A Little Road tripping to the Pacific Northwest

We just returned from a little vacation to the beautiful Northwest.

I guess it was an official road trip, since it included six days in the car (plus one day with no traveling) and 2,500 miles (and about that many photos)!

We spent the first two days traveling with our daughter Heidi and her two children as we accompanied them to Tacoma, Washington where she met up with her husband.

My husband and I then spent some time in Port Townsend and Seattle, Washington, and Crater Lake, Oregon. 

Since I’m sure no one wants a play-by-play account of our trip, I’m just going to post some of my million photos.  Everyone likes pictures, right?

Here goes:

This trip involved a lot of sitting and looking out windows.  Since it was such a lot of driving, many of my photos were shot from the windows of the car.  Stops were for bathroom breaks and gas only.

We enjoyed a tasty cookie treat break at this rest stop in Oregon.

Ken’s sister Carolyn baked us these yummy butterscotch oatmeal cookies to bring along.  Thanks, Carolyn!  They were a perfect treat.

The kids were troupers to travel with, but road construction and rush hour traffic  almost put us over the top as we inched our way the last few hours.  Our GPS routed us off the freeway near Tacoma, but after getting behind a school bus unloading kids (Ken likened it to one of those commercials where clowns keep getting out of a little Volkswagen-it didn’t seem to end).  It gave us some comic relief after a stressful drive, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t save any time.

We finally arrived at our first destination, the home of Heidi’s in-laws.  They recently moved here from Bucharest, Romania to be closer to their children.  We enjoyed a wonderful meal they had prepared for us.  They were gracious and kind.

Ken and I spent that night in Port Townsend, Washington.

We arrived late at night, but our view the next morning was quite lovely.  This was the view from our hotel room deck.

My husband surprised me with this hotel.  I thought we were headed to his sister’s house near Seattle.  (We’d had some debates about where we wanted to go, and I thought I’d lost this argument, so it was a really nice gift!)

We explored the quaint town; loved the historic old Victorian homes, charming bed and breakfasts, an old Fort, charming downtown, and views of the sea.  The historic town was the entry for all shipping and trade going in to Puget Sound.

It was a fun destination and I loved wandering around the colorful streets of this city.  We even got in a lot of walking-a welcome relief from sitting in the car the two days before.

The northwest has had a very dry summer (someone told us it had been 80 days without rain) and many of the lawns were suffering, but the homes were still lovely.

Every perfect autumn day vacation stop needs a farmer’s market, too.

The PTFF (film festival) was going on and lots of movie premiers were presented in buildings on the main street, and in an outdoor theater complete with straw bales as seating.

Gotta love a town with hanging flower baskets!

 Lest this experience become a prop-your-eyes-open-and-endure-it-slide-show, I’m going to break it into several parts. 

One last look at the lovely Port Townsend, Washington.

P.S. What fun little towns do you like exploring?

JoAnn

A weekend at the lake

Can it already be September (well, tomorrow)? It seems that summer is almost over, although it is still pretty warm here.  With school starting a week ago, and the petunia and Black-eyed Susan flowers starting to slow down, it seems as though fall is lurking right around the corner.

I do love the fall!

You might think we haven’t done much this summer, but we have taken a few little outings that were relaxing and fun.

In early August I spent a weekend with two of my sisters, Linda and Julie, Julie’s granddaughter Sadie, and Linda’s husband David at beautiful Bear Lake.   Bear Lake is located on the border of Utah and Idaho (about equal parts in each state) and is famous for its clear blue water, locally grown raspberries (fresh raspberry shakes), and family reunions.  Linda and her husband are building a lovely home there, but for now they are staying in a small trailer, so we were packed in tightly.

We spent most of our time outdoors, so it didn’t really matter that practically the whole floor space was covered by all our beds. 

We arrived just before dusk on the last day of the famous “Bear Lake Raspberry Days”.  There was a lighted boat parade and fireworks to welcome us.  My night photos didn’t really capture the charming effect, but it still shows a little bit of the idea.  This picture was taken at Linda and David’s lot.  Million dollar views, right?

