Unbelievable neighbors!

This picture was taken behind our 'house' last evening, probably about 7:30 pm. Not only did we have two bull moose there was also a cow with them. The moose on the right was HUGE!!!! Of course, the cow wasn't small - in fact, our neighbor, who has been in this area every summer for the past 25 years said that they were very surprised that a cow that large did not have a calf with her. Anyway, it was getting dark and the pictures are a little dark also, but I think you can see them. The small bull got his antler stuck in the volleyball net. It was sorta funny watching him fight with the net - and guess who won - it wasn't the net. In fact, he tore it all to pieces and then went up and hit the metal pole. He was really getting angry and stomping the ground and snorting. I probably got closer to these moose than any other ones so far - but I also made sure that I kept my eye on them the whole time and had an escape route (up a tree). I know, I know, I can see my children laughing there heads off thinking about their 50 something year old mother climbing a tree - but believe me - if one of those moose started toward me I would be climbing a tree in a heartbeat!!!! Thank goodness I didn't have to. But also, if you look carefully you will notice that the smaller of the two bull moose is keeping his eye on me also. It was a pretty cool thing and I certainly want to keep my eye out for them to come back. (Now, some might ask why I didn't change the shutter speed to allow more light in - well, I did. BUT, I was walking the whole time and the pictures were all blurry - so I had to delete them.)

Today, we stayed home and I cleaned the 'house' - actually did a major job in the 'house' with cleaning windows, floors, stove, etc. as well as the normal things. While I was working in the house, Dan went down to the storeroom and got the RIDING lawn mower - I know, I thought he was going to use the push mower also, but he had some excuse - I don't even remember what it was right now. The point is - he used a riding mower, but at least he did get the yard mowed. He is going out with Kaye (our neighbor that works for the Forestry Service) to do the water samples at all the different cabins in the area. He will be gone all day - so I will pack him a lunch in the morning and I'll stay at home - I might go do the laundry since he won't be home and it will give me something to do and we wouldn't have to worry about it later in the week. I'll also see if I can plan the menu's for the rest of this week using things we already have. I think we will probably do the Virginia City/Ennis trip on Wednesday. I am really looking forward to this trip - Virginia City is suppose to be a town that is still like it was in the 1880's. I am excited to see if this is true. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures.

I also did the "books" today - and boy oh boy, we did not do well at all!! Now, we did have some one time expenses (the satellite dish - $1,950.00), Dan's fishing licenses and fishing gear ($250.00) and Dan's new cowboy hat ($130.00). We also spent $155.00 on the hotel in Cody - now, we are still planning to take other overnight trips so we will spend money on hotels, but hopefully not this much! The largest expenses that surprised us was the amount we spent on groceries ($555.00) and the amount we spent on books ($160.00). I guess the reason the groceries amount was a surprise is we are still using some of the groceries that we brought from Florida and we also had the meals we ate out ($485.00). Dan says that we were spoiled with the prices of groceries and eating out in Dowling Park - which is probably very true - groceries are much more expensive here than in Live Oak - and, of course, eating out is about 10 times more expensive - we haven't eaten out for $8.00 since we left ACV. BUT the good thing is - we haven't thrown away any food like we used to do in Florida - we eat our left-overs and we eat what we buy. I can also say that we will NOT spend that much on books this month - we have found a place where we can trade our books that we own now for new books - and we are still both reading MUCH more than we did in Florida (even DAN!!!). Our total expenses did include some things from our trip out here and the final bills from Florida that we won't have again - BUT the total was still about twice as much as I wanted to spend - $4,500.00! Dan and I will certainly try and do better this month - one of the ways we will do that is to do more of what we did today - which was to stay at home and not use a tank of fuel every other day. That does not mean we won't make day trips, we just won't go 4 out of the 5 days we are off work. (Of course, it doesn't help that the nearest laundry mat is 30 miles away and the nearest grocery store is 30 miles in the opposite direction from our house - that makes it difficult to be fuel efficient.) We know that we will still have some expenses that will be one time expenses - such as the washer/dryer that we would like to put in; but that will have to wait - I was able to put some money in saving this month - just not as much as I wanted (only $1,500.0o) - but at least we were able to save some. I guess the thing is - I am really surprised we spent as much money as we did since we didn't buy any kind of decorative items - I mean we don't have any place for those kinds of things - Dan did have to buy his fishing licenses and fishing gear but that was only around $250.00 total - and he won't have to do that again. We'll just spend more time at home and talk about what we are going to do and plan a little better. We'll see if we can't do better this month. I did tell Dan that one of the main reason I am keeping such close tabs on everything is we both need to know exactly where our money is going - if we don't we can't change our spending habits.

Now, I have also included a couple of other pictures for you to take a look at -

this is a picture of an osprey nest, along with the osprey and babies - can you believe the size of this nest???? It was on top of a bridge on the way down to Rexburg - it was huge!!!!



The final picture I took this morning out the window beside my chair --------------
it's a chipmunk!!! We are overrun with chipmunks - I counted about 10 out the window this morning - and I can tell you now that they are driving the pups CRAZY! They spent most of today outside with Dan chasing the chipmunks and digging! It was really funny in some ways, but it also gets tiresome listening to them barking all day! Oh well, at least they will sleep well tonight!


Well, I can't think of anything else to bore you with - so I will sign off for tonight - let me know what you think of our new neighbors and the disaster of our finances this month. I would love to know your opinions!