A good thing comes to an end.

Well tomorrow my Montana adventure (as well as my holiday with the splendid in-laws) comes to a close. I am leaving in the morning to drive our car back to DC and to resume life there. Nikki and Georgie are following by air next Friday. I'll be away from Georgie for 8 days. My previous record was 3 and I wasn't looking to break it.

To avoid icy weather on the ND and SD routes, I am heading through Wyoming and going east through Nebraska and Iowa. It adds a few hundred miles but should make for a much better drive. And I get to see something new. Tomorrow night I'll only go as far as Casper, as I'll get a later start and I found a hotel there that takes pets.

It'll be hard to leave Montana. Despite some trials and frustrations, the quality of life here is immeasurably better than DC. We'll have to find a way to take a little of Montana back with us.

New Christmas present and more cousin fun

We're still having a lot of fun. Yesterday we went sledding. I am apparently out of practice with sledding, as I busted my tailbone on the first run. Then yesterday we went to Nikki's uncle and aunt's house for Grandpa John's 85th(?) birthday party. Today we are taking it easy. Georgie took a 2 hour nap, something she hasn't done in a long time. I think she might be transitioning to one nap a day and also that her cousins are really wearing her out.

Still having a blast

The holiday fun continues. Yesterday we made pork tamales. Today we are going sledding and then going to Valier for Grandpa John's birthday party. And the cousin-fest will continue all day long.

First Christmas

The fun started yesterday with a snowball fight.

But the main event was present-opening.

Mei got this nice winter hat and wore it the rest of the evening (and we suspect to bed).

Samantha helped Georgie open her first Christmas present.

Dale got this smoker, which I'm sure he'll put to good use.

Christmas eve

We're at the grandparents' now. We had a heck of a time getting out the door today, in part because we are trying to pack and move out at the same time.

Georgie loves Christmas trees, as we suspected. Tomorrow she get to see 2 uncles, 2 aunts, and 2 cousins. It'll be so much fun. Dale has a ginormous prime rib thawing right now. The house is nicely decorated, including the very nice tree above.

Scamp Walker time

A big weekend

We've been gone a few days to Great Falls and haven't blogged so this is a bit of a wrap-up.

Friday

Getting to Great Falls on Friday was an ordeal and a half. Nikki went to school in the morning. I had to work all night Friday night so I took a nap when she got home. We finally got out the door at about 2:30 only to realize that the car was extremely low on fuel. As soon as Nikki started down the Dupuyer-Conrad cut-across, the fuel light came on. The cut-across is about 3o miles so we weren't taking any chances. It was 12 below after all. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this but the nearest gas station to us is Nikki's cousin's store in Valier. It's 14 miles away. That means that if you get 28 miles to the gallon, you use a whole gallon just getting gas. Anywhere that's where we headed.

Our car also had low air in the tires so I went down to the service station to fill them. Holding an air hose in that weather and filling the tires is probably the coldest-feeling thing I have ever done in my life. The air coming out has a little moisture content and was freezing on my hands on contact. And that's while I'm gripping cold metal.

At the gas station, we ordered an entire pizza and ate the whole thing there. It felt so good to get some hot food in us. So now it's been over an hour and we are 14 miles from home. Off to a bad start.

Let me just stop here to explain the reason we were going to Great Falls. The rental car that Nikki has been provided with this whole time as part of her grant was due Saturday morning. Which means that, for a change, we were in two vehicles with Georgie in the back all by her lonesome. She hates that.

Soon after we got on the road to the interstate it was dark out. The road wasn't bad though and the interstate was even better. Still we wound up getting to Great Falls after 7 -- 5 hours after we left.

Saturday

Saturday I slept in, as I had worked till 5 the night before. Georgie and Nikki played in the hotel and had the complementary breakfast. I got up at 10:30 and we headed to the airport to turn the car in. The roads in Great Falls were terrible. I don't think we ever saw a road crew the whole 3 days. And it wasn't even snowing any more. There was really no excuse for the condition they were in. We headed back to town to do some shopping but by this point we freezing and hungry and miserable. So went where you go under such conditions: Chili's.

Normally I try to make it a point not to go to any restaurant where I am greeted by someone wearing a headset. Once your restaurant is so big that you start to employ Lean Six Sigma, its food is never good anymore. (Alamo Cafe in SA seems to be the exception to that.) But it was bone-chillingly cold and nothing sounded better than food served on a sizzling platter. So I got chicken and shrimp fajitas and Nikki got the nueva cocina classic Buffalo Chicken Fajitas. She's committed to cross-culturalism, clearly.

So now we are stuffed, tired, and the weather sucks. I went right back to the hotel and asked if I could get my gov't rate another night. I could and so our vacation continued. We did a good bit of shopping after that. Nikki dropped G and I off at the mall and went to a fabric store to get supplies for making Georgie's stocking. Georgie and I took in the mall, which was packed for Great Falls.

