Tag Archives: Mount Vernon Washington State

Tiptoeing Hodgepodge

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Jo From This Side of the Pond is back this week a new set of Wednesday Hodgepodge questions!

1. What puts a spring in your step these days? 

Getting small and large tasks accomplished.

2. April 2nd was National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. Did you celebrate? Do you like PB and J? If so how do you like yours? What’s your favorite kind of jelly?

No peanut butter celebrations here in the past week. Yum and yes to PB and J. Toast with peanut butter and honey is a favorite. When enjoying PB with jam give me raspberry or strawberry please.

3. What’s a memory you associate with spring flowers?

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The Skagit Valley Tulip festival in Washington State and visiting Roozengaarde farm and garden in Mt. Vernon, Washington.  Skagit is the county where you find the towns that grow tulips in abundance. We’ve enjoyed tulip farms and tulips in Mt. Vernon and La Conner.

4. Three things on your spring bucket list? Do you have a spring bucket list? If not pretend you do. 

  1. Drop some pounds.
  2. Travel over to the ‘coast’.
  3. Start mowing the lawn again.

5. One place you will travel this spring? (It might be Europe or it might be the grocery store)

Waiting on our passports which needed renewing so no out of country trips this Spring. We will for sure travel south to Spokane for shopping at the big box stores. Hopefully (see #4) we will get a trip to the other side of the Cascades on the books.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Speaking of the tulip festival…

You don’t have to go all the way to Amsterdam to enjoy tulips galore.

Speaking of Yellow Hodgepodge

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My sisters in a field of daffodils in Mount Vernon, Washington State. We enjoyed a sister weekend back in March of 2016. I think it’s high time we had another sister weekend!!

It’s Wednesday and that means it’s time for Wednesday Hodgepodge! Thank you Jo for the questions and the link-up!

1. It’s National Popcorn Day-my favorite! Are you a fan?

Yes

Sweet or salty?

Both. Give me some good Garrett Chicago Blend, cheddar and caramel!

A good or great movie you’ve seen recently (at home or in a theater, either one)? 

We haven’t watched many movies recently. I can’t remember the last time I was in a theater. We did watch ‘The Blind Side’ recently and it was good.

Some ‘great’ movies we’ve watched in the past: Fiddler on the Roof, Sound of Music, Lord of the Rings.

2. What’s something you didn’t realize was going to take so much of your time as an adult? 

Preparing all the things for the Tax man! We are now at a stage of life that this is not daunting anymore.

3. Your favorite yellow something? 

Daffodils, the flower that makes me smile because it heralds Spring!

4. Why do you write? 

I write to bring clarity to my jumbled thoughts. Things become clearer to me as I write. My thoughts can be so unorganized but when I write them out they make better sense. Writing out prayers is a good exercise for me.

5. Share a favorite memory associated with snow.

Christmas 2020 we had snow that was just right for building a snowman. Our whole family enjoyed creating Ami the Amish Snowman!

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Happy Birthday to our firstborn son! He is God’s unique creation. He’s a great son, husband, brother, uncle, friend and boss. A great encourager who is giving, kind, dependable and hardworking.  We are so thankful to God that He gave you to us and that He saved you and continues to lead and guide you. We love you Joshie!

The Weekend

On Saturday we arrived to watch our grands at 8:00am and said goodbye to their mommy and daddy at 8:30. After playing for awhile boredom set in and since it was still drizzly outside we pulled out the Play Dough for some creative endeavors.

The sun broke through so after cleaning up the dough we bundled up for some outdoor time.

Our son rigged up a way to add a second swing so JJ and Addy could swing at the same time. It’s ingenious and we enjoyed singing lots of songs like Old MacDonald, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Jesus Loves the Little Children, 6 Little Ducks, The Wiseman Built His House Upon the Rock, The B-I-B-L-E, The Muffin Man, This Little Light of Mine.

Off the swings and into the sand.

Sand is nice but mud is muddy.

We played until it was time for lunch so we kicked off as much mud as we could, washed up our hands and got lunch ready.

Hide and Seek, A non Easter Egg Hunt, pretend play in Addy’s room and then it was time for a relaxing time watching Pippa the Pig until Mommy and Daddy arrived just before nap time. We said our goodbyes and headed home with our trailer.

We decided to have an early dinner at our non-favorite Mexican Restaurant in Colville. It was fun to see a couple of our friends there and my cousin with her family. It was good to catch up with them.

Later in the day our Daughter-in-law on the Coast sent these beautiful images with the snow geese congregating in Mount Vernon, Washington State.

Thank you Laura for sharing these amazing captures with me and letting me share them.

Our Sunday was quiet. We had a guest speaker at church and then we bumped into a couple from church and had lunch with them in Kettle Falls. Home again for more quiet looking out the window at hail, snow, hail and rain. Very undecided weather. Looks like we’ll have a lot more mud to deal with for a while.

