To Great Falls and (surprise!) back to the farm

Sometimes country living has its charms and sometimes it has its hassles. Today was a hassle day. We got back to our place from Great Falls today and turned the heat back up. I had turned the thermostat way down when we left to save gas. We were busy doing this and that and neither of us ever realized that the fan didn't kick on. After a few hours we started to realize that it was still a little nippy in the apartment. I checked thermometer and, sure enough, it was 60 degrees inside. Not terrible but not putting-a-baby-to-bed cozy. The real problem, though, is that that meant the heater wasn't working.

I headed down to the furnace with a flashlight and could definitely tell that there was no pilot light. For a number of reasons, mostly involving an attachment to my eyebrows, I decided to have our landlady's son help me re-light it. He came over but we couldn't get it. Now, I checked the propane level a few days ago and it was at 5%. That sounds low but it's a 2000 gallon tank so that means we should have 1o0 gallons. We've purchased 300 total gallons since we've been here (at a cost of over $750 I should add).

Well it's starting to look like the gauge gets stuck at around 5%. Either that or, as Dale pointed out, that little gas is not giving a 2000 gallon tank adequate pressure to stay lit. Whatever the case, we need more propane or our furnace won't work. So we are back at the farm for the night. Hopefully I can find a kind soul at the local utility in Valier to come bring us some propane on a Sunday.

In other news, we had a fun and productive day in Great Falls. We got some new foods (prunes and pear juice) for Georgie and some basics for us. Also picked up a bottle of Samuel Smith's Winter Warmer ale. I was going to have it tonight but left it at home when we abandoned ship.

Black Friday

We had a very relaxing Black Friday and, short of licorice and gas in Valier, didn't shop at all. We had french toast this morning and mostly just relaxed and did laundry at Nikki's parents'. Grandpa took Georgie on a little walk and lifted her up to touch the pine cones.

We had turkey sandwiches for lunch, then headed back to Dupuyer. We stopped in Valier to bring Grandpa John some turkey but didn't go in because Georgie was sleeping.

Tonight we had burgers (nice to get back to beef) and green beans and I had a dunkel by an Oregon all-lager brewery called Heater Allen. It was really wonderful. If you live in Portland, go to Belmont Sta. and treat yourself to one. Especially if your name is Steve.

Nikki and I just tried to watch a documentary about TX music called Heartworn Highways but we are a bit too tired.

It was weird not shopping today. It's kind of a Hobbins family tradition to go to the doorbuster sales. My brother and dad were both at Best Buy this morning at 4 AM to get in line. Adam said there was already a breakfast taco truck parked outside and open when he got there. Gotta love San Antonio.

We are going to be shopping this weekend though. Tomorrow we are going to Great Falls to stock up on some things, mostly food for us and some new foods for Georgie. We are going to introduce prunes to her and maybe a few other things.

Today marks the beginning of the Christmas season (at least in the Shopping Days Until paradigm) so we thought Georgie should go to bed with some Christmas pajamas on:


And here's a video of her discovering a hulahoop earlier today:

Still more peek-a-boo and a new expression

Sorry to anyone who's a little tired of peek-a-boo. We clearly aren't yet.

Also, here's a new frowny expression that Georgie started making yesterday:

But she's still smiling too:

Happy Thanksgiving

Today we came over to Georgie's grandparents' house for a Thanksgiving feast. 

Here are the chefs at work:

Georgie was again fascinated with her great-grandpa's cane:

And his snazzy wool pants:

We are spending the night tonight and cheering on the Longhorns. 

We are so thankful that we've gotten to spend this holiday with both sets of Grandparents (Hobbinses last week, Seiferts this week). We are lucky to have such great family.

And of course we have a whole new concept of thankfulness this year because of Georgie. 

8-Month Review

I'm posting this a little late, since we were on the cruise for Georgie's 8-month birthday.

The big news for Georgine's 8th month was ... teeth! About 6 days into the month, she got her first tooth (bottom left). Then on the morning of her 8th month birthday, her top right. We noticed that day that her bottom right was peeking through, too.

She also learned to wave at people and had a lot of fun with waving at people on the cruise. Also, her first cruise! Being around a lot of people was good for her; she seems very social (even if shy as far as having people hold her) and had a great time with her Hobbins family and interacting with lots of other people on the cruise. (Thanks again to Grandpapa and Nana for the cruise, and to all the Hobbinses for being so good with her.) She also visited her first foreign countries: Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Mexico. We got her passport stamped at the first two (we didn't know we had to get it stamped in downtown Cozumel, which we vistited, rather than nearer the port where our ship docked, and it was too late to go back downtown). She also went swimming for the first time in Mexico. And at her first beach. Another first that happened on the cruise is that she got to interact for the first time with someone her own age: little German Ben, who she scared with her excitement.

