the long weekend

this past weekend emily and i ventured down to sheridan, wyoming to visit the in-laws. we had a great time. it has been a long time since we were in the cowboy state. we celebrated emily and craig's bdays. craig and i went fishing on saturday and had great luck. fourteen fish over 16", with the biggest being craig's 24" brown. monday found nate and i (shaun) on the upper madison for one last hurrah to put the finishing touches on winter fishing. we got a new camera a few weeks ago and i had some fun with some editing. here are my favorite two pics from the weekend.

We don't feel like blah-gging right now...

...but we are still here. Maybe an update in , say, a few months.

New Year's Resolution update

Since it's almost the end of the year, and there's nothing really that exciting to write about, it seemed like a good time to evaluate the progress on those pesky resolutions. Since they were pretty easy tasks to start with, I have to admit some embarrassment with the lack of progress...

New Year's resolutions, 2011:

1) Finish crocheting a blanket I've been working on. For two years.

Definitely need to get crackin'.

2) Decoupage the ugliest bookshelf in the world to make it look a bit more presentable.

Done.

3) Decorate our home in some kitschy, Martha Stewart/Pottery Barn-esque way.

Eh...this is a work in progress. Sadly, I prefer to buy clothes than home enhancements.

4) Get another cat. Porter (sadly) went to another home, so Shaun thinks he's off the hook on this issue for now. Little does he know...

We did this, and our poor little girl met a sad end. Our fat ol' Phanuter seems to prefer being an only child, so it will probably stay that way.

5) Be more experimental with my cooking, i.e. less meat n' potatoes type meals, more stuff with unique ingredients. Also, less butter, more veggies. Though veggies are good with butter.

Shaun doesn't seem to like my experiments. Plus, since I work later in the evenings now, he does most of the cooking. Or we eat cold cereal. We'll have to chalk this one up as a work still in progress. I did try this and got a somewhat enthusiastic response.

6) Drink more water.

I spend all day gabbering with people, so my throat gets dry, so I am actually doing this.

7) Get, and keep alive, a few more plants. I have a beautiful orchid that is the first plant I've ever owned to flourish. It's so cheerful on our end table that I'm inspired to attempt to have a green thumb.

So far, the orchid has lost its blossoms (but they should regrow) and I've added a peace lily, spider plant, rubber plant, what's called a hanky-panky hosta, a cool orange and green croton, and a couple of mystery plants that I probably never will know the names of. I have only killed a basil plant so far. Success.

8) Pick up a new hobby. For this, I don't even have any ideas, so I'll probably Google it and try the first thing I see. Unless it involves: eating onions, skydiving, or something that seems painful.

Our elder's wife has gotten me started with card-making. So far, my efforts are amateurish at best, but it's still fun and I'm pretty sure my mom saves 'em.

9) Buy some kid's toys, that way when kids come visit our home they have something to do. Not so that we have kid's toys for our own kids. I expect their grandparents will want to take care of that. In twenty years, when the time comes.

Sort of forgot about this one. Plus, they seem to enjoy chasing the cat.

10) Make one of those cutesy little clothesline things...you know the ones where it's made out of twine and then there's these mini clothespins that you hang pictures on? The fridge is full, and we need to display all the millions of pictures we have of our friends and family.

Made something different that works well and is currently full.

Where my husband stands, I really don't know. He didn't actually make resolutions to start with...I just sort of made some that I figured he planned on doing. Since he has pretty much done what he planned on doing, I'd say he's fulfilling his unmade resolutions just fine. Now, if I could just force myself to go to the gym...

Pippin Rose Durkee

When we first got Pippin, we didn't know if we were going to keep her. We were going to do a 'trial period' of a few days. We didn't know if our older cat would like her or not, so we were going to take her back if it didn't seem like they could get along. They didn't get along...but the first night we had her, she curled up in our bed and just purred. I knew that I was done for at that moment. Keeping her in the family involved some hardship, but we got to the month mark and things leveled out. She and her big brother liked to spar but they got used to each other, played with each other, played outside together, and both kept our feet warm at night.

