Autumn in Michigan

Hello again everyone!! It has been quite awhile since I have done any blogging but thought it was time for a new post. Fall has went racing by here in Michigan. One day I am admiring the leaves and beautiful colors and the next day all the leaves are gone. We have been very busy taking care of our animals, working, and getting prepared for winter. Volleyball is over for the season. It was fun and challenging. I have lots of ideas for next year. My parents came out a few weeks ago and helped us paint the trim on the house and stretch out the fence for the horses. Unfortunately, we had to decrease the pasture size because of hunting season and people accidentally thinking our horses could be deer. So no more grass for Shiloh and Lily. But hooray for hunting season. Hopefully, Dean can get at least one deer. I am going to sit in the deer stand with my kindle and be the deer spotter. They keep breaking the electric fence so they must be out there. We are loving living in Michigan. We do miss the warmth of Texas but love the land, our new church, and our animals. Even those pesky mice. Here are some pictures of fall around our house. We love it!!!

Product Giveaway! Don't Miss It!!!!!

I am having a giveaway during the month of October. Since it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month I thought it would be a great time to give away some great products in support of Breast Cancer Research. Go to my online AVON website and place an order. After your order is placed I will send you your FREE gift.
www.youravon.com/rorvis


Spend $15 and get a FREE breast cancer pin

Spend $25 and get a FREE pouch

Spend $35 and get a FREE backpack

*Offer good with

Campaign 21 and 22,

Ending October 23


Let me know if you have questions by email drorvis@gmail.com or facebook.

Happy Birthday to Me!!!!

• Tomorrow is my birthday!!! Happy Birthday to me. Today Dean took me to a fancy restaurant in town for lunch. Tomorrow we will be at the Pow Wow so we won't really get to celebrate my birthday. So we went today. The food was only ok anyways. Tomorrow we will eat some Native American Food!
• I thought I was going to get a really great early birthday present and get offered a really good job. It sort of worked out that way. It just wasn't not the job I originally wanted and interviewed for. I am disappointed but know that God has something planned just for me. I just have to stay patient. I am pretty excited about my birthday weekend plans and wanted to share.
• Tomorrow Dean and I are volunteering at the annual Pokagon Kee-Boon-Mein-Kaa Pow Wow. We are not sure what we are doing yet but I am excited to go and know it will be fun. I will post pictures next week.
• On Monday we are going to walk the Mackinac Bridge. It is an annual Labor Day walk Dean's family does every year. The bridge is 26,372 ft long. I am terrified. I hate bridges. I really hate bridges over water. I thought we would be able to jog it, which would make it go faster. Now that Dean tore his PCL we will be walking. He will be crutching. I will post pictures of that also. I hope you have a great weekend and Happy Labor Day. Buy Avon products from me. That would be a great birthday present. www.youravon.com/rorvis

August on the Ranch

Here is your monthly update on what's going on down at the ranch. I can't call it a farm. We don't have cows or corn. Things are going pretty well around here. The horses and goats are keeping us pretty busy. It seems like they are never satisfied. We have been letting the horses out into the yard to eat the grass. They do a pretty good job keeping it mowed. Shiloh and Lily are their names. We got them from a very nice family that lives in the next town over. They are both broke to ride and we have taken them across the road and down the trail behind the house and across the creek. Unfortunately, Dean tore his PCL playing softball on Sunday so we haven't been riding much this week. He can't ride and it is not much fun riding alone. George and Jorge (the goats) are doing fine. One morning George started sounding like a sick duck. Thankfully, he sounded normal at the end of the day. Sometime I will try to post a sound byte of how loud they are. They are cute, regardless. Here are some pictures of the horses, goats, and my garden. The plants are finally producing real veggies!!!

