White Lightning

Friday night we met the next De'Anthony Thomas.  I honestly had never heard of him before, but Jesse says he's pretty awesome.  So the next De'Anthony Thomas' name is Kyler, he gets very frustrated if you call him Tyler, he's 8 years old, pretty darn smart, and one of Jason's two nephews.
I went in to town around 4:00 on Friday, like I always do, and also because we had plans to go to Strawn that night with Jason, have dinner at Mary's, and go to the Strawn vs. Gordon football game.  I came in the side door, which takes me right past Jason's office as I go into Jesse's.  As I was walking past, Jason called me into his office and was cracking up laughing.  Apparently Ryan had been trying incredibly hard to invite himself along with us to go to the football game, and Jesse wasn't hearing it.  "So....you guys are going to a football game tonight?  Will there be girls there?  So...where's this football game at?  Do you think I could just ride with y'all?"  (He probably didn't say "y'all", but that was Jason's version of the conversation)  "Jesse didn't even let him finish the sentence!  'No!'  He just turned around, 'No!'"  Jason was highly amused by the fact that Jesse was refusing to let Ryan tag along, and he wanted to see it continue to play out.  So he told me that when Jesse got off work, I had to tell him that I had seen Ryan in the hallway, or the parking lot, or whatever, and casually mention that he asked to ride with us to Strawn and that I had said it was ok.
Well I have the most fantastic poker face, of course....not.  So I had my doubts as to whether I could pull it off, but I'm not one to kill a joke (when I understand it), so I agreed to do my best.  Thankfully, when Jesse got off, he went into Jason's office, so he was just around the corner and couldn't see my face.  Jason helped things along...
"Oh hey, Rianna and I were just talking...Did you tell him who you ran into?"
"Oh...yeah, I was talking to Ryan."
"What did he want?"
"He asked if he could come with us to the football game."
".....what did you tell him?"
"Oh I kinda figured it would be fine."
And for that I got a pair of safety glasses thrown at me as he stomped off, probably to yell at Ryan, so I told him that I was just kidding, and Jason said that I gave it away too soon.  "Yeah, but I didn't want him to hit me!"  Probably not the best thing to say to people that don't know me, or understand the relationship that I have with my husband...We did all agree that it's totally something that Ryan would have done, though, and everyone got a laugh out of it.
Anyway, we followed Jason out to Strawn, and met his family, including his daughter's husky named Neo, who is obsessed with eating a little white stray cat that has recently showed up at his in-laws' house.  Jason and his family are staying there right now because he is currently in the process of remodeling their house, and apparently half of the other houses in the neighborhood.  Their house is going to be pretty cool when it's done, complete with a haunted chicken coop and a backyard for football and baseball.
We showed up at Mary's a little before 6, and it was packed, but Jason said that since the line wasn't going out the door, it was slow.  Apparently Mary's is the place to be.  If you can fit in the door and if you can hear to talk to the person across from you, it's practically dead.  The kids (Jason's two daughters, their cousin whose brother was playing at the game, and Jason's nephews Keaton and Kyler) were sitting at the table over from us (Jesse and myself, Jason, his wife, and his sister) and provided us with much entertainment as they rattled the ice in their empty cups at the waiter, guzzling down can after can of root beer and coke.  I think the final tally was 13, but it may have been more.
Mary's famous for their giant chicken fried steak, so Jesse and I were told that we had to split a large, and that we would be lucky if we could finish it together.  "You haven't seen the way my wife eats!"  Why is that always what people say about me?  I do try to eat like a normal person and not like a vacuum....Oh well.  We finished it, but it was definitely filling.
Strawn and Gordon are about 8 miles apart, and major rivals.  Apparently a while ago the kids from Gordon broke in and burned a huge "G" on Strawn's football field.  They play 6-man football because there only 200 kids in the entire district.  They all say it's more interesting than "real football", but I still don't understand it.  I spent most of the time watching the cheerleaders or talking with Keaton and Kyler.  But I'm pretty sure most of us spent most of our time talking with them.  Those kids are hilarious.  Keaton is only 6, and his favorite thing seems to be repeating everything that Kyler says, but with his own twist.  We were telling jokes, and Jesse asked "What do you call a flying skunk?"  The answer is "a smell-icopter" and Keaton thought it was great, so he asked Jesse to tell him what the joke was, turned to the guy in front of him (Jason's counsin's fiancee, I believe), and said "What do you call a flying squirrel?"  We all tried to tell him it was supposed to be a skunk, but he wanted it to be different, so he stuck to the squirrel.  Kyler is in 3rd grade and plays football with 6th and 7th graders.  Jesse asked him if he had a nickname and he said it was White Lightning, because he's so white.  when asked if people will still call him that in highschool he said matter-of-factly "Oh yeah.  Unless I spray tan."
He says that everything he says he learned from Jason, and that Jason taught him to play football with video games.  He was a kick in the pants.  After the game they all had to race (Jesse and Ryan included), and when racing with his brother or cousins he was kind (or cocky) enough to run backwards.  They threw the football around for almost an hour and we didn't make it home till after 11, but it was a good time.  It was nice to meet Jason's family, and they all seem pretty cool; I'm glad we went.  Plus, Strawn HS's colors are red, black and white, which are the same as Oregon City AND David Douglas, so I think it's fate that we end up moving there someday and I work for the district.  I mean, it's obviously a sign.

