We had a lot of happenings this week. Saphira had her 6 pups and it has been storming with lots of rain and snow that melts when it hits the ground. We have been inventive in ways to keep our puppies and moms dry and warm. I had hoped for a home by now when I bred them. going to post the next 6 pups. Already sold one of them today.

  We have puppies!  Tiki and Launi had their last litters. we have a total of 11 between them  Tiki only had 4 so has taken one of Launi's to give Launi a break. We got our loan for our mobile home and are preparing the area we will be putting it on.
    Roy has also been working like a dog on the seasonal creek area. We just love it down there. The rain has brought much turbulence in the stream. Unfortunately we think the goldfish have been washed into Lake Oroville. Our Dam can only do so much when there is a torrent coming down.
   We are almost completely over the bug we had at Thanksgiving. Going to Portland to see Julie brought back some unexpected sickness. We thought we were going to die! We had a nice Thanksgiving at Kate's house in Stockton. That was so nice of her to have us over.
    We are going to have a quiet Christmas again this year. It has been kind of nice to just relax in a way. We sent Nate and Jared's packages yesterday and some for Kenny and Julie. Plan on getting together with Lisa and Jenny on New Years to exchange.
    Sadly my sister Karen lost her husband Jim after 40 some years of marriage. He is in a good place. We will miss him.
   We found out Nate will be home March 19th. Hopefully our mobile home will be in place by then. Don't really expect him to stay around long since he plans on heading to Utah.  so all is good for now.

November 2012

November is almost done. We had a good one. Excited to find out we will be getting a mobile home  hopefully by the end of February. We took the boat out on the lake a couple of times. It is good to be finally utilizing the lake after all the time we have been here. We got to explore Lake Oroville a bit more.
   This month we sold our pup Tinky. We decided to downsize a bit and hopefully will get there soon. It is just too much for me with all my health issues. I sit here now on antibiotics for Pneumonia.  Guess I just kept on going when I needed to rest. I did get back a clear result for my lung CT scan last month. What a blessing.
   This month, I was able to go to Portland to see Julie and family. It was Zane's birthday. And Thanksgiving was spent in Stockton with Darryl and Lisa and Antanella. It is wonderful to get to see our grandchildren. Jenny came also with Ethan when we were in Stockton.
    We are still working on our place and are currently working on fencing off the pasture area that we seeded. Hope to be able to save some on feed eventually. Roy also built a bridge over the creek at the bottom of the ravine. I love it down there. It is my favorite place to sit.
     Nate and Jared send home wonderful letters of their mission. We are grateful for their willingness to serve the Lord. It is getting closer for Nate to come home in March. Hope we have our home by then, altho we know he will end up in Utah eventually.
   So that is our update for now.

   I can't believe it is October already!  wow. A lot has happened in the last month. We put some money down on a mobile and did some paperwork to get it going and are awaiting now the appraisal. It is a big step but we are hoping to have it in by Christmas. Not looking forward to living in the smaller travel trailer. We are in a 35 foot (actually 33 feet) 1969 KenCraft trailer that we had to revamp to be livable. It will do for now. We sold our other trailer to have a downpayment on the mobile we are going to buy.  My biggest concern is the cut in the land where our mobile is going. The research I have done says to face it south for best results with heating and cooling with solar. Protect it from summer sun with awnings and use the sun for winter heat. I am worried about cutting into existing root systems of some of our oak trees. Then again we don't want them too close to the house since wildfires are a concern up here.
  I sold all my puppies!! I am keeping one black tri female from Onyxia named Tinky (Antanella named her). She is so sweet. Roy and I took a walk down to our creek and took her and Aussie with us. I am going to rename Aussie, Annastasia. And our new female also back from my friend and out of Onyxia has a funky name we decided to change from Angus to Angelea . So thinking I had a breather from puppies, I looked at my calendar and realized I am going to have more puppies born the first of December!! ugh! Winter pups are so hard to keep warm. I need to have my mobile in by then and then I can use my wash room for a whelping room.
    I had a nice birthday last month. Lisa and Jenny came up a few days before and we rode my horses. Fancy is sold now and I have Ruby and Blondie. It was a struggle to get on Ruby for me but I did with encouragement. After falling off Fancy last year, I have been gun shy about mounting. Don't want a broken back again!.
   Roy and I took the Kayaks out and found the orange one didn't fit him so we traded it for a canoe on craigslist and took it out and I fell in the lake when he tried to drop the prop into the water. It was a nice warm swim but I got a few bruises falling out. LOL   That spurred Roy into finally getting the jet boat going again and now we plan on taking it out next week for a test run.
  Life is full of adventures!  My CT scan came back clear for my lungs and I was thrilled. Happiness!!

Shooter

August 27th  We had a family reunion this month at a resort in Windsor. It was so nice to get our family together. We left on the 15th and came home on the 20th. Onyxia decided to have her pups 5 days early and lost two males (a red tri and a blue merle) but our neighbor Gail and friend Michelle were able to rescue the blue female and black tri female,  and Michelle took them home to make sure they thrived, which they did!
  We did an ocean trip to Bodega Bay and Goat Rock and went to a playground for the kids with a lake but mostly ate and swam and sat in the hottub and talked together. It was really nice and a nice place to be.
  We sold our travel trailer and have been looking for a mobile home and plan on using the money to put down on a down payment.  We are anxiously waiting for information back hoping we get one. In the meantime we moved into another OLD 1969 KenCraft 35 foot park model travel trailer and fixed it up enough to live in for the next 3 months. Another adventure!! So the days before and the days after the reunion have been spent moving, cleaning and organizing the two trailers. the one to prepare to move off the place and the other to live in. Roy has worked so hard to make it all possible.
    Our Female Aussie had her pups a couple days Early on the 23rd and had a litter of  blues! I was so shocked. no Black tri's. My friend Michelle female, Kalua, had a litter on the 12th from Kona and had 10 pups 3 blue males, 1 black female and 6 black males!!!

