Misc. pictures mostly for Grandma, who feels Bekah bean is growing up too fast. I agree.

Cookie time!

Pictures by Ashley. Ashley made cookies the other day and Bekah...helped. I love the little tongue curl!

Nails

Earlier today, Vicky brought over two goody bags full of wonderful girl stuff for Ashley and Bekah. They had some sort of closet cleaning thing at work and she got quite a score. So, big sister offered to do little sisters nails...Rebekah takes this very seriously as you can see.

I can see them looking back at these pictures 20 years from now. Ashley will be my age, Rebekah will be 24. I wonder how much their relationship will change and how much of it will stay the same by then.

Beautiful job girls...Ashley for painting and decorating, Bekah for holding still that long :)

Building projects

It's funny when I look back at the blog and see all the things I promise to post a picture of "tomorrow", and how often I don't follow through on that. I bet you hate that, huh? Okay, I'm going to work on not saying I'll post something specific "tomorrow", since it so rarely happens. Notice I didn't say I'd try to be better at getting the picture up. Hehe.

Anywho...one of the things I promised a picture of is the neighbors steps that Grant worked on the other weekend. Those turned out nice, I think! It makes a much safer access to the feeders up there. And yes, that is the neighbors storage unit Rebekah is sitting on, but Vicky told her it was okay.

And here is a picture of the storage shed in the process of being built. It now has a roof on it as well but we need to make a trip to the lumber store for shingles. I will take another picture when it's finished...but it won't be tomorrow :)

Itchin' for stitchin'

Tonight I am in Kent, retrieving another load of stuff and letting Ashley visit her friends. Every time I come back I feel more and more claustrophobic in the city. It's odd because at one time this place made me feel alive, like I was a part of something bigger and I was plugging into the energy of it. Now I feel like I can't breath when I am here...I wait like a nervous rabbit, wait for the escape back to the ocean.

I get back home and take deep breaths of the cool salty air, my nerves visibly relax, I kick off my shoes and thank God that this little chunk of sandy earth and green vegetation is ours. I unplug from the city.

Tonight I'm thinking about my studio and how I have projects waiting for me. I'm scratching the surface of my creative self, the one who tucked tail and ran a few years ago. It's just a scratch and it's just the surface, and I believe I have a lot of coaxing to do...but it's nice to know that part of myself is still there.




Last night I worked on some sewing. These are some fun little (12"x14") burp cloths I am making to go with the bibs. A handy size for so many things, I don't even have a baby and I'm thinking of making some for our house!

Studio walk thru

Here is the video I took of the camper/studio today. Keep in mind it's not as cute as it's going to be once I'm done with it...but for now it's very very functional and that is a HUGE relief for me. I can't tell you how much I love my sweet hubby for getting it for me....anyway, enjoy your tour.

FTF!

In the geocaching world, FTF means first to find. It means you are the first person to ever find that particular cache. This morning we logged our very first FTF! To those that don't geocache I suppose it's hard to fathom why being the first to sign your name in a little note book is exciting but just trust me...it is :)

Here is the cache we found.

I'm slacking again. I know.

As I sit in the studio accomplishing nothing. Why? Because I'm jumping up every 5 minutes to tend to the child. But keep reminding myself that these days are fleeting and she won't need me forever and someday the quiet will stretch on for hours and I'll miss getting her pretzels and drinks and cleaning the dog poo off of the bottom of her shoe....maybe I won't miss that last part so much.

Anyway, there just isn't much to report so I end up not reporting. Bad 365 blogger.

We have word recognition. The first written word she notices? NO.

We were walking along the road to a geocache close to our house and Rebekah says, "why does that sign say no?". It said No Trespassing. Reading won't be far behind now :)

Not quite the same but...

For those of you who loved the Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion magazine, you can get a small M.E. fix by visiting her new blog.

http://www.maryengelbreit.com/blogs/

Enjoy!

No idea why, but this batch of bread and buns was FABULOUS! I doubled the recipe on the bag of flour I had on hand and mixed some whole wheat with unbleached white. Then I used 1/3 of the dough to make a loaf of bread and the rest I made as buns.

I stood in the grocery store the other day looking at the bread. I wanted something healthy but the cheapest healthy bread was 2/$5.00, even at $2.5o a loaf we were looking at a lot of ingredients I couldn't pronounce.

I stepped back and walked over to the flours in the health food isle. Bob's Red Mill unbleached white flour was $3.99 and the whole wheat was about a dollar more. So I picked up a bag of each, for under $10. With water, oil, salt, and yeast...all relatively inexpensive ingredients, I can make A LOT more than 4 loaves of bread.

Yes, I know there is the time and energy factor. I'm willing to deal with it, especially when the aroma of fresh baked bread is wafting through the house and my family is happily munching the fruits of my labor.

Next door neighbor....Grant wants to invite him over for dinner! :)

SLUGS!

Heyyyy Minnesota, you think you got slugs?

No, here in the Pacific Northwest WE have slugs...prepare to be impressed. These were all taken on the last geo-hike.

And does anyone know what kind of leaf this is? It's HUGE! I put my hand out there for comparison.

The furthest we've gone on foot for a cache. Two miles round trip. In this direction...

yes, that's right, the direction is UP.

Stop for a photo op halfway up, my covert way of taking a break ;)

See, doesn't it look like I'm hanging onto Grant for dear life?

Up some more....not far now *cough cough*

Ahhh the view was worth it. Oh yeah, the best part? We got to the top and Grant says, "so where is the cache?". I give him a blank look. Right. Where is it, I have the coordinates, right? No. No folks...the genius geocacher of Grays Harbor County has not written down the final coordinates.

