My Husband, The Falconer

Number One studied and studied and tested and jumped through hoops for both the state and federal governments, and he got his Apprentice Falconer's License.

But, by the time he got all the licensing stuff back from the state and the feds last year, he didn't really have time to catch a hawk before the season ended, and he was bummed about that.

He made traps during summer and fall last year, and this winter, he started trying to trap a red tail hawk. He bought a small, friendly rat from Pet Smart, and we named her Remy. (after the rat in Ratatouille) She was cute, and even endured an encounter with some "Just For Men" to darken the white spots on her coat and make her more visible to the hawks. After her dye job, she helped lure in and catch a couple hawks. The trap worked! But the hawks were too old for Number One to keep, there are some age requirements that I don't really pay attention to so that's all I can say about that.

Remy

Then Remy had an unfortunate injury. One of the hawks must have gotten her with a talon, right in the ear. She was having trouble walking, but the bleeding stopped and she didn't die. We really thought she would die, but she started drinking and eating again, so then we thought maybe she just had a ruptured eardrum or something that was messing with her balance and making her walk sort of crooked, rather than a serious brain injury.

Number One gave Remy some time off, and she really seemed to improve, then he started taking her out again. In her trap, in the snow one day, she keeled over. Number One went in to town and got a little mouse from the pet store, it was a wild little thing that I didn't like. (I think the pet store just breeds feeder mice, and doesn't handle any of them).

It was getting down to the wire, the trapping season was ending and Number One was calling his falconry sponsor for advice. His sponsor told him that another apprentice had seen some hawks of the appropriate age up north, so Number One took a road trip.

He borrowed a couple traps and some rats from the other apprentice, although he liked his trap better. He put the little wild mouse in one trap, and put it out where the hawks were. At some point, he saw a hawk swoop down toward the trap, but couldn't see what happened. Then he saw the hawk fly off, obviously not trapped, but it looked like he was eating something. That darn wild mouse had escaped from the trap, and the hawk ate it! Feeder mouse, indeed.

Being up in the City, Number One went to Pet Smart and bought a much tamer mouse.

On the last day of the season, after a day and a half straight of throwing out his traps, just as he was about to pack it in, he saw a hawk and decided to try one last time. He used his trap this time with one of the other guys' rats, put it out there, and he caught his hawk!


The hawk really is beautiful. He doesn't have a name yet, but Number One has been having success training him. Now he will jump onto Number One's fist almost every time Number One wants him to! It is amazing. I don't know how long it will be before Number One can actually start training him to fly and return, but I will keep you posted.


Number One made the leg things, called "anklets" and he also made the "jesses", sort of rope-like things that are attached to the anklets, and he borrowed the hood from the other apprentice. The hood helps to keep the bird calm, and Number One is also training him to get into the hood. So much to learn for both of them!

At some point I'll take pictures of Number One's trap, and will definitely keep you posted about the whole process.

A Bit O' Excitement: Updated

Sheesh. I was leaving to pick up H-Bomb from school. Our dog, Mia, decided she wanted to come with us, so I loaded her up. Number One was getting ready to haul a load of calves to Colorado.

We drove over 1/2 mile down the road, and saw CG's two dogs, Taz and Hank, on the road, just hanging out. I stopped, called them over, tried to load them up. Those two snots just walked away from me, across the road heading away from the house. Of course. Maybe they're home by now, who knows.

Town and school were uneventful.

Then, as I was heading home, approaching Marie's Place, I saw a helicopter flying low behind a ridge. I thought by the time I got around the ridge, it would be headed toward the mountains. Not so. It was still flying very low, and very erratically. I thought it was having engine troubles and getting ready to crash, so we stopped to see what would happen. I thought I could call the sheriff on my cell phone if needed.

The helicopter was bright red, and just kept veering back and forth as it crossed the road in front of us. Then I saw them. Mule deer, running scared, just in front of the helicopter. It became clear that they were chasing the deer with their helicopter. They were still veering and flying so erratically that I thought they would clip a rock with one of the propeller blades. They touched down briefly, then sank beneath a low ridge.

