Ups and Downs

Our Internet service was out for several days last week and unfortunately, the repair only made it three days and the next thing you know, it was down again.  Ugh!

During the short time period that it was working, we discovered a problem with our refrigerator.  There was a lot of water on the bottom shelf and in one of the crisper's.  I did some searching on the net and found out that the problem might be a drain hose that had either frozen or was blocked by something.  Yes, access to the Internet is very useful.

We do have a manual for our refrigerator, but after looking over all 315 parts on the list, we had no idea if it had a drain hose or if it did, where it located.  We had to resort to YouTube and yep, there is was.  Someone had posted a video of how to repair a frozen drain hose on a Whirlpool refrigerator, which looked exactly like ours, even though it is a Kenmore. 

Retired Mountain was after it - immediately.  A repair job.  All he had to do was remove the bottom shelf of the freezer, remove the fan, and remove the back panel inside the freezer compartment. 
Piece of cake.

There it was.  Ice.  Lots of ice, and what looked liked a possible drain hole, filled with ice.  We decided the quickest way to thaw it was my hair dryer.  It took about ten minutes and the problem was solved.  The water was draining into the drain pan at the bottom of the refrigerator.

What caused the problem in the first place?  A piece of cardboard that we had placed next to the fan because it was vibrating and making a lot of noise every time the motor ran.   It had fallen down where we couldn't see it and it blocked the drain.  Oops!

Retired Mountain Man is one of those "guy-guys.  You know, guys with skills?  You can send them into the wilderness with a pocketknife and a Q-tip and they build you a shopping mall."(Six Days and Seven Nights)

He has repaired my vacuum cleaner, food processor, roto-tiller, range and oven (several times until we finally gave in and bought a new one), light fixtures, switches, the cable to our DirectTV dish....and yes, I appreciate it very much.

I really like being married to one of those "guy-guys".  I don't mind knowing which tool is a socket wrench or being the assistant on the repair jobs, but I really don't want to do them myself.  I am more than happy to have someone who really does know what he's doing to take on the job. 

Thanks, Retired Mountain Man! 

There are a few more Lobster Mushrooms dried and ready to store. 
How did we get so lucky to have a few rain showers(necessary for the mushrooms) and then sunshine and blue skies every morning? 

I'm behind schedule, but I think I read somewhere that it was National Dog Day, maybe yesterday?   Here's a photo of Maggie watching Ben play in the fountain.   Plus, today is Ben's tenth birthday and first day of school.  He's a fourth grader now.  Happy Birthday Ben! 

The school year is starting either this week or next in most places so watch out for all those kiddos and school buses.  It's an exciting time for the kids, teachers and all of the staff at the schools.  I hope they all have a great year. 

The beauty of summer.

Friday night was a lovely evening for playing music at Trinity.  We had to take a long break while there were a few rain sprinkles, but it was worth it to see this afterwords.

There were some good friends at the restaurant that night, Byron and Myra Lewis.  Retired Mountain Man and I have known them for many years.  In fact I remember the first time I talked to Bryon on the phone way back in about 1977.  We were renting the Loman place on the hill and Bryon phoned to ask if he could carpool with Jon and another Sandpoint High School teacher, Glen Ford.  That was the beginning of a great friendship.  It was wonderful to see them Friday night.  (Do you remember back in those days, it was necessary to carpool?)

Also, Travis and Cindy Kiebert, along with Bill and wife, Danni, and Cindy's brother Daryl and his wife, Brenda were there.  It's always fun to chat with friends during our music breaks.

Photo credit goes to Daryl as I didn't get a chance to take one.

August is one of my favorite months.  There's so much to do and everything is so lush this time of the year.  We have been so lucky to enjoy a rain shower now and then. We've had very little smoke from forest fires, which means the bluest of blue skies. 

My tomato row on my deck.

I am growing pumpkins this year to give to our grandkids and great-grandkids for Halloween.  They are good size and perfect for jack-o'-lanterns. 

This one was chewed on a bit by a deer last month, but I think it will still make a nice jack-o'-lantern.

Warning:  I am now going to add photos of dahlias.  Lot's of dahlias.  Retired Mountain Man's flowers are the best.

 

My favorite:  April Dawn

I do have some other flowers blooming.  I call this my Begonia Corner - on my deck.  All I can say is that they are huge.

A view from below the deck.

