Ireland Day 2 continued

Moving on from Dublin.

We stopped at Duckett's Grove on our way to Kilkenny. Once upon a time, it was a massive estate belonging to very rich, influential people. Sadly, it was burned in the 1930s.

The gardens are still kept up, but sadly not much to look at in early April. At least they are green.

We arrived at Kilkenny to tour the castle there. It was the longest continuously occupied castle in Ireland- around 800 years. It did sit abandoned between 1935-1967, with all of the contents auctioned off so anything in the castle now is not original. But with hidden scraps of wallpaper, paint, and records of carpets and drapes purchased have allowed the restoration people to get close to the Victorian version of the castle.

This toilet was installed before a visiting royal's sojourn. The tour guide called it the Royal Flush.

I thought this stair case was both colorful and different.

Now THIS is a gallery wall. In its heyday, the walls had so many more paintings.

This was a fortress castle in Norman times, but then remodeled in Victorian times to make it feel less... fortressy.

I have a close up photo of the kids on the stairs below. However the sun was positioned in the best way to give the kids squinty eyes. So, we'll stick with the broader view.

Then we traversed the city streets. We found the medieval Butter Slip Street. It looks like it belongs in a Dickens or Harry Potter movie.

That fancy wooden door is totally fake. It was painted.

This, if I am remembering correctly, is St. Mary's Cathedral.

More ornately carved, tiled, and painted spaces, with gorgeous stained glass windows.

The sanctuary was walled off. But when a church worker noticed I was enthralled, he lead me around to the side and let me in so I could take pictures. He was so kind! It was stunning. 

We ate dinner at a pub, then headed to Rose Cottage for the night. All of the old buildings have THICK walls. I insisted someone stand next to the wall for perpective. The outside walls were a good 3 feet wide.

Isn't it cute?

The center section was the original cottage. It was remodeled before becoming an Airbnb. This one had the most interesting bathroom situation. The shower was tiled on two sides, there was a glass wall on a third, but the 4th side was just... open. The shower head was pointed at the glass wall, but the toilet was well within spraying distance on the open side. It was a small bathroom (like all bathrooms that we saw there). But at least we had hot water. This was a major improvement.

Dublin, days 1 and 2

 Once we landed in Dublin, we got into the "queue" to get through customs. It took a long while to get through the line. We were deemed acceptable to enter the country. We picked up our rental SUV, which was a Ford Kuga. How do you pronounce "Kuga" anyway? KOO-guh? Koo-GAH? It was a hybrid, so we were electric in town and gas-powered other times. The sad part is that the radio/back-up camera/phone charger/screen and console was somehow rendered completely blank and useless. A backup camera would have been really, really nice. We couldn't play anything over the speakers. It was a really good thing I purchased an external battery charger so we wouldn't bleed Ryan's phone dry when using Google Maps. Google Maps is a MUST.

Driving away from the Dublin airport is a trial by fire. You drive on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, with narrow roads and tons of traffic-- straight into your first roundabout going the wrong way. The fact that there isn't a monument to bad driving right there at that intersection is a miracle.

We drove right to our Airbnb to drop off the car. We were super tired from a mostly sleepless night, but the rush of being in Ireland and wanting to make the most out of our trip had us traipsing the streets of Dublin to St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Now we head into a picture dump of gothic architecture because I am in love. 

The kids did some brass rubbings.

Our tour guide told us a story about Jonathon Swift, author of Guilliver's Travels. He preached sermons at St. Patrick's Cathedral, going on for 4 hours. He had a mobile pulpit, and if he saw someone snoozing during his sermon he would have someone wheel him over so he could shout down at the sleeping parishioner to wake up. Maddie liked his death mask.  

This was a Fitzgibbon. Not a relation, but he did have the same surname as I did once upon a time.

Also, I embraced the fanny pack. I kinda like it. 

We walked by Temple Bar on our way back to our condo for the night. I had to take a picture even though we had no intention to drink.