Agameece before bed, no matter what.

Even if you have to eat it in the shower, apparently...

I made the great mistake of not giving Jesse ice cream last night, on top of not getting home till 7:30 and consequently not having dinner ready till after 8. So many epic wife fails!
But I should back up. Where did I leave off? Tuesday.

On Tuesday Jody and Matt and Ryan and Nicole and Kent and Tracy all came out to practice pistol. Not much more to say about Tuesday, except that I made a batch of lemon bars and the ants swarmed them while they were shooting, but Jody blew them off at ate them anyway. I brushed them off and trimmed a couple of them and sent them to work with Jesse the next day for Jason. A little extra protein never hurt anybody, right? Especially if you're having twins. Apparently that's the rumor circulating the office. Thank you, husband!
When I came in to work to drop off the car for Jesse and meet Jody so I could go with them to the baby appointment, Ryan and Jason started asking me about the twins, and Jody is all over it, too. When we got to the appointment, he told one of the midwives that I'm having twins. That, kids, is how rumors start.
"A tiny little story is all I need, you better watch out, I'm the rumor weed!"

This is not a peach cobbler.
It's my domestic attempt from the day before...

Anyway...that was a nice blast from the past. I'm getting ahead of myself again. Yesterday I attempted once again to one up my dear sister in our attempts to be domestically BA, and I made a peach cobbler, but it got a little over done, which made me very sad. And then, just before I left to go meet Jody and Mel, two white trucks pulled up, and a bunch of Texans got out and dropped a super mangy cat in a live trap on my front porch! I don't know why it took 5 people to drop off a cat, but it did. (How many Texans does it take...?) Apparently Kent's mom (who they referred to as Regina, but I had only met as "G", which was quite confusing) caught it the other day and
Kent told her to leave it at the ranch. He told Jesse that a cat was going to show up, but everyone failed to mention it to me, so I was rather surprised. Just as they pulled out, and I was about to leave again, the UPS guy showed up with my box from bed bath and beyond! I got a marble rolling pin and a muffin pan. No more rolling out pie crust with a coffee cup for me! I am super excited. It's all heavy and pretty, and has the little wooden tray to put it in, and it makes me happy. But I haven't had a chance to use it, because right after that I left to go into town.

Funny Kian quote of the day:
Kian-"What's your mom's name?"
Me-"Wende."
Kian-"What's her kid's name?"
Me-"Cristin, Rianna, Sarah, Ben, Connie, Noelle, Laney, Joy and Justin."
Kian-"Woah! That's a really long name."
Jody-dying laughing.
Another funny Kian moment was when they pointed out this giant boat-shaped play ground thing that Kian really wants. Jody told me that Jesse and I need it for our twins, and Kian said that he would rather have a boat than a twin, and kept going on about how he should have it, and not the twin. I think he was jealous of the imaginary twin and its playground. They also pointed out a "lamdronat". Literally, that's what the sign says. It's a hot topic of debate whether that's on purpose or not.
But anyway, the tidbits aren't running together well, and I'm starting to lose the thread of my story. So back to it. The birthing center is in Peaster, and it's about an hour and a half away from Breckenridge. It's run by a woman and her two daughters, and they all seem really nice. They basically have an entire house set up capable of accommodating two women in labor, if need be. They even have a fully stocked kitchen that you can use. Mel said that they have been really hands off through the whole thing, not pressuring her to do anything, and she really likes it. She said she hasn't gotten any tests or screens or even an ultrasound. Nothing but some blood work. Right before we left the younger sister, Sarah, said "I like her! I want someone like her to assist at births. We need someone like her." And then we had to laugh about the fact that that's the third time since I've been in Texas that someone has offered me a job the day they met me. Of course they weren't really offering a job, but it was still amusing.
Then this morning I had to go into Abilene to get my fingerprinting done. It was so much easier this time than when I had it done for OC! I don't know why it took forever last time, but today I was in and out in ten minutes. So I spent the rest of the morning at the mall buying teacher looking clothes. I even shopped in the women's section. I feel old, like last Sunday when someone asked me if I "work outside the home". I really wanted to shop at motherhood maternity, because they have seriously the most comfortable shirts I have ever worn, but I figured I should perpetuate any rumors. I already visited a birthing center...that might be too much baby for one week. But I feel like I can now, since I have a wedding ring, without being looking at me like I'm a harlot.
When I was on my way home, I passed Abilene Christian University, so I decided to stop by and see if I could get a catalogue, and sew if i could learn anything about online classes. Well I
ended up meeting the president of marketing and talking to the transfer admissions guy for almost half an hour, just to learn that they only have online classes during the summer except for masters programs. So it doesn't look like ACU would work out too well for me. Oh well.

