Open House in April

We had a very busy weekend and full to the brim Sunday.

Back in the end of 2021 we invited several folk from our church to come over for a Happy New Year get together on January 3rd of 2022. We had to cancel that event because of snow and icy conditions with a promise to reschedule when our front area would be safe for walking without anyone breaking a hip on the ice! Well that day finally arrived and we rescheduled the event for April 3rd!

Twenty Five folk from our church stopped by after church for food and fellowship. It was a houseful with all possible seats filled in three different rooms. The food was enjoyed and I forgot to take one photo of the spread! We had pulled pork sliders, coleslaw (Kathy’s recipe without mayo that you should try, delicious), Vinegret (Russian Beet Salad), baked beans, and Applesauce Spice cupcakes for dessert. Some folk went back through the buffet line for thirds so we knew the food tasted just fine.

Everyone left by 3pm and then our kids and grands came over for leftovers at 5:30. We prayed that our food would be enough to feed all and it did with lots to spare. Thank you Lord.

Not expected at all but fun to receive these hostess/host gifts from some of the folk who came.

From sweet Diana, my trusty helper in the church kitchen.

From Gene and Marilyn, a newer couple who moved to Colville from Southern California.

Soup cozies for Dear and me.

From Gordon and Christine long time residents of Colville who host our Monday evening Bible Study.

A good day with a promise kept.

Happy first full week in April everyone!

Smell the Hodgepodge

Time for Wednesday Hodgepodge where Jo comes up with the questions and we come up with the answers. Thank you Jo From This Side of the Pond.

1. What are some memories you associate with spring?

Strawberry Stands in Southern California. Fresh strawberries right from the fields were so juicy, sweet and delicious! Both of our grandchildren were born in the Spring and that is a very special memory being at the hospital waiting to hear about their entry into this world. Addy was born on the first day of Spring. Easter celebrations are also high on the list of things I associate with Spring. Easter is a favorite of mine to celebrate with joy. After we moved to Washington State a trip to the tulip fields in April make for a wonderful visual picture of Spring!

2. April showers bring May flowers…was that saying proven true where you live? Snapdragons, anemones, carnations, lilacs, sweet peas, tulips, lily of the valley, orchids, roses, gardenias…which one on that list is your favorite May bloom?

If I have to choose one I’ll say lilacs!

Here’s a lilac memory from April 2010 of my niece and grandniece at Descanso Gardens in Southern California.

3. What are your top three distractions and how do you deal with them?

Noise, Empty chatter, devices as in smart phones.

If I can’t get away from the noise I have my headphones.

If I can’t get away from the chatter I try to tune it out. I do tend to sigh when the chatter stops.

Devices, I turn them to silent, or turn them off.

4. Do you eat beef?

Yes!

In the course of a week, how often is beef on the menu?

I would say at least 3x’s a week.

A hamburger, steak, prime rib, or a roast beef dinner…which beef entree would you choose and yes you have to choose. Unless you’re a vegan, and then you may pass.

In a restaurant I would most likely choose Prime Rib if it’s on the menu. If not then I’d go with a hamburger.

5. In what way were you creative during the month of April?

I was creative in planning, organizing, recruiting, cooking and serving 58 pastors last Thursday and Friday. We served dinner, a dessert social, lunch and dinner.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

These grabbers are a favorite with our grands. Toys just don’t hold as much interest. They were trying to grab uncle Andrew’s feet.

Round Trip to Canada

On Thursday Marg hosted eight of “the girls” who live out west at her home in Canada for brunch. This event was planned because of my and Dear’s imminent move farther away from the Frasier Valley MGCC’s. The trip that now takes me a couple hours or so will take upwards of six hours in the future. We all contributed to the meal and we were not lacking for anything. I did not get photos of all the dishes we enjoyed. We missed our two Manitoba girls.

Marg’s little granddaughters helped her set the table. They said “we are the little Mennonite girls”. After we got up from the table we went outside to enjoy our sweets.

The day was beautiful and after a little while we got so warm we had to move into the shade. Besides eating we had some heart to hearts and some good laughs sharing around the circle.