Hope your weekend was good.

Daffodils from the Past

Back in 2010 Dear and I drove north from our former home in Kenmore Washington to see the daffodils. Neighboring fields will be full of tulips come April.

I didn’t find any daffodils in the stores yesterday. I did find a bunch of tulips but instead of bringing them home they found a different home.

We are off to grand sit. There will be lots of round and round today. Have a good Saturday.

Tea and Tulips

We had a great escape on Saturday running away from the storms and catching some blue skies. There was lots of wind that whipped our hair around. I’ll fill in the blanks about our tea and tulip time gradually this week. Lots to do around here and my brain is too tired for too many words. The men folk got a lot accomplished while we played. God bless them. Tomorrow is another big day in the packing world. Hope all of you are doing well.

Grey and Weathered Barns

These photos were taken on December 11th on our way to La Conner for an overnight. We drove some back roads from Conway to Skagit City. Skagit Valley is known for their Tulip Festival and Daffodils, too. Next time I’ll share the red barns.

Linking up with Tom The Backroads Traveller for The Barn Collective.

We’ve been so happy to have two sunny days in a row here in Western Washington. Today I enjoyed a walk along the Burke Gilman Trail with my friend Beth after church. This week I’ve been getting out between rain showers to continue pruning our apple tree. I can only do a little at a time, just as much as my neck can take. It’s a looking up kind of job. It was nice to do the pruning in the sunshine yesterday and today. In the photo above the branches that are growing straight up still need to be cut.

The work on our master bath continues with forward progress but we are still weeks away from completion. We’ve picked the tile for the shower and all the fixtures. We also have the flooring chosen. The electrical is done. What’s going on at your house?

Skagit Valley Barns

These photos were all taken on our way to Roozengaarde Garden on May 2nd to see the tulips.

I’m linking up to The Barn Collective with Tom the Backroads Traveler.

Dear pressure washed the deck and part of the drive and put up our patio covers on Friday. Now we are ready to bring the patio furniture down from the loft in the garage. That will happen once we have a dry spell again. We continue our quest to go through boxes of records to sort and shred. Our major Spring project is to let go of a lot of stuff! Our kids will reap the benefit of not having to do it for us! If you are a mother and are visiting here I hope you have a very grateful and peaceful Mother’s Day!

This is a side by side of our daughter-in-law when she was a baby and our granddaughter a couple weeks ago. Addy’s mommy will be celebrating her first Mother’s Day tomorrow. Happy Mother’s Day Jamie! You are a great mommy for little Addy!

Barns in Tulip World

When we travel to Skagit Valley to see the tulip fields we get the added bonus of seeing some barns along the way.

I spy myself taking this photo in our side view mirror!

The purpose of our trip to Skagit Valley was to visit the gardens at Roozengaarde and the bonus were the views along the country roads.

A horse beyond the tulips out of focus but the tulips were the focus of this trip.

I’ll leave you with this masterfully taken selfie of me and Dear. I have a lot of work to do on my selfies, yes?

Our Saturday is a mix of tweaking, painting, sorting, recycling, and trashing. I’ll have a few hours break at noon for soccer south of downtown Seattle. What’s on your agenda?

Linking up with Tom the Backroads Traveler for The Barn Collective.

Tulips in Borders

We were happy that we had a nice window of sunshine on May 2nd to enjoy this years tulip display even though it was in it’s very last days. The tulip festival usually runs the month of April. This year there was a late start to the blooms because of our winter weather so they extended the festival through the first week of May. So much beauty in living color.

We had a crazy weather day yesterday. The day started with beautiful sunshine and the temps climbed up to 78 and then just before 4pm the skies darkened and we had a thunderstorm event across our region with lots of lightning. One of the lightning strikes was right over our home and it was so loud! The rains came down in buckets and some trees and power lines came down, too. We have power but a good amount of folks lost power. The news called the event “the biggest severe weather day in decades”. Things are a lot milder today. Spring is unpredictable.

Our weekend looks to be quiet again which is a good thing because the end of the month will be busy with travel for both Dear and me. Got this sweet collage texted to us from our daughter-in-law with Miss Addy enjoying the sunshine on their porch. These photos were taken on May 4th.

Oh how we love this little girl. What a blessing she is from God to our whole family. Have a good Cinco de Mayo and first weekend in May everyone!

Zoom In to Tulips…

So many beautiful varieties of tulips and I’ve only shown you some of them. More coming soon.

Wednesday we managed to mow half the lawn and then finished up this morning. We had another sunny day today up until about 3:45  and now we are having a few thunderstorms roll through. Dear and I picked up Katie today and headed to the Seattle Japanese Gardens where Katie enjoyed a Japanese Tea Ceremony course for one of her college classes. She wore a tank top today! Our warmest day to date this year.