Diamond Lake and SNOW!

Well, winter has definitely started in Oregon!  Our first snow came in mid-October, but was gone quickly.  Since then, the snow has been off and on at least once a week BUT in the mountains, it's actually staying around!  In light of this new season, Ed and Kristin decided to take Alee to play in the snow!  We tried to head to Crater Lake (where's there's a full 3 feet now) but they don't allow dogs on their snow (even on their unplowed roads). 

So, we headed to Diamond Lake a few miles to the north.  They didn't have as much snow - but it was certainly enough to play in!  We put Alee's fleece jacket on so she wouldn't freeze and off she went!  She had tons of fun jumping in and out of the snow and running up to us and stopping on a dime to create a puff of snow. 

It was cloudy but still so beautiful!

"This is very different from the gravel backyard..."

"It's too cold to sit properly!"

After all that exhausting playing and running, it was time for bed.  I guess when you're THIS tired...comfort is really not a necessity.

Quick trip to Houston!

Being that Denver was so close to Houston, Kristin decided to hop on a plane to Houston for the weekend with the hopes of catching Christina's delivery of Baby Gosling.  Unfortunately Baby Gosling was not interested in joining us (even after Kristin delivered an eviction notice), but at least she got to enjoy some great home cooking by Paul!  Luckily she also got the chance to hop to the west side of town and see Christy and Eshaan and Shannon and her kids!  It was so great to see everyone, but the visits were definitely too short on this trip! 

 Kristin and Christy at Cafe Adobe - yay for great Mexican!

 Eshaan - up and walking/running everywhere!

Kristin and Jessica!

Denver and the USBR Labs!

For the first week of November, Kristin had to go to Denver for a "Value Engineering" study - a totally exhausting process where she learned a TON!  The highlight of the week was the trip to the Bureau of Reclamation's hydraulics lab and concrete lab.  For the fellow civil engineers - this stuff was so cool!

Here's one of the scale models - this is the description of the "problem"

The scale model - you can't see it - but there's a ton of various sized gravel in there

The end of the model, where the water is collected and pumped back to the beginning

After browsing the hydraulics lab, we headed to the concrete lab to see a large concrete break on a 5 MILLION pound press!  When it broke - the whole building shook!  The press actually sits on it's own separate foundation.

Before the break... 

You Tube Video of the break

 

After the break!

Hoover Dam Concrete mix!  Holy aggregate Batman!

 Info the press...

 Tension breaks from the same machine...

A butterfly valve after cavitation...how cool!

Portland Weekend with Alee

This past weekend Ed and I packed up the car (with Alee) and headed to Portland to see Matt Insley's latest musical, Hearts Beating.  (Matt is the music director.) The show was hilarious and we really enjoyed it - we highly recommend seeing this one if you have the opportunity!  It plays in Portland through November 20th at the Coho Theater. 

  2 Pathological Liers trying to ask each other out...Funny scene!

While in Portland, we got to check out our favorite pet store, Furever Pets.  This place is just super cool and they have so many all natural and locally made doggy products!  We stopped in before the show to check them out and they told us that the Pacific Northwest Rhodesian Ridgeback Rescue organization was holding a fundraiser photo shoot there on Sunday to get holiday pet photos.  How exciting!  Of course we came back to get the photos done - only $10 for a ton of great Alee shots!  Plus, the whole store was filled with other Rhodesian Ridgebacks for Alee to meet and play with - what a great time!  Here were some of our favorite shots:

On the way home on Sunday we headed over the Cascades on Rte 58.  This road goes fairly high into the mountains (around 6,000 feet) but we didn't even think about the possibility of winter weather yet - it's only October!  About 5 miles outside of Oakridge, OR we hit a major snow storm that stayed with us for the next 5 hours!

View from the passenger seat as we were going 15 mph.

 Alee in my lap as we were driving through the snow - she kept looking at the "white stuff" with a very confused look

Once we got home, the next morning the snow also hit Klamath Falls!  Not nearly as intense as it was in the mountains, but enough to give everything a pretty white shade.

 Out the front door

Back yard

As you can tell, Alee was not super thrilled about the snow...

Cooking weekend with Terri and Elsie!

Once we finished moving everything into the new place, Terri and Elsie came to visit for the weekend!  The weather was kind of crummy, so we decided to make it a cooking weekend!  Our cooking included: 

Pumpkin/Onion/Feta Pie in Filo

Homemade chicken stock

Blackberry cream pie

Wine-marinated pear muffins

Friday night we relaxed and caught up and chowed down on Papa Murphy's pizza to prepare for the heavy cooking!  Saturday we took the dogs to visit the Klamath Falls Farmer's Market to get some fresh veggies and herbs, then to Link River trail to pick blackberries and then to the Ruff House to play!  

Picking blackberries!  (Alee picked her own too...)

Klamath "Falls" along the Link River 

Alee exploring...

Muddy feet!

Alee trying to play with a black Shepard...brave girl!

With fresh berries and tired dogs, we came home to start on the evening's cooking!  We started with the chicken - to make the home made chicken stock, we made Terri and Ed some great chicken to go along with the dinner pie.  Terri came up with an herb mix of lavender, lemon-balm, rosemary, salt and pepper to stuff in the chicken.  It smelled WONDERFUL!  After cooking for around 90 minutes, we had some pretty excited dogs!  We made the pumpkin/onion/feta pie in filo dough and had a great filling dinner! I tried to get a pic of the chicken, but it was devoured before I could get the camera over there!

