A Good Day at the Farm

Starting off the morning with a cup of coffee and a mastiff's head on your lap. What more can you ask for? The one with his head on my lap is Deacon; the apricot-colored one on the floor to his left is Corin and the one in the back is Keiko-san.

Deacon is almost five years old now. If you look closely you can see his Margaritaville collar we brought him from Florida. Deacon is very special. As a puppy, he's the one who convinced me that dogs were okay after my friend was so badly mauled by the husky when we were in Alaska with them...  One of Deacon's favorite spots is to be under the kitchen table keeping us company when we're cooking --

Today was a successful day for Nephew Jared and his cousins. All three of the boys got their deer this morning. Their fathers weren't as successful, so they'll be out again in the early morning while the young guys sleep in.

Daughter Mary Mae posted the pictures of the costumes for "Witches, the Musical" that Granddaughter Claire will be in starting next Friday in Mount Vernon. Claire plays one of the Puritan girls in the story of the Salem Witch Trials. I still can't quite see how they managed to turn this topic into a musical... I guess we'll have to wait until opening night to find out!

It rained very nicely last night, but the sun was out this morning. It smelled so good as it rained hard enough to get most of the dust out of the air. Forry said they got some rain at the ranch last night, but not nearly as much as we got here.

The fellows went into Walla Walla tonight to find someplace to watch the WSU football game. Sister Sherry has Direct TV, which is not carrying the PAC-12 games this year. Sherry and I stayed home with the dogs and have had a quiet evening reading and listening to the game on the radio,

Journey to Touchet

This morning I packed my suitcase and my computer; loaded up assorted items I had picked up during the last year's travels; and fixed a bag with various groceries and headed for Touchet to spend a few days with my sister. As I drove down Highway 395, I realized that in all the years my sister had lived near Touchet, I had never driven there by myself!

I guess I have gotten rather lazy about driving. It is so easy to let Forry be my chauffeur. He likes to drive and it's not really my favorite thing to do, so it's just easy to let him drive. I'd much rather be checking in on Facebook or reading my Kindle or just watching the scenery as we go. It was actually a very pleasant drive. Toad II handles the road well and the Suzuki is very comfortable. I had bought some of Sherry Farmer's CDs last week, so I listened to them most of the way down.

One of the fun things about being at Sister Sherry's is cooking with her. My Brother Pat and his sons and his Brother-in-law Gary and his sons were going to be here for supper (deer hunting season starts tomorrow), so she had already made bread pudding and pumpkin bars. We ended up making hard sauce for the bread pudding and frosting for the bars. Then put a ham in the oven and made some scalloped potatoes (Patrick brought fresh potatoes from his garden).

It was fun to see the young men that Pat and Gary's sons have turned into. Nephew Nick went back to Walla Walla for the night (he'd already gotten his deer during the black-powder hunt.), but Nephew Jared and his cousins Matt and Mike are staying here along with their dads. They are planning to be out in the field by 6 AM, so they headed for bed quite early.

I had bought the largest collar they had at Margaritaville for my favorite mastiff Deacon, but it just barely fits. He is four years old now and though he's no taller, he's gotten much more massive through his chest and shoulders. I'll take some pictures tomorrow.

Universal CityWalk -- And The Lorax!

We were NOT going to do anything today! We had had a very heavy rain-storm during the night and I had been up several times shutting windows and pulling in awnings. Forry decreed that it was going to be a quiet contemplative, restful, catch-up day. Then later this afternoon, Bill and Leslie came over. Bill was antsy and wanted to go somewhere. He enticed Forry with the promise of a Margarita and convinced us that we needed to go over to Universal Studio's CityWalk. After all, I had been wanting to check out the Harry Potter merchandise for our grand-kids.

This picture is looking down from the walkway from the parking area at the very colorful Putt-Putt golf course. It looks like it would be a fun place. (I think that purple and green thing on the top of the rocks is a caterpillar...?)

 Sure enough, one of the first places we ran into was --

,

So we left Forry and Bill there while we went to check out the wands and other magical supplies.

Florida flora continues to fascinate me. There were all of these palm trees around the open area between the stores and buildings --

I was trying to figure out why they were green underneath the leaf area at the top of the trunk, then realized that there were ferns growing in between the stumps of the old dead leaves --

After wandering around a bit, we ended up deciding that we would go to Bubba Gump's for supper.

The whole restaurant is themed around the Forrest Gump movie, including the menu --

The portions were huge! This is about half of the tempura shrimp that came with my order. There was another cup filled with french fries as well.

There is a bench outside the restaurant with Forrest Gump's suitcase and a box of chocolates on it and his shoes in front of it. So my Forrest just had to have his picture taken there!

Universal Studios has a big CinePlex Theatre as part of the CityWalk complex. We saw that The Lorax was playing, so decided go see it after we ate. It was an interesting, albeit a bit heavy-handed,  movie -- as are all of the films based on Dr. Seuss books. I really enjoyed the whimsical characters and creativity.

Bill had bought some gourmet cupcakes at the Food Truck Bazaar last night, so we returned to Auntie Violet for dessert while we made plans for the coming week.