Thursday, November 28, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving!

     Well another Thanksgiving weekend is upon us and much like it does every year this day brings with it all the joy in the world as I share quality time with family, and get to watch the Cowboys play!!  The Thanksgiving day game has been played since long before I was a Cowboys fan, 1966 to be precise, but each year I am privelaged enough to watch it I feel that much more grateful.  Thanksgiving has long provided three of my favorite things all in one day, family, desserts, and Dallas Cowboys football!
possibly the best Christmas decoration ever!
     This year were spending Thanksgiving with the Dobsons over in Stevinsville and so far our day has gotten off to a typical Gannon type start.  I got up early and took the girls for a short walk so they could do their morning business and Duchess provided me with some unexpected challenges!  She's been taking an anti inflamatory medication after her eye surgery and for some reason it has not only reduced the swelling in her body but also turned her internal clock back about 10 years!  She has been acting like she's a puppy again, not listening, pinging off the wall with more energy than any mammal alive, and whining when she doesnt get her way.  Come to think of it, maybe she's just preparing us for a future child!  If so she's doing a good job cause almost daily since the surgery she has pushed my patience to the limit.  This morning all in a matter of 45 seconds she managed to hog tie all three of us, me, her and Kashi, with her leash not only once but twice!  Once she was untangled she drug me under a tree that took off my stocking cap, and hog tied herself again.  This time I left her hog tied, grabbed my hat, and headed for the house.  We got back to the house after Duchess hopped her way home, and as I untangled her for the third time I looked her in the face and couldn't help but feel thankfull for her, even with her newfound craziness:)  Mostly I'm thankful that she's done with the medicine now so hopefully she'll start getting back to normal.  Kashi has not gone without her share of craziness this trip either as yesterday when I went to load them in the truck she hesitated jumping into the pick up until after I went to give her some help, then she decided to jump in no particular direction and thankfully I was there to catch her in mid air!  I don't know if you've tried to catch too many 80 lb dogs lately but I wouldn't suggest it.  But between Kashi and Duchess and all of the craziness they bring to our family, we are eternally grateful for all of the joy they have brought us.  They have filled our hearts with more love than we could have ever imagined!
my cheering squad on my run this morning!
     So as I write this and lazily watch Donna scurry around the kitchen preparing our feast, I hope each of you has your own reasons for being thankfull today, whether its crazy dogs or big meals, I hope you all find some joy in your lives today!  I know I will.....as long as the Cowboys win:)

Remember, in the middle of all of the chaos today, don't forget what today is all about!  Count your blessings and pay attention to what you are thankful for.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Fun and games!

     Who says we have to grow up?  This evening Kelli, mother, Jill and some friends of theirs had the final night of a bible study they've been doing.  So dad and I decided to go get a bite to eat somewhere to give them mom and dads house without us silly boys getting in the way.  We had a good meal at Boston's while watching a little college basketball, then we headed over to Dicks Sporting Goods to kill a few minutes until the girls were done.
     
     The Dicks in the valley mall has a putting green next to their putter display and it only took dad and I about two minutes before we were in the middle of a putting contest!  We'd been there for about a half hour when an employee walked by and said, "putting contest guy?, I like it!"  We knew he understood, here it is 25 degrees outside and we were just a couple fellow golfers in dire need of some competitive action!  Well shortly after he saw us, and no doubt wanted to join in, we upped the anty by only allowing of the use of the same putter twice before having to switch.  One of the benefits of having about 20 different types of putters all around you!  We kind of lost track of score, although I'm pretty sure I had him beat, and almost an hour after we got there we headed home.  

     I couldn't help but think on the way back to their house to pick up Kelli about all of the putting contests I have been in with my dad.  I can't remember the last time he and I were near a putting green and didn't get into some sort of game.  And every time this happens I am immediately taken back to when I was a kid and he would have these putting games with all of us kids.  When I was younger it seemed like every ball that left the face of his putter went in the hole!  Not much has changed over the years, other than my competitiveness, he still seems to make nearly everything he stands over when he's playing a game against me!  These games always make me feel like a kid again and whether they're on the artificial green in a store, or on the practice green at Augusta National(a guy can dream right:), I look forward to having many more!  One of these days I might even beat the ol man!:)

Remember, if you start to feel like a kid again, don't panic, it's a good thing!  A very good thing!:)

Friday, November 22, 2013

Fridays!