I tried to call the sheriff, but my cell phone battery was dead.

The helicopter rose above the ridge, when I believe they saw my van sitting on the road. They took off, straight and very fast back toward the highway. Clearly they were not having engine troubles. And clearly this sort of activity cannot be legal. I was also concerned because our neighboring rancher has about 30 horses in the same area the deer were being harassed. The horses I saw did not seem to be upset, but who knows how long this would have gone on had I not stopped the van.

I started heading for home again, drove a couple miles further, when what do I see in the road? Our two dogs, Donut and Rico. Over 12 miles from home! I'm positive they were following Number One and the cows to Colorado. "Need any help??"

Thankfully our dogs are trained, and they were tired, so they both loaded up in the van with Mia. Donut (not a small dog) sat on H-Bomb's lap for a minute until I found him a spot on the floor.

We finally made it home, and I emailed the sheriff and the wildlife law enforcement ranger about the helicopter harassing the deer. I didn't have much information to go on, but I'm hopeful. I really haven't seen very many bright red helicopters around these parts.

UPDATE: I heard back from the wildlife law enforcement guy (a friend of ours), who told me that he had made some calls and the helicopter was part of a wildlife capture program. They are capturing deer and putting radio collars on them so they can track their movements around the county. He thanked me for the report, as sometimes people are stupid and chasing wildlife with helicopters (or ATVs, snowmobiles, etc.) IS illegal and dangerous.

Some Things Just Don't Mix...

We went shopping yesterday, at the closest "city" around...which happens to be in the next state. There are a couple good restaurants we frequent when we go there, and yesterday we chose to eat at the little Chinese place. Everything is good, the prices are reasonable, and the staff is friendly.

We sit down, order our food, and start on our soup/salads when we hear some guy apparently setting up his guitar for some live music. In a Chinese place? Okaaaaay....At noon on a Tuesday? Whatev. We were dealing with the weirdness...

Until he started to play. The very first song included lyrics like "are your garments spotless, are they white as snow" AND "are you Washed in the Blood of the Lamb." Over and over and over again.

Excuse me, I'm trying to eat. I know what you are referencing, and quite honestly it is none of your business. Not to mention the fact that lamb blood sorta stains white garments. (sorry, I couldn't resist).

It just got worse from there. Not only was the guy monotone and slightly off-key, he managed to make Every Single Song sound the SAME. I can't remember his second song, it was something about Jesus again. I was relieved when he sang a poor rendition of "Mr. Bojangles" next, but then he managed to make "What a Wonderful World" sound exactly like "Mr. Bojangles." Seriously. All the songs sounded the same! How does a person accomplish that?

After two normal songs, it was back to Jesus. In a Chinese restaurant. Talk about incongruous.

Dude, if we wanted to go to church, we would!

We just tried to quickly finish up our food and get out of there before we burst into flames.

Living Room

I dug up some "before" pictures for you, just so you can get an idea of the sad little way it used to be in our house. I'll try to make these before and after pictures make sense...so bear with me.

Before, the living room was minuscule. Seriously, it was this big:


There was a wall, right down there, dividing the minuscule living room from the minuscule kitchen. See it?

For some reason I don't have a before picture of the front door, but I was standing right in front of it when I took this picture.

Now, here is our front door. It's red!


And continuing left, you can see our new living room! (for continuity, notice the Christmas card clothesline above the window in pictures above and below) Our new entertainment center was a gift we love love love. On the wall opposite that, which you can't see, we currently have our old dining room table, and that is where our fish and lizards are residing. It's not that pretty right now. We are going to build some custom shelving to fit those cages/tanks and hold our books too. In time.


Now, in the picture below, you can see where the old wall came out (parallel lines in ceiling and floor), and that door leads into the garage. To the right of the door was our old pantry, about the size of a small coat closet.