The other big travel for Month 8 was Georgie's first road trip: to Portland (741 miles, one way) to visit Aunt Darla and Uncle Steve. Georgie did great in the car, and she (and we) had a wonderful time with the Balikos. Thanks, Darla and Steve, for always being so fun to hang out with.

She pretty much went straight from crawling to pulling herself up when she was 6+ months, and the past month she did more of that and started cruising.

Month 8 she also got her first flu shot and finished her first rounds of vaccines. I think we start again at 12 months with the vaccines, but we need to look that up. Her flu shot was also on her first halloween! She went as a cow and went to Conrad to visit Grandpa and to look around IGA (and to get her flu shot). Oh, and she went to the Dupuyer Elementary's Halloween party with her papa.

Georgie also picked up (but now seems to have lost) her nose-crinkle smile. She's getting much more expressive, but I think I'll write about that for the 9-month-review.

First post from a Mac

Nikki's grant pays for a computer and she finally got one today. It's a MacBook. Our first Mac. We are excited about it. By the way, Georgie is not wearing a yarmulke. I found one of her baby hats and decided to see if it still fits.

Stair master

In the last few days, Georgie figured out how to climb up stairs. She climbed our entire staircase 3 times today. This is one developmental milestone I could have waited on. It's kind of scary. In fact, the reason the camera angle is so bad is that I had to stand close enough to spot her.

Sunday at Seiferts'

We're over at my parents' house today. Aaron is helping my dad load some pipe for the reservoir, and Georgie & I are hanging out at the house. My mom won't be home for work for a while. Georgie's started pointing a little, but I don't have pictures of that yet. Here are some pictures from today.







I don't think I've seen this expression before. She was very excited over this chair and there was lots of yelling . . .

Waving (to Sam and Mei)

Appleton Estate Rum Tour

I posted 40-some photos of the cruise already but I wanted to take a moment to write about my favorite part of the whole adventure -- our Jamaica excursion.

Ironically, it's the one part I don't have any pictures of. That's because it was the one day that Nikki and I did different excursions. She took Georgie so she took the camera. Adam has some very good pictures here though.

So anyway, on our stop in Montego Bay, Jamaica, my dad and brothers and I took the Appleton Estate Rum Tour. What made it so great is that it got us out of the heavily-touristed area in Montego Bay and took us through a lot of very interesting parts of Jamaica.

We started by crossing over the mountains that separate Montego from the rest of the island, then made a beeline for the coast. We drove along the coast quite a way, seeing fishing villages, farms, breadfruit trees, and dilapadated wooden shacks that sold cellphones. We saw all kinds of houses, from very modest one-room abodes to hillside luxury retreats probably built by foreigners.

For a bathroom break, we stopped at a little fishing pier with a bar. We took the opportunity to try the legendary Guinness Foreign Extra, a strong and hoppy version of Guinness only brewed for Caribbean markets. It was great, but we were worried about having to chug such a strong beer before we got back on the bus. No problem!, said our tour guide, you can bring it with you. It was at this point that I really started to love Jamaica.

After the stop, our route took us through what seemed like a more managed agricultural area. I don't know how much water they actually need to divert for irrigation in Jamaica (my guess is very little), but the fields here seemed better controlled than in other places and there were wetlands for flood management.

Somewhere after Black River we cut back up to the interior and shortly arrived at the Appleton Estate. Visiting a place like this, essentially a sugar cane plantation, gives you great insight into the sweep of colonial history. I suppose it's like a cotton or tobacco plant in the South that is now proudly run by African-Americans, whose ancestors were once slaves on the very same land. That never happened here of course, but that's the closest analogy I can think of. I guess what I am trying to say is that you get a very different feeling about what it means to be a Western ex-slave in Jamaica because there is a sense of ownership that doesn't exist in the U.S.

But back to the tour -- normally you take the walking tour and then eat some Jamaican food after. But we had a pack of highly annoying New Yorker seniors on our bus who did nothing but complain for the entire 6-hour tour. They were hungry so we ate first, much to the chagrin of our tour guide and her sense of order.

The food was amazing. It was a plate of jerk chicken, rice and peas, salad with a tropical fruit dressing, and a pumpkin and collard green dish. For desert we had fresh rum cake -- much different than the stuff they sell in boxes at duty free. And the whole time we were staying lubricated on the free, all-you-can-drink rum punch.

After lunch, our Appleton guide took us through the various parts of the operation. This was fascinating but I don't need to explain in detail how to make rum. The most interesting fact I got from the tour is that rum is made from sugarcane, of course, but not from the sugar. The sugar is sold and only the molasses is used. Makes me think about rum in a different light.

After the tour we were able to sample about 10 of the company's products. This involved going up to unmanned, open bottles of booze and taking as much as you like. This boozefest seemed to be the only thing that calmed our East Coasters down a little.

