hopeful

I write today from a strange vantage point. Nearly a year ago, we made a very rapid and life-changing decision to move to Montana. Sean would begin his new job as a district administrator, the boys would start at a new school, and I would figure it out once I got there. We'd sell our house, buy a new one, and start anew.

Breakfast at No Sweat Cafe - The First Day of School

Breakfast at No Sweat Cafe - The Last Day of School

This is a throwback post that I am mostly writing for my own archival purposes. See, from 2011 - 2013, this blog was largely a reflection of my life as a stay at home mama: lots of projects, lots of kid stuff, and lots of recipes. To date there are over a hundred posts here, many of which feature cooking and baking. I still use this blog a lot to find my own recipes, especially now that my cookbook collection is in a box (who am I kidding, make it about ten boxes) in a storage unit in Wyoming. 

This is probably my all-time favorite recipe to make for people. If you've had a baby or had surgery or had a loss in the family, this is probably what I made for you. And yet I never blogged about it. And so, because I need it to exist digitally, I'm taking a few minutes this morning to type it out.

Sean first made this for me when we were living in our tiny Missoula apartment sixteen years ago. It's the only entry in my recipe journal that is in his handwriting. It is perfect comfort food.

Artichoke Rice Casserole

PRINT ME!

2 boxes Rice a Roni Long Grain and Wild Rice
2 Tbsp. butter
3 1/3 c. water
1/2 c. breadcrumbs
3 c. shredded cheddar
2 cans artichoke hearts, chopped
2 large tomatoes, diced
1 c. mayonaisse
1 c. plain yogurt

1. Prepare Rice a Roni according to package directions (using butter and water).
2. While that is simmering, chop the artichokes and dice the tomatoes. Mix them together.
3. Combine the mayo and yogurt until smooth.
4. Spread prepared rice in the bottom of a 9x13 pan. Spread breadcrumbs over the rice.
5. Sprinkle half the cheese over the top. Spread the artichoke/tomato mix over that.
6. Spread the mayo/yogurt mix over the veggies. Finish with rest of cheese.
7. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Enjoy!

I made my Montana ski debut two weeks ago today. It was hard and scary and maybe a little fun but the joy honestly came from the satisfaction of accomplishment. I wanted to love it. I didn't, at least not yet, but I have two more lessons to progress.


When I first arrived, I was waiting in The Schoolhouse at the base of the bunny hill. There was a group of fifth graders just finishing up on the hill. Helena has this great program wherein the fifth graders at every elementary school get a day of skiing/instruction and, along with it, a free season pass. It was a large group that day maybe three classes of students, and they were everywhere. There was a girl sitting inside the Schoolhouse who was clearly choosing not to participate. She had thick brown hair and glasses and had that somewhat awkward/not-quite-comfortable-in-my-changing-body look. While her classmates skied, she sat inside with a unicorn notebook, some colored pens, and a little pouch full of fruity lip balms.

Talk about mirrors. I sat there, and maybe even teared up a little, seeing eleven-year-old me, afraid to take physical challenges, afraid to try something that I might not be good at, choosing instead the safe, warm, but not really fun glass windowed space. Eleven-year-old me sitting opposite forty-year-old me. Feeling out of place, too old for the task at hand, a little embarrassed and a lot scared to be unable to do this thing that most of my friends here have been doing since they could walk.


The thing is, I turned out okay. I may not shred it on the ski hill, but I can do lots of other things really well. And at some point in life, I became a risk taker.  I wanted to hug that girl, and I wish I had at least spoken to her and asked her what she loves to do.

Instead, I tightened my boots, pulled on a neck warmer, and faced my fear. It was by no means a resounding success, but I'm glad I finally went outside.

There are lots of different reasons that I take photos. I take them to capture the way I see something. I take them to record moments in our family. I take them because the light strikes me or because my kid is cracking me up or because I want to print a photo for someone. I occasionally take photos with the intent of writing a blog post on a particular topic.

As to how I take photos, there are two possibilities. I have a Canon SLR that I schlep all over the place. And I have an iPhone. Quite frequently the selfies I take with my iPhone show me wearing my Canon; I like to have both around. I previously had an iPhone 6 that was always full, so I didn't use it much for photography, but I recently upgraded to an 8 and now have more storage (a LOT more storage) and a better camera, so that is getting a lot more use. 


I have the amazing capability to move photos from my Canon to my iPhone via the wifi network built into the camera. Because of this, I can take a photo on my Canon and share it via my phone within minutes. This is a huge improvement over my previous camera, where photos would sit and sit until I had a chance to pull out the card and upload them to my computer.