This was a Georgian house. It has all of the moldings and fancy things.

Our apartment was on the top floor. 5 flights of thigh-burning stairs up! (Only 4 if you came in through the front door.) Speaking of-- floors are numbered differently. A floor at the street level is the "ground floor" and the one up from that is the first floor. That's a little different than the US.

Elizabeth got bounced back and forth between hide-a-beds and a twin bed in a bedroom shared with the twins on this trip. She started out on a hide-a-bed.

Elizabeth's view of the kitchen.

I want to talk about the electricity situation in Ireland. Every single outlet has an on/off switch. And each appliance gets switched off when not in use. But it is a guess which switch goes with which appliance.  In this place, we could not figure out two things: Which switch would turn on the dishwasher, and how to turn on the hot water heater. We had no hot water. Annie and Maddie opted for super quick, icy showers, but the rest of us opted for a wet washcloth "bathing." Every single place we stayed in had complicated showers involving string pull switches from the ceiling, power buttons, sometimes no shower doors or curtains, or other odd things.

We slept pretty well, and then it was off for more sightseeing!

The view from our apartment.

The Ha'Penny Bridge over the river Liffey.

We walked to Trinity College to check out the Book of Kells and the Long Room library. We couldn't take pictures of the actual Book of Kells, but there were plenty of displays to check out before seeing the actual book. The amount of work into each picture and line of text is astounding. Many of the capital letters in the text are illustrated beautifully. The lines of text are so, so even- something well out of my capabilities.

Then to the Long Room library. It was pretty amazing.

Trinity College is in the process of boxing up all of the books and statues to get ready for a 3 year long renovation beginning in October. It was still spectacular. 

I found a tweed "Grandpa hat" in the gift shop. I couldn't convince Ryan to buy it, but at least we got a picture.

Then we were off to Dublin Castle. We took the guided tour, so we could see the medieval parts and the chapel. More gothic revival style... I would love to go to church here. The organ pipes are even painted.

Of course, I may not ever pay attention in church if my eyes are constantly taking in the decor.

Then we were let loose to enjoy the self-guided portions of the castle.

You can see the Lady Justice statue above Annie's head. There are a couple of interesting, non-traditional features about this statue. One: She faces towards the castle, not the community. Two: She is not blindfolded. Three: The scales she holds will tip literally towards the tax office when it rains. Our tour guide told us the saying about this particular Lady Justice: "The Statue of Justice, well mark her station, her face to the castle, her [hind end] to the nation!"

We picked up sandwiches for lunch at a SPAR corner store, and then stumbled across this little Turkish bakery and grocery store. They had really yummy pastries that were way better than our premade sandwiches.

Then it was time to leave Dublin. We got back to the place we had stayed the night as we had permission to leave the car there even though we had checked out officially. I think door knobs in the middle of doors are hilarious. But not out of the ordinary there.

Our street was quite busy. We wandered down to see what all of the fuss was about and lo and behold, they were filming a movie. Word on the street was that Anthony Hopkins had been spotted the day before and they were filming a movie about Sigmund Freud in his later years. I don't know that we will ever watch the movie, but hey, we were there!!

One of the old vehicles being used for props didn't actually work after being unloaded from a trailer on our alley way. To get out of our parking space, Ryan had to help push it out of the alley and into the street so we could get out.

I left all of the driving to Ryan. He was a trooper and we took the car back to the rental place unscratched. I played the part of navigator on this trip, which is a less difficult job but also pretty demanding. We even sprung for the way more expensive automatic transmission. Ryan made do with a standard on our last trip, but the automatic was so much better.

One more thing about Dublin. The smell of cigarettes, cigars, and vaping pens is EVERYWHERE. I have never seen so many vaping devices. They were all shapes, sizes, and colors. And I am not sure what was in all of them-- some smelled a bit funky. I'm so glad the good ol' US did the whole campaign on the health effects of all that because it seems so much less prevalent, at least where we live.