One day we went north to the Idaho side and passed this unique Pioneer Tabernacle in Paris, Idaho, built in the 1880’s.  The workmanship was amazing, considering they had to use horses and oxen to haul the rock from Indian Creek Canyon, 18 miles away, with the summers short and the winters long.

Some of the early pioneer settlers were ship builders and you can see their influence on the inside ceiling.  It was so well done.

We enjoyed seeing some lovely, big homes and cabins, but all the beautiful hollyhocks surrounding these small cottages were my favorites.

Ok, this was no cottage, but I LOVED it and I could move right in!

(This picture was actually taken last summer, but I still love it.)

We drove up a canyon to Bloomington Lake.  The road getting there was a little scary, but the lake and the hike to it were very picturesque.  (Plan ahead next time-no flip flops!)  We saw so many pretty wild flowers.

There were some brave (crazy?) people using the rope swing (someone’s hand is pointing to it) to fly out over the  water and drop in to the freezing cold lake.

(Sadie, JoAnn, Linda, Julie)

It was a relaxing way to end a fun weekend.

Good-bye Bear Lake. 

I’ll be back!

JoAnn

Summer’s end… retirement is finally becoming real

After teaching school for twenty years and having the summer months “off”, one might not notice a thing like retirement until the summers’ ending was finally in place.  People often asked me how retirement was, and I wasn’t sure I even knew.

Yesterday, school officially started.  Everyone posted on social media cute pictures of their children all slicked up in colorful, fresh outfits, holding signs stating their grade and the school year as they took off for the new, exciting adventures of the first day of school. I, on the other hand, had the pleasure of staying in bed a little longer, leaving my pajamas on until I felt inclined to get dressed, and puttering in the yard as I waved to the kids being picked up by the bright yellow school bus. 

It was quite wonderful!

Except for the fact that I kept wondering what everyone was doing at school.  When it was time for the bells to ring I imagined everyone meeting their new students. How were they going to handle the Solar Eclipse?  What changes were made to my old classroom with someone else in it?  Are the new teachers nice?  What interesting news did I miss as the teachers gathered in the hallways to chat about their summer vacations?  What students moved away during the summer?  Is it lunch time yet?  Did anyone miss me?

The pro-retirement side inched ahead in the debate, clearly winning, but it was not without some feelings of nostalgia and loss.

I was able to participate a tiny bit in the school preparations as I delivered school bags donated by friends of a friend.  Peggy, a long time friend and past neighbor belongs to a group of ladies in Mt. Pleasant, Utah who take on humanitarian projects each year.  They donated to my class last year and wanted to do so again this year.  They stitched up cute bags and filled them with multiple notebooks, pencils, scissors, erasers, colored pencils, and so on.  This year they gave about 200 school bags!  Peggy and I met several times to transfer the bags, including the last time when Ken and I drove to Mt. Pleasant to pick up the last batch.

One of our transfers included dinner at Olive Garden with other good friends.  Winnie and Stan, Larry and Peggy, Marty and Sandi, Tom and Shirley, and Sheila. 

Today is day two of my “it-finally-feels-like-retirement” time.  I am trying to do some odd jobs to make it productive, but I’m sure the temptation to do nothing will still be hard to overcome. 

Can you believe that summer is almost gone?

JoAnn

P.S. Yesterday’s solar eclipse was pretty amazing, wasn’t it?  Some of my family went to Idaho (the zone of totality) and I think they got the million dollar experience!  Next time….

Refreshing the playhouse

I’ve always envied people who have a home with a lot of property surrounding it, especially if it involved gently rolling green hills, a hearty supply of colorful vegetation (including plenty of trees), and white wooden fences, stretching as far as you could see, and if you threw in an old red barn and a sparkling little lake, I would be quite near to calling it my “died and gone to heaven” place.

In reality, I live in a suburb of a fairly large city, smack dab in the middle of a desert, on a yard that barely qualifies as a quarter of an acre if you measure it with the generosity of a gardener at zucchini harvesting time.

I’ve thought of moving somewhere closer to my dream location.

I’ve thought about it a lot.