After eating, we stripped the remaining meat off the chicken and put the carcass in a crockpot along with some shallots, carrots, celery, garlic and herbs and covered them all with water for about 18 hours.  Boy the house smelled wonderfully!

We cleaned our blackberries (and removed the MANY spiders) and mixed them with a sour cream/sugar mix and poured them into one of my home made pie crusts to bake for dessert!

With bellies full, we headed to bed for a good night's sleep!  

Sunday morning we made wine-marinated pear muffins!  This is a recipe that I've been wanting to try for a while.  The recipe calls for cooking pears in a wine/cinnamon/clove mix until soft and then marinating in the fridge for 2-3 days.  We cooked them on Friday and pulled them out this morning to make the muffins.  They were delicious!

Sadly, Terri and Elsie had to go back home to Portland and we were all sad to say good bye.

Afterwards, we spent some time taking some cute pics of Alee outside...

New Place!

The past few weeks have been pretty hectic for Ed and I because we moved houses!  We moved from our furnished rental in a resort area (15 miles outside of town) to a cute little geo-thermally heated home in town - just 1 1/2 miles from downtown!  As you can imagine, moving with a puppy is challenging...Alee was certainly confused about everything that was going on, but she understood once we got her crate and bed in the new house.

The new place is sitting overtop of a geothermal well (220 deg) so it stays pretty warm...also the heat is FREE and we won't have much snow accumulation in certain areas.   Our well (which we share with the neighbors/land lords) is one of the shallowest geothermal wells in the area at only 88 feet!  Here's the explanation of geothermal energy from the Oregon Institute of Technology:

Geothermal Energy is heat (thermal) derived from the earth (geo). It is the thermal energy contained in the rock and fluid (that fills the fractures and pores within the rock) in the earth's crust.

In most areas, this heat reaches the surface in a very diffuse state. However, due to a variety of geological processes, some areas, including substantial portions of many western states, are underlain by relatively shallow geothermal resources.

These resources can be classified as low temperature (less than 90°C or 194°F), moderate temperature (90°C - 150°C or 194 - 302°F), and high temperature (greater than 150°C or 302°F).   Direct use, as the name implies, involves using the heat in the water directly (without a heat pump or power plant) for such things as heating of buildings, industrial processes, greenhouses, aquaculture (growing of fish) and resorts. Direct use projects generally use resource temperatures between 38°C (100°F) to 149°C (300°F).

So far Alee seems to like the new place except for the wood laminate flooring which she slides across regularly.  She is LOVING the back yard for playing and chewing her bones and we are LOVING the backyard for the gravel!  (No grass to kill with puppy pee!) 

Ed and Alee in front of the new house

Honeysuckles!

Overlooking the City from our front porch

Nice gravel backyard!

So far Buster and Alee are NOT friends, but they are making progress.  Alee would love to play with Buster, but he just isn't having it.  This weekend, we hit a GREAT milestone where Buster actually came into the living room where Ed and I were sitting with Alee and he actually looked right at Alee without hissing or growling!  I even caught it on camera:

Now to start unpacking...

Weekend Fun with Alee!

2 weekends ago we took Alee to her first puppy socialization class!  She did well in the car and COMPLETELY worse herself out by playing with Jasper the 4 month old Boxer!  Afterwards Ed and I got lunch at a deli and sat outside while Alee people watched.

Alee on her way to puppy socialization!

This past weekend was  fun filled and certainly exhausting for Alee!  Klamath Falls held a "Be Kind to Animals" Dog Festival this weekend as a chance to celebrate dogs.  There was a "show ring" (just for fun) and competitions like "cutest couple" and a "confidence builder agility course." Alee got to meet lots of new dogs, put her paw print on a certificate, try out some home made chicken cookies and try out the agility course.  The little boxer she met the weekend before at the puppy socialization class was also there, so they got to play again!  They even got on the news for playing together!  Alee did so well and loved the agility course so much we have definitely decided to start her in agility training once she's old enough (about 12-18 months).

Alee doing the agility training - about to "jump" through the tire

Alee after her playing

After the dog festival, the 3 of us went to Moore Mountain to help the Linkville Lopers running club set up for the Moore Mnt Half Marathon the following Sunday.  We hiked up a hill to see the area where Ed and I will be manning an aid station and helped put markings on the ground to direct runners.  Alee was EXHAUSTED from hiking up that hill - she kept trying to sit in the shade instead of walking with us. 

Sunday morning we worked the aid station and handed out water, gatorade and gels to the runners - they all seemed to have a great time and really enjoy the views.  Of course Alee was a huge help in motivation!  She really enjoyed collecting all the sticks around the site.

 A little blury - but here's Alee collecting her sticks...

Trying now to figure out how to chew on it

Just a beautiful shot of our girl

Ed with Alee

Our Mile 7 Aid station

All in all we had a great weekend and are looking forward to this week where we get to move into our new house!  We're still renting, but this house has geothermal heat and some really awesome neighbors/land lords.  PLUS there's a yard for Alee!