February, 2009 | Oregon A-Team

A cool thing about our property is that half of it is pretty steep 20+ degrees, and the other half is almost completely flat. This allows for lots of different activities. Well, that melt off that I mentioned in my last post drained down our steep hill and made a small pond in the middle of our “flat pasture.” And the latest cold snap has frozen the pond into a small ice pond.

If you’re interested in more back story: The previous owners lived in our current house for 1 year. The winter that they were here, the father had this great idea of dragging his children behind his vehichle on a tarp. I bet they had a blast, and it ended up killing a lot of the grass in a long strip. So now we have a fairly flat, slightly lower strip of land going through the middle of our pasture. It was this strip that now is home to our frozen puddle.

I think that’s enough details to enjoy our video. Donald and I (Ashton) took our friend’s ATV out into the pasture and had some fun:

Ashton:
Ashton on the ATV

Donald:
Ashton on the ATV

Here’s the video we made:

(If you don’t watch the entire video, watch Rosco (our dog) at 2:20.)

Wahoo! What a blast!
-Ashton

First Montana Thaw and Website Updates

After the horrible winter weather we had in December, January was pretty mild. We had a couple below zero weeks, but there wasn’t any snow or wind or anything else that would be considered “bad weather.”

I finally was getting used to all the snow. I was hoping to get 3-6 feet drifts, like we got last January… and it starts to thaw… Normally it doesn’t thaw until March or April, but our south-facing hill has been without snow for weeks already.

I saw the sun setting and decided to take a ride up our hill to see what kind of pictures I could get.

In this first one you can see the Mission Mountains and a series of sledding paths that we created in December and January. 😉

Ashton Anna Home and Montana Mountains

Here’s a shot of our house and Bo, the extremely “skiddish” Wild Mustang.

Ashton Anna Home and Montana Mountains

Here’s Jett (Carol’s other wild mustang) in his new head shot with a nice backdrop.