My First Quilt

My sister-in-law, Kari, is pregnant and I decided that I would tackle making my first quilt. My mom started quilting a couple of years a go, so she and I worked together on it. I love that we can go visit each other as needed! Here are some pictures. I didn't take an pictures of the process, but next time I will (my other sister-in-law is pregnant too, so there will be another quilt).

 

This was my first attempt at applique as well.  I was pretty pleased with out it turned out!  I think for any future projects I'm going try and use my Mother-in-laws embroidery machine to applique in the future. We'll see.

I'd rather give it to you free...

Today I'm feeling slightly...inspired, foofoo, poetic...something. So here's what came from that.

Today was a good day. Got lots done at work. Didn't have to tell anybody no and then got a surprise email from my husband inviting me on a hike after work. We just did a short jaunt up part of the Mt Si trail, but it was great to get out and talk and be in the trees. We then went back to his parents house, watched some football and then headed home. I needed gas, so we stopped and Ryan pumped my gas (he's the best), while I headed into the Starbucks to try and find something yummy.

Being a non-coffee drinker, Starbucks is a bit of a conundrum. But my work gives out $5 Starbucks cards whenever they send a thank you card for volunteering, you hit a goal or they want you to complete some extra training. That being the case I have three $5 Starbucks cards sitting in my wallet. I've learned that Starbucks actually has a quite a few options for us non-coffee drinkers...but when it comes to something warm and relaxing...my drug of choice is Hot Cocoa. I walk in and smile at one of the workers who is curled up on a bench, contentedly drawing on a black board, artistically penning tomorrows special for all to see. Unfamiliar with the sizes I ask the barrista behind the counter for a "little" hot chocolate. She pulls out a tiny cup and confirms the size. I say yes and then hesitate. She senses my hesitation and waits. Putting my fingers to my lips in thought, I let her know that I'm trying to decide if I want a flavor added. She smiles and suggests several, caramel, toffee nut, raspbe... "Toffee nut" I say decisively (which is a feat as those who know me will understand). She asks if I'd like anything else and I say no thank you. We'd already had dinner. She starts to write on my cup and then asks "would you like a free breakfast sandwich?" Smiling and a little confused, I say "Sure, what's the occasion?" She smiles and says "It's the end of the day....I'd rather give it to you for free than throw it away." She asks if I have any passengers and she fixes a second one for Ryan. As I wait for my order, I wander to look at the creativity of the first gal. Her pictures are incomplete, but she's happy to be paid to be creative. The girls chat easily and their ease and enjoyment of the camaraderie rubs off on me and I feel comfortable....peaceful. As the barrista behind the counter hands me my sandwiches I smile and thank her again. With the sandwiches burning my hands I head out the door to share my surprise with Ryan.

As I start our 25 miles drive home I take a sip of my perfect temperature hot cocoa, and am grateful to be alive. Grateful for kind gestures and toffee nut flavoring in my hot coco. I definitely recommend it and recommend giving kindness away for free rather than throwing it away.

Glacier National Park-Labor Day 2009

This year we got an inter agency National Forest and Parks pass. We're trying to make good use of it by visiting as many National Parks as we can. Ryan has been working graveyard (which royally stinks) so making trips has been interesting. That being said, we decided we would take a crazy DRIVING trip to Glacier National Park for labor day weekend. Ryan got home from work Sunday Morning, we finished packing and hopped in the car and away we went....7 hrs of driving to get to Ryan's Parent's house in Hope. Ryan's Brother(Alan), his wife(Claire) and her sister(Caroline) were already out the house and we were later joined by Ryan's sister (Lindsay). -There will be a test later. j/k. :)

A very tired Ryan went to bed early and then we got up and left the house at about 9:00am. Claire and Lindsay decided to join us. We drove 3.5 hours to Glacier National Park. Then we drove around for several hours. We took the Going to the Sun road, but we didn't see very much sun. Though all we did was drive get out every now and then for pics it was breath taking. Then we drove 3.5 hours back to Hope. We've decided that it's too long of a drive to do as a day trip from the lake house. We'd like to go back and so some camping or back packing.

