Good golly, I know that it has been WAY TOO LONG since I have written. So sorry.
All has been well with me and Rick. Life is life sometimes and as most, we get caught up in the humdrum of daily routine.
So what is new and exciting you ask?
For starters Andrea and Eric are moving into a new home (to them) in a couple of weeks. Amanda and Phil have just bought their first home. I don't yet have a picture of it, but will soon. It is a real fixer upper, but that is the kind of work Phil does and the place has SO MUCH potential. Caleb has pretty much moved out...well, he still has most of his stuff here. He moved in with his girlfriend, Jamie, and her place is really small...they hope to get something bigger once he lands a day job. He has had the most difficult time getting one....he has had several resumes sent and with the economy the way it is, well, need I say more. I have told him to hang in there, God has just the perfect thing for him. I pray that somewhere in his heart and mind he can believe that, it is hard when you wait for so long, get bites only to have them get away!!
A couple of weeks ago Rick and I started making Sundays "our day". We plan to go hiking most of the time.It is a great way to get away and do something we really love to do. There is nothing like seeing nature, up close and personal. It is also a great way to "decompress" before the next work week.
Our first trip was to the Long Beach area. We have a book titled: Best Hikes with Dogs and had picked a hike from that book. The driving directions took us towards Montesano, which after looking at the map, silly me, the Navigator in our family, says, "we are going here, why go all the way to Montesano and cut down? It doesn't make sense!" Well, later we found out the "hard way" that it really did make sense. You see, we drove down I-5 to Longview, went thru that city and when we got onto the road that takes you to Long Beach, here was a sign saying "Long Beach 75 miles". "Seventy-five miles!!!!!" I gasped!!!. Rick just looked at me. We ended up laughing about it and just drove to where the road cuts off to Raymond and turned there and made a long loop drive thru Raymond, PeEll, and back to I-5 and Olympia. It would not have been so bad if we had gotten a much earlier start, but we'd been at Lowe's earlier in the day ordering stuff for the bathroom (tell you 'bout this later)!
Any way, here are a couple of pix from this trip:
Such a happy girl!!!
A week ago we picked another hike, this time from a book of Hikes in the Olympic Mountains. The one we chose started a Staircase and was a 7.8 mile round trip hike. When we got to Hoodsport we stopped by the Ranger Station and found out that we would have to hike 5 miles just to get to the trail head since the road to Staircase is closed until May 1st. "Hmm!" we said, and headed up anyway. It was such a beautiful day, we had been all jazzed up for a hike, so once parked we set out up the road. We ended up hiking the whole way to the trailhead to our intended hike, turned around and hike the whole way back. It didn't really seem like 10 miles, but we were gone for a bit. We had such a great time together.
Let me share some pix of this trip:
This photo is taken at the end of the lake on the other side of the land bridge. As you can see most of the lake is dried up here. We found some great walking sticks, which were rather nice to have on our way back.
This where the river goes into the lake by the bridge. There were two Canadian Geese here, but as you can see, one didn't quite make it into the photo shoot!!!
This is the beautiful site we had on the way back.
This past Sunday was Easter, and besides it was raining pretty bad. Don't know where we are going this coming Sunday, but we're going somewhere in the Olympics. All the hikes we'd like to do in the Mount Rainier area say the best time to hike is mid-July to October, so they'll just have to wait. We do, however, have some days off in late July that we are going to camp up at Rainier and one day hike to Camp Muir and back.
Our last, most exciting news is that we are totally remodeling our bathroom. It has been a real thorn in our side for several years and we decided that NOW is the time!!!!
The stuff we special ordered at Lowe's has come in. Rick has the first week of May off to do this remodel. He has started with some of the demolition, so I will share a few of the pix of that...but May 1st begins total gutting process, except for the water heater. Unfortunately it will have to stay until we have the money to have a "tankless" water heater installed.
I will end this post with the few pictures of what we have begun in the bathroom.
I will also say I will do my best to not let so many weeks go by without being in touch.
(There used to be a wall in front of the water heater and beside that was a floor-ceiling cupboard - Rick took those out a couple of weeks ago)
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