And here is that space now...the door is nicely framed, we put a heater on the wall where the oven used to be, and the yellow door now leads into our mudroom (we sacrificed garage space to build a mudroom and a pantry). Again, you can see the left edge of the entertainment center, and the loveseat there in the lower right. The clock and entry table are where the old pantry used to be.

*Opposite this wall we have a couple of armchairs, an end table and an ottoman, a small sitting area in what used to be our dining room. Or it will be a small sitting area when we unpack the rest of the boxes that are currently residing there. I'll show you that part later!*


And continuing on around the turquoise wall, we enter the dining room! I've shown you the dining room before, but it's Christmastime, so here it is again.


It's hard to tell in this picture, but we added a 45 degree angle on that turquoise wall to flow around the corner. That angle is mirrored in the kitchen cabinets, directly across from that wall. You'll see those soon. The end of the turquoise wall used to be the exterior of the house, if you can believe that.


That big hulking shape in the corner is the Christmas tree, lights off. I really love our dining room, but I bet you knew that already!

Master Bathroom/Cowgirl Spa!

Also known as "the Spa," this room is a source of pride for us. Number One and I chose the tiles, I designed the layout, and I also cut many, many of the tiles and laid them alongside the contractor (and sometimes alone) and helped grout the whole place. I learned so much, and I think I would be confident enough to take on a tiling project on my own!


The master bath is directly off the master bedroom, as you may have guessed, and is adjacent to my closet and Number One's closet. That's right, we each have our own closet! The door to my closet is in the bedroom, Number One's door is off the bathroom, you'll see that in a minute.

entrance door

The entrance door to the bathroom is not quite finished. We purchased it new, and just haven't taken the time to peel the protective vinyl covering off the glass yet. That's fine, because it's across from the only window in the master bedroom a person can actually see in through, which doesn't yet have curtains. So I'm okay with the vinyl helping to obscure the view of people getting in and out of the tub! We actually have a different vinyl to apply to the center window of the door, that will make it look like textured glass. (because doors with real textured glass are pricey!) One of these days, that will get finished!

We put so much thought into this house. It is the result of years of ideas and inspiration, coming together into what we both wanted out of a house. While the space itself turned out great, and it's technically not our "dream house" since we didn't get to start from scratch, all the details were carefully planned out based on things we had seen or thought about, that would make sense where we were starting, adding on to the existing house. whew, that makes me tired just to recall!


The design of the bath/closet area was inspired by Number One's dad's closet, which has a skylight in a hallway and lower dividing walls to allow light from the skylight into the closet. I thought that was genius! So we have a large, lovely, low-E skylight centered in the bath/closet area, and low walls dividing the bathroom from the two closets, and also giving the toilet a bit of its own privacy. (the ceilings in the addition are 9 feet; the low walls here are 7 feet)

low walls; that wall is NOT green!

the toilet "nook"

One trick we used throughout the house, especially on the low, existing ceilings, was to paint them the palest sky blue. This was my idea, inspired by the porch on The Grand Hotel (where I lived and worked for two years before moving out West), the ceiling of which is painted blue to echo and reflect the color of the lake. My idea was that it would fool our eyes into thinking the ceilings were higher, sort of like the sky. I don't know if it works that way, but I love how it turned out. Our ceilings are actually so pale it is only noticeable in certain light, but around the skylight it is most obvious.

skylight; the low walls of Number One's closet and my closet;
can you believe the ceiling is the same color as the skylight surround??

It's so interesting the way different colors appear in different light--the skylight surround is the exact same color as the ceiling, and the wall next to the toilet (the one that looks green) is the exact same color as the rest of the bathroom walls (sort of a sand color).

The vanity was a score at Home Depot, I can't remember if I've told the story here so I'll just tell it again. We had been pricing vanities, which at HD are basically any variation of the cabinetry they sell for kitchen and bath. That means they are custom-built and expensive, and no way we sliced it was one of those fitting in our budget. We were getting discouraged, until we noticed this cherry vanity up high on a shelf. It had a Will Call tag on it, but it also had a price tag on it. Mystified, we asked about it.