I love that you can see the glacial blue in the water.

I like the carved out rocks

The mountains were amazing

Cool tunnel that had cut outs that you can see below.

Lindsay and Caroline

Bekah

The water was so clear

Neat waterfall

At the top of the Going to the Sun Road we crossed the Continental Divide. Woo Hoo! It was also snowing and hailing. Needless to say we didn't get out and take any pictures. We did run into the visitors center which was pretty cool, but MUCH smaller than Rainer's visitors center. It was a good trip, but way too much driving!

Moose Lake

Ryan's parents have a house on Lake Pend Oreille (pronounced Ponderay-it means ear in french I think) in Hope, ID. It's a beautiful place and we love to go there when we get the chance. This last trip Ryan and I made it out to Moose Lake. Ryan's grandfather and grandmother would go fishing here a lot when they were younger. They would build a raft and then push out and fish.

It was fun to finally go and see it for myself. It's about a 1.5 hour drive on gravel roads to get there and then a 2 mile hike. As you can see from the pictures that lake was true to its name and I saw my first real live moose.That little black spot is a moose.

We watched him for a while and wanted to get a better vantage point, but the shore of the lake was very marshy. We settled down to watch from afar when he started walking around. He went deeper and deeper in the lake and the started swimming straight for us....that was fine for awhile, but when he got w/in about 100 yards we thought we should move from our shoreline perch. When we got up to move he stopped, perked his very large ears and looked surprised (yes, a moose can look surprised). He hadn't seen us. That didn't deter him. He moved up to within about 30 yards of where we had been sitting and started to graze.
They graze the bottom of the lake. It was pretty funny to watch. Head under...wait, wait, wait wait, until you think it's been way to long for him to hold his breath, then head up...munch, munch, munch, munch...head under....you get the idea. Here's a video to demonstrate. Sorry it's a little shaky.

I also had my first experience huckleberry picking. Ken (Ryan's dad) and Grandma Green came with us. I have to admit it's a lot more work than blackberry picking, there's lots of crouching involved and huckleberries are small! Not having to deal with thorns was nice though.

Anywho it was a great trip. :)

AK-Kenai Peninsula

I've been using a different blog site, but I have trouble getting the pictures to line up the way I want. I'm sure it's user error, but I thought I would try this out for a while and see if I like it any better.

We recently took a trip to AK w/ a couple from our church, the Jones. We were supposed to go to Kodiak, but the weather turned foul on the island and we couldn't get in. Instead we headed down to the Kenai Peninsula and had a great time. The only bummer (and it was a big one!) is that Ryan had to go home. He was worried about getting back in time for his job, so he went home. The Jones and I had a good time anyway, but it would have been a great time if Ryan could have been there.

We went on a 3 hour river tour and had a great time. I didn't even get motion sick.

I saw my first bear on our river tour.

We took a 2 mile hike to Russian Rive falls in hopes of seeing a bear feeding....not really falls, and no bear, but that's ok.

The bottom of the falls. We could see loads of salmon swimming in the calm area there.

We took a short hike, walk up to Exit Glacier. This is a glacier that's at the end of a 40 mile ice field that sits on the top of a hill. It has glaciers running down all sides of it. Unfortunately it was roped off, so we couldn't touch it, but it was beautiful.

If you look carefully you can see a hole in the glacier right in the middle of the picture. There's a little waterfall that's pouring out. It was pretty cool.

Self explanatory

This is just below the Glacier in the runoff. The chunks of ice were so clear! See below.

I know, I know, it's not filtered....but I didn't get giardia and die, so I figure all the cold must have killed most of the buggies.

This is probably my favorite pic from the trip. It's pretty obvious that this mountain was carved out by a glacier at one time ages and ages ago. We were disappointed that it rained, but really the clouds make this picture.

On the beach

Spouting Horn

More Spouting Horn


Dolphins

The beach

I wanted to test out blogspot as I already have a blog on wordpress.