A Little Lesson in Farming

I grew up with my dad farming walnuts, peaches, and rice in the traditional way, and when I was about 15 he purchased the farm that we live on and decided to farm it organically. I think it's interesting to note the differences in how they handle the different problems, like weeds for example. On a traditional farm you would spray the weeds with a chemical to kill them, but that just won't do when you have an organic crop.

So to handle the weeds on our organic farm they burn them. It's really quite interesting to watch, and when Brendon saw it being done for the first time yesterday morning he ran out there with the camera.

The flame looks enormous in real life, and it just eats up the weeds like candy and then dies out immediately after. It burns too hot and fast to be of any damage to the trees.

Also notable fire fun is burning rice fields after harvest.

My Favorite New Sport

One of the highlights of the family reunion last week (at least for me - b) was learning to wakesurf. Thanks to the expert instruction from cousin Colin, after a couple days and just two trips on the boat I was doing this:

It's an incredible feeling - very different from wakeboarding. It's tricky to get your feel for the balanced sweet spot on the wake but otherwise it's effortless compared to wakeboarding. The wake keeps you pushing forward rather than dragging through the water on a rope. Closest I've ever come to surfing. Maybe it will make learning to surf for real that much easier.

Anyway, it was fun to chalk up one minor athletic accomplishment that week after the embarrassment I suffered during the 18 holes of golf with all the guys earlier in the week.

Finally...A Sewing Day

Here's my sister modeling the little knit dress I made yesterday. I thought yellow would be a fun summer color.

Family Reunion

I can't believe I have been so terrible at blogging this summer...but we have been busy! Life on the farm is always go-go-go. This week we had the Leishman family reunion and all the cousins came down from Canada. It was a great time ... we spent a few days on the houseboat, a few days in San Francisco, and a day at Six Flags.
My immediate family...minus Blair who is serving a mission right now in Mexico.

Rylee loved climbing on Uncle Brendon's shoulders and telling everyone "I am WAAAY taller than you!"Dad, Tiffany, and Brendon showing off their hard-earned prizes.

Me with my nieces Rylee and Gracie, and my nephew Cole.
We got the ball in the bucket...yeah!
We were determined to win the water gun game!

Brendon was tubing with the guys and his tube starting going flat and making a Brendon taco.

The lake is super low this year so my dad went searching for buried treasure :) He found a pillowcase with rocks to weight it down. When he opened up the pillowcase he found hundreds of credit cards, social security cards, and driver's licenses. Wild! Of course he took it to the police.
Boating is our #1 favorite way to spend our days.

Boating With The Buddies

This weekend Nate, Melanie, & Scarlett, and Brooke, CB, & Jim came to visit us in Gridley. We had a great time riding the motorcycles, playing the wii, shooting shotguns, eating a ton, and boating.

Brendon won the first round of the "King of the Tube" competition, thus the victory dance.

Even Celebrities Love Our Puppy

This weekend we couldn't walk half a block without people stopping us wanting to pet our puppy. Everyone was going crazy over our little rottweiler. As we were out taking her for an evening walk this adorable couple walking their own beagle went crazy over Macey. They stopped us to pet her and we chatted for a few minutes, and they just kept gushing about how cute Macey was. They were so friendly. I couldn't help noticing how beautiful the woman was, and I kept staring at the man thinking he looked like an actor I knew.

The minute we stepped away from them it hit me - "My Name is Earl". I animatedly told my family how much he looked like the actor from that show, but none of them besides Brendon even knew who I was talking about. We laughed about how I should have asked him if anyone ever tells him he looks like the actor, but kept walking. Later when we walked back to our room we realized they were our next door neighbors at our hotel.

As soon as we got back from our trip I looked him up on IMDB - sure enough it was Jason Lee and his beautiful fiance. What a riot. Well, I must say - they were absolutely charming.

Happy Independence Day

Brendon and I told my parents we better do something pretty great this holiday to distract us from the fact that it would be our first year missing the 4th of July celebration on the South Lawn of the White House. Since the fires in Northern California are so terrible this year (all those fires you are seeing on the news are right by us) we decided to head to the coast to get away from the smoke.

The family picture...Me, Bren, Mom, Dad and my sister Tiffany.

We spent a relaxing weekend in adorable Mendocino, California in a cute little beach side hotel. (Our hotels is one of those behind us in the picture).

We went to the larget salmon bbq in the country. Tiffany fed Macey a hot dog which she devoured and loved!

Macey had her first experience with sand and ocean waves. I must say she was kind of a scaredy cat. Macey was sporting her patriotism at our tail gate party. We dripped a little root beer on the truck and she was all over it.

