On Saturday I took some of our heaps of extra money and invested it in Memories for the Kids at the local ski hill. When we lived in town (and were much wealthier*) we would go two or three times a year, but now that we’re out in the sticks and poor, once a year will have to do. Left to right is Emma-who-doesn’t-like-having-her-picture-taken, Abby, Katie, and Becca.

Skiing is one of the few “fun things” we do that actually costs money. Sledding, hiking, swimming, camping, stacking firewood—all these amusements can be done pretty much for free. But it’s a pain trying to downhill ski in a place without an actual ski lift. (Yes, there’s always cross country skiing. Haven’t done that one yet.) We think it’s worth it.

This was Abby’s first time skiing, and she was actually pretty good. Her first time down the bunny hill was tough, but it always is. The older ones were generally in tears by the time they arrived at the bottom of the hill, and the ski lift was a new trauma. We always left a ski or a pole or an arm behind to be carried up by the next charitable soul to come up behind us. But Abby was a good sport, and took four trips down the hill by the end of the night .She got to where she could stop pretty well, either by making a “pizza” with her skis or by just falling down, and she now proclaims skiing to be her favorite sport.

This is good. She’ll be ready for next year.

* Meaning we didn’t budget

A friend invited me to go snowshoeing with him yesterday, and to my legs’ consternation I agreed. Also brought Emma along, who is shown here looking south over Lake Pend Oreille from about 3.5 miles into the hike. We had to quit at about four miles because I was too tired to continue, and we still had to come down. (Yeah, I was worn out despite all my morning exercises. But I don’t normally run wearing snowshoes.) Emma was a trooper, not complaining even when she fell over her shoes.

You can tell it wasn’t too cold out, but this exercise does warm you up. We had fun, and I’m glad to get out into the woods in wintertime. I think that may be the longest hike I’ve ever done in January.

Two years ago today, while we were struggling to finish the plumbing in the house (we ended up calling in the professionals, $2400) the snow was waist deep on the level. By mid-February, our driveway looked like a white hallway. I have pictures where the snow berms were above my head.

We had so much snow that the governor declared our county a “disaster area” (whatever that means), which brought a fancy snow-blowing snowplow from the state to dig out our road. (Our Forest Service road averages one car an hour past our house, but it’s also a county road, which means it’s regularly plowed and sanded in the winter, and graded in the summer. This is known as a “boon.”) Fancy snowplow driver: “Only 1.6 miles to the turnaround? I’ll have it cleared in two hours.” Mike, the local plow driver: “Uh …” Ten hours later, the fancy snowblower plow came limping out, tail between its legs. (It did finally get the road cleared, leaving 78-inch vertical berms on both sides.)

Moral: This year, we might have expected more snow by now.

But, the Lord decided to carry all our snow to Copenhagen, to help persuade the global warmists. (Is it working?) We’re left with a paltry few inches on the ground. But there was enough to go sledding not long ago.

At our house, sledding usually consists of thirty minute’s dress-up time, 6.5 minutes sledding, 10 minutes chasing dogs who’ve snatched hats or gloves on the way down, 11 minutes throwing snowballs at each other, 17 throwing snowballs for the dogs, and one person running back crying to the house every 4.3 minutes. (It also involves enough wet snow things on the floor to pave a road from here to Texas, but that’s another story.)

Not this time. We had a great time for an hour or more, the seven of us: Dad, Emma, Becca, Katie, Abby, Natalie, and Sarah. Maybe it’s because it took a while to get the driveway good and polished. Maybe because it took so long to hike back up to the top every time. But we wore ourselves out, and it was nice to go back to the warm house, by a crackling fire, with hot cocoa from Mama.

Mmm, winter.

I had to get on the roof.

When I get sick to my stomach I get really sick. Violently sick. It’s icky. And the timing was rather poor for the violently-icky illness I had over the holiday, because our chimbley was clogged* and I had to get on the roof to fix it. Until I could do that, the stove wouldn’t work, which meant no heat in the house.

I had to get on that roof in the morning or my family would freeze. The roof had an inch of weak snow and was sparkling with slippery frost. Metal roof. 9:12 pitch. Eaves are, oh, 10 feet off the hard-frozen ground. This is not typically something you want to do when you’ve been up all night with vomiting, diarrhea and acute abdominal pain.

At 2:57 am that morning I had to call for a priesthood blessing. Whether you believe in such things or not, the blessing worked for me. I felt much better the next morning and got outside to do the job.

In the shot above, the spot in the dead center is me. You see the jury-rigged ladder I keep on the roof, and the extension ladder we set up to access it. I was stretched out on the roof in the gap between the two ladders when I realized I wasn’t entirely well. Not a good situation. But I prayed for help, got up to the ridge, crawled over to the chimney, and finished the job.

I came back down thanking the Lord, restarted the fire, and went to bed.

If you’re like Dawnalee and live on the 4th floor in the city, at least you don’t have to do stuff like this to ensure your family stays warm. For me, well, this kind of thing is worth it if I get to live under the stars.

