Good Fences Chewelah…

Dusk and the White tail deer appear on our son’s property in Eastern Washington. The photos taken through our son’s garden fenced area makes it look like the deer are penned in but that’s not the case. They are free to roam beyond the fenced garden area and in the fields surrounding his home. Next time I’ll have to show you the animals that caused a traffic jam. 🙂

Joining in with TexWisGirl for Good Fences #33.

I’m still adjusting to the latest time change. How about you? It gets dark here so early now. This morning is the first morning we have a break in the cloud system and I see some nice brightness out my window. Time to go for a walk with the “ladies” again this morning. Tonight we’ll have small group at our house. Hope you have a good Thursday!

Quality Time Together…

Last Thursday Dear and I loaded up the car and headed East to enjoy some quality time with our kids. Our son-in-law Andrew wasn’t given time off of work to be able to join us and we missed him dearly.

On Friday (Halloween) we had a great hike on and above our son Dan’s property.

Our sons, Dan and Josh.

A Selfie from Josh and Laura.

Our daughter Katie and daughter-in-love, Laura.

Laura took this photo of Katie on our hike with her phone.

We had some great views and enjoyed lots of fall color.

My son shared some apples from his trees with the deer.

We enjoyed hiking, shooting, shopping, eating, and playing games together. We marvel at the world God created for us to enjoy and the people He has put in our lives to love and encourage us on our journey.

Dear and I stayed at a farmhouse close to our son’s home so the kids could enjoy staying up late and sleeping in while Dear and I tucked in earlier and woke up early each day. On Saturday morning all the kids came over to the farmhouse to enjoy a meal that Dear and I prepared for them. We bought some local made sausages and Dear made his fabulous Swedish pancakes and we added eggs to round off the meal.

Later on Saturday Dan and Jamie made us their famous fish tacos with their home made cabbage salsa. Dinner was so delicious. I’ll share the salsa recipe soon on Mennonite Girls Can cook. I’m so sad I didn’t take one photo of all the good eats we had.

We enjoyed three sunsets in Eastern Washington.

Dan and his girlfriend, Jamie.

Before we headed back over the Cascades to Western Washington we enjoyed brunch together.

We consider any time we are able to spend with our kids quality time.

I’m linking this post to ABC Wednesday for the letter Q. Thank you to Denise Nesbitt and the ABC crew.

Q is for Quality time spent together with family.

The Barn Collective

We just returned home from Eastern Washington where we saw some great barns. This wasn’t the kind of road trip where I could yell “STOP” around every corner to take a photo. We were headed over the mountains to spend quality time with our adult kids. Here’s the little barn that is on our son’s property.

I’m catching up at home as we just arrived back yesterday at five in the afternoon, in the dark, in rain showers. The time change always throws me for a loop and soon it will be getting dark at 4:30 in the afternoon. That always takes some getting used to. Hope you all had a good weekend. I’ll get my post from our time in Eastern Washington ready to go tomorrow.

Joining in with Amy at Rose Street Reflections for The Barn Collective. Click on over to see some great barns from around our world.

InSPIREd Sunday…

St. Mary of the Rosary on Main Street in Chewelah, Washington. The first two photos were taken on Halloween and the third photo down was taken on a trip we took to Eastern Washington in the summer of 2012.

Linking up to InSPIREd Sundays hosted by Beth and Sally.

I might not be able to visit until I get back to Western Washington and I have a more consistent Internet connection. Happy November everyone!

Horsin Around…

We’re having a good time in Eastern Washington and I’ll share all about it when we get home again, home again, jiggety jig. Beautiful colors, wonderful family and lots of good eats!

These photos are from our Halloween Hike where we saw some scary evidence of bears in the vicinity. Hope your Halloween isn’t too scary! We’re ready to welcome the wonderful month of November…

Signs from England

We saw some great signs when we were in England. Pubs and Inns have some great unique signs.

This one really cracked me up…how fresh can Lobster be from Canada to Windsor, England? I suppose it can be flown in the same day but the sign still had me smiling.