Thank God for cell phones and teenage daughters who can look such things up for you. Doh!

Yesterday was outside working day! I worked on burning stumps (what else).

We teamed up with our wonderful next door neighbors for a couple of projects. Vicky and Rebekah worked on repainting their fountain in the front yard...

...while Grant and Jim worked on building stairs to the feeders in their back yard. I'll get the completed picture of the stairs tomorrow (it's dark right now).

Vicky and Jim bought pizza and we got to enjoy the evening around the campfire. I can't tell you how nice it is to have neighbors that become dear friends.

Next weekend we're cleaning the roofs....I'll be sure to take pictures of that!

Working outside just wears a princess right out!

The world of stump clearing. Oh these pictures won't even begin to explain it but I figured I needed to try since I have been whining about it for a couple of weeks now.

This is a sideways picture...oops (just tilt your head to the left, I'll wait) but this is what the "yard" looked like all the way around the house (except the front). All brush, mostly thorny, hiding stumps, with a 3 foot dirt path all the way around.




This was the first clearing Grant made with the machete, I have a video of that if anyone is interested...hehe. You can see the pile of brush getting bigger on the side there. After he went thru with the machete we pulled long stringy roots out of the ground, you'd see a stem about 4 inches high and go to pull it out and it wouldn't budge. Finally after 10 minutes of yanking and digging you'd come out with a 5 foot long root. No lie.





Random shot of the next area to be cleared. This is approximately where the storage shed will be so we have to remove stumps and multiple wads of roots.

Grant hooking up roots to the cable so we can pull them out with the Sportage. Sometimes it works, sometimes we dig for another 10 minutes. Sometimes we axe.

Do you see what the cable is hooked to? That LITTLE wad of stems, right? Yeah. Imagine that 100 fold and you get an idea of what we've been up to lately. Even those little stems have 5 foot roots intertwined with bigger roots and they don't "just" come out...you work for it.

So that's it for now. It is coming along and looking better every day. It feels great to be working on our own place again and seeing the improvements come together. But....buy stock in Advil because I'm buying in bulk!

The bearer of treats when Mommy and Daddy are working hard outside. She can cut the tops off herself now, and scoots her step stool up to the freezer to get them out....and most importantly she knows Mommy will eat any color EXCEPT green or orange.

When Ashley has friends over...

I'm just happy they are kind enough to take them off outside :)

Bekah: Mom, I'm going to miss me when I'm not 4 anymore.

Me: Well, you'll still be you...but you'll just be older.

Bekah: I know, that's why I'm going to miss me not being a 4 years old anymore.

I hear ya kid...I miss that 20 something version of myself every once in a while too.

Daniel X blog tour

I am honored to be participating in a Mother Talk blog tour of Daniel X: Watch the Skies, by James Patterson and Ned Rust .

This is a young adult, science fiction book. I'm going to go out on a (sexist)limb here and say it's going to appeal mainly to the male sector of young adults.

Young Daniel is an alien hunter here on earth. His opponents are getting tougher and tougher but he's quite clever and has the ability to imagine the things he needs into reality. He imagines friends, relatives, weapons and more, this makes him a pretty enviable teenager, no?

I'm not usually a fan of sci-fi myself, but I definitely could appreciate the action and adventure this young alien hunter encountered on his journey. Amongst all of the explosions and slimy aliens biting the dust, they even managed to sneak in a love interest, what's not to like?

The chapters are very short, sometimes only 2 or 3 pages each, which makes for nice small nuggets of reading which seem to work better for holding a (pre) teenager's interest.

Overall, this is a fun story that will keep you guessing until the end and a great way to engage the younger generation in reading adventures!

Get out the butter....I'm toast.

I fought the stumps and the stumps won! Where's my advil?

Love my girls

Rebekah in the park.

Ashley with pink hair.

I'm having a hard time maintaining the daily ritual here lately. There is no ritual in my life right now besides coffee and at some three points in the day my family needs to eat. Even that is hit or miss as long as I feel there are suffcient left overs in the fridge.

Today I am in Kent, but will return to Ocean Shores tonight. The Sportage is again filled to the brim with belongings and again I look around here and wonder how many trips it will take. It is emptying out, little by little but wow. How did I accumulate so much? And the weird thing is that I don't feel like I have that much stuff, so what gives?

Anyway, I'll stop at Costco for groceries on the way back, try to pick up a couple of geocaches, and then I'm hiding in my studio because I have work to do :) It'll be exciting to have space to work again! Pictures of that soon, I promise.

I am hoping you can read this because it is truly worth a good hearty laugh...the very first entry in this weeks local newspaper police log. We have some serious crime going on in these parts folks! I love easy blog material!

Ack, can we PLEASE stop buying and throwing away so much STUFF?

See this article on CNN? Enough already!

Okay, end rant.

I remember when these were tiny and sweet and I'd kiss the bottom of them. Yeah...yard work has been good to Rebekah :) Ashley took this picture last night, I do love the angle of it, very creative!

Yes, I missed another day of posting. What can I say, it's a little hectic around here lately.

The whole back and forth being spread out thing gets to me. And nothing is really "finished". Maybe nothing ever is really finished, maybe that's an illusion I have in my head.

Anyway, the camper is here. It has some issues but I think we've figure out how to deal with them and make it work for now. Tonight we went to home depot and bought indoor/outdoor carpeting to put on the floor since the floor is unattractive to say the least :)

A few cosmetic changes and a table for my sewing machine should get it functioning, which is good because I need to get back to work! According to my Mom I've sold quite a few things and I need to get busy restocking. A good problem to have, but it makes me antsy when I'm not doing anything creative.

At least it's not hot and gross here in Ocean Shores! I'll take it!