*How did the chimbley get clogged? Well, when I was installing it, I dropped the chimney cap. It slid down the roof and hit the ground at Mach 2, which is what I would have done if I’d lost my balance the other day. So the cap was dented when I installed it, and it clogs readily. Not helpful for a $60 chimney cap. I replaced it with an $8 job I got at the local farmer’s co-op, and the new one has at least ten times the air clearance. So I’ll still be cleaning the chimney every year, just not the cap.

It’s been a great adventure putting this blog together over the past, oh, nine months. I thought it would die out in July, but it just keeps growing. Thank you, followers and lurkers, for your suggestions and input. I would love love love to hear from each of you, but in the meantime you can hear from us, every day I’m at work.

And, in defiance to the miasma of political correctness, Merry Christmas!

Doug and Jessica

We had a chestnut tree in the back yard when we lived in town. It was a beautiful tree and I remember the spiky chestnuts and the racoon Jess saw in its branches (the only coon I ever saw in a tree; almost the only coon I ever saw period). But there are no chestnut trees out here and we’re fresh out of open fires; the one remaining slash pile is soaked and covered with frost, and open fires in the house are a no-go. (I’ll take my wood stove that heats 2000 square feet toastily on an armload of wood per day, thank you.)

No, we’ll roast stockings over a closed fire instead, thank you. The stove generates quite a heat plume when it gets going, enough to wobble some stockings as if in a slight beeze; and some of the older stockings get a bit of a singed appearance.

So last week our stockings were hung by the fire with care. The big stockings are for people and dogs, and the little ones at either end are for the cats. Left to right, here are our stocking designees: Noodles (cat), Honey (dog), Dad (not dog), Mom, Emma, Becca, stovepipe, Katie, Abby, Natalie, Sarah, Jacob, Honey (dog), and Icky (cat). You can see that Jessica has embellished each one with a different Christmassy symbol.

Above the stockings, on the mantel, is Jessica’s snow globe collection (those that have survived this long) together with a couple of kerosene lamps. In the stove is the tail end of the day’s fire, ready to take its nightime load, shut the damper, and go to sleep.

Well as you might have guessed, I took a few days off of work last week for the Thanksgiving holiday (as you might have done too). My parents were visiting for the last time before they leave for their LDS mission to India (they’ll be in Hyderabad for 18 months). It snowed a little, nobody had to go anywhere, and it was really a wonderful holiday.

The day after Thanksgiving is when we traditionally set up the Christmas decorations. It’s too bad we couldn’t do that while grandparents were here, but schedules press and you can’t do everything. So we bid them goodbye on Friday morning, and in the afternoon we broke out the Christmas decorations.

This year Jess wanted to decorate with popcorn strings, so we did. She dug out the old hot-air popper we haven’t used for some years and produced a bowl of dry popcorn. Then she strung some needles on thread, and set the kids to threading.

They had a great time. The Christmas music was going, the little ones were running around squealing, the older ones did not injure themselves or each other with their needles, and now we have popcorn strings on the tree for the dogs and Jacob to eat when no one is looking.

I was upstairs working on my book, but I did come down to get some pictures which I’ll be posting in the next few days.

Of the Yeeeeeeeeeeeear!

We’ve had the Christmas music on, we’ll set up the Christmas tree a week from tomorrow (we always do, the day after Thanksgiving), and the weather has complied by sending snow. Jess called this afternoon and said we had two new inches. (This picture was from the other day.) Yahoo!

Not to rub it in to you city folk, but it’s sure nice to see mountains and not neighbors (or streets, or a wall) when you look out your window. You can enjoy ours vicariously. It’s free!

Here we have quite possibly the oddest photograph yet posted on The Self-Reliants. If you can guess what it is in two seconds or less, you win! Time’s up, it’s carrots. I had to stir up these few from their long winter’s nap so I could get a picture. They look curly and squat like most of our home-grown carrots from previous years, but there were some splendid specimens this year too. I wanted to get a shot of some of the behemoths Jessica pulled out of the garden, but they came out of the ground and went into the sawdust lickety-split, before I had a chance to record their monstrosity for the ages. (What’s that, you say? Just photograph them when she takes them out again? Won’t happen. When she pulls them out it will be approximately four minutes before they get hacked up and tossed into soup, and at that time I will still be at my employment, counting the seconds ‘til 5.)

We’ve heard tell that you can actually store carrots in the ground, and pull them up as needed over the winter. In our neck o’ de woods that won’t happen either, since when the snow gets going it will take a backhoe to get down to ground level. We pulled these guys up and now they’re sleeping in the root cellar. But I’m so encouraged at this year’s crop that I’d like to plant twice as much next year. It’s great to have a garden that actually produces. Wait, is that a pun?

This actually happened almost a week ago, last Friday, in fact. The snow stayed in shaded areas for upwards of four days. It’s been cooooold out there! January weather, sometimes. Way too cold for October, and I’ve been burning firewood frequently.

That said, we’re back to more normal fall weather now. It’s welcome; I still have a lot to do before the real snows start!