Thanksgiving -Gardiner Style

I love this time of year. The leaves (which Montana doesn't have, but I got to see in IN last weekend) turning, the smell of smoke in the air, getting to fire up my wood stove. I love it all. Soon we'll be gorging ourselves until, as Heidi would say, "our bellies are round and hard." My big plans for Thursday are to start off with brunch and the Macy's Day Parade, attend the Gardiner Turkey Trot (the town does 1-2 laps around the mile long triangle at the Roosevelt Arch), then go to rugby, and then put my pajamas on and eat appetizers and watch football for the rest of the day. Friday will be the day of feasting with somewhere between 5-12 of us. Who knows who will show up, but we have a 14 lb. turkey so I hope people are coming!

More photos from work

Elk outside the LobbyMore Elk

White tail

More home work

These rose bushes were gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful. But they were a pain the ass. They were sending up little shoots everywhere. Into the backyard, under the wood pile. Everywhere. They had to go. Luckily, I have friends. I think we all had fun with this one.


And, I finally got my tub done. Yay!

My Backyard

Montana Rep-Diaries of Adam and Eve

I'm on the arts council for Gardiner. It's mostly fun and I really enjoy being able to bring some great acts into our small town but sometimes it seems like a LONG process. Especially during board meetings. We had our first performance this past Heidi was point person for the Montana Repertory Theatre. They were scheduled to perform Mark Twain's "The Diaries of Adam and Eve." The play is hilarious by the way. Absolutely wonderful. This group is always a joy to work with and the scenery was absolutely perfect. In an effort to bring more people in, Heidi not only advertised in the local newsletter, she hung posters and even threw a pre-show shindig. It was really fun, lots of food, lots of people, and a gorgeous sunset. Montana is so great for those.
After the show, we had a cake walk. It was a grand success and enjoyed by all. Last year we had attempted the musical chairs version (walk around in a circle, eliminate one chair and then one person each time). This year, we did the put-the-numbers-on-a-chair-and-then-pick-the-number-from-a-hat-for-people-to-win version. I was in charge of that part. I'm bossy so it works. We made enough money to cover our incidental expenses. Yay!
The night before, Allie and I made/finished our cakes over at Carrie's house while Heidi finished up her appetizers. My cake is on the left, Allie models her cake on the right. Heidi was finishing up her crab (crack) dip and putting it on fancy bread with lettuce. It was SO GOOD. She also made up her fancy beverages.
At the same time, we were watching Trailer Park Boys. If you've never seen this show, you really, really need to get it from Netflix. Canadians are funny, who knew?
You know who else is funny? Americans. Just check out the ants on a log and decorations that Allie and Heidi cooked up.

Working during the Winter

I am blessed enough to be able to walk to work. I'm only about 1/4 to 1/2 mile from work (never clocked it, suspect it is about half way between the two, it takes about 6 minutes to walk.) Here are a couple of pictures both from my walk and from my building. Ain't Montana wonderful?

Elk in the morning

Pretty mountain

My building

On the way home

Just to remind myself that Montana

This ain't no reg'lar corn maze

So, I've been saying for YEARS that I've wanted to go to a corn maze. Well, there's not a lot of corn in south-central Montana so I kind of figured it was a pipe dream. Then, my friend Heidi found a haybale maze that they were setting up in Bozeman. That's only 80 miles away. So, eight of us made the perilous journey and went through the maze. It was TOTALLY AWESOME!

Getting instructions. We not only had to find our way in and out, we also had to find four check points along the way. Allie and I found the first flag! Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Going through the maze
I made it out!