The Trip That Almost Wasn't

 Last November I had a mild maternal freak-out. Emma was moving across the country, and Elizabeth was a mere few months away from reaching that magic age of 18 that proclaims adulthood. I decided that distracting myself by looking at possible trips abroad would be how I was going to cope with this particular near meltdown. But looking at those trips made me realize that it was entirely doable to go as a family. In the summer before Emma's senior year, we took a family trip to Kauai. We could do a similar thing and take the family to Ireland during the Spring Break of Elizabeth's senior year. I have been carefully adding to my savings account, aptly named "Travel Fund," for a while and it was sizable. 

So, we bought plane tickets and made a rental car reservation. It was really going to happen!

Over the next two months I researched places in Ireland I wanted to go. Some of the places would be repeats of the trip Ryan and I did in 2017 to share with the girls, and others would be new to us as well. We made reservations of Airbnbs around the southern region, and two hotel nights in Dublin- the night after we arrived and the night before we leave. I bought two plug adapters with enough outlets to charge everyone's phones every night. Found the neck pillows. I made lists. Made plans. Made a calendar. Made back up plans depending on the weather. Got someone to feed our animals. I even purchased Ryan a new Jansport backpack to replace his 15+ year old one. (I searched for a backpack nearly exactly the same as the one I wanted to replace. Ryan doesn't like change once he finds something that works. So I bought him the backpack and didn't tell him about it until he was faced with the replacement in real life and he knew we could send it back. Once the backpack was in hand, he totally was on board with having a new, functioning bag.) We were set to leave the day after Ryan got out for Spring Break. (This was different for him versus the kids because of Parent Teacher Conferences at the elementary school level. Ryan had an extra day past when the kids were done.) And most of all, we were excited and mostly packed!

26 hours before we were due to leave, I got a text update from British Airways that our flight to Dublin was canceled.

Cue spiraling freak out.

I desperately tried to reach Ryan and of course he was busy. I logged into Travelocity and sure enough, the flight had gone kaput due to the London airport workers strike. We had wrongly booked a trip with a London lay-over because it was cheaper than a direct flight. Travelocity had a chat feature to contact them, which I started. It took a long while to make it from computer generated responses to an actual person. I had finally gotten a hold of Ryan and he understood the gravity of the situation and came home so we could talk because it was around lunch time. Eventually I was transferred to a call with a thickly accented real-life person, which was not as helpful as I had hoped. The best they could offer was a flight that was over 24 hours and routed us through Istanbul.

Seriously?

And if that wasn't enough, if I canceled the flight then all of the plans booked through Travelocity were also canceled. Not that it mattered regarding the hotel stays because those were non-refundable.

The computer chat-turned-phone call had gone on a long time. Ryan had returned to work and when things got interesting, I called him on Annie and Maddie's phone so I wouldn't have to make all of the hard decisions alone. And we made the hard decision to pull the plug on the whole thing. For whatever reason, Travelocity couldn't contrive of any way to make this trip happen without doubling the price and shortening the stay. They said all of the good flights were booked. To say that I was sick to my stomach and disappointed would be an understatement. Multiply that by three teenaged girls and you might understand how we were feeling. I cried while canceling our Airbnb stays. This whole sad process had sucked a solid 3 hours out of my day.

Once Ryan got home for the evening we talked about what we could do with our Spring Break. What kinds of activities could be dream up? We could surely try and resusitate something. Ryan gave each of us a pencil and paper and told us to think of ideas of things to do. Annie and Maddie had zero things written on their papers. If we couldn't go to Ireland, there was not a dang thing in this world that could replace it. No bowling, no Tulip Festival, no eating at restuarants could make up a fraction of what we were missing. We talked about when we could rebook the trip. Ryan was unwilling to miss more than a day of work at a time, and Elizabeth needed to get a job at least by the end of her senior year which would prohibit a summer trip. Ultimately, we figured out that if we wanted a family trip then we needed to just do it. The best prices I could find had us leaving 3 days later than Friday. It was more, much more, than we had originally planned. But it was now or never.