The temperature was very cool this morning.  A sign that the rush of August will soon be over.  We can look forward to Fall and enjoy the leaves turning color, but not yet.  There are a few lazy, crazy days of summer left. 

Hang on! August is in high gear.

I promised I would tell you what has been going on.  Way back a long time ago, three weeks maybe, we were getting ready to go to Denver for a family reunion.  My garden veggies were in full swing which meant that there were daily pickings.  Green beans to get in the freezer and dill pickles that needed to be canned.  I was rushing to get as much done as I could along with planning and packing for the trip.

We flew to Denver, rented a car the action began.  The reunion was my mom's family, the Phillipp's crew.   My mom was the oldest of four sisters and there are 17 first cousins, who now have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  Then there are a whole passel of 2nd and 3rd cousins, so many that I can't even remember who they all are.

My cousin Judy hosted this year's reunion with her sisters, Nancy, Lisa and Nikki helping out.  She lives in Wheatridge on a beautiful hillside overlooking Clear Creek and has a lovely view of the mountains.

This part of my family was always the musical group.  My mom and her three sisters always sang together.  They would sing a capella and their three and four-part harmony was so beautiful.  The youngest sister, Aunt Betty, passed away when I was in high school, but I still remember all four of them singing together.

We have had five reunions and there was always music at everyone of them.

 I took these photos at the reunion in Denver in 2003.  Sadly, my mom and all of her sisters have left us, but they sang at this reunion and we have a recording of it.

Cousin Judy and her mom, my Aunt Merle- 2003

Aunt Shirley- 2003

My mom and and my brother, Roy, 2003

I found this photo of my cousin Judy from 1968.  She has a beautiful singing voice and sand in a band.  I think this is one of the band photos.

My brother, Don and I also played in a band back in those days, but that's another story. 

Cousin Nancy and David - 2019

Cousin Lisa-2019

Cousin Teena and her husband, Harry with daughter, Jill, 2003

 I wish I could say that I ended up with a lot of good photos of the reunion this year, but they turned out so-so...  Bummer.

The entire time was action-packed because during the day we all took off to look at the sites in Denver.  This included going to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature, the Denver Aquarium, the Denver Zoo and a trip to Golden, Colorado and also to Dinosaur Ridge.

To top it all off, the Rolling Stones concert was on Saturday night and some of my relatives were die hard Stones fans so off they went to concert - for front row seats no less.  Rock on Mick!

There was so much to see at the Denver Museum one couldn't possibly see it all in one day.  My personal favorite was the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit.  There were copies of many of his sketch books with his drawings of inventions.  Using the his designs they built dozens of them and some were hands-on.  Grandson Ben loved them.

The Flying Machine

Ben, David and Rylee

JP, having a good time.

I'll throw in a few more photos from the zoo and the museum, plus Dinosaur Ridge.

Sad tiger....

Dinosaur tracks and yes, it was very interesting.  Ben is a big dinosaur fan.

Son David, Julie and Ben.

Son JP and Retired Mountain Man at the museum

Grandsons Collin and Ben, RMM, David and JP

Yes, I have my shoes off.  My feet hurt.  Do you realize how many miles we walked between the 80 acre zoo, the museum and the aquarium?   I think I spent half my time looking for a place to sit down.

We had a wonderful time.  We flew home and I was back in the garden that afternoon.  Yes, there were more green beans to pick.  It took us several days to recover from the trip and then it was back to Friday and gig time at Trinity.   As I said in one of my previous posts, get ready for August because everyone tries to pack in as much as they can before summer ends.

Yesterday, our satellite Internet decided to stop working, which meant two entire days without Internet service. How could one survive?  The technician arrived today and everything is back online.

In the meantime I discovered my sweet corn is ripe.  Hallelujah!  The one reason to plant a garden.  Fresh corn on the cob!

The Oyster Party. How did it begin?

Yes, I'm back and posting again.  I will explain in a later post.

Today is Retired Mountain Man's birthday.   For more than twenty years we celebrated his birthday and several other August birthdays by hosting what we came to call, "The Oyster Party".  His mom, his sister, a cousin and eventually, a grandson, all had August birthdays.

I think the party began one summer when his parents made a trip to the coast around 1995.  They stopped by to see us on their return trip and they brought canvass sacks full of fresh oysters.  We put them on the grill to cook them just until the shell would pop open and then served them with melted butter.

