6 Pack

The sun is shinning the sun is shinning! Unless you live in the land of grey skies, you just don’t know how wonderful it is to see the sunshine and feel it’s warmth. 

Last Monday, a friend had invited Gracie to go skating on the Portage and we weren’t about to pass that opportunity up, no way no how! Any chance she gets an opportunity to skate, she is on it. The only thing I was not looking forward to was the cold temperatures. What a surprise when we arrived to the lake and the sun was out and shinning bright. There was plenty of warmth behind it and we all soaked it in. The kids would have skated until dark had we let them, but once the sun was setting those cold temps were easily felt. I couldn’t resist the photo opportunity of the beautiful sky and Gracie. Man, are we lucky!

The week was a busy one with Gracie spending the week at home during a cool down from face to face learning. She is a super smart kid but I need to keep her focused on her days at home….she’d spend them goofing all with dad all day if should could. So we are happy that we both will be back in the building for school and work. I just have a feeling that maybe that will be our last “cool down”…or at least I’m hopeful.

Last Saturday I was doing laundry and happened to look out the window facing the backyards and woods, and spotted something….my distant vision is not so good, so I was unsure if it was a small wolf or a coyote. One thing I knew for sure was it had a very bushy tail and it was on the move. John and another neighbor both had seen a small wolf about 1 mile from our house the day before hand. It was spotted separately but around the same time of the day. John said it was small and it also was on the move. As luck would have it, that night we spotted a coyote on the game cam. So I suspect this is the same guy I spotted moving along the fence line during the day. It was fun to see something other than deer and birds on the cam too! 

It’s really interesting how the deer come back to this area….one day there are about 3 deer hanging around and then the very next day you can have a dozen or 2. Yesterday we had the most in the yard to date, and that was 12. They aren’t too interested for some reason in the salt block right now, but they are very interested in my Grandma’s Oregon Holly bush! Of course Bleau and Huck just go nuts the first few times they see them so close to the house. But, by last night Bleau was already settling some and was somewhat calmly watching them from the window. 

It’s now been 2 weeks since we lost our buddy Dune. Gosh I loved that guy and miss him terribly! I will say that we’ve noticed a few things since his passing. The first being…the house is very quiet. We never knew that it was solely him who was so vocal and making the most noise of the bunch! I no longer get a 6 am howl, asking for food. The second BIG thing that has changed is that Kashi is 100% a household dog! She was pretty sad the first day Dune was gone so we had her with us, free range to the entire house. That was something we could only do a few times a day, for shorter period of times with Dune. Although, that was getting better too. That first day she found her favorite spot on the kitchen rug and spent the entire day there. We decided to chance leaving her out of the laundry room all night. We’ve had no accidents and she’s not eaten a single sock 🙂 Every day she gets a little more comfortable and spends a little more time in the living room area. She’s even tolerating Bleau going into the “her” kitchen and walking by her. He’s just not her cup of tea. He wants to play and she does not. So we are really really happy about her being just like all the other dogs, living free ranch day and night. We’ve even left her and Huck alone for a bit and they both came running to the door to greet us. Not much has changed with Huck and Bleau. They still lay around the house all day and pretty much move when there is an opportunity to eat something!    

So the weather man says we need to keep our eyes towards the end of next week for snows to come. Hopefully, this will pan out and the area will get a boost to the economy and we’ll get some extra snow to play in as well.

Good night from the Keweenaw..