Some signs around this old house are that the weather is turning on us. Today we filled a yard waste bin with leaves and it’s really just the beginning of the raking season. We are looking forward to a few more soccer games with the Seattle Sounders and since we came in 1st place overall for our MLS season we are really hoping to be able to be in the final game for the MLS championships. If that’s the case that game will be here in Seattle on December 7th! It would be pretty sweet to celebrate our Seattle Sounders 40th Anniversary year and my 40th wedding anniversary with a MLS championship on the same weekend. Hope you were able to follow that.

We get to spend some quality time with our adult kids this weekend and we’re really looking forward to that. If I’m scarce on the internet you will know why. We will be busy eating fish tacos, tomato rice soup, Swedish Pancakes, my mom’s roolyet and besides eating together we will be shooting at pumpkins and other things…

What are your plans for the weekend?

I’m linking up with Lesley for her Signs, Signs; a weekly meme of interesting, funny, ridiculous and unexplainable signs. In the future I hope to post more unique signs.

We Whispered a Fond Adieu…

It’s no secret around this Old House and my blog that Dear and I are very fond of traveling to Great Britain. This is my fond farewell post of our latest travels back in July.

Our final two days were spent just outside of Windsor. On our final full day we spent some time on a boat trip on the Thames, a walk across the bridge to Eton and shopping on High Street in Windsor. Here are some photos to show our adventure.

We saw a few loaded boats with students learning to row as we started off our river tour and then we came upon this scene…

Oops, looks like they need a little more schooling on rowing properly.

On our way back we saw the kids bailing the water out of the boat!

After our lovely cruise we took a walk across the Thames on this bridge to explore a little of Eton.

After all this cruising and walking it was time to find a spot to eat…

We chose the Duchess of Cambridge.

After we were full and satisfied we did some souvenir shopping in town.

Here’s our one and only Selfie that we decided to take outside the Selfie London store on High Street!

This was a shop I had to check out since I’m quite a fan of T.J.Maxx in the U.S.A. I was happy to find a souvenir nicely priced.

The Crooked House was a restaurant that served coffee and Afternoon Tea. They advertise that they are Royal Windsor’s only tearoom.

Windsor is another town that I wouldn’t mind re-visiting.

I took this picture as we left our hotel on the way to Heathrow to fly home. Why yes, I do hope to come back soon! Toodle Pip!

Windsor Castle

This time around on our trip to Jolly Old England Windsor Castle was our only tourist attraction that we had to buy tickets for and to que up for. It was worth the lines and the hoard of people milling about. Photography is not allowed inside the castle but you can click away on the grounds of the castle. We were also treated to a changing of the guard during our time there. At Windsor this event is not as grand as at Buckingham Palace. You can check online to see the scheduled days and times for this event. Windsor is a great town to get the flavor of the Monarchy without the sea of humanity you find in London.

Since I’ve shown some fences and walls and gates in my post on Windsor Castle I’m linking up to

Good Fences #30 at Run*A*Round Ranch and TexWisGirl.

N is for Neckwear ~ The Bear in Oxford

Dating from 1242 The Bear is the oldest Pub in Oxford. It was fun to see it featured in the latest season of “The Amazing Race”. There is another pub in Oxford that also claims to be the oldest. I’ll let them duke it out.

The Bear is home to a rather impressive yet random collection of neckties. Visitors from around the globe have contributed to the collection. They are displayed in a room off the main entrance and you can see that the display continues onto the ceiling.

I was stumped to come up with an offering for the letter N until I remembered this pub that we stopped into after a long day of walking and sight seeing in Oxford in July. It has very low ceilings and a very narrow steep staircase to the toilets. I can’t imagine someone having a few too many going up and worse coming down those steep steps.

I’m linking up to ABC Wednesday with the fine originator, Denise Nesbitt and her trusty team that keep things going…

The Balm We Needed…

After our one bad hotel experience the Oakley Court in Windsor was the balm we needed to end our time in England on a very good note!

Oakley Court is situated along a stretch of the Thames known as Water Oakley. It was first shown on maps around 1800 and the name appears to originate from Cornish Breton in which it appears as “Warhta Eog Lee” – The Upper Salmon Place.