Happy Father's Day!

We were in Utah in mid-June to visit our two daughters Michelle and Julie and their families. Jordan and Lisa were also down visiting as well. Perfect time to take family pictures! We were able to have Chris' niece take family pictures for us on Father's Day.  Above-Bob and Julie Ward-Julie holding Ivy, Brynnly, Quintin, Zachary and Braxton.

Jordan and Lisa Newby-Jordan holding Adelaide and Lisa holding Matilda, LaRue.

Chris and Michelle Gleed, McKenna, Brooklynn, Tyler and Lauren.

Neil and Diana and Kirsten.

Grandpa and Grandma with 12 of their 14 grandchildren.

Adelaide and Lauren, Brynnly, Grandpa Neil, Grandma Diana and Ivy, Tyler, Quintin. Zachary, Front row-Braxton, LaRue, McKenna, Matilda and Brooklynn.

Family-(minus our two boys and their families.)

Back row-Brynnly, Bob & Ivy, Julie, Dad/Neil, Mom/Diana, Michelle and Chris.

Middle row-Braxton, Quintin, Zachary, Kirsten, Tyler, Lauren.

Front row-Lisa with LaRue and Matilda, Jordan with
Adelaide, McKenna and Brooklynn.

I want to 'thank' my family for pleasing their mom by everyone wearing red and jeans.  I made the younger granddaughters matching t-shirt dresses, the babies had red onsies with matching skirts and the older grandkids all had red shirts.  Michelle and Chris gave dad the aloha shirt he is wearing in the pictures. Thanks Chris for wearing yours too!

David and Angela with Avery. Taken outside their home in Washington.

Thank you David and Angela and Avery for wearing red and jeans for us!

Douglas, Douglas, Jr. (DC) and  Ashley at home in Georgia.

Thank you Doug and Ashley and DC for wearing red and jeans for us!

David wanted to do something special for his dad for Father's Day. We wanted to make a brick patio and had all the brick but dad never got it finished. David started but was not able to finish by the time we got back from Utah. Jordan and Lisa and their girls spent five days with us and Jordan helped David finish the patio.The bricks are set on a thick bed of level sand. David pounded every single brick in place!  Dad supervised and helped them pour a concrete curb to encase the brick in a frame.  These pictures were taken a week later after it rained. Dad finished the edging this morning with the dirt berm which will eventually fill in with the grass.

Dad really liked the patio and was very happy David wanted to do this project!

They did a great job and I love it too!  I made a plat of how I wanted the brick laid. If you look close it has a hop scotch pattern in the middle.  Jordan and Lisa's girls have already tried it out! We all love the patio!

I planted these flowers just after Mother's Day and now they are all filled out just in time for July 4th! I love the patriotic colors!

Another view of the red, white and blue petunias.

Just one of the other planters I filled with color. I love it!

Bob & Julie's family gave dad this Perplexus Ball for Father's Day. Everybody had a fun playing with it!  It's hard to keep that small steel ball on the '23 feet' of track in that ball!

A closer look at the ball.

Jordan and Lisa gave dad some Disney World trinkets from when Lisa went to Disney World this past January.

Kirsten and Mom gave dad the DVD 'Hatari' with John Wayne.  Neil got himself the 50th anniversary DVD and book of the Seattle World's Fair with the Space Needle and I also got him the movie 'It Happened at the World's Fair' with Elvis Presley.  Dad had a great Father's Day!  Thank you kids for all that you did for your dad! He said that he had a great Father's Day!

Spring - Blooming flowers...part 2

I replaced this rose bed with this dahlia and  two geraniums.

These replaced roses.

These also replaced roses.

I have this blank area in that corner. It doesn't get much sun. I haven't decided just what to put in there yet so for now it's empty.



Spring -Blooming Flowers!

Red, white and blue petunias. Hopefully when the flower bed is really full it will look patriotic.

I put this new flower bed in today. I pulled all the rock back and put in the brick border to keep the rock back. 

