Thanksgiving

Hi everybody!

It's been a snowy Thanksgiving weekend here in Northern Idaho. Our snowfall started at 4 pm on Thursday and it feels as if it is snowing ever since. We have about 5 in. (12.5cm) on the ground by the house and heavy snow is forecast for tonight. The tempereature will drop to 0F (-18C) on Tuesday. Fortunately we have lots of firewood and the house is well insulated. We are enjoying the snow and Roxy is too!

Thanksgiving dinner was very good. We enjoyed a ham instead of a turkey this year. The ham came from our pig that we bought at the County Fair. We have been busy finding new ways to use leftover ham in the last few days...

We had to make a trip to the Emergency Room this afternoon for Joel. Joel took on a Gerber camp axe, but came in second... It was a pretty bad cut and he needed stiches. We are now praying that the end of his finger will reatach itself again. He will see the surgeon on Tuesday morning for a follow-up to see how the finger is doing. According to Joel it sounds a lot worse than it is... The bone was missed, so it is only a flesh wound.

We had some ice this morning. For those of you in South Africa, the ice on the road was over a cm thick and the roads are then very slippery. There has been non-stop accidents today of people slipping off the road into ditches. With the ice on the roads, we couldn't even get to church and were stuck at the house the whole day - until we had to drive to the hospital!!!

Thats is all for this week.. We are attaching a few photos again. Enjoy!

Love
Joel and Hannalize

Hunting season is on..!!

Hello everyone,

Things are moving along here in North Idaho. Hannalize just got back from a week in Portland at her head office. She had lots of meetings and got to stay at a fancy hotel. It's sure nice to have her home, though. Joel has been busy with work and a few classes that he is taking. He's looking forward to next week's 4-day weekend for the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Hannalize is trying to get her buck. Hunting season runs until December 1st and the animals are rutting right now, so hopefully tomorrow will be the big day. The picture above is from last weekend's hunting trip up in the snow. We saw 10 does, but Hannalize passed up on all of them since she is looking for the big one.

The weather is nice this weekend. We had some very cold and snowy weather the last few weeks, but it's nice right now. It has been quite cold at night and we have had a very nice fire burning most days and nights. One nice thing about Joel working in the timber industry is that we have no shortage of free firewood.

Today, we worked in the garden and built a nice flowerbed that will go on the side of the house. After we got done working in the garden, we drove into Coeur d'Alene and did some grocery shopping....with a lot of impulse shopping also. Tonight, we're just going to relax in front of the TV.

Enjoy the pictures and we'll post some of Hannalize's big buck soon...!!

- Joel & Hannalize

Empty House...

Hallo everybody!

It's been a while since we last visited and lots has happened. The house seems very quiet now after Hannalize's parents were here for a visit. They were here with us for just over 3 weeks and a busy 3 weeks it was. We showed them around St Maries and North Idaho, before we took a trip down to Oregon. We visited with Joel's parents at the cabin and made a trip to the Cowboy Dinner Tree for their world famous giant steaks. We were thankful that we went to the cabin, because unfortunately the cabin burned down the next weekend. Thankfully, no one was there and no one got hurt.

With the labour that was flown in from South Africa, we were able to get a number of projects done around the house. Several more rooms have been painted, new shelves have been put up and large amounts of leaves were raked.

Here in Idaho, hunting is in full swing. Both Joel and Hannalize's dad shot Whitetail Deer and Joel has shot many Grouse. After hanging for a few days, the deer were cut up and lots of biltong has been made and is hanging in the garage. the rest of the meat is in the freezer, either in the form of mince meat ("hamburger") or boerewors (sausages). The venison makes wonderful biltong and wors and we have been indulging in it. For the Americans reading this, biltong is a South African type of dried meat, similar to jerky, but also different....very, very good..!!!

As can be seen in the above photo, Hannalize's dad and Roxy both enjoyed watching the History Channel very, very much while they were here visiting. We're not sure if Roxy was as interested in the program content as much as she was interested in the cheez-its that were located next to the couch.

On Oct 30th, we woke up to a white St Maries. The first snowfall of the season, while light, was quite beautiful. We had a week of very cold weather, as cold as -13C/9F. Is has warmed up and has started raining, but more snow is expected by the end of the week. We have been burning a lot of firewood... Joel got his new weather station installed today and we can now measure temp, wind speed, rainfall, and barometric pressure from the warmth of our dining room.

Hannalize will be traveling back to Oregon next week for work. Joel has been busy with ambulance training and his math class that he must do to get his Idaho Engineering license. Not too much other news, but keep checking back and we will have some pictures of the first big snowfall soon...

Joel and Hannalize