     Man how I love Fridays!  I swear if I have one day that is more succeptable to crazy things happening than any other it's Friday.  This week I thought maybe I would be getting a good day today as yesterday Duchess had surgery to remove a tumor from her eyelid and not only did the procedure go very well, she is recovering at a record pace!  The doctor said she'd be pretty groggy and slow moving for at least two days but she was back to full speed by the time she went to bed last night!  So with the weeks biggest hurdle behind us I thought today would be pretty mellow. 

     My theory was initially busted right away this morning when I went to fill the girls water dish the faucet that I normally get the water from was frozen solid!  Our house has two outside faucets and neither one is frost free, which means they are exposed to the elements unless you shut the water off to them.  So I went dounstairs and tried to do just that but the gate valve that shuts it off is seized up and wouldn't budge.  I had to get going for work so I decided to resolve my frozen water issue later, in hopes that it would warm up enough to not split the line and flood my basement!

     Seconds after arriving at dads for work, I took a bite out of a cookie mother had set out for us and a large chunk of one of my teeth came off with it!!  Kelli's obviously my go to for dental advice so I texted her to tell her the great news and see what she thought I should do.  She was in a CPR certification class with all of her co-workers so she asked me to try and take a picture of it so they could all access the damage and see if I needed immediate attention or not.  Now i don't know if you've ever tried taking a selfie of our own teeth before but I can tell you it is a lot harder than you'd think!  I took two different pics and sent them to my council, they reviewed them and reassured me I was going to make it:). So I called the dentist and luckily got an appointment to go have it looked at Monday morning!  I was a little shocked since it's thanksgiving week next week but happy they were able to get me in!

     On the way home, a little lighter than when I'd left, I stopped and picked up some insulation boxes for our outside faucets.  Thankfully by the time I returned the back one had unthawed so hopefully well be okay for now!  So at the end of the day all is well that ends well:). I guess I just have to look at it as if I didn't have Fridays what would I have to talk about?  Without all of these fun little life's lessons they would just be another day!  Hopefully today's lessons are over however as I can only handle a couple a week:)

Remember, even if you think your having the worst day possible there's somebody out there who would trade you days in a second!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Pure happiness

     This past Sunday I finally got my ol girl Duchess out for a duck hunt.  Starting around the first week in October she begins to sense that waterfowl season is upon us and she gets a little more excited each day!  Between house projects and work our opportunities to get out kept passing by but we finally kicked the season off, and it couldn't have come at a better time, Duch goes in for her eye surgery this Thursday!

     So we got up at the crack of 2:30, yes AM, and headed out to pick up our guide for the day, a buddy of ours who lives in Hayden.  Once we picked him up we drove another 1 1/2 hours north past Sandpoint, ID to the Kootenai national wildlife refuge.  This place is about 20 miles from Canada and serves as a hidden oasis for duck hunters!  According to the bird count on their website there were about 9600 birds there last week!

     Aside from the ample amount of birds to hunt with views like this surrounding you it's easy to justify the 2 hour drive!  We got into the birds fast and within the first hour had four mallards down.  Duchess once again made me proud as she went after each bird with the enthusiasm of a puppy, even though she's 11!

     I know she's not the perfect huntinndog in the world, but as I recently told another buddy of mine who has a lab of his own, the guy who says his dog is perfect probably doesn't hunt with them that often!  I am in firm belief that labs are like little kids when they go hunting and can only contain their excitement so long!  But Duchess imperfections are often followed by some of the most amazing retrieves I've ever seen!  Usually about the time she makes me angry for whining when I can't seem to hit anything, I sail a duck so far away I can hardly see it and she swims a half a mile faster than Micheal Phelps could then drops the bird at my feet and sits down ready to go again!  