So we bought new tickets- ones that were straight from Seattle to Dublin. Reserved another rental car. And prayed I could find places to stay this close to the trip. We got everything booked over the next 24 hours. 

I was only cautiously optimistic about the upcoming trip. I kept feeling like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and we would really be out of more money because a lot of those places I booked were non-refundable. But on the plus side, we could watch all 5 sessions of General Conference at home, and on Friday- attend a baptism and host the missionaries, the new member, and another family for dinner. 'Cause why not. We were only supposed to be winging our way to Ireland then. 

Finally Monday rolled around. We were all packed early and then waited around, watching tv until it was time to leave. Our flight left Seattle at 6:50 pm and it is a 3 hour drive to the airport. There was no reason to leave until after lunch. At the last moment as we were loading our bags into the car, my van had a low tire warning come up. Ryan had just filled up the tires that morning, so to have a low tire again so soon was not promising. He filled the tire up again and then loaded our air compressor into the back of the van, then away we went. Once at SeaTac, there literally were no spaces open at our favorite car park. The attendent said she didn't know of any car park that had space. (NOOOO!!! This trip must be cursed!) This was news to us as we had never had an issue before; not that we take many trips... I guess we looked pathetic enough, because the lady had us pull over to the side and she checked reservations. There was someone who hadn't shown up and she kindly let us go in. I was worried that someone might recind that offer all the way until we got dropped off at the airport. (Can they do that?)

We took the escalaters down to go get our passports checked and tickets printed. I was feeling semi-confident at this point that we were really going to Ireland. What I failed to notice was that one of my shoes had come untied. One of my shoe laces got stuck in the escalator and I did not realize this until I was trying to get off and I couldn't. This boat was going down. I had visions of the Escalator Monster eating my shoe and then my leg, and then we really couldn't go because I would be maimed... etc. etc. Maybe I was feeling a little melodramatic. I was able to extract my shoe lace with only a little trouble. Ryan didn't even notice I had gone down.

We had a solid half hour wait to go through security. But in the end, we were able to board and take off, and it was finally real. We were going to Ireland! Wahoo!

It was a really long line for security.

Ready to go!

Leaving Seattle.

After a long night of little sleep, we landed. Hello Ireland!

Christmas 2022

 Greetings!

As our year winds down, it’s good to take a moment to reflect and relish the good in 2022. Firstly, our dishwasher made it a whole 4 years before dying due to our extremely hard well water (this is about average for us- we’ve purchased 3 dishwashers in the 11 years we’ve lived in this house). Secondly, we are completely done with braces. For everyone. (Oh glorious day!!) And lastly, I was ahead of the game and when Ryan lost half of the sole of his shoe at work, we already had a new pair of exactly the same type of Keen shoe waiting to replace the dead pair. Go me!

We had this fabulous idea to remodel the downstairs bathroom in February when the plumbing in the wall behind the shower broke, requiring a hole to be sawed into the fiberglass wall of the shower to cap the pipe so we could turn on the water to the whole house again. To replace the shower, the vanity and toilet needed to be removed… so why not just rid ourselves of the vintage 1990s golden oak vanity and the cracked toilet? Easy peasy- we could do it over Spring Break. We had all of the major pieces purchased and delivered by the end of March. Demolition Saturday came and we removed the toilet, vanity, shower (in pieces) and warped Pergo flooring. But that was as far as we got for many weeks. Ryan did something to his back during that process, and spent the whole week of Spring Break moaning on our bedroom floor. By Friday of Spring Break, he was well enough that I drove him to the chiropractor and he was on enough medicine that he did not remember visiting our chiropractor friend. When our chiropractor friend and his family came to check in with our family that evening, Ryan was surprised to learn he and I had already seen George that day. We went about 2.5 months without a toilet downstairs, but that bathroom is done and working now, and looks good! And even better, Ryan got to the point he can put on his own socks in the morning. That was a long process.