George and Jorge

Some of you know that we started a new adventure this summer. Dean got offered a new job and so we moved. I won't disclose the location on the blog but if you want our new address email, call or text. Our new house is still being updated and decorated so I will save those pictures. If you know us at all, you know that we have always wanted a farm/ranch and farm animals. Moxie doesn't count, even though she is as big as our current farm animals. We were riding our bikes one night and went past this house with a huge barn and quite a few goats. Dean wanted to stop but no one was outside. He decided that if someone was out when we were riding home we would stop. At this point we had been in our house for 3 weeks and it is not ready for chickens, goats, cows, or horses. Dean didn't really care about that. Dean started talking with the lady and she showed us these two kids that she would be willing to sell. They were so cute with their little horns and so friendly. We decided we would talk about it an let her know. Right after we left Dean was ready. He really wanted the goats. So I decided we could get them for our anniversary. Our new house has a chicken coop so we decided we could put them in there. We bought all the essentials and some fencing and built them a nice little pen. That Tuesday we picked them up and brought them home. They are adjusting pretty well. They make a lot of noise and haven't really started eating the grass or weeds yet but they are fun to play with. Jorge has a flipped ear and is the lighter one. He is really friendly and loves us. George is not. He has the darker head and floppy ears.He will let you pet his face but always runs away when you try to get closer. Moxie sits out there just watching them. If she sneaks in the chicken coop, she chases them around and causes all sorts of problems. Once the boys get big they will be able to beat her up. Enjoy the pictures of our Boer goats and Moxie too.

Mackinac Island

I just realized I never published this post. These are picture from our anniversary trip to Mackinac Island in Michigan. It was alot of fun. I love the island because there are no cars allowed only horses. Plus it smells like fudge. It is such a lovely place. Can't wait to take the ferry there again.

The Battle of San Jacinto

The weather was beautiful yesterday. Instead of staying home we decided to head out to the San Jacinto Monument to watch the reenactment of The Battle of San Jacinto. San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico was won here and resulted in the acquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. It was a pretty important battle and led to the capture of the Dictator Santa Anna. The actual battle only lasted 18 minutes. The reenactment lasted about an hour. We really enjoyed it and got a great history lesson. If you want to learn more about The Battle of San Jacinto there are some great facts here: http://earlytexashistory.com/SanJacinto/sanjacintofacts.htm

The Entrance to San Jacinto Battleground State Park

The San Jacinto Monument

The Texian Army

Conagher? Looks like it to us.

The Soldiers marching to San Jacinto.

Shooting the cannons at the Mexicans

Blowing up the Mexican Camp

Gunfight

The base of the monument.

The Battleship Texas located in the Ship Channel.

3 months later....It is complete!

I received a new sewing machine from my mom at Thanksgiving. I wanted to do something simple and something I could use later. So I decided on a t-shirt quilt. I have so many shirts and didn't want to get rid of them. I have been wearing the same shirts over and over for years. Some of the shirts in my quilt are from high school. I used all my t shirts but the newest ones or ones that didn't mean anything. I wasn't planning on making it so large but it ended up being bigger than our king size comforter. 36 shirts total. I started after Christmas and finished this morning. It is too warm here to actually use it now so it is folded up in the top of the closet. I will probably add a border but haven't decided what fabric to use. There were a few bumps along the way but I really like the finished product.

Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter Everyone! We hope you all had a great day. We had a wonderful day eating, hiding easter baskets, and watching the Detroit Tigers game. Thankfully they won after 11 innings. Here is a picture of our delicious dinner. Only 7 weeks til summer!!!!

Fall and Winter

Things have been going well since school started. We have been busy working and playing some too. We have spent some time in the National Forest dirtbiking and camping. We also really enjoy the horse races but don't go too much.
Over Thanksgiving we went to Breckenridge and Beaver Creek snowboarding. It was great even though there wasn't much snow. Thanks to the unseemly warm weather we decided to go back to Colorado for Spring Break. This time to Winter Park. Granby Ranch to be specific. We spent one day snowboarding at Sol Vista Basin. This is the best hidden secret. There we no lines and the snow got better as the day went on.The runs were also awesome and really long. If only it wouldn't have been so warm we would have went every day. We spent some time hiking around our hotel and in Rocky Mountain National Forest. Dean led us off the trail when we were hiking around Granby and we ended up postholing quite a long ways. Poor moxie was bunny hoping the whole way. She was so tired the whole rest of the week. That was a good thing. The national forest was beautiful and the trails were great hiking. We didn't see any animals but we did hear one elk. It was a really fun trip.
We are now back to the daily grind of school. The weather is getting hot. Its been in the 80s almost every day. We are looking forward to finishing the school year and getting ready for our summer adventure.
I will try to post more about our life not just vacation adventures and maybe even post pictures. Try being the important word. Thanks for reading! Come visit anytime.

