Category Archives: Colville

July Wrap-Up #1

Looking back…

This will be the first of three July Wrap-ups. The first one will be close to home and the second and third will be at a distance. We started the month in Walla Walla celebrating with our family and those posts have been shared.

Travels interrupted the documentation of the end of the school year but finally it happened in July!

Looks like they both decided Top Ramen was their favorite food. Hilarious, as their mom feeds them 3 well balanced meals a day!!

While watching them in early July they decided to give me a makeover.

It was hot but they managed to go cherry picking at a nearby orchard.

Dinner on the Columbia with fishing was refreshing on a hot night.

JJ caught his first stick!

Addy caught her very first fish!

Addy wasn’t interested in holding the fish so JJ took over the job for the fish photo!

Our hot water tank needed to be replaced and while the guys worked on hooking up the new tank we set up this water splash pool for the grands to keep cool while waiting.

Hooray the new hot tank is working and the guys are pleased with themselves! I’m pleased, too.

When the job was completed, we enjoyed a Creamy chicken noodle dish for dinner with a fresh produce salad from the kids garden to go along with it.

The kids brought over raspberries from their garden which inspired the baking of this Raspberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake.

I’ve already shared the other July happenings close to home like soccer camp, walks on the trail, summer blooms, summer critter visitors, Canadian visitors. I’ll save more blooming plants from our back acres for another day.

Happy August everyone!

Soccer Camp and More

It’s that time of the summer when soccer camps happen and right on the heels our city youth soccer teams are formed.

Tonight they will meet their teams and coaches for the next few weeks.

Meanwhile here are some current visitors on our property.

Turkey families have been showing up.

They are very hard to see but these are itty bitty little quail. They are so little and so cute.

Fun to see the flitting butterflies landing on the lavender.

I’ll share what has been blooming here in my next post.

Early Morning Walks

On Monday of this week we started early morning walks along the Rotary Trail in Colville. The trail circles the Golf Course. These are some photos I took with my phone on two different mornings.

Smoke from fires have made sunrise and sunset interesting.

A hawk

There is usually only one eagle perched on these polls but on this day I had a twofer.

Now for a smoky sunset…

This was on Tuesday on our way home from a class we are taking at our church on Biblical Counseling. Our windshield needed a good cleaning!

Some Olympic competitions have been televised already. I’ve watched a couple Olympic soccer games and we’ll see if we sit down to watch the opening ceremonies on Saturday.

We have cooled down as of yesterday and it was a nice relief.

Happy Friday everyone. Hope you have a nice last weekend in July! Here we are this Friday morning on the trail. My, what long legs we have.

 

Pausing…

I’m pausing until next week in sharing our amazing family time in Walla Walla the last two days of June and first two days of July.

We had a fun time at our 4th of July late afternoon and early evening festivities after tackling our acreage that seemed to get way out of control while we were gone. Mowing and weeding and watering were at the top of the list. We are enjoying sunshine and warmth here in Colville. Yesterday the temps were in the upper 80’s and today we have a forecast of 93. We are on a trend that will take us above 100 in a few days! Yikes. I see lots of watering in the evening and early hours the next several days.

Stay cool y’all!

Current Visitors

This mama deer comes to forage in our yard but leaves her fawn in a neighboring area to our property.

Our state bird has paid us some visits, too.

Mama Deer comes back a few times a day to nibble on all the pretty stuff and some weeds, too.

We had a surprise visitor today who was running back and forth next to our slider and seemed to want to come in an pay us a visit. This was the first time we have seen this critter in our parts, a long tailed weasel!!

Since this critter eats mice and chipmunks we wish it well!

I’ll be missing in action for a few days. I’ll catch up when I can. Have a great last weekend in June!

Early Summer Delights!

A day at the lake. (Thank you, Jamie, for this great photo!)

Look carefully to spot the young quail.

Shade cloth up and doing it’s magic making it pleasant to sit out on the deck.

I love the cool of the mornings and listening to all the birds singing.

We rested from our labors on Sunday but the days prior we did a lot of work outside tackling some weeds, weed cloth and mowing the lawn. We are back to a watering regiment since we haven’t had rain the last few days. Do you have to water?

Have a good week!

 

Hello Summer

Hello from Summers past. This shot above was from Butchart Gardens in 2009.

Time for summer sport camps and lots of time outside in the sun!

For us older folk it means mowing and weeding and watering!

After we did a lot of weeding we took a drive into Kettle Falls in search of a good hamburger.

We were very pleased with the quality of our burgers and with my onion rings at a little joint in Kettle.

Heading back to Colville from Kettle on Highway 395, I took a photo of this beautiful first day of summer view.