Emma (19) decided college wasn’t what she wanted at this point in her life and came home at the end of winter semester.  She got a job waiting tables for a couple of weeks before settling in to work at our local library. Once she had her car paid off, she decided she was ready for a big change and moved to Florida the day after Thanksgiving. We’ll see if she still likes it there after hurricane season.

Elizabeth (17) is a senior in high school. We bought a 2003 Jeep Liberty as the household teen car we found on Craigslist, and she can be found driving herself to early morning seminary and playing chauffeur to her younger sisters. She still loves her art classes, sometimes taking 2 at a time, she enjoyed her creative writing class, is plugging away through pre-calc, and survived her 3rd and final year of cross country running. I’m pretty sure she only ran cross country because the girl’s coach is a friend of her mom’s, it is familiar by now, and Elizabeth has friends on the team. She still makes a face when people ask if she likes running.

Annie and Maddie (14) are not at all the same despite being identical twins that most people have a hard time telling apart. Just ask them. In fact, they are offended that I grouped them together in this letter. It’s not like they are in the exact same 8th grade classes, or participate in the same after school activities, or have the same 4.0 GPA, or hang out with the same group of friends, or both are avid readers- getting into murder mysteries lately, or both got their braces off, or anything like that. Puh-leez. Annie plays the clarinet and Maddie plays the trombone in middle school band. Also, Annie always beats Maddie in cross country races, and refuses to finish the Harry Potter series. See? Completely different. They still share a cell phone and so no one is ever quite sure which twin is texting.

Ryan stays plenty busy being the principal at Pioneer Elementary School. Every day is an adventure there and he brings home stories of “Poo-casos” (think “Picaso” but in the bathroom), kid vomit the color of Pepto Bismol just inside the front doors of the school, recess duty, angry or indifferent parents, and other daily larks- like schedules, teacher evaluations, and endless meetings. At church he’s been put to good use as the Spanish Branch clerk (doing the computer stuff) and stake high council. But we still get to sit with him most weeks during Sacrament Meeting where I can give him the Stink Eye as much as I do the kids for being irreverent. 

I keep myself occupied. I get to teach Sunday School Old Testament lessons to 11-13 year old teens at church (hence my need for Old Testament podcasts- it takes a doctorate to make sense of some of that). I volunteer a few days a week in a first grade class to get my little kid fix, and started working in the Columbia River temple one day a week back in August. I am also the Reminder for Forgotten Things, Pep Talk Giver, Finder of Lost Things, Proofreader, Teacher of Basic Skills, and sometimes The Reality Check. (“Nice try. Putting your socks behind the couch pillow so I can’t see them anymore is NOT taking care of them.” Seriously, my youngest kids are 14. FOURTEEN, people. Why do we still need this conversation?!?!)

July was a busy month. Elizabeth, Annie and Maddie spent a week at church Girl’s Camp, a week at Grandpa Camp with their grandparents and cousins, and then a week at For Strength of Youth at U of I in Moscow, Idaho. The girls got to experience dorm life with no air conditioning during a week of high 90 and 100 degree temperatures. They were not a fan. Ryan and I managed to sneak off by ourselves to Kauai while the girls were at Girls Camp. Kauai is so incredibly beautiful and fun, and we decided we still like each other when the kids aren’t around. Even after hard, sweaty hikes when we smell less than good. In other words, we smelled like humid, adolescent armpits left unwashed for way too long at the end of our hikes. Snorkeling, a catamaran trip, good food, swimming, and sightseeing were all less odorous and all of it was an enjoyable way to spend a week away. 

We are so grateful for this time of year, to remember and celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are grateful for all of you in our lives, and for the love and service you have given our family over the years.