She loved to ride around on my shoulders. Every time I picked her up, she'd scramble onto my shoulders and just lie there, pleased as punch. She kept me company in this manner every morning while I put breakfast together. When I would take a nap in my chair, it wouldn't be very long and she'd curl up and sleep with me, purring the whole time. When she was just brand new in our family, I went into the guest room to look for her, only to see this tiny lump under the comforter...Pippin was burrowed in and sleeping. She burrowed everywhere, usually poking her head out when we started calling for her. She chased the blinds covering our sliding door. She picked taffies out of our candy jar and batted them around the house. She kept us up at night with that little trick a time or two. Her brother, a messy eater, would always knock food out of his bowl onto the floor...she would vacuum it right up. She tore up a page of my Bible chasing after one of my bookmarks when we weren't home. She climbed Shaun's dress shirts to get to the top shelf of our closet, earning her the name Bratso, while her brother is Fatso. She loved to be outside, and would jump over her brother on her way out the door. Her nicknames were Pippy, Pipperson, Skippy, Skipperson, Rose, Rosie, Rosie-Posy, Skip...she probably didn't even get a chance to learn her real name because we called her by so many others. Shaun called us Team Durkee...the running joke was that we were going to have t-shirts made for the whole 'family.'

Our sweet little gal was hit by a car, and is hopefully chasing butterflies in a happy place where kitties go when their nine lives are up. She was just about six months old, and we were looking forward to a lot of years of chasing her around, and her chasing her brother around, and maybe someday our kids pulling her tail and giving her some of the trouble she gave us. We had just a short time with her, but she sure gave us a lot of happy memories, and she will be sorely missed.

This weekend

A list of what was awesome this weekend:

1) Weather
2) Fishing
3) Scenery

4) Extra day off work
5) Wildlife

6) Toasted strawberry marshmallows
7) Vitamin D

8) Hanging out with the hubs

A list of what was not awesome this weekend:

1) Falling in the creek

2) Getting hooked in the back of the neck

3) Emergency creekside surgery to remove said hook

4) Snakes

5) Generic brand graham crackers that made our s'mores taste like chocolate and marshmallows wedged between cardboard

We continued our summer adventures this weekend with a camping and fishing trip near Dillon. We took a three-day weekend and made a pretty wide loop around southwest Montana. We started at a spot Shaun has been to several times. I would tell where it is, but I honestly don't know my directions well enough to do so...so we'll say it was near some mountains somewhere around Dillon. We spent Friday afternoon fishing and enjoying life (except for the part where I fell in...). We enjoyed an evening around the campfire and were sorely disappointed by our s'mores. Seriously, folks, pay the extra two bucks for Honey Maid graham crackers...don't be like me. To compensate, I just ate toasted marshmallows. Strawberry marshmallows, to be exact. I may never buy regular ones again.

Saturday morning started out with a semi-successful jaunt to a spot higher on the creek than we were Friday, but it wasn't panning out according to our hopes and dreams, so we moved on. We left some gopher casualties in our wake beside the dirt road on the way to our next stop, but got distracted by a stream that was just too good to pass up. Contrary to our spot of the morning, we ended up with some fantastic mountain brook trout. That particular spot will remain a secret, thank you very much. As a brief intermission, I got snagged in the back of the neck by an errant hook, which was fun. It took some pliers and some patience and some nerve, but Shaun got 'er out and we went back to fishing, to be rewarded by some more brookies.

The next stop, after about 30 more miles of dirt road and a trumpeter swan refuge, we hit Red Rock creek for some snake sightings and some more brook trout. By this time, we were both ready to call it a trip...40 fish between us, 2 snakes, 4 flies lost, and a proper sunburn apiece seemed sufficient. So we trekked the last thirty miles of dirt road and headed back to civilization.

Next week...Texas.

we snuck in a quick night of camping in the elkhorn mountains recently. lots of sun, water, and willing trout. emily put her fly fishing skills on display by taking over 20 brookies and rainbows. our biggest brookie of the day was around 11-12 inches or so. on the way out we saw a big rattlesnake in the road. he had already been hit but was still moving. we ran him over a few more times for good measure. glad he was on the road and not along the creek!

greater yellowstone area

it was nice to have the last week off from work. we got the weekend of cody convention and saw some of the wolski family. we came back to bozeman via the beartooth highway. this was followed by another great convention at manhattan. here are some pictures from our ramblings...