WOW! I knew I was behind on my blogs but didn’t realize it had been quite so long. I have several things to tell you about today so I’ll start with the most current and work my way back. Elizabeth gets out of the hospital today, FINALLY, after spending 4 days “sleeping” in Intensive Care followed by 4 days on a regular floor.
WTF?! you say? How did this come about?!! Well, it seems Ms Wiz (when they were little her older sister couldn’t say “Elizabeth” and called her “WIZbef” ) likes to drive fast on gravel roads. We believe TEXTING played a major role as well. Anyway, last Monday Elizabeth lost control on the gravel about a mile from home, bounced her car off the side of a telephone pole, sailed over a fence, and rolled her car, not necessarily in order. From there she was ambulanced to the local hospital where the LIFE FLIGHT was waiting to take her to Des Moines.
Elizabeth’s new to her 2001 Mercury Sable, which she LOVED and had for about a whole 2, 2 1/2 weeks before the crash. It now looks like this:
It’s a wonder she is alive AND expected to recover completely. At first the drs were telling us to expect a month long hospital stay, followed by inpatient rehab, and a 50% chance of regaining fine motor skills in her left side. Thanksfully we are looking at full recovery after only 8 days in the hospital to be followed with 3-5 weeks of outpatient occupational rehab and absolutely no fine moter inpairment.We’re headed back to MT as soon as we can get her stuff packed up so that we can get therapy started ASAP.
Prior Elizabeth’s little crash adventure Mariah and I met the parents and neice/cousin Ravyn back in late July over by Helena to spend a couple days in a Forest Service cabin on their way to Washington to see my aunt and uncle. Elizabeth stayed at home to finish up her summer college classes and to work.
On our way back home Mariah and I met my friend Nancy to do a little huckleberry picking:
For those of you not familiar with huckleberries, they are DELIC! Kinda like a sassy blueberry only better. We also picked what we thought were early elderberries but in fact were POISONOUS pokeberries. We wondered why these “elderberries” were ripe when the others weren’t:
Again, these are POISONOUS pokeberries–you can tell by the red stems. Sure are pretty though and can be used to make dye.
Once back home Elizabeth, Mariah, and I picked black currents (similar to gooseberries), chokecherries, and after Elizabeth was moved to Iowa Mariah and I picked wild plums back on the rez. So far all we have gotten done is the picking and freezing, so there will be lots of jam, jelly, sauce, and wine making going on this fall. We usually had at least one dog along on each picking adventure and both Sadie and Lola got some mean berry pickin skills–they could gobble them off the bush almost as fast we could pick!
(Black currents above)
Early August Elizabeth and met Uncle John down in WY so that our beloved Bruce (Great Pyraneeze) can keep John company while he is ‘stationed’ in Vail. We miss Bruce but know that they make a good pair and keep each other out of trouble lol, plus it is hard to work with 3 pups (Bruce, Lola, and Sadie) all at once:
In early/mid August I took Elizabeth back to Iowa to live with the grandparents and attend college. Mariah was already there since she road back with them on their way home from WA state. While there we got in some Tristan squeezin of course.
Tristan and Astrid
A couple weeks ago I went over to Patricia’s to celebrate her 35th birthday complete with guns, bbq elk burgers, birthday cake and of course beer. Patricia just moved in to a sweet little 20 acre spread complete with house, cool chicken house with below ground level floor, a butcher shop set up, and several other outbuildings. Its only about 6 miles from Fort Peck town and lake and everytime I go over I drive past multiple deer and antelope. I am very apprecitve of her good fortune to say the least!
About a mile from Patricia's--too cool!
Me and my .20 over/under Mossberg shotgun
Birthday party Montana redneck style
Well, I think that pretty much catches me up for now. If we get back before Saturday I have a bird hunting clinic to attend over in Glasgow that I’ll tell you about and I’ll try to get back to regular posting too. Hope you had a great Labor Day weekend and EMAIL me sometime! 
