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| Mormon Row in Tetons |
Gosh, it’s been so long since I’ve written, I think I may
have forgotten how! Darn summertime, eh? It’s been jammed packed full of
interesting things and sitting still hasn’t been high on my priority list. But,
Thistle and I are back to getting up at the crack of dawn again so I figured I
better make good use of the time since Rob doesn’t appreciate me making too
much noise at 5 a.m.
There’s been some pretty big changes in the household,
lately. Rob and I went to do a commercial
photo shoot a few weeks ago over in Gillette at Destination X and I fell in
love with a side by side ATV. After much
discussion, we decided to sell my big seven passenger vehicle and get one for
me to use as a little “town car”. It really worked out well all around. I have
a neighbor up the street who had told me about a year ago that if I ever wanted
to give up my Freestyle, she wanted it, as she has 4 kids and knows what a
great car it’s been(and what a little old lady driver I am). For both of us, it was about the easiest
vehicle purchases we’ve ever done so it must have been written in the
stars! They went to the bank here in
town and practically got the loan on their signature. That’s the way things work here when they
know you well. For us, it was easy peasy
because we only had to scrape together the money for the taxes and tags after
selling my car and were able to buy my side by side outright!
We’ve even gotten an entry with it in the annual fair and
rodeo parade coming up in two weeks. This year’s theme for the parade is “Dancing
with the Steers” (a play on Dancing with the Stars) and Thistle will be the
star attraction. I’m not going to tell
you what all we’re doing so it will be a surprise for those of you who will be
watching the parade, but it will be really funny, I guarantee!
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| Me and Thistle in the side by side |
We also managed to take a nice, long weekend trip over to
the Tetons a couple of weeks ago. We went over to get some good shots of the
mountains in summer bloom, or so we were hoping. The darn summer has been so hot and dry,
though, there were hardly any flowers left. The mountains were a little hard to
see, as well, as the smoke from the Fontenelle fire is still obscuring the view
quite a bit. We still managed to get
some great shots, I don’t think you can get too many bad shots of the Tetons,
no matter the weather. When we first
arrived over there, it was in the 90’s and we’d only been there about 2 hours
when a big rainstorm blew in and dumped a bunch of wind and rain on us very
quickly. So, we ran back for the truck
to keep from getting soaked and sat and watched as the temperature went from 90
to 57 in a matter of about 10 minutes! It pretty much stayed that way, nice and
cool, for the remainder of our weekend.
We stayed in Dubois, which is just over the Togwatee
Pass from the Tetons and about $200 a
night cheaper than staying in Jackson Hole . It’s
a much smaller town, a lot like Buffalo ,
only about 900 people. Boy, did we have
a blast there! As we were checking into our motel, the owner there saw that we
were from WY and right off the bat, gave us another $50 off our room rate, just
for being locals! We had some fabulous cuisine while we were in Dubois and
found the local bar hangout and made some great new friends. We’ve decided to
go back in September for our 20th wedding anniversary, we had so
much darn fun. Now that we have the ATV,
we’ll probably trailer that over with us and really have fun!
Our garden has also been keeping us very busy! We’ve had an
especially good crop of berries from our chokecherry bushes this year and for
the last week, Rob and I have been picking berries until our hands are pretty
much stained purple and I have been making jelly to beat the band. It’s sort of
a race to see who gets to the berries first, us or the darn birds! As for the
rest of the garden, we’ve already harvested our sugar snap peas (wonderful!)
and are starting to get in some green beans and zucchini. The corn went from knee high on the 4th
of July to almost 8 feet tall as of today! It has already begun to tassle,
even! By the time we get back from Maryland , I have a
feeling I’m going to be a canning fool.
That’s what up next around here…We’ll be leaving on August
10th to go back to Maryland
to celebrate my Mom’s 75th birthday as well as my Aunt Becca’s 60th
birthday. Looks like just about the
entire Burke contingency will be there to celebrate as well. They’ll be coming
from Alabama and Georgia
mostly, although, my cousin Rick, lives in Maryland .
I can’t believe that after not seeing some of my relatives for 20-30
years, I get to see some of them for the second time in one year! I must admit,
though, MD in August is not the ideal time to be going, it’s going to be so hot
and humid! Mom has one of those big tour bus RV motorhomes, though, with air
conditioning, and that’s where Rob, Thistle and I will be staying throughout
the festivities. We’re driving, of course, because we always have to bring back
lots of Yuengling beer, Snyder’s pretzels and Utz potato chips! Rob is also
looking forward to the trip because his Mom and sisters only live about 2 miles
from my mom. We’ve also already let our old friends at the American Legion in
Hampstead know we’re coming so we can get together with all of them one evening
while we’re there.
My health is staying pretty steady. My stomach is still giving me a fit and I can’t
eat very much at one sitting, probably a good thing, but it’s frustrating at
times. I get about halfway through whatever I’m eating and I start feeling
really nauseous so I have to stop. Seems I buy a pair of pants that fit and two
weeks later they are too big. I really need to get to the doc’s and find out
where my labs stand but darn it, it’s summertime and I don’t want to get
involved in all that stuff right now.
I have one more wedding to perform on August 3rd before
we leave. This one’s going to be a nice,
small one for some very dear friends and I’m really looking forward to it. The last one I did for Larry and Bonnie up on
the mountain was such a hoot! Bonnie arrived on a 4x4 and came down the aisle
of fishing poles draped in wildflowers!
It was a beautiful ceremony and there was at least 100 people there!
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| Larry & Bonnie's Wedding! |
Thistle is finally getting over her heat cycle, by the
way. Geez, if I’d known this was going
to last a month, I don’t know that I would have let her go through this (or me,
for that matter). It all started on June 25th , I know because I
wrote it down. It does seem to be
calming her down, though, now that we are seeing the other side of it. She’ll be getting spayed towards the end of
September. It’s been fun (not) trying to
keep her away from other dogs and she’s not been happy to have to stay in the
yard for a month except for when we went to the Tetons. Hopefully, now I can
get her re-enrolled in obedience classes soon.
Well, folks, get out there and have yourselves an incredible
day! I’m going to hop in my little blue ATV in a little bit and go have some
fun. With this thing, even a trip to the
grocery store is a blast!
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