I came home to dishes all over my life, because the sink broke yesterday and we didn't get the parts to fix till this afternoon. But my husband is wonderful, and he got it fixed right after work today, so I still had time to use my new rolling pin to make biscuits and gravy for dinner, and a batch of chocolate chip cookies for Jason. He said that in return for cookies he's going to take us to dinner in Strawn
tomorrow, and then we're going to a football game. It should be a good Friday night. Jason seems cool. He's a local, and his office is right across the hall from Jesse and Ryan's (they found an empty office and declared it theirs) so I sometimes talk to him when I'm sitting in Ryan's chair waiting for Jesse.
And that, I think, brings you up to date with all of our Texas Adventures. Till next time...! =]

PS. Jesse found a stick bug this morning!  It was cool.

Also, my biscuit picture was cool...gotta add that too!

I'm certain there's a monster in my bathtub.

I keep hearing strange clanking noises coming from the tub drain.  But that's neither here nor there.  We're in to week three, and soon I'll have to stop counting the days.
We went to First Christian Church with Ryan this Sunday.  It was interesting.  Definitely more high church than we are used to, complete with small children as candle lighters, a choir with robes, and a minister in a red, white, and blue tie drinking sweet tea from McDonald's in the pulpit.  The church has a big pipe organ, that is pretty cool, but on the whole, I don't think it's one that we'll go back to.  Everyone was still very nice, though, and as we were leaving, one lady came running out the door to say hi to me, because apparently I met her a few days earlier.  "We met you the other day!  It's so good to see you!  Do you remember?  I'm Virgil the 3rd's wife!"  I do remember meeting her, now, at the ribbon cutting for Party Planet, but I'm afraid I have absolutely no recollection of Virgil the 3rd.  I'm sure I will remember him next time, though.
After church we went to lunch with Ryan and discovered our new favorite restaurant.  Legends.  It's nothing special, I guess, but in Jesse's words "This place is way better than Ernie's...and we haven't even gotten our food yet!"  Ernie's is a Mexican place in town that everyone goes to, but nobody really likes, except for the steak.  I'm not sure about all the food, since we all had cheeseburgers, but the cheeseburgers were pretty great.  I have a feeling we might spend quite a few Sunday afternoons there.
I spent a good amount of Monday trying to catch a biker on Grand Theft Auto.  I eventually got incredibly frustrated and felt like it was stealing my soul.  After giving up on being a gamer, I went to the Administration office again and dropped off all the paperwork for the sub application.  I have an appointment to get fingerprinted for my criminal background check on Thursday.  I have to drive to Abilene to get it done, but it will be nice to have an excuse to get out of town.  It's hard to justify driving 60 miles just because you're bored, especially when you're alone.  But when you have a reason...you can go and kill an entire day!  I've started making a list of things I can't get in Breckenridge, like bleach pens, slacks, bullion and a pizza cutter.
Tomorrow we're going with Jody and Mel to their baby appointment, which should be fun.  Jesse commented the other day that everyone at work is having babies, and he feels left out.  Then he said that he's praying for twins.  But don't worry...we're still not planning on popping any out anytime soon.  We just really aren't ready for that yet, so don't get any funny ideas.  Ben told me something that you can eat that's supposed to increase your chance of having twins, but I forgot what it was.  Anyway, I'm not too keen on the idea of twins.  Jesse's not the one whose back would have to cart all that around for 9 months, after all.
Well that's about all I've got for ya.  I'm debating making cheesecake...I have some stale snickerdoodles that would make a good crust.

Some pictures.

These pictures really belong in other posts, but I wasn't able to put them up at the time.

This was from our first trip;
We caught a couple of geckos and tried to make them fight.

This one is us looking beautiful in the UHaul.

Me looking even MORE beautiful in the Uhaul...it was a long drive

We stopped in Clines Corners, New Mexico, even though, as my father pointed out, neither of us are Clines

This is the first scorpion we found in Dave's bedroom

And this is me in Dave's freezer.  I spent a couple hours scrubbing it.  It was quite the project.

