Welcome baby Ethan!

Meet our friends Tom and Kathy's newest grandbaby Ethan with his mom Melissa!!



We are thankful for this wonderful new gift from God, joining sister Abby!

Welcome baby Jayton!

Our friends Clayton and Brenda have a new little grandbaby born just this past week, is he cute or what? And Brenda was actually able to extend her stay and be there when he was born. What a tremendous gift.

Sunny sunday brunch

My cousin Julie invited us over for brunch today, as her sister Cyndy, niece Kiesha and grandniece Elleah (all my cousins!!) were visiting from Wenatchee. Turned out to be the prettiest day yet in a week long string of wonderfully sunny days and a great visit with family too.

We had a great meal together and then retreated to the deck and back yard...astoundingly...warm enough to do that. At least the mid-50s with lots of sun.

My cousin Donna:



Her daughter Kathy:



Donna's son Tim and his friend Nina:



Donna's daughter Cyndy and granddaughter Kiesha:



Kiesha w/her daughter Elleah, Uncle Shannon and the neighbors llamas and goats:



Elleah was a bit timid about feeding them, and at one point retreated to Uncle Shannon's arms, but eventually curiosity won out and she ended up feeding sword ferns and lettuce to the critters.





Sadly, my pictures of Julie and her son Jesse were too sunbrightened to use...sorry guys!!

But in Julie's yard, a true sign of spring:



And as we were cruising home along the shore of Black lake we were surprised to see the lake smooth as glass, and fisher's dotting the shoreline, and even a few in boats. You get a sunny winter day here and everyone gets out and about...trying to beat cabin fever I guess.



All in all a great day.

Hope of spring???

A gift left by the former tenants!! Can't wait 'til they bloom! And, yes, that is SUNSHINE, at long last!!

Fiery sunrise

Took this the other morning as I was getting ready to leave, so beautiful!! Later in the day it gave in to rain, but the sunrise was certainly spectacular!!

Snow woes in the mountains too

Just so you know I'm not the only one whining about the snow check this out!

Snoqualmie pass has been closed for days now because of huge snowfalls (more than 10 feet) and avalanches. More than 70 miles of I-90 are shut down, bringing cross state traffic to a halt over that route and backing up traffic for miles and miles. They opened it briefly the other day, had another avalanche that took out a couple of cars (no one hurt, thankfully) and had to shut it right back down.

Officials here say this is costing our economy more than $700,000 an hour because nothing is moving on either side of the state. Yikes! But they don't want to open it until it's safe either even though it is hurting the whole state economically. Better to lose the money than adding to our already high number of avalanche deaths this year.

Theses are official WSDOT photos of the pass and their work to try to clear it. Pretty amazing stuff.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/

And their blog about this whole deal:

http://wsdotblog.blogspot.com/

On top of that one of our other passes, Stevens, has been closed down off and on for last two days, same problems there, loads of snow, bad conditions, wrecks and avalanches.

I've said it before, our winter this year is the worst we've seen in a long time and they are blaming it all on the La Niña weather pattern we are in this year. After two days of rain (finally!) they say we'll have snow again for the next three days. Yuk!