We did a little more shopping after that but Georgie was getting tired of it and, as it turned out, getting a cold, so we headed back to our hotel. We stayed in and had a pretty low-key night, though I did have to make an emergency run to the supermarket to get lotion because we were all painfully wind-chapped.

Sunday

This morning we were all business, hitting three groceries stores for gingerbread house and tamale supplies. We got back early this afternoon and found that not only were our four animals alive, but a fifth had joined the mix. A stray cat, with no apparent aversion to goats, had taken up residence by the front door. I took pity on him in the cold, so he got to try lobster for likely the first time in his life (in the form of chicken-lobster cat food). At one point he was insistently sniffing Penny's nose. She didn't know what to make of it so she head-butted him. Makes me wonder what our own cats would think about the goats if they met.

So we are back now and the propane has held out and we are looking forward to a week of getting packed up and moved out. And of course in a few short days we'll see Darla and Steve and Frank and Katie and Samantha and MeiAiLi and we are extremely excited about that.

Georgie loves hotels because of the full-length mirrors.

Georgie at Chili's

First steps

Georgie took her first steps this morning, with her Papa watching her! It makes me sad that I missed it, but I'm glad Aaron got to see an important milestone before we trade back to me staying with her while he's away at work. She took two steps this afternoon for me, toward me and her Fuzzy Farm Animals book. Pictures or video of her doing, as Aaron calls it, the Texas two-step, as soon as we can.

My view right now

No problem

Nikki claims no credit for this outfit.

Christmas Pageant

At lunchtime, Nikki picked us up and we all went up to the school for their Christmas pageant. It was a lot of fun. Each grade, Headstart through 8, sang carols and then there was a brief play in the heritage language.

One of the freshman girls was dressed up as Santa so we tried to have Georgie's picture taken with her (or him, I guess). As soon as she put her paper beard on, Georgie lost it. She had a similar reaction to Fuzzy the propane man the other day. I think grey-bearded men (real or costumed) just scare her. It was too bad. Santa will have to wait till next year I guess.

Here's our view from the car window on the way home.

Standing

Georgie has really mastered her standing in the last few days. She does it all the time now and can go a good 10 or 20 seconds before taking a seat on her diaper. And she's starting waving her arms in classic Georgie fashion while standing. That either means that her balance has gotten better or that she's not really standing but flying at a very low altitude. I was going to take a video of this but Nikki was on the phone with her brother and I didn't want their conversation as the soundtrack. The other thing we tried today is letting her use a 5 gallon bucket as a walker across the kitchen floor. She figured that out right away and it's a great preface to the Christmas present we got her. More on that in about 9 days.

Back in the Dupe

We're back home in Dupuyer now, where the wind chill is currently 27 below. We are doing well. The heat continues to come on, meaning the propane continues to last. There is an old electric heater built into the wall upstairs. I gave it a test run the other day and it seem safe. We've been keeping the downstairs at about 60 degrees and spending most of our time upstairs. I figure if we can find ways to heat the house with electricity I can preserve the propane. This is our last week here full-time anyway.

We got back yesterday and dug ourselves through the door. We haven't done much but concentrate on dealing with the weather. This is the last week of school up on the rez so Nikki is really putting in some hours. Georgie and I had fun today. We played upstairs most of the time. It's still kind of novel up there for her so she doesn't get bored.

I haven't taken any pictures since we've been back but here's some stuff from the weekend:

Here's Georgie showing everyone the secret trick to making good ice cream: hand-waving.

It got to -20 out but Dale and I were crazy enough to hang Christmas lights outside anyway.

Snowed in

Well we've had some pretty serious winter weather here. We left Dupuyer Friday afternoon to come over to the farm and get through the storm with Georgie's grandparents. From the looks of it we got 6-8 inches of snow but it's hard to tell the way snow drifts in this kind of wind. It's currently 14 below and due to get colder before it gets warmer.



So Georgie had to stay inside today but that didn't bother her.

We made ice cream in this ball by rolling it around. Cream goes in one end and ice and salt go in the other and surround the cream cylinder. It got a lot easier when I went outside and packed it with snow. It took a while because I was mostly rolling it myself. Rolling it around will be a lot more fun when the whole clan is visiting in a few weeks.

Georgie ate some peas today and here is eating some diced pear.

Grandpa had a really tough travel day coming back from Salt Lake via Great Falls but Georgie was excited to see him and have him read her a story (Peek-A-Who again).

(Pictures here are small because the internet has been out and I am using a rigged sort of dial-up setup. It was timing out when I tried to upload them the usual size.)

Nine months old

Georgie is 9 months old today. We started out the celebrations with some of our usual morning activities -- pointing, no-hands standing, and looking out the window.

Thursday

Georgie and I had a fun morning of playing and giraffe-eating. Then Nikki came home for lunch and we all went to Valier to get the lugnuts re-torqued. We all went back to the reservation and I bummed around with Georgie while Nikki did some interviews. When we got home, Nikki read Georgie her favorite book -- Peek-A-Who.