I’m waiting with her while Gab and Garrison get out at the store. She needs a nap.

Zack went over to the house a couple times to help out too, but the water finally defrosted and now the heat tape is working, so all should be well with the water situation. The thermostat I had the tape plugged into failed Wednesday night and the water was still frozen Thursday night.

Today Rob and I went snow mobiling. That was a blast even though the snow was packed. Tonight and tomorrow we should get about a foot of fresh powder and that ought to make things even more fun around here.

So yesterday Rob was very distracted. First he washed a load of clothes. Put the clothes in, turned it on and walked away. A few minutes later I heard him laughing because he realized he’d put the clothes in the dryer, not the washer (the condo has a stacked washer/dryer unit).

A little later we were out sight-seeing and after I took a picture of him he realized he had his hat on backwards. Imagine that. A Texan with his Stetson on backwards. He made me delete that one. Here’s one with it on straight:

And here’s one of me standing on the frozen lake behind our room:

And that was right before I found out why he was so distracted.

Isn’t it beautiful? Of course I said ‘Yes’

The blue lapis and yellow diamond, as well as the rose gold all have symbolic meanings to us

Cute little biker babes

So this blog post will be a sort of recap of things that have gone on through the year. It’s the sort of things I would have added to a Christmas letter to send off with the cards had I managed to get all that done.

Chloe and Keigan are both tottering around now, Chloe much more agile and at ease with her newfound ability than Keigan yet. But it won’t be long before both of them are running screaming around the house.

Zack has been working a lot still for Tyson, regular plus overtime most weeks. He and Loretta are renting a place on Bradshaw Mtn. and their landlord has been making nice improvements to it for them. One of the improvements they got was a new propane wall-mounted heater.

Their heater did such a good job in their house I thought we might like to have one here, too. So one weekend earlier this month, Garrison and I bought all the supplies including the heater and some propane and installed one of our own. It is so nice to have it this winter – it makes a huge difference in my electricity bill, too.

Robert is still in Afghanistan and the weather there seems to be very similar to the weather here. It’s been cold at night and cool during the day. The other day while we were on the internet chat talking to each other, I thought his connection got dropped. Or mine, maybe since our internet here is worse than what they have in that third world country. But no. What happened was rocket attack and he had to run to the bunker for cover. When this contract ends I’ll be glad he’s done.

Gabrielle opened her gift from Kylan today:

Today when I went outside, my chickens had given me a gift too, lol. They’ve finally started laying again. I guess the solstice triggered something in them to get busy with it finally. All winter not one egg.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

So I hiked the rest of the way to the tank and shut off the water. After changing the entire stretch of line, I turned the water back on. Guess what?

A new leak:

This one was very close to the point where the line is buried. So I dug it out some and cut off the brittle part and reconnected it.

So far, so good. Here’s a few more pictures from yesterday. Well, it includes all of the ones above, too with a few more added:

Right now we have a little trickle of very dirty water from the bottom of the tank and usually this happens when the line springs a leak and the tank can’t build volume.

On my other blog I posted a picture of Yogi with his foot bandaged. Somehow he got his toenail pulled out yesterday. Click here to go to that page.

This was a new kind of task for both me and Garrison. I’m pretty proud of both of us for getting the line ran, fittings all hooked up, pressure checked and leak fixed, and finally operating.

Here’s a few more pictures in the meantime: