Seis de Mayo Hodgepodge

1. Question day this week lands on Cinco de Mayo. Are/were tacos on your Tuesday night menu? Hard shell, soft shell or just gimme all the tacos? Are you even a fan of Mexican food? Do you like your salsa mild, spicy, or somewhere in between? Margaritas-Frozen, on the rocks, or no thank you? Have you ever been to Mexico?.

No tacos on Taco Tuesday/Cinco de Mayo this year! I enjoy Street tacos (soft shell) but I would eat any taco. Mexican Food is my comfort food, so yes, I am a fan. Spicy salsa or in between not mild. Cadillac Margarita on the rocks please, no salt.

Yes we have been to Mexico before we had children and while we were living in Southern California. We drove to some little village just outside of Tecate, Mexico to pick up tile for the house my cousin was having built. After we got the tile safely back to the U.S. side of the border in a panel van that belonged to Dear’s father we went back into Tijuana (I forget how we got into Tijuana without the van, maybe a taxi) to do some shopping and then we decided we could walk back to the border but the police pulled up and thought we were nuts so we got escorted back to the Border by the local police who befriended us instead of arresting us when they found out my cousin was a Huntington Beach Policeman. It was hilarious to see my cousin sitting between the two policemen in the front seat and Dear, myself and Jeanie were in the back seat of the cruiser.

2. What’s something you may do this month?

Since we are still on stay at home orders I may just finish Jaymison’s First year scrapebook.

3. Tell us what’s happening in your state or town as far as restaurants/salons/parks/beaches/businesses opening up.

Our beaches and parks and golf courses are opened up but other businesses are still on hold until our county can convince the governor that we are an area of our state that has only had one death and our medical facilities have not been stretched so maybe he will okay more services to open up.

How do you feel about it?

I feel that we could be at the stage 2 reopening at this time instead of stage 1.

Are you out and about or hunkered down? Do you wear a mask?

We go to the grocery store about once a week. We do wear masks. Another thing I’m doing is taking the very minimum with me when I go out. A license, credit card, keys and my phone. No purse. I’m using my pockets for my stuff. When I get home I take off the clothes I wore, wash my hands thoroughly, and put on fresh clothing.

4. Mother nature, everybody and their mother, mom jeans, like mother like daughter, soccer mom, mother hen, mother lode, necessity is the mother of invention, stay-at-home mom…pick one and tell us how it applies to your life right now.

Having to come up with meals everyday has made me more of the mother of invention. Although Mother nature is calling me outside a lot to weed and mow.

5. April showers bring May flowers…what’s blooming in your yard or garden today?

A lot of plants are ready to burst forth but these are showing their color first.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

We’re still lighting our star of hope each evening. This star is for our earthly hopes. Our eternal hope is set!

We hope that we can gather together again with our church family and have Communion together again.

We are in a stage that we are seeing and hugging our grandchildren again and that brings us such joy that is hard to explain. Post coming soon.

We hope we can travel to see our “Coast” kids again, soon.

We really miss not being able to go out for Cinco de Mayo or other times when we want to enjoy Mexican food. The two photos above of Katie and Andrew were taken at two different Mexican Restaurants that we have been regulars at. La Corona in Kirkland, Washington close to our Kenmore home was our weekly Tuesday date for early dinner. Our favorite waitress, Liliana, would see us drive up and have our Cadillac Margaritas ready for us. Now that we live in Colville our Mexican restaurant of choice is El Ranchito in Chewelah. We enjoy the friendship we are developing with Hector and Sergio. The photo of Andrew in the birthday hat was taken at El Ranchito. We hope for a time when we can comfortably go out to eat again.

Thank you to Joyce for coming up with the questions for Wednesday Hodgepodge.

Our Backyard Zoo

Today is the last day of April and the final letter for the April A to Z Challenge. Our back acres are a mobile zoo of sorts. The animals come and go as they please. The birds fly in and out.

There are a few other animals and birds who come and go into our backyard zoo that I haven’t managed to get a photo of. It’s always a treat to see someone new show up for a visit. Our yard was totally fenced in when we first moved here but we’ve taken a few sections of fence out for Dear’s shop project so the four legged variety of animals have easy access now.

