Church Progress

Quite a bit of progress has been made on the new church in town over the last week, as you can see from the following photos:

It's going to be such a cute church, and with such a spectacular background!

Adventures with the Cousins

Last weekend Megan and Kayli stayed with us for the weekend. Desert Boy was so excited to have a sleepover with the cousins! One of the first things on the agenda was to work on the tree house.

Megan was eager to get to work with the hammer, while Kayli started painting beautiful designs on the walls. I don't think Desert Boy liked me intruding on his quality time with the cousins. He kept scowling at me!

Kayli is painting under the new coat hook. This is going to be one classy tree house!

Megan was making a bench for the tree house.

Desert Girl found the bench just the right height for her. She enjoyed conversing with her cousins. Maybe they understood her better than I do!

They laughed a lot.

The next morning was time to head into Ely, Nevada to take advantage of the free train ride weekend. I had to go somewhere else, so I gave my husband the camera and he managed to snap about five usable photos during the entire 2 1/4 hour ride.

This is a diesel engine on one of the side tracks. They had a steam engine pulling their train.

It looked like Kayli had a good time. She took over 300 photos on her camera.

As the train pulled into the station, I went up to the window and got the camera so I could get a few photos.

It was a nice day for a train ride, quite different from our chilly last experience.

The engine backed the train into the East Ely Depot.



Time to get off the train and off to the next adventure.

In the afternoon, we headed out to the garden, and Kayli and Megan helped plant seeds.

We gave Desert Boy his own plot where he could plant anything he wanted. It will be interesting to see what comes up.

Desert Girl liked playing in the wet dirt.

That was fine as long as she stayed in the wet dirt where we hadn't planted anything!

Here's a tiny pea plant poking through the ground.

And a bit higher.

The first pea leaves. Wow, those kids are sure super gardeners!

Everyone had a great time and we hope they can come back again soon!

Meeting the Cows

Some calves in one of the corrals. Why are they looking this way?

Because they've noticed Desert Girl, who's noticed them and come toddling over in her little pink-flowered irrigating boots.

She can make manure look so stylish.


Most of the calves are scared, but one decides to size up Emma.

Maybe she really isn't all that intimidating and is worth a closer look.

And closer yet.

Desert Girl reaches out her hand as a peace offering.

Hmmm, this could be interesting.

Desert Girl seems to like meeting the cow.

In fact, she loved it.

She turns to see the other calves watching her.

Uh oh, have they figured out that they're bigger than me?

Nah, I'm fine and life is grand.

Oh, does the cow want to play? I'll head right over.

I know all about slobber.

Should we have a staring contest?

Hee, hee, I did it.
Oh my.

Fire Shelter Practice

So what are a bunch of people doing just standing around with a beautiful mountain in the background?

They're not enjoying the view, they're getting ready for the annual fire shelter deployment exercise.

If you're a wildland firefighter (full-time, part-time, or once-in-a-blue-moon (I fall in that last category)), you have to take annual refreshers. Most of it is in the classroom, reviewing safety for various fire-related things. Then, at the end, you go outside and pretend that a roaring fire has blown up and you don't have time to get out of the way.

So you drop your pack, use your tool to clean down to mineral soil, and deploy your fire shelter. If all goes well, you will be able to live to tell all about it.

The shelters are simple, but you have to be ready to deploy it quickly, so we practice getting in them every year, and have 30 seconds to do so.

The clock starts, and the second round of recruits heads to the deployment area.

The real fire shelters are made of aluminum foil laminated to another layer, but because they're expensive and don't do well with multiple deployments, we use practice shelters instead, made of a green tarp material.

It takes a few seconds to pull the shelter out of the case.

Then it's time to shake it out.
Then you get under it and lay down on the ground, holding the interior straps firmly as the strong fire winds whip around you.

There are different preferences for how to get into the shelter the fastest.
Then the instructors come around and shake the shelters to make sure you're holding it down well. It's a bit claustrophobic inside (and this is coming from someone who likes tight passages in caves). It would be really tough during a real fire to stay calm and keep the shelter down. The super-heated air kills before the fire does in most cases.

These guys were all able to deploy in 30 seconds. You'd want your feet to be pointing towards the flames, so the guy on the left needs to rotate 90 degrees.

Last year wasn't a particularly busy wildland fire year. It will be interesting to see what happens. Many millions of acres need to burn--but they need to burn in a way that won't threaten lives, and that can certainly be a challenge!