Bread?

Mom and Pops made me put in this post!
Question:
What happens if you forget to add the yeast to a loaf of bread?
Answer:
Um... you get bird food! The only problem was even the birds weren't interested.
Oh well I guess I'm not quite perfect yet!

Splitting wood and trimming a tree

Pops and Dave have a constant job of getting firewood ready for the furnace. Here they are splitting wood to stack. We use a wood burning furnace so it saves lots of money but is quite a bit of work.

Randy needed to borrow the splitter so the guys hurried to get the wood done before Joel took it to him. See the leftover snow? Will it ever be spring?

Pops has kept this Alaskian Cedar trimmed but it has gotten out of hand the last
couple of years so we started cutting.

We hauled several loads to the burn pile.

Wola! Here it is! Cute huh? The TREE!

Uncle Ron Brownells 80th birthday

I was determined to get some fun pictures for the blog when we went to Enumclaw to celebrate Uncle Ron's 80 birthday. I got so wrapped up in visiting and enjoying people that I am disgusted with the results of my photo efforts. I didn't get much so please forgive me! This first picture is Aunt Alice showing my parents the book their kids made for Ron showing his life. It was so nice!


Whose birthday was this? The only picture I have of Uncle Ron is this one with him smiling in the background! Mom told Kay that she would never fill Dave so she made this plate to be funny. Yes he ate it and loved it!
All of the Brownell kids and their spouses were there for Sunday dinner plus Aunt Cathern and Beth Harston. Others of the Harstons stopped by. Then of course us, my parents, uncle Leo and my cousin Peggy.
They had a wonderful lunch set up buffet style! We went downstairs to eat. It felt like Thanksgiving with so many there.
Ron and Alice had no idea any of this was happening. As a surprise for Rons 80th birthday all the kids from out of state flew in . Gayle and her husband invited Ron and Alice to go with them GeoCacheing (that is where you use your GPS to find things that others have hidden. It is a fun sport that is done all over the world now.) and then to breakfast. When they got there the Cache was their family. They were at a school and as they approched them Ron thought it was a bunch a high school kids. They were so shocked and happy.
On Saturday they all went to the Seattle temple. It was so fun because I had the assignment to be first follower on their session. I knew about the whole plan but had to act dumb because we were all coming as another suprise the next day.
Uncle Leo and his daughter Peggy came with us. They were visiting with Lyle's wife Anna.
Dave and Lyle were visiting. Lyle was just released from the Stake Presidency a couple of weeks ago. He said he hadn't been called to the nursery yet but I assured him it would probably be coming... or perhaps cub scouts instead.
The girls fixed the best meal and had everything so nice. Things were so organized that I am sure every one of them have been Relief Society presidents!
And here are the siblings! We only wish the rest of the family could have been there! It was a wonderful birthday and we were so happy to be invited. We look foreward to more birthdays.

A fun day!

Today we decided to have a fun day. We went up past Mt Vernon to Samish Island and bought fresh oysters. Then mom and I cooked them for dinner. We ate the whole quart! They are so yummy!!! I even made Aunt Sharons tarter sauce.
These guys are doing some bird watching. We have been figuring out all the different names and type of birds that use our bird feeder. It has been a lot of fun.
Earlier today we went up to Fir Island to see the Snow Geese and Swans. We were certainly not disappointed! We saw thousands of Snow Geese all flying in special patterns across the sky leaving the area to fly north. Mom and pops said they have never seen anything like it, it was so neat. After that breathtaking experience we saw a field of Trumpet Swans that were so close to the road we couldn't believe it. They didn't seem to be bothered by us watching them. Pops said he had never been so close to a whole flock before. We also saw 14 Bald Eagles. They were mostly on the ground and only one or two together. We saw a few Blue Heron and the sad thing about the whole day was that I forgot my CAMERA!!! I would have had such wonderful pictures if I had remembered to bring it!!! It was still a fun day.

We thought it was spring!

We were getting so excited because each day the sun was shinning and it looked like our long winter was over. Even these daffodils in our yard thought it was spring. THEY WERE WRONG!!
Saturday it started snowing again (much to our dismay)... but Sherilyn, Joel and Seth seemed to be excited and built us a new snowman!
Pops, Joel and Dave spent their time putting together this shed. They are still thinking that spring must be close because this is a shed for their garden tools and supplies. They put it down close to the garden so the rototiller and hoes will be handy. (Just in case spring ever decides to come.)

More projects

Dave is fixing the bottom of the fence so the rabbits can't come under and feast on our garden this summer.
Dave and pops have been doing a few more projects around the place. First they knew it wouldn't do any good to plant peas or anything else with our "pet" deer hanging around so they put up a 7 foot deer fence.
The only problem is the deer fence is up and you can't see it....can the deer see it? I don't think so! We could imagine them or any other animal (including human) just running into it.
See? It is there! It is a nylon mesh..... pretty strong but if you don't see it......

So we bought this ugly floresent flaggers tape and here it is all ready for the deer. Cool huh?
The next project was building stairs in the barn. Before we had the stairs we had to use a ladder. Well a ladder didn't do much good for mom or pops or Dave (who isn't supposed to be on one since his stroke) so this space wasn't very usable. We needed a place to put our food storage and other things so this is great. Except for the 2 big boards they used leftover wood that was in the barn so it was fun to see what they could come up with. Looks pretty good doesn't it?

Remember our buried treasure spot? This is what we came up with. We plan to fix it up as a little sitting area with flowers and a little herb garden. It isn't very level...hummm we'll work on that too. Watch for changes!