And that is the finale for the April A to Z Challenge for 2020.

Hope things are well with all of you on this last day of April. Will May bring good news of loosening of the Stay at Home orders? We are hoping for that. We did hear our Farmer’s Markets are opening and that fishing and hunting are also okay with social distancing.

We’re in Hot Water!

So how timely is it that we are on the letter W for Monday April 27th!

We have not had our heat going a lot the last few days which aided our discovery of a noise that was confusing. We heard the noise in one of our guest rooms that is also the grands play room.

We have determined that it is a hot water pipe leak somewhere in the vicinity below this room.

We have a couple call outs to local plumbers and hope to get this glitch addressed soon. I will be calling our insurance company to see about our coverage for this problem. One of the options in addressing this is to go through this floor to pump out the water and repair the leak. If that’s the case it will be great to get rid of this carpet and put some new flooring in this room. Our entire crawl space has a bladder between the floor and the crawl space and that’s where the water has been accumulating. It’s ready to burst! Yikes! We will know more once we get a plumber out to assess what needs to be done. In the meantime here are more water photos from our favorite walks along the beach, Emma Woods in Ventura, California from 2008-2010. The waves of Emma Wood.

God is in control of the waves of the sea and all the waves in our lives, too. If you don’t believe that I pray that God will reveal himself and his power and sovereignty to you so that you can believe.

Happy Monday to y’all. I’ll let you know what the plumber reveals. Makes us thankful for social distancing since hot water and showers are at a premium right now to keep the leak under control.

Off With Your Heads!

On the letter O today and I’m using an old saying to show our tree service chopping or felling two trees we were concerned about on our property. Two Douglas Fir trees came down in a jiffy with the right equipment. The grinding of the stumps took a bit longer.

We didn’t like how this tree was leaning towards our bungalow.

Timber!

Our experienced tree service guy said it was a really good choice to take this tree out as the base of the tree was rotting on the side of the trunk towards our house. We were thankful for that decision. We were only going to have the one in the back taken down until the tree people offered to do this one for half the price since they were on our property with all of their equipment already. They got in a full day of work with good pay and we got two down for the price of one and a half! We are counting our blessings!

There are more photos I’d like to share from the grinding and the chipping but my country broadband is acting up again. I’ll have to also show the wide open spaces we now have with these two trees gone. Dear and our son chain sawed the logs into manageable rounds that have been hauled up to our sons place to be stacked to dry. Our son will have enough wood to keep his place warm next winter from these two trees and then some. We haven’t had to burn wood to keep warm at our country bungalow.

Today is Friday y’all. I know some of us need to remind ourselves each day about what day of the week it is!

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24 (ESV)

A to Z Challenge ~ C is for Colville

C is for Colville. Colville is our newest hometown. We’ve lived here since September 2018. Between hubby and me our first 37 years we lived in Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura County, California. Dear and I were both born in Los Angeles County. We lived our years through high school and college in Los Angeles County. After we were married we ended up in Orange County where our first two children were born. Before we moved to Washington State we lived in Ventura County where our daughter was born. Our next 30 years we lived outside of Seattle in Washington State. And now for our retirement years we are living in the outskirts of the city of Colville still in Washington State.

Here’s a little history about Colville:

The first white man in the area that is now Colville was David Thompson, who came in 1811 to explore the Columbia River for the Northwest Fur Company. A few months later a water route was opened from Astoria up the Columbia through Canadian waters, and overland to the Great Lakes or Hudson Bay. During that first year, nearly 11,000 pounds of furs were reported shipped to the fur markets of London from the Colville area.

In 1825, Fort Colville, named for Lord Andrew Colville, a London governor of Hudson’s Bay Company, was built at Kettle Falls, a few miles west of Colville. The fort functioned as the center of trade in the Northwest. A large farm supplied wheat, oats, barley, corn and potatoes to sustain the personnel at the fort. (Today, both the fort and farm sites are under water, covered by Lake Roosevelt, a part of the Coulee Dam National Recreation Area.)