We will be enjoying our first Summer adventure the last weekend of June into July. More about that soon.

Happy Summer to all of you.

The Last Three Days…

After pulling some weeds early on Friday morning we were inspired to hit the road and go a little north and then west about an hour to the little town of Republic, Washington.

We had lunch at the Mexican Restaurant in town and then poked around the few shops on the main drag. We found the thrift store in town and then found the park where there was a Farmer’s Market and a Library book sale.

Republic, Washington is a city with an early 1900s look and a heritage based in the mining and logging industries. Originally named Eureka Gulch, Republic had a population of 954 in 2000. Noted for its fossils, natural beauty and recreational possibilities, it is nestled in a valley between Wauconda and Sherman Passes at the intersection of Washington State Routes 20 and 21 in the north central part of the state.

On the way back to Colville.

When we spot the Columbia River we know we are close to home. The weather was great for our quick trip to Republic and back home but things began to turn after we got home.

On Saturday we got some mighty winds and thunderstorms with some hail and rain. At one point the temperatures inside our home dropped five degrees. We also saw that the same roads we had taken to Republic that were clear and dry had snow and slush on Saturday and into Sunday at the highest point on Sherman Pass! Sherman Pass has an elevation of 5574 feet.

On Father’s day we had clear weather again as we headed to church and after we got home from church this was the view we had out our windows.

It didn’t dampen our little Father’s Day meal on Sunday evening with our Colville kids.

Happy Father’s day to our son who is faithful and loyal and cares for his family well.

The two dads got nice gifts and we enjoyed our time together.

Dear got phone calls from our out of town kids wishing him a happy Father’s day.

Happy Father’s Day to Dear. A good Father with integrity and faithfulness.

Today we are scheduled to have our windows washed. We didn’t anticipate all this crazy weather. Hopefully the day will be dry and we’ll be able to enjoy the clean dry windows for a few hours.

Tomorrow I’ll be helping in the kitchen for our Church High School camp and I’ll be gone from home from 6am till after 6pm. I won’t be visiting blogs. Time will tell if I’ll be able to muster for Wednesday Hodgepodge.

Hope you all had a good weekend and have a good week ahead.

Flag Day

Flag Day is a holiday celebrated on June 14 in the United States. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress.

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress replaced the British symbols of the Grand Union flag with a new design featuring 13 white stars on a field of blue and 13 red and white stripes—one for each state

The American flag, also nicknamed as “Old Glory” or “star-spangled banner”, has changed designs over the centuries. It consists of 13 equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing 50 small, white, five-pointed stars. Each of the 50 stars represents one of the 50 states in the United States and the 13 stripes represent the original 13 colonies that became the first states in the Union.

The rest of the photos show some new blooms around our country bungalow.

I brought in some of the white peonies to enjoy their scent and some of the first of the pink peonies, too.

Have a nice Father’s Day weekend everyone.

Busy Start to June

June has started off with full weekends and good family days. Our Grands and their mom enjoyed some sweets with Granny Great. I love this photo of all of them.

Josh and Laura were in Nashville for a business trip and got to enjoy the Grand Ole Oprey.

Our Garage sale started Wednesday with 15 families bringing all their stuff together so we were ready for the early birds on Thursday morning. All the participants signed up for shifts to help at the sale.  When our Grands and their mom came for their shift, Addy and JJ and the other littles were able to cuddle the new pups. The family that hosted the garage sale raise and sell golden retrievers.

We had a very successful sale with many families earning over $200 and some earning a whole lot more. We earned close to $400.

On Saturday I put in some time at the sale before Gramps and I headed to Kettle Falls to watch Addy’s Irish Dance group perform at Town and Country Days. It was hot with limited shade. We were happy that the stage was a covered stage so the kids didn’t have to dance with the sun beating down on them.

Finding some shade before the performance.

It was fun to watch Addy again on stage. When the performance was over they got her changed into cooler clothes quickly so they could enjoy some of the Town and Country festivities.

While waiting for the performance to begin we popped into an establishment next door to the stage to cool down and it was fun to spot this customer.

This guy was part of a group that performed in the Town and Country parade earlier on this day. When you are planning a trip to Scotland, you notice people dressed like this.

After the performance we headed back to the garage sale that was in it’s final minutes to gather up our stuff that didn’t sell and collected our money. We had three days in the sun and I was spent.

Another thing happened this weekend. When we put our A/C on it wasn’t working properly. We’ll have to call today and try to get someone out soon before the real heat starts!

Sunday morning after a good time at church we had a true day of rest.

Hope you all had a great weekend!