With much love,

Ryan, Danae, Emma, Elizabeth, Annie, and Maddie Kannely

Beady Eyes

While Ryan is out of town visiting Emma in Rexburg, I am in charge of feeding the animals and watering  Ryan's seedlings.  Elinore (mama sheep) needs extra calories as the pasture grass isn't growing yet and she has two babies she is nursing.  My feeding instructions are a scoop and a half of grain pellets and a "half of a flake" of alfalfa hay.  Our one hay bale is wrapped up in a tarp near the pasture, so I figured my first order of business was to grab the hay.  I grabbed the tarp with my left hand and began to lift the tarp and reached my right hand in for the hay.  My hand did not feel the usual pokey straw as much as something warm and kind of.... fluffy?  It did not feel menacing as much as surprising, so I didn't drop and run.  I did pull my hand back and carefully lifted the tarp higher.  One beady little eye peeked back at me.  A beady, chicken eye.  

Whew, I can handle a chicken.  

My mind had already conjured various scenarios, and this wasn't too bad.

As I wiggled my hand around in the hay trying to find where my next flake would separate, the hen got fed up with me and scampered.  That's when I saw the nice, circular nest and two warm eggs.

Girl, you shouldn't feel broody when we don't even have a rooster around to make those eggs viable.  So I only felt a little bad stealing her eggs and bringing them back inside with me.

2021 Christmas Newsletter

 Greetings Fellow 2021 Survivors! 

Another year has wobbled by.  I don’t know if our theme song for the year should be “Tubthumping” (the “I get knocked down but I get up again...” part, not all of the drinking), or “Keep Holding On” by Avril Lavigne. I vote for “Keep Holding On” just because I like to turn the volume way up to sing along and pretend I have a powerful voice instead of my soft, wimpy one. In any case, we are still mostly on our feet and pressing (inching?) forward.  

Emma spent her senior year of high school entirely online. If there was ever a way to make a senior year drag on to make a person lose all enthusiasm for school, that would be it.  In February all of the seniors were allowed back on campus to… wait for it… do virtual school at school. Yep, sit through the same boring thing you were doing at home, now in a classroom. But, getting out of the house must have held a certain amount of appeal, because she was so outta here. At least it gave her a reason to change out of her pjs and brush her hair everyday. Emma had a friend who really wanted to do cross country her senior year, but to do so there needed to be 5 girls to make a team. That friend convinced Emma, another friend, and sister Elizabeth to all come out to run starting in late January. The “fall sports season” ran the month of March, and so Emma got to spend her 18th birthday running a despised hilly 5K race. She persevered, graduated, worked the early morning cherry season to earn money for college, and at long last made it to freeeeeeedooooooom, whoops I mean we dropped her off in Rexburg to start classes at BYU-Idaho and adulthood in September.

Elizabeth (16) is our lone high schooler this year. Her mother strongly “encouraged” her to choose any kind of extra-curricular activity, and she opted for cross country again. She was even convinced to embrace running shorts! As another non-enthusiastic runner in our family, she has managed to “letter” in cross country twice this year. Once in March for her sophomore year, and then again this fall for her junior year. This is what happens when there are only enough dependable females to make up a single team, which we then call “varsity” regardless of actual speed. Elizabeth has managed quite the cushy schedule and is a teacher’s assistant 1st period (this is more of a sit around and read a book situation than helping out in a classroom), followed by two periods of art. Chemistry and Math, along with 6:15 am Seminary, round out the rest of her school day. Now, if only we could convince her she would like to get her driver’s license… She is not a fan of driving, but loves her art classes.

Annie and Maddie (13) are in 7th grade. They have all of the same middle school classes and with their faces half covered by masks, none of their teachers seem to be able to tell them apart. There is one significant difference between the two, but it is only a help in one of their classes.  Annie plays the clarinet (both instrument and music book handed down from two previous sisters) and Maddie plays the trombone (handed down from her dad to her uncle and then to her). They both joined the newly formed middle school cross country team this fall, and were able to set school records in their races even though they can’t (or haven’t yet put their minds to) run an entire mile without a walking break. (Did I mention this is a new team sport for their school….?) They also kept a 4.0 GPA for their whole 6th grade year, making them the first and second Kannelys to get their pictures on the middle school 4.0 Wall of Fame. They may have gleefully mentioned it to their older sisters once or twice. 