By 1840, the Hudson’s Bay trading post was processing 18,000 furs a year. When the boundary of the northwest was drawn at the 49th parallel in 1846 and the territory of Washington was established in 1853, Hudson’s Bay Company, being a British company, withdrew from Fort Colville and moved to Canada. The War Department in 1859 ordered a military post built just northeast of the present townsite. The post was called Harney’s Depot at first, then Fort Colville. Four companies of the United States Infantry were stationed there. (This second Fort Colville, located at different places at different times, sometimes confuses visitors.)

The town of Colville was founded in 1882 when Fort Colville was abandoned. The first school, a hand-hewn log building, built shortly after the founding of the town is presently located at the Keller Historical Center within the city limits.

Colville is the county seat for Stevens County. Stevens County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington along the Canada–US border. At the 2010 census, its population was 43,531. As of July 2018, the population was estimated to be 45,260. The county seat and largest city is Colville

These are backyard views of our Country Bungalow in Colville, Washington. We do not live in the city limits of Colville so we don’t have the same services that the City of Colville offers within the city limits.

Colville is a city in Stevens County, Washington, United States. The population was 4,673 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Stevens County.

Here are some random photos that I have of the Colville area (Stevens County).

Our favorite grocery store.

We have a Super Wal-Mart and I’m bonding with this store that has most everything we’d need for living in the country.

The Country Store can fill in the gaps for farmers and other property owners.

This is our road. We are up this road about 2 miles.

We get some interesting creature visitors in the country.

The view out to Colville city limits from our kids’ driveway.

This is Colville mountain with our huge C for Colville and a lit up cross.

Highway 395 coming north into Colville with one of our local farm/produce shops, Front Porch.

When we come down our road to town we have the choice to go south to Colville or north to Kettle Falls.

Welcome here to our Country Bungalow in Colville, Washington. Colville is pronounced, Call-ville!

I could have used the letter C for the COVID-19 epidemic but I decided we are getting enough information about the Pandemic. Diversions can be good when we really have no power to change the big picture. We do have the power to change the little picture by keeping our distance and compliance to the mandates set down to slow the spread of the virus. We will continue at home keeping the faith and praying for the end of this. Looking forward to better days or better yet the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.

February 1st Walk About…

…our snowy backyard.

On Saturday the temperatures were in the upper 40’s and the sun was shining so we decided to walk about the yard and see some of the winter damage. The winds were coming in gusts so we did not walk too close to the trees. The wind was strong enough to down a lot of branches and trees around our area and to cause power outages. Our power stayed on.

Although we have not seen the deer we know by these tracks that they have definitely been in the yard. Their deposits and hoof prints are a lot more visible against the snow.

This tree suffered a lot of damage from the weight of the snow and winds. We have decided that it needs to come down soon. We will miss it. We will have quite a pile of branches from the front and rear trees for our burn pile.

Dear spotted more deer tracks down in the emptied pond.

One or more of the trees on the mountain behind us have fallen. We have a lot of work cut out for us come late Spring and Summer. If you look on the upper photo of the collage above you can see the fallen tree. I zoomed in on the other photos to get a close up.

The photo above shows how the tree split close to the base of the tree.

That blue sky was a welcomed treat!

Our Weeping Pussy Willow is leaning over from the weight of the snow. We hope we can save it. The only color in our yard right now besides the evergreens are these red berries.

It took several tries for me to be able to upload my photos today. The joy of country satellite connections. Oh and speaking of country we have Dish provider for TV. They cut the Fox channel that was televising the Superbowl game so we weren’t able to watch. There were a lot of angry Dish customers. Thank goodness the Seahawks weren’t playing. I was happy to hear that Kansas City ended up winning. Sorry San Francisco fans.

Happy Groundhog Day! I hear we are suppose to have an early Spring. Time will tell.

We had a good morning at church with Communion and a sermon from the book of Hebrews. We enjoyed the grandkids sitting with us and thankfully they were not disruptive. Quiet cuteness! Jaymison was entertained by the singing and watching all those people. Addy hopped from lap to lap. She had her parents, Gramps, Baba and Granny to keep her occupied. She did wonder why she couldn’t have the “crackers” when the gluten free matzah came around for the Communion service. During our benevolent offering which we always have after Communion one of our elementary kids played the offertory on the piano. So sweet that our young people can share their talents in our services.