Here are some pics from the Rocky Mountains.

Costa Rica

Our last big adventure of the summer was to Costa Rica. We got a great deal on flights and accommodations so decided to go for it. We were definitely in for a big surprise when we got there.
As soon we arrived it was raining. Every afternoon it seemed to rain for an hour or two. We went through customs easily and went to get our little rental car. We decided on a 4x4 Jimny since we didn't know what kind of terrain we would encounter during our week. When we got to the rental car it was VERY expensive. There were all these hidden fees, gas, insurance which ended up bein way out of our budget. We had to pay it since we needed the car and our hotel was 25 miles away. We were not off to a very good start.
It got much better when we arrived at our hotel. It was a great little studio with a kitchen and we could see the ocean. It was lovely.
We spent alot of time exploring the little villages and shops. Dean found a delicious mango juice and strawberry cereal. For me it was Tangerine soda and the fresh fruit. Groceries were still very expensive. More expensive than we pay here.
The best part of the trip was the day we spent doing an adventure tour. It was a combo package that included ziplining, horseback riding, whitewater tubing, and a spa. The ziplining was pretty cool. Not as good as when we were in Mexico but still fun. There were more climbing elements which were challenging and a little scary. The best part of the whole tour was the tubing. It was so fun. You sit in your own tube and go over these small rapids and even small waterfalls. If you aren't careful you will fall out or get stuck on the rocks. I got stuck once but was able to wiggle my way out. Dean ended up falling out when he went over a waterfall. Right before that we realized that the cap had come off our waterproof case so if any water got inside we would have some major problems. And what happened? Dean fell out and soaked the camera. Luckily, we had taken some pictures before that because after that point the camera was dead. It was really fun. After the tubing we got lunch and then went horseback riding. It was nothing like Camp Foster. You were supposed to stay in a line but everyone kept passing eachother and bumping other horses. It was awful. I was just waiting for an accident to happen. We rode to the waterfall about 15 ft high. The water was freezing but it was awesome to jump off. I was so scared but did it a few times. Dean of course was diving and acting dangerous. It was fun. Our tour was over after that. We had the option to go to the Hot Springs and Spa and it was fun. First you sit in the sauna, then you go to these mud pits and rub or brush mud all over your body. It seems like something you should do in private but it was open so everyone could see you rubbing mud all over your body. Slightly wierd. It really did exfoliate your skin. After you rinsed it off you went and sat in the hot springs. It was very relaxing. It was a great way to end a great day. Even though we broke the camera.
We spent another day exploring the beaches. Dean even tried surfing. The surf wasn't great the day but he did manage to get up a few times and get swallowed by a few waves. It was fun to watch.
We also went on a great river tour. We were hoping to see alot of monkeys, birds, and alligators. My phone could still take pictures so we were hoping that would capture our experience enough. We were lucky enough to get in a boat with a couple from Pennsylvania. They were nice enough to take some pictures for us and let us take them from their facebook. Right when we got to the boat we saw lots of howler monkeys hanging in the trees. We were so excited to see more monkeys up close. Once on the tour we spotted lots of birds and iguanas. Some of the iguanas were so large. We even fed them some banana peels which brought them out by the dozens. We were also fortunate enough to get the only guide that brought bananas. He took us to a spot where we could find lots of white face monkeys. As soon as we pulled up to the bank they started to emerge. As soon as we brought out the bananas about 15 monkeys came out of the trees. They jumped on the boat and then started climbing all around. I even had one sit on my lap. It was really cool. I never thought they would be climbing on us but they really loved those bananas. It was a really fun tour.
It seems like we didn't do a lot while we were there but we really did get some good sightseeing in and two really great excursions. I don't know if we would go back but it was a fun experience and a beautiful country.