A few of us were able to meet up at the #tulipsofthevalley in Chilliwack to enjoy the last few days of tulips in their glory.

We enjoyed swinging with the tulips, too.

Girls just want to have fun!

I left Canada around three and at the border crossing I was picked randomly for a full car search. Oye. I still managed to make it home by 5:30 for which I was grateful.

Hope May is starting well for you.

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.

First Hodgepodge of May

1. Can you tell I’m embracing a Cinco de Mayo theme here this week? Do you like Mexican food? What’s your favorite dish? How about on the side-black beans, pinto beans, refried beans, rice? What about heat-mild, medium, hot? Will you celebrate with Mexican food and drink on May 5th aka Cinco de Mayo?

We embrace Mexican food every week. Most Tuesdays you’ll find us at La Corona sitting at a table served by our favorite waitress, Liliana. When she sees us drive up she heads to the bar to make us our Cadillac Margaritas. We’ve become good friends sharing life experiences together with her. We enjoy medium hot. No plans so far for Cinco de Mayo as we already had our Tequila Tuesday this week. We enjoy Mexican food at home, too. Photo is from a couple years ago before I embraced a new hairdo and my grey. Growing up in Montebello, California in my elementary school days we would have special assemblies and dance the Mexican Hat Dance on Cinco de Mayo.

2. Ever been to Mexico? For work or holiday? Love it or no? If you haven’t been is this a place you’d like to visit? Can you speak Spanish?

Surprising that even though we grew up in Southern California Dear and I have only been to Mexico once to pick up Saltillo floor tiles (a type of terracotta tile) with my cousin and his wife who were building a home. It’s referred to as the perfectly imperfect tile. This was not a vacation in any stretch of the imagination. We are happy to have made it to Tecate and back alive to talk about it. Part of the story involves us getting a ride by the Tijuana police back to the border.

3. What’s one thing you may accomplish this month?

I know that this month I’ll be getting a large part of my quota in of visiting family. We will head east to visit Addy and her folks again and then I will fly south to see my dear old pop for his 94th birthday and see as many siblings and nieces and nephews that I can fit in and who have the time to visit with me.

4. If you were mayor of your village, city, or town, what’s one thing you’d like to see changed, done away with, revamped, or accomplished? Is serving in public office something you’ve ever seriously considered?

If I was mayor of my village I’d space out city projects so that every major street in town wasn’t torn up at the same time. No interest whatsoever in serving in public office, thank you.

5. What’s something that may be popular, but that you just don’t get?

Green “healthy” smoothies.

6. Can’t let this week slip by without mentioning Thursday May 4th is Star Wars Day. As in ‘May the 4th be with you’ ahem. Are you a fan of the Star Wars series? Exactly how much of a fan are you? On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being ‘I’ve seen every film, own the action figures, might have dressed as Darth Vader for Halloween one year’, and 1 being, ‘what’s a Vader?’ -where do you land?

Well we embraced the series back in the day. Our middle son always had little figurines of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in his pocket. I still have those in one of my china cabinets to give back to him. On the scale, I’ll say 3. And…just to name drop, we were in a small group with George Lucas’ sister in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

7. Scroll back through your blog posts and in three sentences or less tell us the general theme of your fourth blog post. Does it still ring true today? Is it a topic you re-visit on your blog from time to time?

My blog is about all the things I enjoy and wonder about. What I see in the world around me and who I see it with. It’s always been heavy with photos because I’m visual. My fourth post dated March 5, 2007 was a devotional about Trusting and Obeying. Yes, it still rings true and I post devotionals occasionally and Sunday Hymns every week. Jesus will always be a part of my blog since He has saved me and leads me on in my life.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Today Dear and I enjoyed some time at Roozengaarde Gardens in Mt. Vernon enjoying the end of Tulip season there. My photo at the top of the post and this one above was taken at the gardens. I’ll be publishing a few posts of all the beautiful tulips we enjoyed soon.

Linking up with Joyce at From This Side of the Pond for Wednesday Hodgepodge.

