long time.....

OK, my fault, I'm sorry.....I've been having a hard time catching up.
We had a wet year...right up to the time we needed to drive to Portland for our middle son's wedding.
Yes, it was a miracle we could get thru the creek at all....Monday evening, we spent 3 hours waiting for the water to go down enough to cross and go home and pack. The rains held off over night....and early in the morning we packed the car. Ha! Not believing the water had actually gone down far enough to let the car drive thru....we barely got the truck thru the night before. But, we put out food and water for the cats, put out hay and water for the sheep....herded the three dogs into the back seat and front seat of our car....and drove to the crossing to wait for another miracle. Yes, we were supposed to go to the wedding after all....the car drove thru the creek without stalling. We dropped the dogs in the kennel. And headed across the country.
Wow....may I just add the USA is a beautiful place!!!!
We drove across parts of Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and finally wound up on the east side of Oregon.
For those romantics among you. JamesandOlga.com will give you a brief introduction to our children, who met while looking at an historic site in the Ukraine. They were married at a vineyard outside of Portland, and some friends and family...like us.... joined them for a couple of days on the Pacific coast. Would you believe....I love the ocean!
Unfortunately, once we left the state of mo....they suffered from an endless heat wave. High humidity and temps near 100 for 9 or 10 days. The sheep ran out of water once....we had friends checking on them. The cats put a hole in the screen and half escaped into the woods.

What I didn't put at the beginning of this story, is that our head Great Pyr, Angel, died last night.
She was the best guard those sheep will ever have....knowing most of them close enough to lick them in greeting. We almost lost Angel last year. She and the younger pyr, Sugar, were lost a couple of days in the woods. Although they spent six weeks hiding under the furniture on our porch.....Angel was obviously aging. We spent the past week keeping them inside during the day, and feeding by hand....but Angel left the porch in the middle of the night to join her beloved sheep in the barn. It's really hard to lose a good friend, who you have depended on for help 24 hours of the day. Angel, like a good guard dog, was wilful and stubborn...She weighed what we asked of her, in her own mind, and balanced it with her duties at the barn...or in the woods. Her eyes reflected an inner wisdom, and we were lucky to have spent a few years with her in our family.
We all knew she was leaving....but only on her own terms.
We love you Angel....and will always miss you.
Angel Dog Kelly.... born 2004, died 2009
Always good to her family of sheep....and their humans too.