The first of four scorpions we have found in our house so far.  Jesse actually stepped on one of them.

And that's all I've got.

Today was boring, so after sleeping most of the day while Jesse killed aliens, we drove to Eastland to have dinner and get an Allan wrench.  Well, we got sidetracked at WalMart (they have a real one in Eastland) and ended up buying almost $300 worth of groceries.  And a cooler.  And grand theft auto 5.  Just the essentials, of course.  With a cooler full of groceries in the car, we weren't really able to go to dinner, but that's ok, because groceries are worth it.  Especially since we found Tillamook cheese!  Jesse sent a picture of it to Ryan and he had us pick up a couple loaves of cheese for him.
I've had back luck with food lately.  I burned my second pizza this week tonight, and this morning we ended up with a million chewy waffles and cold bacon because I kept having problems figuring out the waffles.  But we have this fancy new waffle maker that flips over and has a timer on the side, so I had to use it.

But a few days ago I cooked steak for the first time, and that actually worked! I even got Jesse to eat salad. It was truly a miracle.

But that's enough about food.  I spent most of yesterday talking to Courtney about mermaids.  Apparently they are real, and there are documentaries about them that are quite convincing.  I must admit, I'm not a believer, but I didn't watch the full two hour discovery channel documentary thing.  However, Courtney and I did decide that she should move to Texas and dedicate her life to searching for mermaids in the Gulf of Mexico. 



Like I said, I may be losing my marbles. I mean, this is how I entertain myself lately:

Other than playing with safety glasses and going shopping, the most exciting moment of my week was when in rained yesterday!  It rained like Oregon for two days.  I went running in my bright yellow Seaside sweatshirt, and then did ballet in the front yard in the rain until my phone got wet and stopped letting me change the song.

So then I took a hot shower (usually it's 95 degrees in the bathroom upstairs, so I never take hot showers), made myself a not-super-awesome-but-better-than-nothing white mocha, and sat on the porch with Anna Karenina and listened to the rain. It was lovely.

I certainly am looking forward to starting teaching, but I am leery of toddler classes. I just don't know what they're going to be like, and I like to have things planned out. Oh well...gotta do what you gotta do, I guess. It's good to get 'em young, I just wish I didn't have to be the one to get them.

Math and Menus

I just had a sudden urge to do math.  There is something seriously wrong with me.  I was reading Blue Like Jazz yesterday (for the millionth time) and he was talking about being stuck in space by himself and having his hair and beard grow into his face and going crazy out there all by himself, not being able to even see or get his hair out of his eyes.  That didn't really happen, he was just talking about it...It's a good book.  But anyway, the point is that people kinda grow crazy when they're all alone for extended periods of time.  His point was that community is healthy, which I absolutely agree with!  I was talking to my father about how living on a commune in Texas wouldn't be that bad, especially if the other members of the commune build guns for a living.  Communes are cool.  A little bit reminiscent of cults, which aren't so cool, but I think I could make it work.  But I digress.  Back to the math.
I'm in the process of writing a menu, like a real adult.  I have been looking up recipes and writing them down in  notebook so I can add them to my recipe binder, and the notebook I happen to be using is my old Math 111 notebook.  Well I was flipping through, looking for a blank page, and I saw all these math problems, and I suddenly felt like I would enjoy the mental stimulation of doing math.  And that's when I realized that I really am spending too much time alone.  But maybe it's good for me.  I mean, math would probably be a good thing for me to do.  Jesse tells me all the time that I need to use my noggin...
Of course, thinking about doing math is fine, but I probably won't, because it's math, and who likes math?  But today is going by very slowly...

Beginning of week two:

