one stop light town

Loving A Girl...

What can I say? She is a brilliant ray of sun for everyone she meets... She is always rocking some fabulous accessory. Yesterday we had a very serious, honest conversation that went something like this:

Mai - "Mama, I am stylish."

Me - "Mai, you are sooo stylish and you have awesome fashion sense!"

Mai - "I guess it skips a generation."

Yep! I totally LOVE this girl...

the big one...

I am tempted to delete the last posting ... you know the one that is titled "a month of silence"?

That was clever of me... except that, well, that was about 4 months ago. I thought maybe it would motivate me.

How Relaxing Is this Picture? I was enjoying Liquid Montana Gold...

Nope...I went merrily along blogging in my head all these months.

The thing is life here is sooo consuming in a good way. I heard a quote the other day that said...

"just remember, you can't download

real life."

Loving Fisherman and Little Bo

After spending some years trying to do just that it has been amazing to start living again... Tod goes fishing nearly every day... I run with the sun most mornings. Our kids are doing all of the things Tod and I cherish most about our childhood... camping, hiking, floating the river.

And at the end of the day we drive home to our quiet little life and I LOVE IT!!!

Okay, so you might be asking... what's with the title of this post? Is there a story behind it?

Why yes there is... thank you for asking. And now I will be telling...

The Loving Fisherman In All His Glory

Once upon a time... there was an awesomely hansome, kind and loving fisherman who took his family on a fabulous adventure. He got up early in the morning and got all of the poles ready, packed up the life vests and ham sandwiches...Today was the day he was going to teach his lovely lady to fly fish. All were bubbling over with excitement at the prospect of spending the day under the sky, floating down the river with the promise of landing the big one.

Well, as most fisherman will tell you (and I never believed them, but I do now...) there is a good chance you will land the biggest fish of the day on your first few casts. Wierd how that works... but this day, it was true. The loving fisherman cast only a few times, the fish rose, he set the hook and the boat was full of whooping and hollering because it was a BIG ONE!!!

Now, I have been fishing all of my life. And I mean ALL of my life. Some of my earliest memories are of waking at the crack of dawn with my Dad and paddling the canoe out on the lake to catch breakfast...I cleaned my own fish before I could ride a bike. So I am not a newbie... I am a rugged Wyoming (now Montana) woman... I don't need eyeshadow and lip gloss to have a good day and I know a thing or two about fishing. So when I saw that HUGE fish swimming toward the boat I decided to help it out a bit, you know how you do... you reel them in and then you pickem' up to show everyone. So I grab the line super excited for everyone to see how big this fish was and just as I lift it out of the water... snap!! The line broke and the fish swam away. Just then, an awkward silence fell over the boat.

Then, the loving fisherman spoke up...

"It's okay love, we will get another one." And he did...The End

Fly Fishing 101: Ladies... aparently fly fishing is very different from regular fishing... the end of the line is called the "tippet". It is a very fine line between the fly and the leader. And it breaks, VERY easily.

a month of silence...

Where does the time go? I knew it was about time to post because I found myself blogging in my mind again... we have been so busy and done so much... where do I begin??? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words and getting started again is hard so I am going to start with some images of life these days...

So one day after church I was chatting with a friend who was going to be immunizing her pigs later that afternoon and I impulsively was like, "Hey, can we come out to help you? We'd love it... I mean, we probably will be useless but it will be fun!" So she took us up on the offer and this is what transpired:

I KNOW... Tod roping pigs???? Many, if not all of you, are in disbelief... but it is true... Tod ACTUALLY roped a pig. Turns out he was not half bad at it!

Okay, Mai receives the "MOST SHOCKING PLAYER" award. The girl was totally CRAZY with the pig thing... I mean she was going for it. It was hilarious because all that "dirt" is not dirt at all... Oh yes, you know what I am saying... STINKY. But Mai??? She (and her courageous mentor Dal) were chasing those pigs and getting right down into the "funky mud" to mark the pigs after they got their shots. Mai had a piece of pink chalk...her tool of choice... and she would just boldly run upto the pig, giggling with delight and scribble, scribble, scribble. It was AWESOME.

Maddox, well... I thought I knew my kids. My new theory is all parents must verify what they think they know about their kids with a trip to a ranch. Maddox was heart broken..."Pigs, cry mama...pigs cry". He was traumatized. So we headed over to the chicken coop and the horses. Much more his speed...

I have more pictures... and now I am on a roll but it is officially the next day and I have broken my new vow to myself that I will go to bed at a healthy hour... So goodnight!!

the world according to...

I can't begin to express how much this lady annoys me... she epitomizes all that is wrong with the world.

First, she is happy to be doing laundry... enough said. Secondly, her shirt matches her daughter... finally, her bright sunny disposition first thing in the morning* makes her one of THEM...

*(how do I know it is morning you say??? out the window farmer husband Bob is going to milk the cow and if you use your imagination, the sun is rising over the barn during some freak rain storm but that story is for another day)

You probably guessed by now, I am not a morning person. I can't even think until 10am. I am grouchy, confused, uninterested but full of guilt. Everyday... like "Groundhog Day" I wake up to a chipper baby boy who is ALLLLL Morning Person just like his Dada... man-o-man those two.

Maddox is ready to play, play, play before he even opens his eyes and his Dad well, let's just say his "morning personness" is a wierd combination of pride & personal vendetta that gives him a feeling of superiority (which if you ask me is a problem of all morning people.)

My Mama and my dear Sister are both morning people as well... so yep, my entire life has been one colossial battle against my natural Circadian Rhythms.

It is exhausting really, not being a morning person. Today, I found myself reading a article titled, "Nine Ways To Become A Morning Person". Nope, I am not joking.

The thing is, I don't want my kid to hate me. I don't want her to feel trapped by my in ability to roll with the world. I want her to be on time and not feel the anxiety that I have felt my entire life... what is a girl to do???

I haven't changed in 37 years... I have little (if any at all) faith in the fact that I am going to be able to make the shift. I almost thought to ask if any of you have any advice but then I thought... "No one is going to tell you anything you haven't heard before" and besides... the advice will just serve to make me feel even more inadequate. Who decided Morning People should rule the world anyway?

I could argue that even God himself did his most creative work at night... "2 Now the earth was [a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night.".... I am just saying...

i'd be lying if I said I wasn't....

JEALOUS doesn't begin to describe my feelings as I rolled out of bed this morning. My honey is away on the men's rah-rah, ski Discovery, play poker poker, love Jesus, big breakfast (not necessarily in that order...but close) weekend. It's been planned a long time, I want him to have fun and bond with his buddies, and know Jesus more... but I LOVE TO SKI!!! And I woke up wanting to be a guy for one day...

Inspite of my attitude I dragged myself and the kids out of bed and got us packed because my friend, Mrs. Starr had invited the kids and I to hang out with her and the 3 little starrs at a place called Fairmont... never heard of it but hey I am game. Besides, Mrs. S and I get each other and we laugh easily. She has quickly become one of my favorite people here...

So we packed up the kids for the 20 minute drive to Fairmont Hot Springs.

This place is REDICULOUS... heaven on earth! Okay, I admit, I am easily overjoyed however... as I sat in the perfectly warm (not stinky mind you) hot spring pool I could not believe what an awesome place this is. I sat there feeling the crisp Montana air against my face, looking up at a perfect "not one cloud" in the blue sky, while listening to the littlest starr - my friends girl - in her cute sing-song voice saying, "I am so happy, I am so happy" and I had to pinch myself. I thought... little star... "I am so happy too..."