I love dahlias! This bloom is bigger than what this photo looks like. I'm excited to see how all my dahlias will grow and how big they'll get!

These are orange dahlias and you can see the lavender one next to it.

I love these purple flowers. I had roses in this planter and the ice storm this past winter killed the roses so I took all my roses out. I'm done with roses for awhile.

Note to self:

I really dislike Blogger's 'new' format....arrgghh!

Well...it's progress and slowly coming along!

I put these cubby bookshelves in our office. As you enter they are to the left.

Neil built and added these shelves. I wish I had taken a 'before' picture of the brackets and boards he had. He had so much stuff on them that they bowed slightly downward on the ends!

They were functional and that's where I'll leave it!

This is on the opposite wall of the office where Neil has his desk. He put up those three shelves above the desk about 3 years ago. I have asked him to build a smaller version of his block of shelves he just made for the other wall. Then I'll have him work on the desk! :o)

Like I said...a work in progress!

In the 'Eye' of the beholder...Freaking Yikes!!!

Well, be prepared for some shocking 'Eye' pictures! This was NOT a pleasant experience by any means! :o( . . . How did it all start?

The end of January I went to visit Lisa. We were going to dig in and get some deep early spring cleaning done! You know how those high shelves and top of kitchen cabinets sort collect dust? We were going to tackle that and 'wipe 'em out!' :o) We even had the living room and stairs carpeting cleaned! We worked hard for 3 days and it looked awesome! LaRue was at school and Tillie and Matilda were at home and they were terrific!

I forgot to ask for 'low odor' for the carpet cleaning. I am soooo allergic to perfumes of any kind including cleaners. The last day I notice my eyes seemed itchy and Lisa mentioned her eyes were itchy too. Hers passed and were okay. I drove home and after two days my eyes were red and out of control itching!! Things went downhill fast. The pictures below says it all! This is over a 30 day period!

I woke up and my eyes were puffy and swollen and red and horribly itchy!
Freaky huh?!

I went to the doc and he gave me stuff for it and this is a day or so 'after' the medicine.

Each day that passed my eyes improved.

I have to tell you though, the cortisone cream made my eyelids baked and dry and scaly! Yuck!

Things get better! The sad part, and this is sooo vain on my part, it sure aged my eyes. I'm pleased to be 61 years old, but it sure saddened me to have crepe eyelids and wrinkles!

This is today and not too bad looking!

Today I went to an 'Opthamologist' and was finished with seeing a regular doctor. I told the Opthamologist I should have seen him first! My regular doctor said that it was probably better I started out seeing him first as they would probably ask why I hadn't gone to my regular doctor first. My Opthamologist said, "I AM a Medical Doctor! Oh, well...next time I'm going straight to the Opthamologist FIRST! Hopefully this won't happen again! He told me it was dermatitis. I probably got either or both dust and maybe spraying the cleaners I was using somehow 'got into my eyes'. Boy in the future am I going to be a lot more careful! Next time, I'll wear goggles! Hee! Hee!

When I first went to urgent care, my doctor was off that day, I joked and said, 'Lovely shade of eye shadow I'm wearing, bright pinkish red!' lol :o) He laughed and said, 'Well, I haven't heard it described like that before.' I responded, "Well, now you can say you saw something really freaky and interesting today! lol :o)

(Note to self-for future reading lol means 'laugh out loud' in this case. It also could mean lots of love too.)

The aftermath of the ice storm...postdate

No pictures, just some comments.

I went outside today and drove around town and a little ways out of town to survey the ice damage. I forgot to take my camera with me but I don't even think pictures would show the full image. Pretty sad out there. A regular war zone of ice damage. It makes my previous post of the photos of our yard and neighbors pretty tame.