Let me just say that we have now been living on the ranch for one week, in texas for ten days, and out of Oregon for twelve days.  It feels like ages.
We went to our first Texas church this morning, Bethany Baptist church.  We actually went twice.  As I believe I have mentioned, Texas (or at least Breckenridge) is a little behind when it comes to the internet, so only three of the 5 million churches in town have websites, and only one has easy to find service times.  We picked Bethany Baptist because it seemed to have a 9am service, and a bunch of people were planning to do 3 gun practice this morning at 10am.  Well neither of us set an alarm, and I woke up at 8:25, which is enough time to get me up and dressed and have breakfast made and eaten and out the door before 8:45, but I guess it wasn't quite enough time for Jesse.  However, we were only 2 minutes late to what I thought was a 9am service, but was actually bible study.  Long story short, we ended up going home for 20 minutes, and driving back at 10.  Thankfully everyone pushed practice back to 11, so we didn't miss out on anything. 
I'm glad we made it.  I've never been good at church hunting.  We tried once when we first moved to Portland, but we ended up staying at the first church we went to, because none of us wanted to prolong the search.  I have gone to two other churches since we moved to Colton, but those were chosen strictly because of the people I knew who were already going, and my attendance didn't last long.  So having to go to a new church, one that my father is not the pastor of, one where we don't have any friends, was a relatively new experience.  At the beginning of the service, the man doing announcements (who I believe is the associate pastor, but I'm not certain) mentioned something about giving to some specific program, and Jesse leaned over to me and said "oh crap, they pass the plate here, don't they?" and I was taken back to the first memory that I have of being in church.  Actually, I have three other early memories involving churches...one is getting a tambourine stuck on my head, one is climbing on the "rock wall" outside the old Elkton church, and the other is sticking olives on my fingers with Larry Hendrickson in the basement of the Lowell church, but those just happened at church, not during church.  My first memory of a church service is at the church in Reedsport (I'm fairly certain we were sitting on the left side, which is odd for my family, but I can't be certain), and when they passed the offering plate, I tried to take the money out.  I was about 4 years old and didn't know any better, but I was still confused and mortified down to my very core.
Thankfully our experience today was much less embarrassing.  Everything that happened was long winded, but it was cut short at an hour, there were two little kids sitting next to us that kept waving to me, everyone seemed very nice, and the pastor was good at preaching from the bible, rather than going off on tangents and leaving everyone thinking "so...because Jesus said 'blessed are the poor in spirit', that means we should be vegetarians??"  Of course, no pastor in Texas would tell you to be a vegetarian, but you get the picture.  He was decently concise, had good illustrations, and only a little bit of the preacher voice.  Apparently he and his wife were missionaries in Washington for a while, and did some work in hood river, so they could sympathize some with our culture shock.  We also met the school nurse from north elementary school, and she told me that if you have any college at all you can be a substitute teacher, and they're in desperate need of subs right now.  I guess they lost a bunch of teachers and had to hire all their subs. So I will probably try to figure out how to go about signing up to be a substitute elementary school teacher!  She said it pays $50/day, which isn't astronomical, but it's not awful.  That would definitely be an adventure...I have never experienced an elementary school classroom, especially not in Texas, but I should be able to handle faking it for a day at a time, right?  I helped all the kiddos with their homework at Candy Lane all the time, and only once had to tell a 5th grader that I didn't know what to do.  It'd be easy peasy!
Well anyway...we got home from church and people started showing up pretty quick, all in their matching colt jerseys that they wear to matches.  It was cool to watch.  I feel like I could do 3 gun, but not smoothly.  I'm not super comfortable with shotguns, and the transitions would confuse me.  So I stuck to score keeping and feeding people cookies.  Apparently my cookies are good enough that Jesse threatened to start selling them, and Ryan said he would go broke.  Honestly, I though they were a little, teeeeensy bit overdone, but I like super soft cookies.  Jesse didn't do bad, coming in sixth out of ten, which is pretty good for having never done it before.  They left most of the course up, so I'll have to try it sometime before I start teaching and don't have free evenings anymore.
Afrer that we went out on the boat and Jesse got to swallow a few gallons of Hubbard creek lake before figuring out how to wakeboard.  It was a bit too choppy for my taste, so I decided to wait, but he and Ryan and Annie and Dave all gave it a go.  Of course, with Dave wakeboarding, that just left Annie to drive, and she just learned yesterday.  She did a pretty good job (I guess, I don't know much about it) except for when she turned around and straight into our own wake.  I'm told it was a wall of water, four or five feet high that we plowed right through.  I somehow managed to miss seeing it.  I turned around just in time to get a face full of water, but it must have been a dusey, because it left a puddle of water on the canopy, and about six inches of standing water in the bow, where Annie had put Dave's chicken wings to keep them dry.  That worked well.  We had to take everything out of the boat when we got back to the shop and spread it all around so it can dry out.  Thank goodness for the heat! It would probably take days in Oregon.  The whole thing is carpeted.  Who thought to put carpet in a boat?  It snaps out, but still...it's like putting carpet in a bathroom.  Just weird.
Anyway.  That was our great Texas adventure for the day.  Over and out.

We will dance

This song basically sums it up today...and for once I have no words of my own to elaborate any more. 