Fences with Flowers…

On my neighborhood walk in the Spring these are the flowers and scenes I see with different fences.

The start of my walk on this sunny morning is from the front of our home on the drive that leads out to the neighborhood. That’s our pear tree on the left at the beginning of the drive. Me and my shadow…

This is the first lilac that I pass along my route with white plastic fence sections you can buy at the big box hardware stores.

At the middle of my walk I see these beautiful rhododendrons against a wooden fence. I want to buy one of these varieties for my yard.

Tulips blooming with a wooden fence in the background across the street from the pretty rhoddies.

Home again, home again, chain link fence. This is the back of our property that happens to back up to the street. Our house is backwards where all the other houses in this neighborhood face the street we turn our back on it! We fool a lot of new delivery people. Our home was the first one in this neighborhood tract. Our old house used to be a nursery with no properties around it at all. The streets and the rest of the neighborhood were added when whoever owned this old house sold it for development.

I’m linking up with TexWisGirl for Good Fences. #108

Lunch in La Conner and Tulips!

This post is mostly about tulips and daffodils but we ladies (Mennonite Girls Can Cook) did enjoy lunch in La Conner after we tiptoed through the tulips and daffodils. So I’m linking to ABC Wednesday for L is for Lunch with the ladies in La Conner! Thank you to Mrs. Nesbitt and the ABC team!

Seven out of ten of the girls were able to meet up for a few hours in the Skagit Valley of Washington State. Six of the girls had to cross the border from Canada into Washington State. I live in Washington State so I just drove North for a little over an hour to meet up.

You can call these rows of tulips but since we are on the letter L we can call them lines of tulips.

When us girls are together there are lots of photos taken.

Such lovely landscapes!

You can look at lots of varieties of tulips at the gardens open to the public like Roozengaarde and Tulip World.

Other flowers besides tulips are planted in the gardens. These lavender colored hyacinth blooms are so pretty paired with yellow blooms.

We love each other and laugh a lot when we get together.

I’ll add my Bible verse for the letter L…

You will encounter lots of mud if you want to walk out to the fields of tulips or daffodils so mud boots are a good idea to lug with you and make sure you bring a plastic bag to put them in when you are done and put your clean shoes on.

It really is amazing to have this area in Washington State to enjoy and to rival the tulip production of Holland.

Barns, Daffodils and Tulips!

A little road trip to meet up with my girlfriends from Canada to see the tulips and daffodil fields in Mount Vernon yielded an added photo op with barns in the distance, emphasis on in the distance. I’m linking up to the Barn Collective #25 at Rose Street Reflections. Thank you Amy!

Hope you didn’t have to squint too hard to spot the barns! Next time I’ll show the ones I got closer to without any flowers in the foreground!

Have a wonderful Easter Week everyone!

June Photo-A-Day Finale

I’ll be headed to Portland, Oregon for a wedding early on Saturday morning so I’ve decided to finish up all of the remaining photos from Kati’s June Photo-A-Day challenge and post them today.

You can click over to Kati’s Little Corner of the World and see more photos for the challenge.

22. Green

23. Pair

It’s always a joy to see this pair of boots in the house when we wake up because we know our son Daniel has made it safely across the mountains to visit us.

24. Hat (oops #24 was Hot not Hat!)

I think a lot of people could describe these young men as “hot”. My favorite branch of our military. I have just a little bias since our son-in-law is a Marine. They always look so sharp in their uniforms!

25. Cold

From my nephew and new niece’s wedding on a Blueberry Farm last summer.

26. Thermometer

Our thermometer showing a very hot day for us here in the Pacific Northwest

27. Fruit

Our blueberry bush last summer. They are at the very green small stage so far this year.

28. Yellow

April Tulips in the Skagit Valley of Washington State

29. Grass

Our son Josh with the green grass of the Cotswolds behind him from September of last year.

30. Looking Up

“…I will lift up my eyes…”

I’ll be coming around to visit your photos later on Sunday or early in the week.

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Tag Archives: Tulips