The Little Sip Cafe

This is my hopping little cafe that has got my sugar tub running on empty! This was taken this spring, before all the hollyhocks where in bloom. We aren't quite as busy these days.

August ~ Me Myself and I ~ Link Up

Kermit the Frog

It's MMI time again, people! You get to learn more random crap about me! Read it, and learn something!

1) What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

I know I should say, "Start our own business. Our dream would be to have our own place!" But really this is what I would do… 

Learn to play the banjo and the ukulele.

Oh, and learn to do tricks with a bull whip.
Not anything kinky, just for fun, like in the rodeo or something... You know...

Kelly Brook as Indiana Jones 
photo credit: Google

2) If you had only six months left to live, what would you do with the time?

I'd go visit everyone in my family and take my kids on a few fab vacations.

3) If a front page news article was written on you, what would the headline be?

There's A Stranger On The Mountain,
and She's Telling All Our Secrets.
or
Crazy Mama of Four Didn't Kill Her Kids Today And Instead Baked Some Awesome Cookies!

4) What is your biggest pet peeve?

When my kids ignore me.

Am I really that annoying when I say "Set The Table" 12 times? I'm hungry!
Oh, and when they take my comb out of the shower. I have curly hair.
That is the only place I can comb my hair!

A Room with a View
photo credit: google

It's just not nice to be naked and dripping with conditioner and looking for a stink'n comb!

5) What is your favorite 
chick flick movie?

