merry-go-round

When I was a kid, my town park had a merry-go-round that was a lot like this:

merry-go-round photo

Ours was bigger than this one appears to be.  I think it was a good 12 feet high and the benches were each big enough to hold several kids.  You could lie down on them, too.

It was a really fun merry-go-round but not at all safe by today's standards.  You could get it going round and also swinging back and forth.  You could also swing it too hard and slam it into the center pole.  But, oh, was the motion it made cool!  And it was fun because you had to work together to give it that motion.  I'd like to go on one of those again.

Lewis River Middle Falls

Middle Falls is a really nice place to hang out, especially at this time of year when the water is low.

I was especially enchanted with this view across the river.  I took lots of photos here and had a hard time deciding which were my favorites.

Hiking the Lewis River trail

 After we hung out for a while at Lower Falls, we had lunch and then hiked up river.  These are pictures from our hike along the Lewis River trail.

             

New bridge

         

Lower Falls of the Lewis River

As I said in the previous post, we took a day trip to the Lewis River.  We spent some time hanging out at the top of Lower Falls.  When the water is low, you can walk out on the rocky shelves of the lava flow.

Rock cairns in shallow water

Deep swimming hole

 John hung out at the top of the falls and read.  I walked around on the lava flow to take the photos of him reading.

from behind

 Here you can see how much higher the water gets.  We've been there when the water was part way of the stone steps on the right.  And when it is that high, it is also moving really fast.

Water level can rise to the stone steps on right

Day Trip to the Lewis River

This week  we did a day trip to the Lewis River.  It was a perfect day for it.  The light was so beautiful.  The weather was great.

The water is low now, as it usually is at this time of year.  Makes hanging out at the falls even better since you can go out on a lot of rock shelves (lava flows) that are under water when the level is higher.  I'll post more photos this week and more details...

St Helens from McClellan Point

St Helens from the road

Trail down to the falls

Notice all the bare rocky areas at the top of the falls.  That is where we hung out.

Lower Falls

Short hike to Fairy Falls

We have been too busy with the kitchen to get much hiking in lately.  We did make a quick trip to the gorge and a hike up to Fairy Falls.  The day was beautiful, the trail was quiet and golden light of late summer was spectacular.  So warm and soft...

Rudbeckia Nitida Herbstonne

It is also know as "Autumn Sun", which is an English translation of Herbstonne.  I am pretty sure that is what this is.  We saw it on an errand walk in a few places.  It is 5-7 feet tall.  I thought maybe it was a cone flower because of the shape of the flower but I've decided it's a Rudbeckia.  It's a real beauty!  I want....

Dat da da dah

It's done!  Our kitchen project is done.... this phase is complete.  We are really happy with how it came out and glad to be done.  Getting the stone into the house was a little scary but we were too busy to get any photos of that.

The counter top is really pretty

The top arrives

Cutting the stove hole

looking from the dining area toward the work area

and from the opposite corner

Click here for more photos of our kitchen

These are before photos....

Before this phase photo

The kitchen when we moved in, 17 years ago.

donaleen freaks out

I've been concerned about the granite color.  How is it going to look in the actual kitchen?  Will I have to cover the counter with a tablecloth because I don't like the color?  We had the leftover granite cut into small table tops.  John had the great idea of picking one up and bringing it home to see how it looks.  It looks great!  Ahh.  Glad I don't have to worry about that anymore.

It's actually a little more green than the photo shows.

the Spice Jar Incident

John has not allowed me to participate much in the kitchen project work.  Many things are outside my skill set but some things he is just too controlling about.  Like he wouldn't let me help with the painting.  Mostly I took over all the household tasks while he worked on the project.  I was also his handmaiden, meaning I would hold things, carry things, fetch things, hand him things... very exciting work.

It really came to a head with the Spice Jar Incident.  We decided to get some square spice jar bottles for our most commonly used spices and store them in a convenient drawer in our new island.  When we got them home, he put them away because he didn't have time to transfer the spices or to label the jars.  I said I would do it,  to which he replied my hand writing was not good enough.  Annoying!

I told him he was behaving like a man.  I labeled the jars and transferred the spices.  He had the good sense to tell me  I did a good job.  Men!

Kitchen Island Status

We are nearly done.  Just need our counter top and our stove top.  I am more than ready to be done.  I miss having a life.  It's great having a husband who is such a great craftsman.  Sometimes I wish he wasn't so driven by the project and was a tad less opinionated.

Room of Requirements

We have a room that serves many purposes.  We call it the Room of Requirements (if you've read Harry Potter you will recognize the name).  During our kitchen project it has served as a staging and storage area for the project.  Here it is full with the kitchen project stuff.  There is even more stuff than you can see.  Most of the kitchen furniture was stored in here as well as the Vent A Hood and the cook top.

It has also served as my craft room.  A guest room.  A play room when we were taking care of twin boys.  During rare lengthy summer hot spells, we've slept here.  We haven't had to do that for a few years since we haven't had a long enough hot spell to need to do that.   Here it is set up as a bedroom.

It's really nice having the luxury of a room we can use like that.  Of course, we could just call it the spare room.  But Room of Requirements is so much more fun.