I've watched the sunrise in your eyes
And I've seen the tears fall like the rain
You've seen me fight so brave and strong
You've held my hand when I'm afraid

We've watched the seasons come and go
We'll see them come and go again
But in winter's chill, or summer's breeze
One thing will not be changin'

CHORUS:
We will dance
When the sun is shining
In the pouring rain
We'll spin and we'll sway
And we will dance
When the gentle breeze
Becomes a hurricane
The music will play
And I'll take your hand
And hold you close to me
And we will dance

Sometimes it's hard to hold you tight
Sometimes we feel so far apart
Sometimes we dance as one
And feel the beating of each others hearts

Some days the dance is slow and sweet
Some days we're bouncing off the walls
No matter how this world may turn
Our love will keep us from fallin'

CHORUS

The music will play
And I'll hold you close
And I won't let you go
Even when our steps
Grow weak and slow
Still I'll take your hand
And hold you close to me
And we, will dance

Windows.

I swear I've never seen a house with so many windows.  I have spent two hours now just washing the windows and ceiling fan in the living room and dining room and the doors in between. It's ridiculous!  I have said many times that I feel like my life ought to be a movie, but I have changed my mind.  Since I have now been alive for quite some time, and it seems likely that I will go on living, it really ought to be a tv show.  But anyway, I felt today as if anyone watching my life would have gotten a chuckle out of seeing me standing on the little island in my kitchen, vacuuming the ceiling fan, or finding a scorpion while on my hands and knees trying to polish the wood floors in the living room, listening to everything from Michael Card to Michael Buble, up to my armpits (literally) in dust and grime.  At one point I did take a break to watch the last show in Country Strong, and I cried like a baby.  It was kinda sad.  It's just such a good movie, and I always get so into it, even if it's just playing in the background while I clean.
But before any of that happened, I got up, dropped Jesse off at work (the sunrise was beautiful again), had a bowl of lucky charms, then went back to bed and slept until 15 minutes before I had to leave to meet Jlyn.  I honestly felt like I could have slept the clock 'round.  I don't know why I was so tired, but I was.  So when I finally dragged myself out of bed and got dressed, I got the great idea to wear a skirt.  I figured that I was just going to talk to someone, and I wanted to look decent, and I wanted to wear something that didn't look like I had been doing manual labor for days.  And that was when I realized that I had left the lights on in the car and my battery was dead.  That's not a super great thing to have happen by yourself on the ranch 10 miles out of town.  But thankfully Kent left one of his trucks here and Jesse put jumper cables in my trunk.  Unthankfully, my car was too far away and Jesse had the keys to the truck, so I had to push my car to get it to the truck.  And then when I got it started, I backed up, turned around, and killed it. So I got to push it back and do it all over again.  Yay me!  So much for no manual labor/skirt-appropriate day.  But I made it to town, and Jlyn and I worked out a schedule that has me teaching 9 classes classes week, and I got a pretty sweet neon yellowish green Party Planet T-shirt that says staff on the sleeve.  Now I am awesome.
Overall, I would consider today to have been productive.  I got Jesse to work, made my meeting, went grocery shopping, picked up Star Trek:Into Darkness from redbox, remembered to put soap in the downstairs bathroom, washed all the windows and ceiling fans, scrubbed the floor, cleaned Jesse's closet, picked him up from work, got dinner started, and even had time to make a batch of sun tea AND talk on the phone to my mom and to Courtney.  I feel downright domestic, and it's a good thing domesticity is something I strive for, or else all this crap would not be worth it.

On the ranch

Well...where to start?
Yesterday was a long day.  We went out on the lake with Dave and Annie and Shauna (a local that is working there) and her husband Patrick in the morning.  Annie got to back a trailer for the first time, the boat and the jet ski both were having problems, and Jesse almost killed Dave.
After that we got our Uhaul from the shop and Dave and Annie helped us get moved into the ranch house.  We don't have a ton of stuff, and it already has a table and chairs and about a hundred couches and a washer and dryer, so we left most of the big stuff at the shop.  We did bring our bed, though, so this house now has 15 beds in it.  It's a little bigger than two people really need.  We were moving the two beds from our bedroom upstairs so they would be out of the way, and one of them got wedged halfway up the stairs, and Jesse had to take it apart, which was no easy task, and I didn't make it any better by being grumpy.  But we got the beds situated, which was the most important thing that late in the evening, and drove into town to have spam and rice with Jody and Mel and Kian, because what little food we had was packed up, and we were too tired to bother with it.
We sat around the table, wedged in amongst the boxes, and played Kian's fishing game with him while Jody fried spam.  It was nice to spend some time with them when we weren't busy moving people.  I feel like we have been moving and cleaning and busying since we got here (except the morning on the boat), and it was nice to sit and talk.  Mel is due with their second in November, and they told us about a birthing center that is just over an hour away that apparently is so good that people come from out of state to have their babies there, and is cheaper than either going to a hospital or having a midwife come all the way out here to Breckenridge.  Disclaimer: I am NOT pregnant, not am I planning to be, but I do like to know about these things, and it's always good to have it planned in advance.  Anyway, they said we could go with them to an appointment and meet everyone and check it out if we want to, which I feel wouldn't be a bad idea.  For future reference.
Anyway...we got home and realized that our water doesn't get hot because we have no propane. Thankfully taking a cold shower almost feels good when your bathroom is 95 degrees.  Neither of us slept much, I never sleep well in a new place, but I still managed to get up with Jesse, eat some lucky charms, and spend a good four hours sweeping and mopping and vacuuming and unpacking and sweeping some more and doing laundry and sweeping again before going and spending a couple hours with Mel and Kian this afternoon.  He and I played alot of hide and seek.
When I got back, I finished putting most of the place together, and then got lazy and read Blue Like Jazz until Jesse got home.  He needed to sight in his rifle, and I actually managed to hit a few things...one of them being the post that the targets sit on, so now there's a big gouge in it.  Oops.  It's nice being out here.  I know Jesse loves being able to just go out and shoot things whenever he wants.  Plus, we probably will see alot of people living here.  Nicole and John just showed up to go look for some piggies.  When I get settled and have time to go grocery shopping, I'll have to make sure to always have some sweet tea and a full cookie jar for everyone.