Manly Men

Thursday, after a long hard day working on the farm, we thought we were going to have a relaxing evening. But then the boy who mows our lawn came speeding up to inform my dad that he had run into our well (yep, we get our water from a well on the farm...can't beat the taste!) and that it was flooding everywhere. Oh geez.

Here are some pictures of my dad and Brendon fixing the well. It might not seem that impressive...but those wrenches they are wielding each weigh about 50 pounds! One of the things I've always loved about Brendon is that he knows how to do manly things :)

Macey Leishman

We had a theft. My dad's new 2008 Ford F250 and our Miss Garmin (sob sob) were stolen right out of our driveway last week. My entire life we've never locked our house or our cars...we live in a safe small town...and it just breaks my heart to admit that times are changing and we have to lock things now.

But there was one good thing to come out of it. My parents decided we needed another rottweiler (our last one dissapeared last year...sad!!) so Thursday night we picked up this cute little puppy.

At first we named her Juicy, but one of my brother's had a fit so we changed her name to Macey. Sometime I secretly still call her Juicy.

Bren and I love to play with her when we get home from work. She cracks us up. She's still very uncoordinated (she's only 5 weeks old) so she stumbles around like she's drunk all the time.

On a side note...we did finally retrieve my dad's truck. The thieves had ditched it in an abandoned peach orchard and someone thankfully noticed it.

Groundhog Day

We arrived at my parent's house in California just in time for my mom's annual dance recital (she is a dance studio owner/dance teacher). We were quickly put to work from dawn to dusk. Brendon and I helped make the backdrop for the stage, and Brendon ran the lights for the recital. The first day we got home was dress rehearsal for the younger girls. The second day was dress rehearsal for the older girls. And then two nights of performances and a matinee. Brendon said it felt like Groundhog Day ...the dancing was never ending.

The recital went over smoothly...and Brendon got many compliments on his dazzling light guy skills.

Tatum [my bff from home], Taryn, and Tiffany [my "baby" sister that just graduated high school!]here's Bren working the light boardMom, me and TiffanyTatum and me

Safe & Sound

We never want to eat fast food again, but we made it to California Wednesday night after the five day drive. The internet is down at my parent's house (oh the joys of small town living...they don't exactly have fios that comes all the way out to the ranch) so we've been pretty out of touch. I'll try to catch up on my blogging.

Merkley's Marooned in Nauvoo

Our cross-country drive brought us to Nauvoo early Sunday evening. Getting here was somewhat of an adventure.

The flooding that has made big headlines for Iowa is causing the mighty Mississippi to flood towns all around Nauvoo. We drove past a couple towns that had been evacuated with National Guardsmen sandbagging the riverbank. Then, the road was flooded for a couple hundred yards. I'm proud to say that we opted not to make the highlight reel for some late night "Stupid Drivers" program. Although some people were stopped there and seemed to be seriously considering braving the water.

Ms. Garmin kindly directed us on a detour that involved several miles of unmarked gravel roads. Gratefully, we made it. Unfortunately, most of the historic sites were closing as we arrived. We walked around Nauvoo, saw the temple, visitor's center, Smith family graves, and drove to Carthage to see the jail.

Thanks to the gracious hospitality of our friends, I'm enjoying this view from the balcony of the finest hotel room in Nauvoo. It's gorgeous.

If anyone is planning a trip to Nauvoo I highly recommend the town and these accomodations http://www.ldsliving.com/nauvoo/

We might be happily stuck in Nauvoo for a good part of the day. We planned to get on the road early but from what everyone says, every bridge across the Mississippi within 100 miles is closed. Geez. We'll see what happens tomorrow. For now, this is nice and relaxing after two days of driving.

All My Pods Are Packed, I'm Ready To Go

This is what it looks like when the Merkley's squish all their material possessions into one 6x8x9 cube.

And this is the crate that Brendon skillfully built to house his beloved Ducati, so we could pack on top and around it in the crate. Bren has mad building skills. This crate is solid! Big smiles because after a month of packing it's done. And we're on the road tomorrow morning.

Coast To Coast

Could our drive be any longer? Gotta love those gas prices!

Saying Goodbye

Friday night we gave our last White House tour. I will miss this magical place.

On our last Saturday in DC, Brendon and I rented paddle boats at the tidal basin and reminisced about all our good memories here. I hope meeting me is on the top of his good memories in DC list :)

(note: please pardon the lack of makeup...it topped a sweltering, humid 100 degrees this weekend).

Sunday we drove to the Jefferson Monument to say our goodbyes to the founding fathers. Then we cruised through Georgetown one last time.

It sure is hard to say goodbye ...even though we are thrilled to be California bound.