Family Pictures

Saturday we had Alex and his family here and Erika and her family here. Alex and Sheali enjoyed seeing the great nieces!!  I got to keep the playdough and the barn went home. :)

A playdough present from Uncle Alex! A princess castle!!

The kiddos are loving mom tickling them! Lots of giggles!!

The other present! A barn with lots of animals.

Teagan is drawing a face! Getting to be such a big girl!!

How couldn't love this adorable face??

A family picture!!

Teagan is blowing dandelion seeds.

I think Erika is ready to go! It was cooling off pretty good!!

A grrr kind of day!!

The good news is I found .99 cent packages of gluten free oatmeal today and my computer isn't completely toast! The bad news is my hard drive is practically out of space and while I was deleting emails to get some more room it somehow activated a virus. Which in turn shut down my antivirus. So now I'm waiting for the on-line scan that I found to finish scanning (Eset) and hoping that it allows me to delete what it found. (99% done!) I guess the good news is I was planning on taking my computer to the computer guy Wednesday anyway so if all else fails it's scheduled for the shop already!! Uhg!!

Edit- It worked! Yea!! :)  So now my virus scan will go tonight to make sure all is caught and the malware scan tomorrow while I'm working. Then hopefully it'll be ready for that new hard drive!

More good news is it was an absolutely gorgeous day! it reached 80* again, Second time this month. Everything is pretty much completely leafed out and it's not even May yet!! The white spot is the moon. :)

And even more good news... We end the week with going to a baptism. Christina is going to be baptized along with at least 4 other's. That will certainly be a very nice way to end the week! I really like what a young man said at a sing last Friday. Don't seek companionship, seek fellowship. An important thing to do!

Quick K-Falls trip w/pics

Where to begin! I decided we needed to get down to see my mom and soon after her heart spells so we took off Tuesday morning and got back tonight (Thursday evening). A very quick trip that ended up being half business but at least we got to sit down and talk with my parents face to face!! I've got to say it really doesn't look good. She has congestive heart failure and is retaining fluid. Because of her weakness and fluid retention and now needing to be on oxygen 24/7 the doctor wants to see her again next week. My dad's dementia is getting worse as well so we'll see where things are in the next year for both of them.

My cousin took Christina and I out to lunch at the Crazy R Pizza today before we left. They have some EXCELLENT gluten free pizza! As well as a really nice salad bar. I would think that their regular pizza would be pretty good if that gluten free pizza is anything to go by!

Below are some pictures from our trip and pictures of my brother's dogs. He's got quite the bunch of them but they actually do quite well typically. Unless someone drives into the driveway then it gets VERY noisy! :)  The boarder collie (Maggie) is quite hilarious to watch sometimes. Today they were trying to get her in the house and she went and hid behind a chair and was peeking out. It was quite obvious she was trying to hide. Then when they said no, get in she got this smile. I couldn't get a picture of the smile but she does smile!

We got stopped due to road construction going down. This was our view. Gorgeous! But mid April and absolutely no snow was on the pass at all!! Not good!!

Mt. Hood

The rest stop before Chiloquin on the way down is right next to the river.  

I really like this profile picture of Christina!

The river!

Interesting mossy tree at the rest stop

The crew :)

Maggie being a love bug

Patches- She actually tends to think she's a dog! She'll actually make barking noises! 

If you look real close you'll see a crane- it blends in with the clouds!

I'm leaving this one extra large because it allows you to see Mt. Hood better! This was on the way down. It was gorgeous when we left but as you saw above it was a tad wet on the way back!! 

Lawn project

I really need to do the before pictures but never remember! I've been preparing the lawn with moss stuff and trying to get the weeds out for the last month and a half. One of our friends has been walking me through the preparation of reseeding a lawn. The front desperately needs it since my elderly neighbor was being helpful and scalped my lawn in areas a couple of years ago when he mowed. Those areas have never recovered. And the poor back lawn is so full of moss! Most of it appears to have died off but it still seems like some is still left. We'll see what our friend has to say tomorrow! Anyway today was the day to mow as far down as I could since it was nice most the day. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain but hopefully it'll cooperate long enough for the seed to get down! Here's the pictures of the final mow. I think there are muscles that I didn't know I had!