Moving

Well it looks like we're gonna get to live on the ranch!  Jody told us last night that Kent was talking about letting us rent the cabin on the ranch, and the prospect of being able to go out and shoot at stuff whenever he wanted made Jesse very happy.  Apartment living is not his style at all. 

So this morning we got up, ate some apple jacks, dropped off the trailer, and drove down to the shop, with the intention of unloading all our stuff so we could put Jody's stuff in it and use it to move his family this weekend.  But Kent said he was going to drive out to the ranch later, so we shouldn't unload our stuff until he could take us out and let us look at the house.  So instead of unpacking, we got to sort receipts, tape them in chronological order onto pieces of paper, and then type up an expense report.  I can handle the basics of excel, and I felt fairly proficient as I was typing it all up...until we realized that we had forgotten to include mileage for driving to and from the airport during our last trip down here.  So then Jody came and helped me start a second page, and get the totals to combine on the second, etc.  I felt like I could handle it from there, so Jody went back to work and Jesse disappeared into the vast maze of the shop, and I spent the next 20 minutes or so realizing how little I know about excel.  Basically, when you move things down, the cells left behind do not keep their formatting, and it is a pain in the butt to get it back to looking like the rest of everything. 

But I digress.  Once I was finished with the expense report, we drove out to the ranch with Kent to see the house.  He told us that every first and every second or third week of September he has a group of guys who all come in and stay there to hunt doves on the ranch.  The only stipulations to living there would be vacating the premises for those two weeks, and not competing with the season hunters for game animals.  But he said that we could come stay with him, and Annie said the same thing, and Dave has two extra bedrooms, and Nicole has offered to let us stay with her if we need to, as well.  So I think we basically have that covered.  And as far as hunting goes, Charlie has a ranch, and Kent is talking about turning another 240 acres or so that he has (or his niece has, or something) into the Bold Ideas hunting ranch, so Jesse would be fine that way too. 

We had seen the house from the outside before, but had never been in it.  Even now we just got a brief walk-through, and it was full of dove hunters, so we didn't get a good look, and we didn't get any pictures.  It's not beautiful, and it's not modern, but it's cute AND functional, and even has air conditioning!  The kitchen is painted a strange sort of teal color, but it gives the place character, and Kent said we could do whatever we wanted with it.  There is a loft upstairs that has 4 sets of bunk beds and two twin beds (from what I remember) as well as the smaller bedroom downstairs.  There's apparently a storm cellar in the laundry room type thing off of the kitchen, but Kent said we would probably be better off getting in the car and driving away from the storm, rather than try to actually use it.  It has a washer and dryer, so we would probably just store ours somewhere and use the ones that he already has set up.  There isn't much else to say about it...He's never rented it before, and he's not worried about leases or cleaning deposits or anything.  When we asked him what he wanted for rent he said a couple hundred dollars plus utilities.  So I guess we will work that out eventually.  I am looking forward to having a place out of town, and we will be able to stay as long as we need to, which is good, and cheap rent will make it much easier to save up to buy our own house.  Or our own Jeep, which I have a feeling will be our first big purchase here... 