The sampling was, as you may expect, an opportunity to buy rum from the gift shop. I got three bottles -- a fifth of the VX blend, a small bottle of 'rum cream liqueur' (the rum version of Bailey's), and a liter of Rumona, a liqueur of rum and honey. I left the Rumona at my parents' house because I didn't think I could polish it off in the month we have left in Montana.

Our journey here took a coastal route but the return trip went over the mountains. The countryside was so beautiful and lush. We were heading back just as some schools were getting out so the whole way back kids were waving at us. The East Coasters were too disgusted by everything to wave back but we did. It was nice to see the kids. Each school has a different color of uniform so we saw a lot of colors on our 2 hour drive.

We also went through Accompong, a Maroon town in the mountains that had been the scene of some fierce colonial resistance. Soon after Accompong road construction and traffic slowed us down and the complaining really started to kick in. I was embarrassed for our tour guide. At one point she started to have a little motion sickness on the mountain roads and we pulled over. Our tri-state assholes then began loudly discussing her queasiness -- "Oh my gawd, is our tour guide getting sick?" yelled across the bus, etc. I mention these people only because they succeeded in souring our otherwise wonderful time, especially the last hour or so. Adam has two funny pictures of them here and here. The woman with the dyed eyebrows was the most obnoxious of the pack.

Despite these people, this trip was the highlight of the cruise for me. Spending over 4 hours on the bus might not sound that fun (and it's why we didn't bring the baby), but there was never a moment we weren't staring out the window in awe. And this was the most authentic place of the trip. In Grand Cayman and Cozumel we saw more of a facade for tourists but I feel like I saw the real Jamaica. It was also really fun to spend time with my dad and brothers. We didn't intentionally divide the family along gender lines. (More like who-wants-to-drink-rum-all-day lines.) But it was nonetheless good to have a little male bonding time.



(pictures by Adam)

Wool soakers (for Lori)

A friend of Steve and Darla's recently posted a comment asking about wool soakers. I forgot to reply when we got back so I am posting my response here. Maybe it will help anyone looking into wool soakers.

We love our wool soakers. We have a few of them and use them almost exclusively as night diapers.

Here are a few tips:

• Everyone swears by Aristocrats, but we've tried them and Disana and the Aristocrats are not so much better that they are worth the extra $10 each. We got our Disanas from Abby's Lane.
  
• Use lanolin. We add a toothpaste-serving sized squirt to our wash water when we wash the soakers. You can really feel the diapers getting more waterproof over time.
• We use Eucalan wool wash to clean them. Cleaning them is easy with this stuff.
• For heavy wetters, a prefold under the soaker will likely not cut it for overnight. We like hemp for this and we tend to stuff Georgie's soaker till she looks like a hockey player.

Hope that helps!

More peek-a-boo

New tooth and new game

Georgie got a new front tooth during the cruise.

She's also made up a new game in the last two days. When mommy says 'Ding Dong' she hides her head and when we start saying 'Where's Georgie?' she pops her head up until we say peekaboo. The ding dong thing started because Nikki was imitating the sound the plane makes when the fasten seatbelt sign came on and Georgie was laughing about it.

The Massive Cruise Photo Update

Formal night

Twice during the cruise we had formal night, where everyone had to dress up for dinner.

Dining

This was Georgie's favorite staff member. She wasn't our waitress but she stopped by our table every night to see Georgie.

This German family shared our table at dinner. They had a boy a few weeks younger than Georgie. They shook hands and were having a good time when Georgie screamed at him with delight. He started bawling. That was the end of Georgie's friendship with him.

Montego Bay, Jamaica

My mom, Nikki, and Georgie took a city tour of Montego. The guys all took a cross island tour to the Appleton Rum Estate. Nikki had the camera so I will have to post someone else's pictures of that. But I will say now that Jamaica was amazing and this excursion was my favorite of the cruise.

Sunset departure from Montego Bay

Grand Cayman

Here's our ship moored off the pier in George Town, Grand Cayman. This was the only port that we had to take a tender ship to.

First we went to a butterfly farm, where this nice Dutch lady showed us how caterpillars become butterflies. Above is her holding a chrysalis.

Here is a butterfly that just emerged from its chrysalis. Its wings are still too heavy with fluid to fly.

We were fascinated.

Georgie liked the flowers.

Next we went to a turtle farm, where we saw all sizes and ages of giant turtles. They let us hold the little ones. Georgie slept through the whole thing.



We capped Cayman off with cocktails on the pier.

Cozumel

In Cozumel we went shopping first. Georgie got a new tambourine.

Then she had her first experience swimming in the ocean. She loved it.

On the ship

Georgie's favorite toy in the room was this lightswitch over the bed.

Mom and I having cocktails topside.

Nikki did a little card playing.

Grandpapa made Georgie her own bear named Alfred.

Georgie wasn't allowed in the big pool so she brought her own.