 

July was wonderful. Had a lot of hot weather but it is cooler up here in the mountains than in the valley. I noticed that the air quality was pretty bad in the valley when the fires were going and it was much better up here. I have a new horse named Blondie. She is a 13 year old paint and supposedly a quiet riding mare. So my Fancy mare is now back at the trainers being put on the market to be sold.  I traded the last of my puppies toward her. It is nice to be able to do that sometimes. We will be expecting a couple of litters with Onyxia and Shooter (from snoroseranch.com) and Aussie and Teddy.
  We placed our old faithful dog, Callie in a nice home up in Paradise where she will get the doting and love she so much craved. We are hoping to get a mobile in place by Thanksgiving. Hope all goes well with the loan company. We will be going to a time share in Windsor Ca for a family reunion in August and  looking forward to seeing grandkids and children that we miss so.

july 15

Life has calmed down alot lately. we sold another puppy last Friday to a couple up near Quincy. They were so impressed with the little guy. the lady said when her husband brought him home in the truck that he just plopped himself all the way on the front seat and made himself at home. she said that she thought his name should be Buddy and her husband said, I think that is what she said she named him.  That is so cool. I have had several people say they kept their puppies names that I gave them. I love getting stories of the puppies that I have sold. We meet the nicest people.
   Jared is now at the MTC language training for the next 8 weeks to learn Spanish for his two year mission to Chile. He was so excited. Now we officially have two boys on missions. Nathan is enjoying his Mission in Texas and will be home next March. It think the time will go quickly.
   We are keeping busy trying to fix up the place. We have done a lot in the 10 months that we have been here. I am still not certain we can get a mobile yet but it is at least a little closer in coming the longer we wait after our short sale last September.
   We bought a couple of kayaks on craigslist and took one of them out on lake Oroville at Foreman creek. It will be nicer to do it on calmer waters maybe in the early morning sometime. That is all for now.

June 2012

   It has been an interesting month so far. We are preparing for Jared's visit and our little simi family reunion the end of the month. We went to see Antanella at her dance recital in Concord and had a great day. She was so cute. She is really a natural at performance.
    The puppies are growing and we are having great results with selling them. It takes up quite a bit of time to do all the chores and worming and care that they need but it gets me out of the house and I am grateful for the chance to raise such beautiful, smart dogs and meet lots of nice Aussie lovers.
  I finally got on Ruby, the mare I got from my friend Michelle. She and her Daughter Shayla showed me how gentle she was and then helped hold her while I got on. It was a relief once I was on and I no longer felt the panic. It was the first time I had gotten on since Thanksgiving when I got dumped by Fancy and fractured my Sacrum and T12. After the Chemo last year from my lung cancer, I didn't know how brittle my bones would be but they didn't separate so I am good. I just keep taking my Mannatech products and my Kangen alkaline water and vitamins and keep on going on.
    We are excited to have Jared home and plan on a Temple trip to the Sacramento Temple on the 22nd. It will be a wonderful experience.
     Nathan has been transferred to the lower part of the State to a town called Crystal Springs, TX. He said it is really small and loves the new opportunity to serve there.
   So that is all for now.

     
 
 
 

I wish I was better at this than I am. I cannot figure out how to move my pictures around and post more pictures. so confusing.

   We are busy as ever. Roy is recovering nicely from his knuckle replacement surgery. We had 2 litters of pups born to Saphira and Teddy and Tiki and Kona. they were born April, 25th and May 2nd. We are happy and still dreaming of a nice mobile home eventually.
  We are looking forward to Jared coming home this next month for a visit before he leaves on his mission to Chile in July. Nathan has been on his mission now for 14 months. He is doing well.
  We got a garden started and are enjoying the landscaping Julie and Mike did while they were here. It looks so much nicer. Little by little  it will all come together eventually.
    We also got a new horse this last month. Her name is Ruby and she is an 18 yr old registered quarter horse mare and is bred for a foal next year. I still have not gotten on her yet. I have not been on a horse since I got dumped last Thanksgiving off Fancy.
     We are also happily planing on a reunion this August with everyone who can make it. We will be missing Nate and Jared but know they are in the right place for them.
   

fence and landscaping

Roy was able to put in over 600 feet of fencing before he had his surgery on his hand. It is looking so much better. Julie and family came as well as our other two daughters and families. Julie was able to do alot of landscaping done as well as getting my garden spot readied. I am so happy with the progress.

New Year promises to be bright!

We have now established our boundaries on our property and have started putting in a fence. Can't wait to get our place enclosed so we can turn out the dogs more often and have a more room for our horse to graze.
We have been able to go visit our grandkids at Jenny's house in Galt a few times and it has been nice to keep in touch. We are hoping to maybe make a road trip or fly to Oregon sometime in the future. Roy is going to be having knuckle replacement surgery soon and will be down a few months.
Nate is doing good on his mission. He was just transferred last week to Leander Texas, about 20 miles north of Austin. Jared is getting ready to put in his papers and will hopefully be getting his call this summer.
We had another litter of pups and have almost all sold already. It has been surprisingly nice to see people are willing to travel all the way up here to buy our dogs.
Life is good!

Happy New Year 2012

We are finally in our mountain retreat with our Australian Shepherd dogs and pups and a nice quarter horse mare for Elaine to ride. We have 10 mountain acres above lake Oroville in California near the town of Berry Creek. Roy is happily working and clearing the land and I am raising my dogs and selling them.