In the years following, we found that Flying Fish Company would supply us with fresh oysters for our birthday celebrations and we began to order twenty dozen oysters each year.  Eventually, their would be around fifty people who would attend.  We loved it!  We added clams to the menu.

Tyler, JP and David tending the oyster grill.

The party was a potluck and everyone brought their favorite dishes.  I have to say it was the event of the year for us because we looked forward to seeing everyone, family and friends and enjoy fresh seafood along with all of the other great food.

There was a lot of setup for the event.  Just in case of bad weather we always set up two tents.  That year Ben helped Grandpa Jon begin the setup with our Mollie dog on watch.

The party always included events for the kids.  Daughter-in-law Julie always came up with the best games for them.  I think their all time favorites were the Obstacle Course Race and the year we had a customized version of Musical Chairs.  She is also a very talented artist and designed artwork for our t-shirts every year.

Here she is explaining to the kids that at this step they had to put the socks on their hands and then unwrap the caramel candy.

Pick up a penny with your toes, Ellie and Rylee.....

The events for the kids always ended with a pinata, which was always very special since we ordered them from our neighbor, JoyLyn McChesnie.  Sadly, she finally stopped stopped making them.  That meant for our last party I had to purchase one online and when it showed up, it was a mess.  I had to remake the face and patch it up.  The kids were happy with it though.

There was a reason  the last year's theme was "Bigfoot".   Retired Mountain Man has a game camera and it's secret location is some distance from our house on a great game trail.  He was always very proud of the photos from his camera of all the deer, elk, bear, you name it -- whatever showed up on his camera.

In 2012, son David and his wife Julie, came up with the idea to dress up as Bigfoot and hike down to the game camera for some photos.  Later in the day they would convince Retired Mountain Man to hike down and retrieve the chip out of the camera to look at his photos.   Ta-da!  What was that?  Is that Bigfoot?  Who is that?

All day long as we prepared for the Oyster Party, Retired Mountain Man was certain that cousin Adam Long was the culprit.   Later in the evening, Bigfoot surprised everyone and showed up again.  I can tell you that it caused quite a stir when he walked in the door.

There were some little ones who were quite terrified and were certain that if it wasn't Bigfoot, it was certainly a scary monster!   The big surprise though was that Adam Long was NOT the culprit.

Bigfoot revealed

A few years later, we added little gorillas- Caleb, Quinn and Ben. 

One year we celebrated not only the birthdays, but David's graduation from the University of Idaho.  All of his hard work and studying had finally paid off with a PhD in chemistry.   We added music to the party that year.

Bruce Bishop

As you can see, the quality of the photos from 2002 were not the same that they are now.  This was taken with a digital camera and I was lucky to have one. 

This little guy was the center of attention, Mathis Heisel.

Julie and I always tried to get a group photo of the kids every year.  In this photo they are wearing the clothes they had to grab out of the bag while playing musical chairs.  The one with the biggest number of items of clothing on won the game.  (It was hot that day and the winner, Rylee, was very warm.)

I searched for more kid event photos especially of the year we had a zip line, but I couldn't find them.  There are just too many years of  photos.  I think the kids really liked the zip line too!

In addition to the music that we added in 2002, the party also came to end with some music every year.  The music was extra-special since we had a sing-a-long with the piano.  Sometimes we had the addition of other instruments, guitars, harmonicas, trombones, violins and trumpets.  It just depended on the year.  One thing for sure, it was going to end with singing.   Everyone enjoyed it so much that eventually we had songbooks with our favorites, over forty songs.

What did we sing?  Some favorites:  Your Cheatin' Heart, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, I'm in the Jailhouse Now, Hotel California, Cecilia....  A big favorite for the men, If I Were A Rich Man (with Tevye moves) and always the finale' was The House of The Rising Sun.  Everyone sang on that one, even the little ones.  Many of the little ones you see in the photos above would  learn ALL of the lyrics to that song.  Yes, I know, kind of a strange song, but all I can say is they loved to sing that song.  Sometimes we had to sing it twice.... or three times.  Then the party was over.

This photo is actually one from New Year's Eve.  Yes, the singing happened on NYE too and it always ended with the House of the Rising Sun.

Our final party was in 2016 as we decided to pass the torch to the younger generation for hosting parties.

 Happy Birthday Retired Mountain Man.