What's Goin' On

Here is this morning's snow. It is our third snow in three days. Very, very pretty stuff, but doesn't Mexico sound better?

A week ago Saturday, we had a 75 degree day, unusual Pacific Northwest weather!

It was gorgeous and when I was out in the truck, I saw sooooo many people buying annuals and trees and roses. That was a booming plant sale day. And now, after all this snow, the nurseries will have a second round of it when all those folks have to come back and replace their frozen flowers. I ALWAYS wait until Mothers' Day to buy and plant my baskets and other containers. I learned my lesson years ago when I lost all my flowers in late April during a freeze...

The photo below shows a glimpse of the pond through the snowy trees and bushes.

The tire swing, lonely and still, in the woods....(KD, don't look at this photo).....it's just a tire swing ...Snowy branches below.....

So, here is the update:

Bill is still tiling and getting bathrooms ready for the countertops. I think he has a new profession because his tiling is awesome. I will be showing you photos as we get closer to having that done.

I am still running errands in the truck.....gasoline is up to $3.69 locally....so I am trying to make as few trips as possible and that takes very careful planning and organization. The door place messed up our hardwood door order, they neglected to measure width wise and not all of our doors happen to be 30" wide, so we are dealing with that issue and I don't want to talk about it further. I will really get cranky.

So on to the good stuff!

Spanish is coming along great!! We are studying past tenses already, even though I don't really have the all of the present tenses down yet...., but I feel confident that we will be able to communicate in Alamos. Next week, after class, we will take Violeta to our favorite Mexican restaurant, La Puerca in Kirkland.

Even though a lot has been going on, it still seems incredibly slow to me, and somedays I think we are moving in slow motion. I am just so ready to go.

And so much rain has set more than a few projects behind schedule. Craig has not been able to stain the house. The gutter guys can't put in the drain system, and so on and so on....

In the photo below you can see the old retaining wall and how it is falling apart. The ground behind it leads up to the earth house hillside.

So, Don and his crew came out and removed the old wall and during the night a torrential rainstorm washed much of the hillside away. I worried that if it did not stop raining part of the deck would go with it.
The rain got worse after this photo and much more of the dirt washed down.Eventually the rain stopped and days later the guys were able to clean up all the debris and put in the new retaining wall which we are very happy with. I especially like the new steps which lead up to the new flagstone pathway that goes along the earth house hillside.

Back to what's going on inside the house.

I am the 'not so happy about it' owner of a door staining department in the living room. I did not like painting the walls and I don't like staining doors either. But I am working hard at it, and I think it will be done soon. I am staining doors that actually fit in the spaces they are supposed to fit into. I won't go into what we will do with the doors that don't fit in their spaces and I want to end this session on a HAPPY NOTE!!!!!!.


We can't even walk in the living room, it is full of doors, but they will be a nice addition to our house.

I told Bill that we will not have doors in Alamos, just those hippie doorway beads.

Our little casita in Mexico has just gone through a Mexican type of probate, so now we are put on the list of house closing dates. Are we at the top of the list or the bottom of the list? We don't know........

Evidently things are a little behind schedule down there as well. So, there is nothing to do beyond keeping up the remodeling project here and hope the rain and snow go away. Oh and keep watching cable tv while we have it!! What in the heck happened to ICE ROAD TRUCKERS, my best show. I thought it was coming back on with a new season, and if you have been keeping up with this you know that is part of the reason we even have cable...

Oh, well.....
I just took the photos below within a 3 minute period. The Cascades are beautiful this afternoon!

We have been so lucky to keep seeing many wonderful people we know. Whether it is at the grocery store, the post office, at Steve's birthday party, Starbucks, Lowes, the library, the gas station or just two trucks passing in opposite directions on Tolt Hill, honk and wave!...we see so many people every day and it's giving us the chance to keep saying goodbye to all of you!