The trouble is that we live right in the middle of all our children, too.   Indeed, we are a gathering place for our family, who come by often, and we enjoy spending time with all of them.

We also have a lot of good friends and neighbors.  We’ve lived here forty-one years.

Also, we are old enough that our home is paid for.

(Who wants a new mortgage?)

We are needed in our church congregation, which sometimes struggles for strength.

We are close to good shopping, museums, and parks,

and mountain recreation is just a short drive away.

Have I convinced myself you why we aren’t moving yet?

Then there is the play house…

As the grands would proudly say, “Ta da!”

Here is our playhouse.

We would hate to leave it behind. 

It wouldn’t be easy (or affordable) to move it.

It was built by my husband, with a lot of love.

You can read more about it and see pictures of the inside by clicking on the link below.

link.

So, while we don’t have everything we desire and dream of in a home,  (and who does?) we are pretty lucky.

The play house was built in 2012 and has had some good wear and tear over the years.  The paint was chipping and the door had some bad weathering problems. 

It was time for a make-over.

We changed the siding color to white,  built a new door (which now opens out to give more indoor space and helps avoid chopping off grand kids’ heads with the top of the Dutch door),  added shutters, planter boxes, and a mail box.  We painted the door, trim, and shutters Catalina Blue by Benjamin Moore.  (Yes, Ken, I watched as you did all the work, so technically it does qualify as a “we”.)

I  also added my school banner, which was looking for a new home since I retired from school.

Here is the new look.

I love the new planter boxes Ken built.  The flowers were close-outs for $3.00 total!

We added a $12.00 Lowes mail box since we are into delivering “letters” right now.  Ken also painted the little  design white.  The gold color just didn’t look right.

The kids still love playing there.

Here are before and after pictures:

                  Before                                              After

So, even though I will miss the old blue “Grandma’s Sweater” paint on the front door, I like the new look, too.

And…

I’d probably never be able to take care of a bigger space anyway.

Guess that is what day-dreaming is for!

JoAnn

P.S.  Has your summer been unusually warm this year?  We are dying of heat!

Reinventing a Fisher Price Post Office

We still have a lot of the old toys that our children grew up playing with.

Some of them have “aged” a bit, or lost a few parts, but they are still good play things for our grand children, and many of them are not available to buy any more.

Does anybody remember the Fisher Price Post Office?

It came with some small plastic envelopes and letters, and it had some fun little compartments where you could deposit letters and sort the mail.

Our post office had lost a few drawers, and only one or two letters remained, but the little grands still loved playing with it.

Recently, as one lonely letter was being delivered (and redelivered) to someone, we stumbled upon an idea that sort of mushroomed into a fun project.  I pulled out some foam craft sheets and markers and we started making some new letters.  My little helpers loved watching me make some “mail” and they wanted to help make some, too.  We spent a good part of the afternoon thinking up great letters to send to different family members.  Someone won the lottery and was invited to collect their money.  Ken was asked to send money to Grandma Jo.  Olivia got a love note from a secret admirer.  Birthday cards and invitations were thought up.  A few unique letters were written by children who don’t read yet, but they were still made with a big helping of love.

Another day some different grands came by and wanted to join in on the project and they created even more wonderful, creative letters.  Brittany sewed a cute blue mail bag, complete with a shoulder strap.  Ken printed some postcards from our vacation last summer in Oregon.  We even created some packages containing garden seeds, and a blog book, tied with jute string.  The best part is that this project can be ongoing.  I have a LOT of foam sheets!

Fisher Price toys always fostered creativity, but the family letters made this toy fresh,  personal and relevant today.

As a fan of hand written letters, and one who hates to see the art die out, maybe this will help teach our grand children the joy found in sending and receiving mail.  We recently added a little mail box to our play house and we are thinking of putting one by our back door for letters from the play house.

Remember the blog post I did a few years ago about letters I had sent to Aunt Mardene and how she had saved every single one? 

You can click on the link below to read about it.

OLD LETTERS

Well, it’s time to go to bed (and dream up some more letter ideas).

JoAnn

P.S.  Should I be rich since winning the lottery and getting money from Ken?