And yet, photos still sit. Even if I get them off the camera and onto my hard drive, I still am awful about going through, editing, and uploading.

That was a really long and boring introduction to the point of this blog entry, which is just to share some photos that have been sitting on my camera or my hard drive for a while. No theme here, no unifying event, just a handful of photos from October that I feel have a story to tell. I hope you like them.

A ledger from the Butte mines circa 1915. We went to the Butte Silver Bow Archives in search of information  on my great-grandfather. This book, which was about 3 feet tall, tracked hiring dates for all employees.

Early fall frost in the neighbors' garden.

Many colored tin, just outside Ennis.

Autumn on the Clark-Fork River

My mother, collecting fall leaves in Missoula

We got our first big snow of the year on November 1st. It was crazy - on the evening of the 31st we were all over the neighborhood trick-or-treating, it was fairly mild, and the streets were dry. Twelve hours later it was coming down fast and furious. Now, as I've mentioned previously, I don't mind winter temperatures but I am not a fan of winter driving in flat places let alone in the mountains. That said, I went out anyway that morning and slip-slided all the way to the gym. Coming back an hour later was even harder. I made it almost all the way home before I ran into trouble. After turning onto Beattie, which runs uphill at a pretty steep incline, all forward progression stopped. I was stuck.stuck.stuck. I spent about twenty minutes backing up and attempting to move forward, but my wheels just spun and spun. Finally, tearfully, I was able to pull over to the side of the road and hiked the last five blocks to the house. I hated Montana right then. I felt so enormously incompetent, I was embarrassed, and I thought I was going to spend the next six months sitting at home because I couldn't drive in the snow.


(Quick aside: my regular tires were totally shot before I left Illinois. I knew this. I went in for an oil change in mid-August and they told me they were totally shot. But I was losing my ever-loving mind at the time trying to get the house packed and I just didn't have time to deal with it. I fully intended to get new tires with new tread upon arrival in Montana. But I didn't.)

Several hours later, my father-in-law and I drove down to my van to see if he could get it up the hill. Is it terrible that I was elated when he couldn't? He's the best driver I know - the guy flew helicopters, for goodness sake - so if HE couldn't get my van up Beattie then maybe I'm NOT a Montana failure after all. I was so happy!

It took a shovel, a spade, and a bucket of gravel to get the van out. We drove it directly to the tire shop where my beloved minivan, Alexvander Hamilton, was fitted with studded snow tires.

(Quick aside: I had no idea what studded snow tires were. I didn't even know they existed. Sean thought this was crazy, but it turns out that studded snow tires are illegal in Illinois and that's the only place I've ever done any winter driving. So it's perfectly logical that I didn't know what they were.)

Shortly after this debacle I learned that you can also get studded thingamajigs that you can put on your BOOTS so that you can HIKE in the SNOW! What a miraculous invention! As we near the end of November, I am a newly liberated winter woman. My van and my feet have studs and I can go anywhere. Bring it on, winter!

I'm a sucker for a Christmas tree, or really for all things Christmas (thanks, Mom), so I was perhaps disproportionately excited when I heard that the live evergreen tree destined for the U.S. Capitol was planning a whistle stop in Helena.  The seventy foot tree started in the Kootenai National Forest in western Montana and is making the 3000+ mile journey to Washington, D.C. strapped on the back of a ginormous semi truck.



Since 1970, a different national forest has been selected each year to provide the U.S. Capitol Tree, or "People's Tree."  The tree hasn't come from Montana since 2008. In honor of the event, the Helena Area Chamber of Commerce along with several local businesses and organizations planned a two hour celebration in front of the Montana State Capital. There were cookies, hot cocoa, and carolers from the high school, and both the governor and the mayor spoke. Visitors were invited to sign their names on the tarp covering the tree, and people across the country will continue to add their names as the truck pushes on.


So it was a pretty cool event. You know what made it even cooler? My kids' elementary school, which is located about four blocks from the capital, planned to have the ENTIRE SCHOOL walk over to see the tree in a giant single file line. Even better, every kid came with a can of food in hand to donate to Helena Food Share. Even better, Helena Food Share didn't know they were planning this, so they were blown away by the 300+ canned goods brought by 300+ smiling kiddos in brightly colored winter wear. It.was.awesome.






That was a pretty great kickoff to the holiday season. You can read more about the U.S. Capital Tree here and even tracks its progress as it continues to push eastward.