Has your church gone to gluten free for your Communion services?

October 2019

Country life has taken a very busy turn for us. The first three weeks of October are filled to the brim. It was good to have a nice hour walk with a friend on Wednesday along the trails by the Dominion Meadows Golf Course here in Colville.

Our cousin Jim is here right now and we connected with another cousin in Colville who we’ll have dinner with on Friday while Jim is here. I hope we remember to take some photos. Jim plans to move along in his travels leaving here on Monday.

Our Connection Groups at FBC start up this Sunday for 6 weeks.

Our Third annual family hunting get together is coming up and our “Coast Kids” start arriving on the 11th.

A wedding has been added to our calendar on the 12th of October and we’ll travel to Spirit Lake in Idaho with our kids, Andrew and Katie, for that event.

Dear and I are heading to the Truth Matters Conference in Southern California on the 15th.

After the 19th of October we do have some free days until the 30th of October if anyone feels inclined to have a casual visit. You know who I’m talking to. No more snow in the forecast. But things are subject to change.

My computer time is going to be slim these weeks so if you don’t see me around you will understand why.

Some Spurgeon to close this post…

Always remember this. In common life the wisest thing is the right, straight, undeviating course. The right thing is always the wisest. Sometimes it looks as if it really is necessary to go off the straight line and just take a shortcut. It seems so, but it never is. The take of the shortcut is a book of lamentations from beginning to end. But you need not be a philosopher to discover how you should act under any circumstances. The way to act in every case is to fear God and keep His commandments. Straight Ahead!

Here we go…straight ahead into October and beyond!

U-Pick Corn

On Tuesday afternoon we hopped in the car and drove a few miles north of us and stopped at this farm to pick corn. U-pick 4 for a $1. Part of the sign looks like it washed off but we got the gist of what they wanted us to know.

We found 4 ears we thought looked good and put our $1.00 in the metal box and headed back home.

There’s a story behind me having to take a photo of the photo of me at the corn field. Dear mistakenly took a video of me instead of a photo and my computer wouldn’t let me make it into a photo and I couldn’t upload the video, either. Hmmm.

We cooked 2 ears of corn as soon as we got home and boy was it good and sweet. I called it dessert, delicious. We’ll remember this farm next year and enjoy fresh corn again.

Quote of the day from Sprugeon:

“The way to do a great deal, is to keep on doing a little. The way to do nothing at all is to be continually resolving that you will do everything.”

Encouragement of the day:

If you are finding it hard to get started on a task, try setting a timer for 15 minutes and tell yourself to get after that task for at least 15 minutes. You’ll be surprised all you can get done in that short amount of time and maybe it will be enough motivation to continue.

Have a great 9-19-19!

It started with a Crash!

We marked our driveway for our First Baptist Colville Senior Summer Social. When it was time for everyone to arrive there was no problem slowing down and finding our address since a Sheriff was right in front of our property with his lights flashing because of an accident right at our driveway. The person who caused the accident was in a hurry and tried to pass someone who was turning into our driveway. He ignored or didn’t see our guest’s left blinker flashing and came around them and tried to pass while they tried to turn into our drive. No one was hurt but our guest’s vehicle suffered lots of damage and had to be towed away. That was a bang of a start to our social.

Most of the 31 folks had never been to our home before and we only knew a handful by name.

By the end of the evening we became familiar with many more and enjoyed conversations with a few.

Our back acres proved to be an ideal picnic spot in the evening since the sun goes down behind our mountain at 5:30. Since we were in the upper 80’s or low 90’s being shaded from the sun was necessary.

One of the gals from our church walked about our property with me and identified several plants by name. I was very appreciative of her knowledge. Come to find out she’s a master gardener. She told me how to cut back and what I could pull and what are weeds. I wish I had a pad and pencil on me when she pointed out the plants and named them. Our huge bush is a variegated willow. That one I remember.