Post-Christmas Post

I cannot believe another year has come and gone. I cannot believe I have lived in Eugene for almost two years and the list seems to go on and on. My house is currently a disaster and I'm in the process of trying to decide which project will come first.

However, instead of spending the day working on any of the above, I spent the day first visiting my grandfather and then going for a walk on the Ridgeline trail. It had frozen up high in the hills and the trees were raining ice. It was beautiful. Here are a few pictures from the adventure:

There were so many beautiful things to take pictures of (but its hard to capture how strange "frozen" things look with a camera).

This is a picture of Oregon's favorite weed (the wild blackberry vine) - frozen as frozen can be.

The bushes were all so frozen white that when the wind blew, it rained down frozen white ice (think snow cone dusting from the trees without the snow - just little sticks of ice).

These pine needles were covered with the little bits of ice. Very chilly but very pretty.
The trail itself was very nice and dry. Occasionally spots of ice made the ground white but I am waiting for the weather to get warmer so come back to this particular location. It was beautiful but very chilly.

A day rerouted...

This afternoon it was a little overcast but looked like a nice enough day to go for a small hike or play a bit of frisbee golf. Instead when I pulled in to the parking lot, a nice young man informed me that my car was dragging large parts of plastic as I pulled in. Sure enough... the protector on the bottom of the car was half off the frame.

As a result, I only got in half a hike before I felt guilty and headed back down the hill to my car to see how bad it was. After driving home and calling my grandfather, I realized I could crawl under my car and fix it myself. Should have figured it out earlier but at least its taken care of now. Wasn't able to get much done but at least it wasn't worse.

View from the top of the hill looking down at the parking lot.

Its amazing that it could be so gray in the valley and so beautiful above.

View from the valley (its grayness)... it was beautiful but also so dark.

All in all, it was a pleasant day, but I do wish the car thing would have been resolved earlier.

Settling in for winter...

One of my favorite parts of getting ready for winter is fall but it seems fall has been short-lived this year. I didn't have much time for leaf hunting and as such here is one of the few pictures from my most recent trip to Seattle. Alas, it will be one of the only ones from this fall.
Many changes are in store in the near future. Our branch structure is being reorganized at work and so I am in the process of interviewing for either a new position or a new position. I'm a little worn out with all the changes which has been taking its toll on many of us. I thought this would be a good time to post pictures of where I work. These are the ones that did not make it to our website final design.


I'm not sure how this building in particular came to be one of the larger buildings in Eugene but it certainly is. We don't really have a downtown so to speak like normal cities. There is a little row of shops and restaurants on 5th Street and there is a little cluster of shops in buildings near us off Broadway but many things have left downtown.

This is just for fun and nostalgia. This picture is a view from my favorite Seattle restaurant - India Bistro in Ballard. Margot and I recently had lunch while I was looking for pictures of things to carve (I'm working on a new set of pannels for the living room walls and trying to find something interesting to attempt).

At the prompting of several friends, I am looking at selling some of my photography. I've setup a small flier and now need to read up on metadata and digital methods. Its a little overwhelming. So, we'll see but its a fun idea and something I dearly love.

I've also got several projects going right now that need to be completed this winter and I'm trying to find time and space to do them will all the other changes happening. Right now the short list is as follows:

• use spare yard to create new granny squares blanket (I've been loving the yarn I used on a couple of recent projects and now need to get it completed)
• Finish putting together scrapbook from miscellaneous pictures occupying my living room floor
• Decide on photography business and how much work/ effort I want to put into it
• Finish this silly pile of books on my living room table (one down several to go!)

These are the silly little items on my list. There are several bigger "life projects" that need to happen but I'm still battling them out. I suppose those will be interesting topics for reflection later but in the meantime... winter is certainly on its way.

A post long overdue...

At my mother's request, its time for a long overdue post. Unfortunately, most of my adventures have been limited to frisbee golf, house cleaning, cutting flowers at grandpa's and the like. At some point, I am fairly convinced y'all will be tired of the same pictures. So, I've been a little light on the posts.

That said, this weekend was fairly productive. While I intended to go hiking, I stayed in and worked on projects around the house. Some of the results are posted below:

I'm not sure why but lately I've been on a beading kick. Above are some of the necklaces from this weekend. Lighting was great when I took these but you get the idea.

The necklace above is my favorite recent creation. Its a bit of a copy from a purple necklace I also really like but this one has the teal or aqua. I was surprized at how well it turned out but its will be a staple I'm sure.