You don't even think about the destruction mother nature can provide from a little ice and wind and sub temperatures. Living in Covington we knew what downed trees after a severe snow storm looked like. Trees toppled over like dominoes. Out here all along the river the birch and alder snapped like toothpicks. Big fir trees in town, where my grand kids go to play on the slides and swings, three grand daddy sized trees that were two feet in diameter broke off and they had to cut them down to 3 foot stumps. Wild! It's all taped off and you cannot go into the park because of broken limbs still needing to be removed or just hanging. Pretty trees that go along the side of the road before entering Orting either broken and pulled up out of the ground from the weight of the ice. We were pretty blessed that the ice damage didn't last more than two days.

It reminds me of when our son Douglas and his father-in-law Joe drove to Alabama to help clean up after the massive tornado damage last year. He said you can't even imagine what to expect. You drive along and everything is beautiful with rolling hills and then it hits you right out in the front of the vehicle you span a several mile wide path of destruction and homes just gone and only the foundation left and with trees so twisted and torqued that when you went to cut into them with a chain saw it was hard to cut and then the trees would close down onto the chain saw and you couldn't remove it.

It truly makes us humble and thankful that we were spared and blessed that no harm came to us from this ice storm. We prayed! Thank you dear Lord for sparing us!

From Snow to Ice Storm...Part 2 - What an adventure!

WARNING! LOTS OF PHOTOS...do you want to continue?

The picture above is my outside mini fridge! I have ice and snow around the milk jug and other things in the basket.

Short story - our generator wouldn't start. That's another story, not going to tell it here.

We DID have running water, hot water and heat from our blessed natural gas fireplace... see a few photos down with Kirsten.

Taken from our backyard of a neighbor's tree. It did end of breaking off the lower branches over our other neighbor's fence, fence was okay.
Our bird bath.

Rain gutters full of snow topped with frozen ice from freezing rain.

Frozen ice on roof vents.

That nice cozy fireplace and Kirsten enjoying it!

Street lamp with icicles.

Our little trees along the street side of our house. The one is really bent low. it didn't break! You couldn't break the ice off as it was 1/2 an inch thick and would not come off!

The same bent tree the day before but not as bent.

Nice 1/2 inch ice coated branches with little glass balls the the tips off the branches.

You can see the buds frozen in the ice!

Icicles from my car.

My car, frozen in one inch ice on top and 1/2 an inch on sides!

Frozen hoses!

Our pretty gate and fence.

Let the thaw begin! The sun tried to come out!

This is 1-1/2 days after the ice storm!

Things are looking better! The same tree in the back ground was bent over with ice the day before, see above photos.

My mini fridge thawed out. Temps finally got out of 30 degrees to 38 degrees!

My car looks much better!

You can see my little animals now!

The street is almost bare from all the snow and ice.

That beautiful plum tree springing up a little but still broken, sniff, sob.

It was an adventure! We were blessed with water and the fireplace! We used candles. I should have taken pictures of our warm candlelight by night. :o) I didn't miss TV one bit! We listed to the radio and Neil's ham radio for updates. I read 'Matched' and 'Crossed' by Ally Condie the 2-1/2 days without power. Fantastic read! Can't wait for book #3 coming out the end of the year!

I forgot to mention that areas south of Seattle were without power. There were over 280,000 PSE (Puget Sound Energy) 'customers' without power which was just over 1 million people. There were also many businesses without power.

We did have our nephew Jason McClelland (bless his heart, thank you!) come over this afternoon and he wired in our power panel for our generator to plug in and then we just run the generator and flip a switch! Unfortunately Neil left the gas in the generator since last winter and it gummed up the carburetor and it needs to be fixed, but oh, well! That will be taken care of next week! :o)

Our power came on tonight at 6pm. We were only without power 2-1/2 days. When we lived in Covington (1/2 an hour from where we now live) we went without for 5 days and it was not uncommon 3 to 4 days at a time.

All in all it was not a bad experience! :o)

Bless the wonderful people who worked (and are still are working to restore power to others) so hard to restore power. There were so many downed trees and power lines. Where we live the lines are under ground.