Hands Down, "A Room With a View"
with Helena Bonham Carter and Julian Sands.
It's just delicious!

~~~~~~

Now head on over to the hop, pick up the button and let everyone know more about you!

Thanks for coming 'round! xo

Sunday Afternoon With My Darlings

I've been wanting to take some photos of my kids and last Sunday afternoon was the perfect opportunity. We all headed out to play after lunch and the kids still had most of their Sunday attire on. 

Not all of my kids participated, but 3/4's isn't bad! 

Here are some of my favorites! 

 Bean. 

She was standing at the edge of the world, 

taking it all in with her artist's eye. 

She turned to me and I started snapping. 

 Bear. 

Having a moment of fun on the pogo swing.

Bunny. 

Into everything and always on her way. 

She was escaping the deck and off to the swings. 

She's not big enough to swing solo, 

but she sure thought she was cool when I sat her on it by her big self! 

I've used the Nikon D70, but I must confess, I do not know what I'm doing!

Bruised and Broken But Not Forgotten

Last week we had no guests. Not a single person in the whole world wanted to come stay at our Ranch. So we closed and let the staff have the week off. That same week was the week my brother and his family were already planning on being here. Lucky for them, they got to sleep in one of the guest cabins!

This also meant that we gave the horses the week off too. They were up the mountain for a few days when we decided we wanted to have our family go horseback riding. There were a few staff members who stayed here, and one of them helped saddle up a pair of horses. Sam, who she's been working with and Ruby for Adventure Man to ride while they wrangled in the rest of them. Now just because Ruby wasn't out to pasture with the rest doesn't mean she wasn't on vacation too. I guess she was enjoying her "staycation" too much, because she made it really clear that she didn't what to go out. So Adventure man got off, ran and got a helmet, and they made her turn some circles. They had her turn some more circles after AM got back on and that's when it happened. At this point they were up the trail a little ways when her saddle slipped and the movement of her hissy fit sent Adventure Man down into the dust. Only he didn't hit dust, he hit a rock. Right in the ribs. He was having a hard time breathing and since he is an EMT himself, he knew he better head down the mountain to get checked out.

We kept our guests here so they could go on their ride once the wrangler got back with the heard, but I loaded up the four young ones and we drove Dad to town. He had 2 different sets of x-rays taken. Once they determined his ribs weren't broke, or cracked than they needed to decide if his lungs were collapsed. He was ordered to come back the next three days to be monitored.

It has been determined that Adventure Man does indeed have Pneumothorax, a collapsed lung. He has been monitored by the best in Little Town. I am extremely confidant in his Doctors. They have told him to take it easy and that he may be in pain for the next 6 - 8 weeks. I told him, "Yeah, Just like having a baby!" Haha! He has a hard time with the taking it easy part. But he'll survive.

And I'm just glad it wasn't any worse. It could have been A LOT worse!


My brother and his family enjoyed the ride immensely and even got to see one of our local Mama bears and her two cubs enjoying the wild berries up the mountain. They were lucky enough to see another Mama and cubs earlier that morning through the spy scope so that put them at six bears in less then 24 hours of being here! Nice!

What. Is. That. SMELL?!

It all started the day my brother and his family were here. I walked into the living room and said, "What is that smell?" They all looked at me as if they had know idea what I was talking about. OK. My brother has 3 boys. Three teenage boys. Maybe that's just their boy smell.

But I wasn't convinced... At All.

These boys are good looking kids and they practices good hygiene. I was pretty sure it wasn't them.

Our living room is the log cabin, a one room home that was once owned by one of our wrangler's grandparents. Whether they lived in it year round or just used it for a hunting or vacation cabin I don't know. Perhaps I should ask! The rest of the house is an addition. And really quite nice for an older home. The only complaint we have is the lack of bathrooms. No wait, we DO have bathrooms, what I mean is we don't have enough. Really we just wish there was a master bathroom.

The next day the smell was stronger. Can you really not smell that? They didn't seem to notice. By this time I knew what it was. It was a mouse. A dead mouse. I know that smell, I have a cat! I started checking the traps. The one behind the wood burning stove was still set. The one under a cabinet was tripped, but had caught the extension cord. I'm guessing that was from yanking the standing fan in front of the screen door too many times.

I had put out more traps just a few nights ago because I had seen a mouse run past the stove at 3 AM when I was up with the baby. He had come out from under the T.V. and had paused when he saw me in the big chair. I had paused too. I don't think it was for the same reason. But maybe it was. Maybe when a mouse sees a human, he gets a shiver down his spine. The hairs on the back of it's little neck stand up. But then again, maybe not.

That night I put out a lot more traps. But the next day I took them all down again because we were having a birthday party and I didn't want to trap party guests. Or gross out any moms. I checked all the corners where I thought there might be a forgotten trap but found nothing. The smell was getting worst. I could hardly stand to be in the room. Adventure Man couldn't smell it! My sister-in-law couldn't smell it. She asked what it smelled like and I told her, "a dead mouse!" No one knew what I was talking about. I tried, for the sake of our guests to not complain. To not say something. What if  I was wrong! What if teenage boys really DID smell like that! Heaven help us all when our girls start dating… when they are 29…

It wasn't until the day after my brother, his wonderful wife and all those great boys left that we found it. Bean bent down to the speaker next to the T.V. Then she come and whispered in my ear that she found the mouse. There was one more trap, in one more corner that I had missed. And it had been there for at least 4 days in a room  without AC in the hot summer heat.

I threw it all away, trap and all. I scrubbed the area, and let is soak to loosen that which was stuck to the floor. That was when Adventure Man walked in and said, "I smell it now!"

Darn Right You Smell It! And I Cleaned It UP!

I am happy to say, that my living room smells much MUCH better. And it wasn't my teenage nephews at all!

Mr. Cottontail Is A Daddy

We have lots of cottontail rabbits. I believe there is a family under the house. We have another family in the barn, and in the shed, and probably in the woods. We see them a lot.

But this little guy was much smaller than the others.

He seemed to be just as interested in the kids as they were in him! 

He was very little!

The pictures aren't very good because I shot them through a screen. I used the Nikon D70 which probably helped me get the focus past the screen so we could see the bunny. I haven't taken very many pictures this week because I have miss placed my other camera. My point and shoot panisonic. That's the camera I use the most. I took the pictures of the wildflowers with it as well as the horseshoes and the hummingbird at sunset.

 

Dancing With Great Great Grandpa

I grew up just a few blocks form a Buddhist temple. Or maybe it was a community center. It looked more like a community center compared to the temples and shrines in Japan. But I really don't know. I do know that every August they would host the Obon Festival and we would always walk down the street and have some fun. We would see bonsai trees on display, and sumo demonstrations. We would eat teriyaki chicken on sticks and play games and try to win goldfish. I always wanted to win a goldfish! (Bless my parents!) 


It wasn't until I was grown and married and had moved to Japan to teach English that I really understood the Buddhist holiday called Obon and how it commemorates one's ancestors. "It is believed that each year during obon, the ancestors' spirits return to this world in order to visit their relatives." Family members hang lanterns in front of their houses to guide their loved ones home. Food offerings are made and they dance. 


We were so lucky to have been able to live in Gujo Hachiman. A small mountain town that is crossed by two rivers. The town is in the Gifu Prefecture and is known for it's pristine waterways. In fact, people came from all over Japan to drink the water. Or so we were told! 

The streets of Hachiman 

The streets are lined with canals that they still used to wash clothes and vegetables and whatever else you want to wash out on the street. The citizens of the town take great pride in the water and have kept it running the same way it was in the 1600's. One thing I learned while living in Japan, technology is for electronics, not for plumbing. 

Getting ready to go 
dance the night away 

The other great thing about Hachiman was that it was also known for it's distinctive summer dance festival. It is called Gujo Odori and it was started 400 years ago and still continues to this day! 

(Ok, this reminds me of when one of my students asked what we studied in school in the states and I listed a bunch of classes and one of them was US History, to which he responded, that must not take very long! It totally made me laugh. But the comparison to his country with such amazing history, it's just remarkable!) 


Sorry! Where was I? Oh, right! Gujo Odori. Gujo Odori is basically a 31 night dance party. Yep, they dance from the end of July to the start of September. Then, during the nights of Obon, which is the 13th to the 15th of August the dancing goes all night long! Talk about a party! My parents came to visit us while we were there and we took them to one of the nights festivities. One of the women we tutored brought us some Yukatas to wear. (A Yukata is a summer Kimono. Made of cotton, not silk. When you're dancing all night long you don't want to have to wear a 20 lbs dress!)  

Some of my students! 

Now every August I think of this small part of my life, of my past. I think of those in my family who have gone on, both who I have known and who are just names on a pedigree chart. All of my kids are named for someone from our family. Either a living grandparent, or one who is gone. Some day I will see those who have gone again, or I will meet the ones I never knew. Who are just a name. I think of how I would like to dance with them. So lets light the lanterns and start the music.

Thanks to http://www.japan-guide.com for some of the facts!