things organized. I have my leather writing desk with built-in typewriter I've made us haul from house to house, but Tim has had to make due with what's around. We found this desk for Tim with cupboards and shelves above and a nice big desk area. It was covered in fine china and porcelain dolls waiting to be sold, so with some guilt, we let the lady at the front know we wanted it but weren't sure how we were going to get it into the house with three hands. Just then, another woman walked by and heard. "Where exactly do you live? Honeymoon Bay Road? Before or after all the curves?" She was on her way to run some other deliveries, and for a small donation to the Senior Services program, she'd be happy to bring our furniture right into the house in about twenty minutes. Woo hoo! We rushed home to clean and shuffle cars, then they arrived with our beautiful new furniture. Between these new furniture pieces and the beautiful new fridge that came yesterday inspiring us to stalk it and the cupboards full of good foods, this house is getting mighty homey. It's crazy to think that we've only been living here a little more than a week, not counting the time we spent in Seattle shortly after the floors were done. Unbelievable the transformation that's happened since this was a moldy old basement.

Tilly playing in her box on the search for food and cardboard to tear up. Thanks, Mom, for her new hobby! 

Tim happily utilizing his awesome new desk. 

 Our flashlight family waiting by the door to go on outings every few hours with Tilly and I.

Tilly really excited about her new bone and slowly gaining freedom in our ever cleaner and better organized (thus more puppy-safe) house.

Free range Greenbank dogs

This morning was a spectacular sunrise, and thanks to Tilly, I got to see it! And I also got to go back to sleep after. 

I took Tilly for a short walk down the street before and after church, but quickly saw that wasn't going to be good enough and was more exhausting for me than her, so we hopped in the car and headed for Greenbank Farm.

We immediately ran into our Airedale neighbors from Honeymoon lake who have a 16 year old Wire Fox Terrier the same size as Tilly is now, and a 14 year old Airedale.

Thanks to their help, Tilly got some manners lessons and properly worn out while I made friends. Hopefully we will be going on many more outings together to the wonderful off-leash dog parks of Whidbey Island.

We came home to a clean house thanks to Tim's innovations in one-armed sweeping and work on the kitchen.

Practice Thanksgiving

Last night was the first night in over a week that I slept all night! Woo hoo! Then, around eight, Tilly got tired of that business and decided it was time for a long walk. I took Tilly for a 2 1/2 mile "run" ie long walk with a little biting, pulling, and some nice trotting even! After eventually getting home and showering off, I jumped in the car with grandpa and a back seat full of cardboard while Tilly took a nice long nap. Once we were back from recycling, it was time to hop in the car and head to my uncle's house in Munro for a quiet family dinner of about 20. Tim held up in his sling, dinner was AMAZING with all my incredible aunts cooking away, and Tilly got to meet the cows. 

Tim and I were the only kids at the kids table married and old enough to drink, but as he's on painkillers, and I was driving, so root beer and cider seemed about right.

 We served oldest to youngest, letting Neighbor Paul and Grandpa take the lead.

 Grandpa Loren was up to no good slipping the baby whip cream and ice cream.

So many stories flying around the grown-up table.

Tilly

I feel like it would almost be worth while graphing how long I can keep Tilly's attention with any one item - make a game out of her puppy-sized attention span! So far frozen washcloth boiled and soaked in fatty chicken juices seems to be a winner. Unfortunately, most brilliant ideas only work well the first time, and even then only for so long. After more doctors appointments where we were told Tim is doing super, better than expected, and awesome, and we scheduled his stitches-removal for two weeks out and physical therapy the week after that, and came home exhausted and cold. Walking in the dark with the grumpy pup was a hard sell, so I instead played "walk around the house" where we brought things from our kitchen, all the way through the shop at the far end of the house, up the stairs past grandpa, and into the other kitchen at the far end there, then exchanged our item for something up stairs and made the trip back, stopping and sitting at every closed door. A couple of these trips made for quite the walk! Plus we discovered the joy of playing fetch with the ball all the way down our super long hallway complete with slippery floors.

Classes glasses classes

I finally got some homework done, Tim got busy cleaning the kitchen with one arm and putting away the Pyrex, and Grandpa took Tilly and I to our last puppy kindergarten where she performed incredibly well despite a crazy week and got her diploma! I still haven't gotten my garlic in the ground, darnit!

Fish Expo!

After a long and harrowing drive to downtown Seattle, we finally arrived at the RIGHT convention center and walked in to the wonderful world of Fish Expo! Last night we registered on line, and due to some problems with the site, I couldn't register as a family member, so I got to be a commercial fisherman with the official title of "First Mate" to "Tim's Fishing and Marine Repair". We ran into Ed and Cathy from Juneau, met a woman from Greenbank (Whidbey), then lo-and-behold! There was our good friend Nancy at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game table! Although we couldn't find any remote control boats, there were bowls of chocolate everywhere and the whole thing was pretty cool. Tim found a creative use for his name-tag lanyard and managed to stay vertical for over an hour!.