The staff said that it had been a special order but no one had ever picked it up. This doesn't make a lot of sense, because special orders have to be paid for up front (at least partially), so we didn't understand why/how someone could have backed out of the deal without losing a substantial amount of money. Regardless, we asked, "so it's up for grabs?" And they said yes!

We had them get it down, measured it to be sure, and then I asked if the price on the tag (which was already a bargain compared to ordering a custom piece) was the best they could do. They went off to discuss it, then came back and said they'd be willing to knock another 10% off the price! SOLD!


With the discount on top of a discount, it fit in our budget AND we were able to order a custom solid-surface vanity top with two sinks and very cool faucets as well!


I made the mirrors a few years ago; the one on the right was made from wood I salvaged when we tore down an old tack shed up at the mountain cabin. Both were in storage until I decided to use them here, and they're perfect!

And, Aunt G. already teased me about the "hollywood" light fixture, but they are bright and cheap and darn it, I like them! Plus they fit into our budget!

The bathtub was another score. We had such a limited budget for bathtub/faucets/rough-in materials (yes, our budget was broken down quite specifically) that we were worried we wouldn't be able to get a big tub like we wanted. All the tub that were bigger were also too expensive--we couldn't afford a tub AND faucets! We just didn't want to settle for a tub that a person couldn't stretch out in. Our old tub is so short you can't even get your whole body in the water, so it's not very pleasant at all.


So anyway, we were walking around Home Depot with our mile-long list when we noticed a tub on display. It looked nice, it was jetted, at 5 1/2 feet it wasn't quite as long as we'd hoped. But. It was on CLEARANCE. For just HALF of our total tub budget! A virtually unheard of bargain! When we found our HD guy, he said it was the last one and they could hold it for us until we could get back to pick it up. Awesome! At that price, we were able to get a lovely faucet, a rainfall shower head and matching handle, a really sweet drain, and all the rough-in parts, and we only had to borrow a few dollars from another budget category.


So the contractor built a tub surround based on our specifications (notice the extra 12" of space at the end of the tub, above), and then we tiled it. We haven't decided what to do about a shower curtain or something like that...I've debated having one of my three metal working artist friends design a shower rod, or then I've thought about a partial glass wall, but really I'm just not ready to mess with the lines in the bathroom with a shower curtain. With the nice tub we don't take many showers anyway, and if we do it really doesn't splash that badly, plus it's all tile! So that's another thing that can wait a bit.

The door to Number One's closet is one of the doors I salvaged from the bunkhouse basement, it was actually an interior door in one of the old houses here. I just sanded and painted it. I am not at liberty to show you the inside of Number One's closet right now, let me just say when it's clean, it's impressive. Ahem.

Number One's closet door

We're not quite finished in the bathroom, you notice the mirror on the floor I haven't decided where to put, but I really needed a hook for the robes. The one drawback about pocket doors is that you can't hang anything on the back of them--that's where we used to hang our robes. Other than that, they are perfect!

That's about all that I can think of right now for the bathroom. If you have any questions, just leave a comment!

Stay tuned for more rooms!

Reflections...

As we near the end of the year, it's time to reflect back on the passing and the accomplishments and events that have shaped us. Our little family has so much for which to be grateful this year, it was such a whirlwind it's hard to even know where to begin.

First and foremost, we have each other and our health and happiness. Number One and I really have two of the most terrific boys:

H-Bomb, now age 6 1/2, finished Kindergarten and is now in 1st grade, says that math is his favorite subject and at his very first parent-teacher conference had already surpassed the yearly goal for reading. There is nowhere to go but up! He has several good buddies in his class, and it's comforting to see him forming friendships (some since preschool) that will likely stand the test of time. H-Bomb is an amazingly loving and thoughtful older brother to Sawed Off, always hugging and teaching him and spontaneously telling him "I love you, Sawed Off." It is wonderful that this persists in spite of the petty sibling stuff.

