Retired Mountain Lady

 Good morning sunshine!  The sunrise was a beautiful one this morning.  A bit on the chilly side compared to the temperatures we've been having, but oh so nice to see the sun!  I hope your Thanksgiving was as enjoyable as ours. Checkout this designer pie!  You can count on that I did not bake it.

It has been action packed here through the Thanksgiving holiday and after.  We spent some fun times with sons JP and David and families.  The board games around the table were intense, but there was so much laughter and it was wonderful to have them all here. 

Our pie baker, Julie, outdid herself with the pie choices.  A gluten free pumpkin, a regular pumpkin, a cherry and a banna cream pie.  Whoa!  Plus she tossed in a few gluten free scones.  

These two are our expert gamers.  They can spend hours on their Nintendos, but they did take timeout to play a couple of board games with the rest of us.  

Granddaughter Rylee spends her time with her nose in a book and we had to entice her away from one.  She kept saying, "I only have 90 more pages, I only have 75 more pages, I only have ...."  She finally gave up and agreed to play with us.   

(I'm not complaining about any of my grandkids reading books.  I love it. They are all avid readers.)

Willie was beside himself to have so many people to get some attention from and yes, he had his share.  Plus, there was a Ben!  A kid!  There were kids on the farm where he was born and we could tell that he was missing them.  

The day after everyone left, Willie spent almost the entire day moping around, looking for his people.  Sadly, he had been left with the old duffers.

There were only a couple of items left behind when they all headed back to Montana, but one required a Fed Ex shipment.  The Nintendo game case contained the discs to ALL of Ben's games.   Monday morning it was a trip to the shipping drop-off in Ponderay.

Willie report:

House training is coming along well with few accidents inside the house.

He definitely knows these words:  sit, lie down, come, watch me, bed, crate, off, eat, yes or good, and no.  The "no" word is one that he likes to ignore if he can.  He is signed up for some puppy training beginning next Wednesday.  I need all the help I can get.

Willie is set up well.  He has a small, wire crate in our bedroom where he sleeps at night.  He also has a bed pillow in the living room and now, thanks to our friends, Neil and Ann, he has inherited Thompson's crate.

Thompson's crate is like owning a Hilton in doggie world.  It's four times the size of the wire crate in our bedroom.  

Willie's Hilton crate is in our pantry, which is really a "catch all" kind of room.  Everything that doesn't fit anywhere else goes in the pantry.  

We were surprised by the amount of snow we received on Friday night.  There was four inches when Willie and I got up Saturday morning and by 10:00 a.m. there was eight.  It was time for the snow machine, which worked better than I thought it would.  The snow was pretty wet, but we did blow some trails.

Willie must have been around some machinery around the farm where he was born because while he has some fear of the noise they make (a good thing, since he stays away on the porch), he does not freak out at the sound of them.  I am hoping that it stays that way because Maggie always went into panic mode whenever I started the lawnmower.  Plus, she wanted to herd it. 

Son David says my trails look like the autobahn.

Saturday afternoon after we were finished with all of the shoveling and snow blowing, Willie returned from the woods with a trophy.  A deer shed.  He was so proud and prancing around with it.  

We don't know where he found out, but it had to have buried in the snow because it was kind of covered with ice when I took it from him.   We are guessing that it was somewhere near Jon's last burnt slash pile, which he and Willie worked at on Friday.  

Willie loves hanging out with Jon around the burn pile.  There are a lot of things to explore and it's good for him since he gets to spend several hours outdoors.

Our Zags have had some disappointing games this week, but hopefully they are learning.  Today is football day.  A little bit of music.  A little bit of puppy training. A little bit of this and that before the next snowfall.