cheerfulmonk.com

We came here in 1974 and for the first two years we got a Forest Service permit to cut down our Christmas tree. Then we bought the land in 1976 and cut down our tree on the land for 35 years…until the 2011 fire burned all the trees.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the tree cutting:

Getting Christmas tree 12/25/1980. Andrew cutting tree

Getting Christmas tree 12/25/1980. Kaitlin checking out Christmas tree

Getting Christmas tree up on land for 2001.

1987 Kaitlin cutting down Christmas tree

1987 Andrew cutting down Christmas tree

Christmas 1987-getting Christmas tree up on land

1987 Getting Christmas Tree-Kaitlin and Andrew

Kaitlin with Christmas tree

We didn’t go for the best looking trees, we picked the ones in spots that needed thinning and we loved them.

November 23, 2021

I don’t have any pictures of Andy putting the Christmas tree up, or down, by himself, but I do have these from January 1, 2018 of Kaitlin and Tempi helping him.

There are a few more pictures here on Flickr.

November 27, 2021

Years ago Andy and I were invited to a friend’s for Thanksgiving dinner. I was looking forward to it but knew I would miss the leftover turkey. So Thanksgiving morning I went to the store and bought one, figuring I should start defrosting it to have it a few days later.

When I was at the store I ran into a colleague from work. He looked at the frozen turkey in my cart, looked at me, and said.

You don’t believe in planning ahead, do you Jean?

I still laugh every time I think of it.

November 26, 2021

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

Meister Eckhart

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

November 25, 2021

We went up to the land again on Thanksgiving 2010, of course.

There are more pictures here on Flickr.

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving and we’re still grateful for the help Torben and Kaitlin gave us. It was invaluable.

When we walked inside the boundaries of the house we knew where the walls were going to be but we needed to figure out what size windows we wanted and how far above the ground they should be. We also had to figure out how wanted the kitchen. The architect never did give us an accurate floor plan, so Torben created one for us using PowerPoint when we got back to the apartment. We used that when we picked out the cabinets, etc.

Thank you both so much! We will never forget it.

November 24, 2021

Sunday I mentioned Kaitlin and Torben’s Thanksgiving trip in 2011, and that we stopped at the site on the way from the airport.

There was a lot of activity when we drove up the next day. Workers were preparing the site for the house and building the shed.

There are more pictures here on Flickr. and even more of just building the shed here.

November 23, 2021

Andy put the tree up Saturday.

He didn’t fall off the roof and hurt himself, so all’s right with the world.

November 22, 2021

Exactly 10 years ago Kaitlin and Torben came to visit. We picked them up at the Albuquerque airport and drove up to the house site on our way here.

There are more pictures here on Flickr.

November 21, 2021

Pixabay

A friend of mine just said someone took a video of a mountain lion here in town. So they’re not only up by our land.

It was just a matter of time. We have a lot of deer comfortably wandering around…we’ve seen them in our parking lot and from my bedroom window. And our local paper often has pictures of them lounging in people’s yards. On the whole the residents welcome them, so it’s a tempting source of food for a brave, hungry lion.

It’s probably best not to let pets out unattended. A few years ago a dog was attacked in the bushes of its back yard. The owner heard the fighting in the bushes and rescued the pup.

Life is never dull.

November 20, 2021

Yesterday I decided to walk over to the pond to take a few more pictures, but I didn’t get to it until after the sun went down. I went anyway to see how my iPhone would handle the lower light.

Not too bad. It did a better job seeing Homer and Edna than my eyes did.

There are more, and higher resolution, pictures here on Flickr.

November 19, 2021