Sawed Off, who turned three last February, is a strong-willed and opinionated almost-four-year-old who can't wait to follow in his big brother's footsteps. He is such a sweetheart, with his little curly hair, full of hugs and always affectionate. It is amazing to see Sawed Off learning so much from his brother and yet still being his own little person. He also is very free with the spontaneous "I love you"s, which we love!

If we have done One Thing right, it is knowing that our boys Love each other
and Help each other and will Be There for each other.

Number One and I were kept busy designing and deciding and supervising the interior of the addition on our house. While he helped with the major decisions, it was really me in there with the day-to-day, even spending three days side-by-side with the contractor's son, installing kitchen cabinets, and then another three days with the contractor, installing the bathroom tile. Indeed, after about one day, the contractor would come in, lay the mud for the bathroom tiles, and then take off, saying "here you go!" So I really had a lot of hands-on and I learned an incredible amount! I also got to know our sweet contractor better, he really is a good guy. And throughout this entire project, we became friends with "she knows who she is," spending time together and realizing we have lots of things in common.

After the contractors were finished, it was up to Number One and I to paint! A big job, and thank goodness we did have some help from a couple friends. After that, Number One also had to sand and finish the wood floors--over 900 square feet!--for which he had some help from our then-farmer guy. And the floors look great! (you'll see!)

The remodel went so well, everyone is so impressed when they see the transformation, and I still can't quite believe that we designed it from the ground up--from the walls to the very last cabinet pull! Amazing. We are so thankful to ABEG for doing this for us, and to the Universe for reinforcing us and blessing us.

And I promise, one day soon you will get a room-by-room tour of the addition. Promise. Coming Soon!

In February we managed a trip to St. George, Utah, for a family meeting and had such a lovely time with Number One's aunts and uncles. We got to see them all again for the summer family reunion at the ranch house! What a great year!

This past spring, we had a delightful visit from Number One's high-school buddy and his wife, and had an excellent time hiking and cooking and just spending time with them for the few days they were here. We miss you guys! And later a visit from his buddy's dad for several days, with more hiking, more cooking, more wine, which was very enjoyable.

We had a visit from my parents this fall, and they helped a lot with the addition, varnishing most of the new trim, building and installing shelves in the master bedroom, spending time with the boys, etc. We got to go on a few hikes, and also enjoyed a visit from my mom's cousin and her husband.

Seriously, such a whirlwind that I'm having trouble distinguishing the events this past year that happened besides the house...H-Bomb took a Photography class, I was hired for a Photo Shoot, we met new friends who immediately felt like old, dear friends, I cooked lots of ranch meals...some of them are probably on the blog already anyway!

We are just so aware of how amazing and supportive and wonderful our group of friends and family are, from near and far, old and new, and we are so grateful to have such awesome people in our life.

It was really fun to get some of you together at our party.
We hope to see more of you all
(and especially the people we missed seeing this year)
in the coming year.

The tribe is coming together. We are so blessed.

Happy Christmas.

Housewarming Extravaganza...the photos.

*Exactly how long can a post languish in "draft" status before it's published? Way too long, apparently! Here's a short post I started MONTHS ago and I suppose I got distracted or something.

Anyway, our party was fabulous, we have amazing friends and family who were there to support us and celebrate our new home, and it goes without saying the food was out of this world. Thank you to everyone!*

It's been three weeks since our fantastic housewarming party, and I realized I hadn't even written about it!

We had such a great turnout, lots of family and good friends showed up to celebrate with us. Everyone loved the house, the food was fabulous and it was just so much fun.

I'll share some pictures, but honestly we were having too much fun at the party to take very many pictures. If you'd like to see the menu and the recipes and pictures of the food, please visit The Bad Girl's Kitchen.

I will still take you on a virtual tour of the house, don't you worry! We're getting the rest of our living room furniture on November 18th, and after that the tour will begin.

Here are some of our guests, and you can see some of the house too...