Saturday, October 25, 2008

One year and counting

This has been an interesting week. The fall weather is nice and warm, which makes northeast Nevada nice. Today marks 1 year here and many great things have happened since we arrived. I think we are all becoming accustomed to, or at least some what accepting of life in the west. A sign of this was this morning reading the paper, neither Gail or Andy found interesting the want ads asking for winter sheep shearers or cattle herders. Yes, we actually have want ads looking for experienced cowboys. So, if anyone can "work on range lands protecting pregnant cows from harsh winter conditions, trailing groups of pregnant cows to assigned areas on horseback, using trained dogs, using appropriate trailing methods to avoid undue stress on cows to prevent hypothermia or death...set up camp supply wagon...break horses, rope calves......and live in a mobile camp on call 24/7" let us know and we will forward the ad. And you thought we were kidding about living in the wild west.

Matthew and Nikolas had parent/teacher conferences this week and both had great reports. Both are A/B students and we are very proud of both of them. Nikolas is looking forward to playing some baseball in the spring. Matthew continues to plan and build his Lego Command Station (he now has a very large plywood base sitting on top of his dresser) which he is preparing to submit to the 2009 Elko County Fair...which isn't until August.

Gail's Pampered Chef business is almost to the point of taking over her life. No complaints mind you. She has two or three shows every weekend between now and December 15th and a couple mid week shows just to break up the monotony. And because she doesn't have quite enough to do, she is starting up her own house cleaning business the first week of November. She has one week left at the daycare center and will go full speed ahead with her business the next week. Unfortunately, Gail fought a stomach bug this week and was down for the whole weekend. Maybe she will stop catching everything that goes by when she is no longer wiping noses and getting coughed on every morning.

Andy had a nice thing happen this week. The local District Attorney's office is losing an attorney and word on the street is that they want Andy. Several different members of that office, along with a detective on the Elko police force have inquired as to whether he wanted to join their office. Andy was told the "boss" wouldn't come knocking, he isn't the kind of guy that would pilfer an attorney out of the Public Defenders office, but if Andy was interested, the job was already his. Andy is quite happy with what he does, so he will not take them up on their offer, but he is honored none the less. He is quite busy and glad to be doing trial work.

Well, that about sums up our week. Hope all is well.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

How about them Sox

All continues to go well for us here in Nevada. You will note below the extent of our fall colors. These were taken north of Wild Horse Reservoir. You will also note the birds swimming in the water. Those are pelicans. Believe it or not, we actually have pelicans in the desert. On Sunday we woke up to some flurries and we have had our first snow. All of it fell in the mountains, which makes them look nice. The best part was that Monday it began to get warm and we are back into the 70's. Hopefully, we will stay that way for a while.








We were saddened to here of the death of Scott Dimond. Our prayers go out to his family. We knew him briefly before moving last October. We are all grateful for the service he rendered in behalf of the great nation we live. Thankfully, there are still people in this nation willing to preserve the freedoms we all enjoy.

Andy had a doubly rough week as one of his clients was killed in an auto accident on Monday. Hopefully, there will not be too many more. He continues to be very busy and still enjoys very much the work he is doing.


The boys continue to do well in school. Gail is busy as always. Between Pampered Chef and the launching a cleaning business she keeps herself quite occupied. Andy and Gail celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary this past week. They enjoyed a nice evening out.


Saturday, we all spent the day in Twin Falls doing some shopping. We thought we would share one of the more interesting sights we saw. That is an actual urinal at one of the casinos in Jackpot. The boys get a kick out of this and require us to stop here so they can, well...I think you get the point. You gotta love the culture of Northeast Nevada.

We hope you are all well. Until next week.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

What an Interesting Week

Our week began sunny and warm and ended blustery and cold. Yesterday and today has only been in the 30's and this morning when we woke up to snow flurries. The Ruby Mountains are covered and look nice. The good news is that it is supposed to warm up after Monday.

All continues to go well with everyone in the family. We had a quick trip up to Boise on Sunday and Monday to attend the funeral of Gail's Aunt. The service was nice and lead to some neat discussions in our family about the life cycle. The boys were well behaved and we had a nice quick visit. Even though the circumstances were not the best it was still nice to see Gail's family.

The rest of the week went fairly quickly. The boys continue to do well in school. Gail went with Matthew on a field trip to the Northeast Nevada Museum. He reported he was glad he lived now, considering how much work the pioneers did and the modern conveniences we all enjoy. He was not impressed with the idea of having to use an outhouse. He did enjoy making butter and he said it was quite good.

Gail has begun her cleaning business and so far has one account, but hopes that will soon expand. She did not have any Pampered Chef parties over this weekend. This was mostly due to Gail's sister coming Friday evening and staying until Saturday. We enjoyed having her here. She came and did a Scentsy party for her. If you want to know what that is give Gail a call and she will fill you in.

Gail and Andy are looking forward to this coming week as they will celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary. This past Wednesday we had dinner with our dear friend, Bill, who was one of the witnesses at our sealing. It was so nice to see him. We could not end off our weekly report without mentioning Andy had a birthday this week.. We had a nice evening at home. He reports it was especially nice and appreciated the calls and cards he received.

We hope you all have a nice week and take care until next.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Another week has come and gone and a quick one this has been. All of us continue to do well. We are coming up on 1 year in Northern Nevada and we are still together.

Gail is still going strong with her Pampered Chef business. Each week she has done 1-2 shows and enjoying it. She is considering starting up a new business in the area doing cleaning. It will give her a bit more flexibility and allow her to set a better schedule. She has one account and depending on how it goes it may lead to a few more. We will keep you posted.

The boys continue to both do well both in school and overall. Andy went with Nikolas this week on a field trip to hunt for fossils. All 3 of the 2nd Grade classes at Nikolas' school went. Andy described it as organized chaos. He was particularly impressed with the bus ride. It was fun and Nikolas came back with a few shell fossils. The location is not to far from our apartment and hopefully before it snows Andy and the boys will go back. Speaking of snow, Friday night into Saturday we received rain. It started about 6pm and didn't stop until early the next morning. We got more rain in that time than we received all year.

Unfortunately, this past week Gail's Aunt passed away so we were up in Boise for the funeral. We enjoyed seeing Gail's family and it is always nice to get away. We also enjoyed the opportunity to participate in our church's General Conference.

That about sums up the week. We hope you are all well.