Ryan and I celebrated 20 years of marriage this year. We did fun things this summer to celebrate, like painting our two-story house like the “do it yourself”-ers we are. Why pay someone else to do a job that is an utter pain in the rear, when you can do it for the price of paint, supplies, and a big ol’ paint sprayer that we then get to store somewhere forever more, with the added bonus of being hot, sweaty, and facing your fears of tippy ladders and slanted roofs? The week we worked on that project was the week we experienced one heck of a heat wave. When you paint outdoors, the paint is supposed to be dry by the time the temperature reaches 90 degrees. That was at or before 9 am every day that week, which meant we were up with the sun and could paint again as the sun was setting after 9 or 9:30 pm. It was a glorious experience I tell you. 

We made time for plenty of hikes this summer. I decided I was fully ready to embrace the outdoorsy lifestyle vibe, and I have the hiking shoes, wool socks, and a hydration backpack to prove it. Ryan and I hiked around Mt. Rainier a few times and up by Leavenworth once.  As a family we hiked in Oregon (Punch Bowl Falls), Utah (near Kanab), Wyoming (Little Bighorn and Martin’s Cove) and South Dakota (Badlands, Custer State Park, Mt. Rushmore, etc.). It is good to leave behind the computer screens, and soak up the glorious fresh air and vitamin D. The girls usually go along with their parents’ hairbrained shenanigans with only the minimum eye rolls and complaints, as long as we bribe them with audiobooks in the car and good snacks on the hikes.

Animal life continues as normal at the Kannely farm.  The cat population grows and shrinks, even with two fixed kitties. They are great at keeping the rodent population out of our house, and so they have earned my undying gratitude. One of our furry friends, Soot, likes trophies from his kills. There are a lot of squirrel tails and bird wings left in various areas around our house. Vinnie even brought us a partially mangled garden snake once this year and left it right in front of our door. The mice, gophers, and baby chicks (uh sorry neighbors….) are easy mid-day meals that do not leave left-overs luckily. Eleanor the sheep gave birth to twins last spring.  Both of the lambs grew really well and now are in family meal-sized chunks of meat inside our freezer. (Sustainable farming, you know.)  The poultry population is huge, and Annie and Maddie have a side business of selling free-range, mostly poop-free eggs. The garden, as ever, produced plenty. Ryan achieved another farm dream- this time growing and harvesting oats. He asked for and got a sickle for Father’s Day so he could harvest his crop “old-school.” (Cue the banjo music.) 

We wish you all peace and love and laughter this Christmas season.  

All our love, 

Ryan, Danae, Emma, Elizabeth, Annie and Maddie 

Credit Problems

 For the first time ever, we had our credit card info stolen just before Thanksgiving. The credit card company alerted us fairly quickly. Black Friday started out with Ryan asking me, “Hey, did you buy me something really expensive from [insert random company name] for Christmas because the credit company is asking about it?” That’s a negative. After a lengthy phone call, we were assured we wouldn’t be liable for the many fraudulent charges. We would, however, be getting new cards and a new account number. Once the new cards came, I grabbed the card on the right of the paper and called the number to activate my card. Once my card was ready to go, I activated the card on the left as well and we were done! I grabbed a ballpoint pen and signed my name. This is when I finally looked at the bottom of the card and realized the name on the card was Ryan’s. Oh fudge. What was the credit company doing? Ryan has always been the head of household, putting his cards and information always on the left side of the mailing papers. Why change after all this time? So then we had two cards with my signature and I had to call and report a damaged card, being sure to ask for a new one for my husband. But please don’t ask how we managed to damage a card in less than a day after our new cards arrived by two-day mail... I plead the 5th.