     An when it's all said and done and were hiking back to the truck with a string of birds, she has the look in her eyes of pure happiness!  I've seen the same look every time we go hunting since the first time 10 years ago, and it never gets old.  When I see this look in her eyes I am reminded of the big picture and thankful that I have been blessed to be the man who has been allowed to provide these moments of happiness for Duchess!  She truly has been a good dog her entire life, Lord knows I out her through some rough patches in the beginning while I was trying to straighten myself out, but her loyalty has never waivered.  She has looked up to me with the same level of adoration from day one!  And as she gets older every year, and her body takes longer to recover from a hunt than her mind does, I am even more grateful of each outing we get to go on.  Each one bringing both of us to that place of pure happiness:)

Remember, it's the little moments in life that stick with us all forever!

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Perseverance

     Well our kitchen floor renovation is completed and the only word I can use to describe it is the one in the title, perseverance!  Our originaly plan of simply removing the existing tile to expose and refinish hardwood floors vanished immediately as once we got the tile up we were surprised to see the vinyl tiles underneath the ceramic tile had been glued to the hardwoods with an asphalt based glue!  I tried to remove it without chipping the wood and got about one square foot section in almost an hour.  So I called my interior designer, Kelli, who was out picking up paint and other supplies and asked her to do the hardest thing a designer has to do, make a last minute change of plans on short notice so the project could still be finished by the end of the weekend.  

     I left this morning to come down to Klamath Falls, OR for work for a couple days and we knew we had to get the kitchen back in operation before then so Kelli went to work coming up with an alternative plan for the floor.  Our first thought was retile it, but neither one of us likes tile that much and theres no way it would get done in time.  Then we thought of a laminate type floor, we went to a couple places and actually found one we liked and nearly bought it but opted to take a sample home first to see how it would look.  Then the Pinterest Gods came to Kelli and she had the thought of doing a finished plywood floor, an idea that is all over Pinterest and actually looked pretty cool.  So at about 6pm on Saturday night we got back home with sheets of plywood ready to be cut down to strips and made into a floor!
     Sunday was a long day as we got up early and got after it as soon as we thought we could without ticking off the neighbors.  Ten minutes into the day we ran into another speed bump when the air compressor we were using of Dad's quit working!  I made some phone calls to rental places and got some prices while I waited to hear back from Dad to see if he'd taken his back up compressor down to Arizona or not, turns out he hadn't and after he brought it over we were off and running again, at the crack of 2pm!  We managed to get all of the flooring down the same day, well technically it was Sunday morning by about an hour before we wrapped up for the day:)  We fell asleep immediately, feeling like we were on an episode of Renovation Realities, and my alarm went off in what felt like 20 minutes later so I could pick up stain for the floor right when Home Depot opened up.

     So we applied a coat of stain, and let it dry for the day while I did some work and took a trip to the dump, then applied two coats of sealant and our project was done!  When it was all said and done we ended up with new paint throughout, including a chalk board wall that you can kind of see in the pictures, and a kitchen floor that we love!  We had some definite trials and tribulations through this project, but we learned two improtant lessons, keep at it until the finish and you'll most likely be happy with the results, and never start a project like this when you have a time limit!  Obviously we've learned nothing from all of those episodes of Renovation Realities where almost no one meets their deadline!  In the end though it all worked out and we couldn't be happier, now it's break time for both our wallets and our bodies to mend before the next project!:)


Remember, sometimes during trying times a little bit of perseverance is all that you need:)



What did we get into?!

     Ah home renovations!  What a wonderful way for one to test your mental stability.  Kelli and I have known since the day we moved into this house that there was going to need to be some updating done to it.  It was in good shape and the previous owner had done some nice things to it, like refinish the hardwood floors, but he also did some not so nice things to it, like the tile in the kitchen!  We also knew that the water heater that was installed two year before Kelli was born would probably have to be replaced:)

     So as we've been making this house out own, room by room, we've completed painting the living room, hallway, and entryway.  We updated the fireplace with new tile on the floor, painting the brick face and old brass doors, and I built a new mantle for it.