Happy early holidays, all!

(I started this post a few weeks ago, and it feels strange to pick it up now; the mountains and hikes described herein are now covered in snow. But that's a story for another post. For today, let me tell you about the mountains of Helena, Montana.)

Helena, Montana lies just east of the Continental Divide, tucked in a valley with mountains on all sides. Just as in Chicago you can always figure out where you are by knowing the number system for the streets (thanks, Dad), here you can always get your bearings by the mountains. The city of Helena is nestled pretty closely to mountains in the west and the south; Mt. Helena is easily identifiable in the west, Mt. Ascension to the south. There's a great big valley before you get to the mountains in the north, but those are easy to find because of the Sleeping Giant, a range of mountains that look like a huge giant snoozing. The mountains to the east are similarly a ways off.

This is a photo of our neighborhood taken from the top of Mt. Helena:


Mt. Ascension is off to the right in this photo, and those are the Elkhorn Mountains in the distance.

It looks nothing like east central Illinois.

One of the privileges of my temporary life of leisure (AKA unemployment) is that I have time to hike in these hills. I also have extensive amounts of time to drink coffee. So that's pretty much what I do - hike and drink coffee. My partner in crime on these ventures is most often my dear, dear friend Malena (along with Charlie the Amazing Goldendoodle), though sometimes I go on my own. Sometimes I hike fast, sometimes I hike slow, sometimes I bring my camera, sometimes I don't. It's pretty great that within a few minutes of leaving the house I can be at a trailhead and on my way to the top of a mountain.

Malena and I hiked to the top of Mt. Helena a few weeks back. It's a great spot to see all of Helena spread out below:

From the west side looking east. You can see the cathedral in the middle.

Looking west.

Charlie the Amazing Goldendoodle

The Sleeping Giant (Mt. Helena view)

A few days after that I hiked to the top of Mt. Ascension by myself. These photos were taken on my phone so they aren't as sharp, but you get the idea:

Mt. Ascension from the trailhead

Trees

Helena from above

Snow in the distance

Mountaintop Hope

The Sleeping Giant (Mt. Ascension view)

 A tale of two summits. Hope you enjoyed.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I had the opportunity to attend a field trip with Finn's class to the Gates of the Mountains. Named by Meriwether Lewis, who, along with his expedition, passed through this area in 1805, the Gates are so named for the ginormous limestone cliffs that rise alongside the Missouri River:



A few takeaways from my day spent on the river:

• Getting to go on field trips is such a gift. As a working parent, I seldom was able to, and when I did I had to use one of my two personal days. I feel super lucky for the gift of time I have this year.
• Getting to go on field trips ON A BOAT is super cool. Amiright? 
• Montana kids are tough. It snowed the whole time. Snowed. Now, we were in a covered boat, but it wasn't heated, and at the end of the trip when the teachers allowed the kids to go out back, they loved it.
• Finn seems to be thriving. He's made good friends. I'm so happy I got to spy on him for a day and get to know some of the kids in his class. 
• Unrelated: Sean really wanted to name a kid Meriwether.

The photographic highlight of the trip was this bald eagle. The boat skipper/tour guide pointed out the nest shortly before spotting the actual bird. With my long lens, I was able to see it up close:


I leave you with a few more photos. Come visit us; we will take you on this trip! Maybe plan on coming in the summer, though :)

All aboard!

Early morning light on the Missouri

Indigenous pictographs

Autumn colors at Mann Gulch

Braving the elements

My favorite 4th grader

I took 968 photos when we visited Montana in early July. At the time, Sean still hadn't interviewed for his position so we didn't know we'd be moving here. Things happened pretty quickly when we got back to Illinois, and while I managed to get those 968 photos onto my hard drive, I never went through them until today -- three months to the date after we arrived for a ten day visit.

It's a strange feeling to look at photos taken on a vacation and realize you now live in that place. That hill we were playing on is now our route to school. Those cousins we usually see once a year we now see every few weeks. That pool is right outside our window. Sometimes it feels like we're still on vacation, but most of the time it feels like we've settled into a functional, everyday routine.

Montana is one of the reasons I got into photography; there is so much beauty and it changes by the second. These photos were all taken the first few weeks in July - before it got smoky. Pretty spectacular. I share today to put a little beauty out into the world. I hope you enjoy them.

Little Blackfoot River

MacDonald Pass

Little Blackfoot River

Sunset on the Little Blackfoot

Driving to Seeley Lake

Mount Helena from the backyard

Approaching the Little Prickly Pear