Now hopefully in a few weeks I can post a nice green lawn!! :)

Front lawn- and there's one of the bare patches. :)

Back lawn in progress- kind of a before picture

This was the piles AFTER the mower, with bag, was done,

I then raked the middle of the lawn because of the moss and thatch (this is before I raked)

Another angle before I raked

I didn't bother to do that area since it'll probably be gone in the next couple of years. So there's what it looked like before. :)

After the second mow to pick up what the raking did. DONE !!!

Yard progress! Garden Pics

The only day of no rain for the week so it was outside work today! Christina mowed the front yard and did a fair amount of raking to try and get the thatch out of the front lawn. I'd say 3/4 of it got done. I did a bit of the thatching in front and mowed the back yard and got the front bed weeded and some roses out back trimmed and .... filled two yard debris containers. My neighbor was very kind and offered his, pretty much empty one, when he saw us working out there. (I think they were ecstatic that the yard was finally getting taken care of since this was the first time that it got mowed this year!)

I've decided that I simply need to do that now and again, no matter how much work there is! Yard work is a huge de-stresser for me. I really do love gardening! Sure I'll be working a bit longer hours in the evenings this week while it's raining but it is well worth it! :)

Some of the yard work doesn't show in the back yard pictures since I did it after I took the pictures. The daffodils were some of the biggest I've ever had! I'm wondering if it's because of the winter was warmer over all?  The other odd thing was how dry the grass was! It rained Friday night/Saturday morning and when I put it in the bin it was basically completely dry. That almost never happens in March, much less April!!

Tulips in full bloom! Everything is so early this year!!

First rose bloom of the year! Before April!!! Pretty unreal.

This is the rose bush I got for my Birthday almost 5 years ago. Quite a nice bush now! (Notice how dry the soil is in the planting box? Almost never is that dry before Mid-April to May)

Rosemary anyone????

Our handsome boy thoroughly enjoying the sunshine! As long as there isn't another cat in the area he does very very well!

A faithful finish/Pic's

We went to a funeral today. Second one this week actually! Both finished faithfully and are now with their Father. I didn't know the first one well but I did get to know the one that we went to today. He had such a wonderful attitude even in his dying days. There was just an acceptance of what was happening and an anticipation for the final breath because it meant going to a much better place. He was a maintenance man for many years at a mill and it was mentioned that is a lot of what our life is about keeping the maintenance up through prayer. It helps negate the effects of the down times in life. There will still be down times but it keeps one going with a much better attitude through the down times! I do love our funerals. They are so inspiring! And I saw a lady that I knew growing up! It's been years since I last saw her! She mentioned that her daughter and her family we're coming to meetings again. So very good to hear!!

I also babysat the girls last night so I'll attach a couple of pictures. It's hard to believe that Teagan will be 3 here in a couple of weeks!! That toddler look is definitely not there anymore!! And does anyone have doll clothes they want to get rid of??? Neither of my girls were into dolls but both of Erika's girls like their dolls. So I'm thinking that would be a pretty neat B-day present for Teagan!

Teagan's having great fun! :)

She's being a silly girl here. Nope, I'll stick my tongue out grandma!!

Look grandma! I got the my glasses on! :)

And here's my baby. :) She decided she wasn't getting enough attention. Hard to believe but she is now almost 11 which means Pippy, my other cat is 12.

Really???

So that bug that has been going around finally got me. :( Not too bad so far since I've been hitting with all that I can but now is not exactly a good time!! (Although is any time really a good time to get sick??)  So I gave myself the day off and layed low. As a result I made decent progress on a project I've started working on. The lettering is now completely done. I really like the saying. I'm not sure if they realize just how true this is.