     All of these little projects went smooth and our next big move was being narrowed down to three things, kitchen floor, water heater, and new interior doors because the existing ones have been painted so many times they don't open or shut right.  Kelli quickly prioritized the water heater as taking a nice hot shower is one of life's luxuries he simply can't go without, and she said she was getting pretty tired of setting a new land speed record for shaving each time:)

     So we bought a new water heater as well as about 30' of PEX pipe so I could relocate the water heater from the middle of nowhere to next to the furnace.  This project went really well, probably because it was not the first water heater I've replaced:), so we got a little eager and decided to jump into the kitchen floor last night!
     The tile in the kitchen is the one thing the former owner of this house did that is my biggest pet peeve!  It looks like he didn't use any spacers cause the grout lines are all different, and the tiles are all even and comin loose in certain spots.  Since my office is in the small room of the kitchen that has the same tile i look at it every day and want to tear it out every day!

     So last night we started tearing it up with the intentions of hopefully revealing more hardwoods, and if not then just retiling it the right way.  The good news is we found hardwoods, the bad news is its underneath asphalt based tiles!  After hours of contemplation of wether to retile over the asphalt tiles or remove all of it and refinish the hardwoods, we decided to reveal the wood!  

     The only big problem will be the amount of time and work involved with removing the old flooring, I know it won't be very fun but I have to keep reminding myself that it will be worth it when were done!  Isn't that the words many of us live by half way through our home reno's?  I know nice said them many times before!  If not those words I know we've all uttered "what did we get ourselves into" in the middle of a home repair that has gone wrong!  Most times I feel like there should be cameras following us around for a reality show!  But all we can do is keep rolling with the punches and keep our eyes on the finish line.  Just try not to loose sight of that line:)

Remember, sometimes trial and error is the only option you have:)

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Fall fun and fowl

     Man where does the time go?!  It seems as though it was just yesterday that I was dusting off my golf clubs to go hit a bucket of balls with Dad on a chilly spring morning.  Now the golf clubs have more or less been rendered idle for the year, barring a trip down to Mom and Dad's Arizona house, and the camo has been pulled out of the closet!  You've read about our bowhunt for elk on here and I haven't hunted with my rifle since I picked up a bow so my big game season is pretty much over so now it's on to the wild animal that really gets my blood pumping, ducks!
   I hunted waterfowl a few times growing up but it wasn't until I moved to Conrad, MT and got my baby girl Duchess that I really got interested in the sport.  Since getting a dog who pretty much lives to retrieve my desire to bird hunt has only grown stronger each year!  Duchess has been an amazing dog over the years, showing me some of the most awe inspiring retrieves one could imagine.  She's had so many of them it's hard to share all of them but one sticks out above the others, we were hunting outside of Laurel, MT on the Yellowstone river when the buddy of mine that was with us winged a goose and it sailed all the way out into the middle of the river which was starting to freeze up so it had little icebergs flowing down it.  Duch never hesitated, she swan out to the wounded bird, picked it up and began swimming back to me, getting slammed by icebergs along the way!  I ran down the river bank to shorten the distance she had to swim and all I could think of was how I was going to go get her when one of the chunks of ice took her under!  Thankfully this never happened and she eventually made it back to me and I'll never forget the look in her eyes as she sat there shivering in my arms, looking up at me with a face that simply said lets go do that again!
    
     Duchess turned 11 in June and as much as she seems to defy the odds of aging I know her hunting years are numbered so I take each hunt were on as a blessing in itself.  She has been an extremely healthy dog her whole life but recently she had a small growth show up on her eyelid.  We took her in to an optician, yes they actually have a pet optician, and she's going in to have it frozen off and sent in for testing in a couple weeks.  The vet was pretty optimistic that it was not a cancerous tumor but never the less I know I am going to treat every hunt we go on this year that much more special!
     So as the days start getting shorter and the thermometer becomes more resistant to showing warm temperatures, I know at least two of us who are eager for the snow to fly! 
Remember, if you try hard enough you can usually find a silver lining in every situation we come across in life, the trick to happiness is being open to trying to find it:)