When we got back from looking at the house we went with Dave and Annie and John Isberg (the shooter they had in Canby who drove down this week with Dave's truck and camper) to finish packing up Dave's stuff and move him (again) to the place he has a little ways outside of town.  It turned into an all-day ordeal.  After getting everything loaded, we met Ryan for lunch, went out to the house, unloaded, back to the shop, bought everything under the sun at Wal-Mart in the way of cleaning supplies, and long story short, I spent most of the afternoon inside his refrigerator while Annie put the boys to work washing windows and then scrubbed and vacuumed most of the rest of the house.  Someone actually has a picture of me inside the freezer.  I'll have to share it, if I ever find it.  At 6:00 I finally finished with the refrigerator and mopped the kitchen, and we all found out that it is Matt's birthday today.  Even his brother, hard at work putting a TV stand together incorrectly, didn't know.  So we called it a day and went to La Familia's for dinner.  And that's the end of my story thus far.  Tomorrow we get to move Jody and his family, and on Sunday it will be our turn!  And then Monday I have a meeting with Jlyn. 

Now it's really the end.

It's good to be home!

We finally pulled up at the rental house a little after 6 this evening, tired, and sore, and happy to be back. We were met at the door by Kian, the most energetic 4 year old I have ever met. He shushed us, saying "you have to be quiet, he's sleeping!" Sure enough, Ryan was curled up on one of the couches in the living room, but I doubt he was getting much sleep with Kian around. We went into the living room and met Mel, Kian's mom, and she told us that he has been bursting with excitement for Jesse and Rianna to get here all day. Despite his previous warnings, he ran into the living room to share the breaking news with Ryan that Jesse and Rianna were here and Rianna was wearing a pink shirt. Apparently that was big news! He and I hit it off pretty quickly, mainly because I allowed him to turn me into a quadopus (I couldn't be an octopus because I have only four limbs) over and over again. Jody got home, said "you're not black!" and told Jesse that he'd been replaced.
When the guys went to get stuff for dinner, Kian and I started playing hide and seek. I told him I would show him the best hiding place, and he exclaimed "oh, do you mean in wreck-it's room? I don't go in there!" He also refuses to set foot in "Jesse's room" or "Jesse's bathroom" for fear Jesse will get mad at him. Anyway, I locked him in a closet for a while, and then he said it was my turn. When I was a child, my father used to play hide and seek with us. He would hide, and as we were searching for him we would find him suddenly lying on the couch. He insisted that if we looked right at him and didn't see him, then he would become invisible, so he would go sit on the couch...honestly, I'm not sure how that was even logical, but we believed it, and Kian is just as gullible as I was. He would stand around the corner and count to five, while I ran around into the bedroom and hid. He spent a good deal of time rooting around the closet, before going and telling Nicole that he believed I had died. When he was gone I ran in and sat on the pile of pillows in the closet, and the look on his face when he came back to look again, following Nicole's advice, was absolutely priceless! The game continued for a while, and now he is absolutely convinced that if I sit on that pile of pillows, I am able to become invisible.
When Jesse got back, Kian began playing hide and seek with him, which kept us all entertained for quite a while. Jesse even climbed out the bathroom window and into the garage, and Ryan put Kian in the dryer.
Currently, Ryan is playing on the leap frog with Kian, and Jody is finishing up the ribs for dinner. Life in this house is definitely more lively with Kian here, and it's good to be home. Dinner's ready, so I guess that's all for now.

Big moments

As we drove through Oregon City this morning we saw kids waiting for the bus, ready for their first day of school, and it got me thinking about the fact that there are no small moments in life.  Today there are kids rushing through their first day of school, somewhere someone is being born, and someone is dying, and Jesse and I are on our way to Texas.  Obviously we are in the midst of a big moment right now.  All of our worldly possessions are packed up in the truck that we have already driven a few hundred miles across Oregon.  But while I know this is big, it doesn't really feel big right now.  We said goodbye to our families this morning, and there were surprisingly few Cline tears shed.  We all have a reputation for being emotional persons, and I had been looking forward to this day with anticipation of not a little bit of emotion.  Of course, Nana cried, but that goes without saying.
I think that, at least for me, I haven't realized yet that we are never coming back.  I was thinking to myself this morning about something that I needed to do when we got back and to remind myself that this isn't a trip.  As we were pulling out of Payette, ID after having dinner with Jesse's uncle John, Jesse said "Rianna, we are going to Texas and leaving behind everything we know except for my guns."  I want to say something poetic about the rolling hills, or the big blue skies, or watching our home fade away in the rear view mirror, but our UHaul doesn't have a rear view mirror, and I've read almost 7 chapters of The Hobbit (we didn't like the audio book we got, and it was really hard to hear on my phone, anyway), so I haven't had much time to enjoy the beautiful scenery....which has consisted for a good long time of flat, dry, bushes and power lines.  I feel like we're in Texas already!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that everything is big.  It might not look or feel big, compared to some events in some people's lives, but this is life, and it's the only chance that we have to do little things, so we should enjoy them, and realize that it's big, if only for the fact that it will never be able to happen again.
And that's my poetic/profound moment.