This one is a little more rustic made from waxed cord with a couple amber beads and silver caps to the beads. The cord is very thick but it will be a nice casual necklace.

I also finished the edging on the blanket above. I had started the squares earlier and couldn't figure out how I would edge it. I came up with the edge pattern (a modification from another pattern) and finished it this weekend also between necklaces. It was nice to have a productive weekend but I dont' remember the last time I spent so much time on creative projects. All in all it was nice to get these things off the living room table.

Hopefully next weekend I can get outside and go up to the falls to add a few pictures and more frequent posts.

re: A day for remembering...

Memorial day seems to be a day for big sales, to kick off summer or to go camping but that seems to be a thing for the younger generations. I grew up spending time with my grandparents and their generation on Memorial day. And it seems I am still the one who arranges the plastic flowers, helps remove the tags, makes sure the real flowers have water, etc.

My grandfather gets nervous ever year. Maybe its visiting people who have been somewhat forgotten or ignored the rest of the year or maybe its remembering how much has changed in such a short time. So many who used to meet us on Memorial day are now gone and it is good to go and remember God's faithfulness and how much we loved the ones who are no longer with us. We usually don't go on Monday. This year we went Saturday and it was absolutely beautiful. Here are some of the pictures.

This picture is at the Lacombe cemetary. There are several special things about this little place. Its where my grandfather's family is buried just a short distance from Clark-Smith Road where he grew up. Much has changed up here and some things are very much the same.


This is a picture of my great-grandparent's grave. My grandfather was standing to supervise me putting the flowers on and removing the old and weathered ones while telling me stories about his parents.

This is the view from the Gates Cemetary in Crow. It is phenominally beautiful here. Usually you have to open the two horse gates and even then usually it is very quiet here. This time we ran into my cousin's uncle but other than that it was very quiet. Monday it will be busy with people and those tending graves.

My grandma, great-grandma, cousin and their families are here. Some times it is hard to remember. With memories come great emotion.

This mix of real and plastic flowers was a little obnoxious but I tried to keep the roses to a minimum. My grandmother used to always get annoyed and frustrated with my grandfather bringing her roses. Too funny, I still dont think he has any idea.

Very close to my grandmother's grave is my great-grandmother's. Its hard to believe they went just a year apart but their headstones remind me. I remember so many good things they taught me and they gave me so much for which I am thankful. I love them and miss them and am thankful for the time to stop and remember. It would take a volume to remember all God's faithfulness in this place and for that I am also thankful.

Almost summer...

I decided a few weeks ago that I needed flowers. It helped that driving by Home Depot on the way to Starbucks I spotted some of my favorite flowers on the clearance rack. I bought all four and headed to my grandfathers (it was Friday night - my night to beat him at cribbage). Since I only had room for one plant, I gave him the other three which he potted near the garage and they are flourishing beautifully.

I did manage to get mine into a pot but somehow it contracted little tiny bugs and before I could kill them, it killed my plant. So, today I bought replacement plants and added in a purple daisy too. Here are some pictures from the flowers. Hopefully they make it a few more weeks than the last ones did.




These are my favorite flowers (the pincushions on the left) with their new pot-mate the purple daisy.

These are my grandfather's plants. His seems to have made it more than a couple weeks and are growing beautifully. I'm so jealous! It must be the beautiful setting because other than that, I promise we did the same steps.... er.. though he might water his a little more than I seem to remember to.

re: Back to Blogging.. Sort of...

Well, I'm trying to go back to blogging but I've been working a lot lately which means I sometimes forget to do much other than go to work, come home and sleep.

I did have a good adventure last weekend though and got some good pictures out of it. So, here we go back to blogging. Hopefully the weather will one day cooperate and I'll be back on my usual outdoor adventures with pictures and other fun things to share. In the meantime, here's last weekend's adventure.

I went to Portland to buy a box to ship some things to my dad. Then I saw this highway I have never been on and decided I needed to find out where it went. While I was on my way, I stopped to get allergy medicine and won an ipod at Safeway and then continued on my way.



The highway went to a beach near a beach that I knew but I saw a pretty beach that I wanted to explore. So, I turned left to go right (in Oregon beaches on the right require turns to the left and beaches on the left usually require turns to the right.. after all, this is Oregon).

When I turned to the left I found a parking lot and a bridge and path and a path under a bridge that took me to a beach with rocks (see below).

So, I wandered out of my car and off to the beach, just in time for a sunset over the ocean. Very pretty. Too bad it wasn't August because then it might have been warmer. It was freezing! But very beautiful.