Spring Hikes

We started this spring off with some easy hikes to warm up (and wait for the snow to melt on higher hikes). Here are a few of our spring adventures!

Hike to Twin Falls (April)

Hike to Wallace Falls (May)

Chet's Motorcycle Ride to Neah Bay (May)

Urban Hike to Meadowdale Beach Park (June)

Mini Hike to Big Four Ice Caves (June)

We are looking forward to doing some bigger hikes this summer and maybe some backpacking! There are so many beautiful places to go explore in the Pacific Northwest. :)

Baby steps...

I have just completed my second week of work. Primary care is fun, hard and a steep learning curve all at the same time! I am loving my coworkers and enjoying the patients... I'm just continuously realizing all that I have to learn and what I don't know. :) Oh, and I'm learning what it means to go home worrying about a patient and hoping they are feeling better the next day, not ending up in the ER because of something that wasn't apparent yet when I saw them (or something I could have missed!). Oh, the joy of taking on a role with more responsibility... and I'm so thankful for the ability of myself or a triage nurse to call and check in on kids the next day.

One of the things that is now really clear how the emotional up and down of not getting jobs over the last year really was part of God's plan... I'm in a great place, I am enjoying what I'm doing, I am love the people I am working and learning from and I have so much room for growth. Working 3 days a week (which are long days) fits in well with Chet and my lifestyle. And, though the drive is long, so far it is tolerable with books on tape and my bluetooth headset... and I have plenty of time to decompress from the day.

So, overall, things are looking up right now. Still challenging but I'm just going to trust that it will get better and it is normal to go through this, at times, painful growing and learning process.

Oh... and now I have a 3 day weekend with my hubby... certainly can't complain about that!

Changes

So this week has been a huge change for me... I started my primary care nurse practitioner job! It is such a blessing but also such a challenge. I just kind of started off taking patients and asking questions when I needed to other providers. I knew that jumping right in would be hard but I guess I had forgotten the anxiety that starting something new like this can bring.

Today I woke up, a day off after working my first two days, realizing all the decisions I made and things I discussed with families over the last two days. And then my mind went into hyperdrive... did I do this right? did I forget something? what if I missed something? should I see them back sooner? did I forget to chart something? Basically the anxiety started swirling and I was so fixated on looking up things to reassure myself that I didn't do anything major wrong that I could barely answer Chet's questions.

I think that I am once again learning that change is hard for me, especially I'm not sure what I am doing is absolutely right (or reasonably right). I don't want to make poor decisions, I want to be a smart successful practitioner... and that's okay. But I need to be patient throughout this transition... with myself, my mistakes and my rocky growth. And I need to trust that this opportunity is part of God's plan and He is with me through this change... if I just give my anxiety to Him. I can still be thorough but I can't let the anxiety tear me away from relationship with my husband and doing things I enjoy.

Maybe I'm putting this here just to remind myself later when I fall back into anxiety. Maybe I just needed to put things down so I could move on with my day. Either way, any prayers during this time of changes would be appreciated.

Being green...

So, I come up with all sorts of ideas that I would love to do around the house and yard... and luckily I am blessed with a loving husband who helps me out with them! I really wanted to put in a raised bed along the fence where we've been growing veggies... to help improve the soil, hopefully have the soil warm up quicker so that things will grow better... and possibly keep out some of the grass from across the fence.

Chet and I both agreed we'd love to do it in a "green" way... recycling lumber to build it rather than spending $50-60 on new wood. So, we've been search craigslist, soliciting our family and friends and rummaging through out own wood pile. As of this week, we had gathered enough good wood (we kept running into pieces that were too rotten to use) and Chet put this together yesterday!

Area ready for the bed to be put in.

Chet getting the back nailed on.

All put together, just waiting to be filled with more dirt & compost!

I'm hopeful that things will grow well in there. And, if nothing else, it will be easier to pick the things we do get since it is raised up a bit! I've already got some quinoa sprouting in my other bed so I'm getting pretty excited that spring is starting to arrive!

This is just a picture of our dogwood stump... you can see the hole in the center of the 3 foot stump. And we suspect that it just gets bigger as you get down lower. Fun, eh?

Yard Changes!

Though I don't have pictures of everything, we are doing a bit of landscaping in the yard this spring... trying to make things look a little more "put together" and add some plantings. We are now on year 3 of living in this house and I've learned a bit about where things do and do not grow in my yard. Namely, the areas that were beds around the edge of the yard that looked lovely for growing things actually do not get sun! Like, barely at all. Hmm... tried planting veggies there the first spring, sort of tried a second spring and pretty much gave up the third year. So, this year, a shade garden is going to join the edge of the yard... including some more permanent, shrub type plants.

Also, our front yard has been a lovely expanse of mossy grass. I've managed to kill the dandelions so it stays pretty green but it is BORING! And it provides no privacy from the street. I added a few things but, this year, I decided that it needed to be a little more dramatic. So, a few weeks ago, Chet and I started tearing up grass so make front beds. Eventually, it will go across the whole hill in the front but we at least have the part adjacent to the fence all fixed up. I'm so excited for flowers to start growing!

The big, big change of today was our dogwood tree was taken out of its misery. Below was the tree when it looked healthy in May while is was blooming a few years ago.

We took out the other one to build some terraced beds a couple years ago... it was rotten and totally water soaked. We thought this one looked okay. Hmm... till we had it officially looked at by an arborist this spring. Every year, the tree starts to lose its leaves about a month after it blooms and continues to lose them till it looks scrawny and pathetic at the end of the summer. Such a pain! Well, we found out that we could spray the tree multiple times a year for the sum of $150 per year in order to keep it looking sort of okay. And that wouldn't fix the extensive rot in the roots and core of the tree. Hmm... what to do especially as it doesn't appear we'll be moving any time soon. So we decided to say "goodbye" to the dogwood to make room for something more disease resistant and healthy! Maybe a pretty maple that turns bright red in the fall? Any other ideas?

Here is our friend taking down our tree! Strange to have it gone but definitely a good decision to get rid of it... as soon as he cut into it, water started just dripping from each cut! The tree was saturated as well as rotting from the inside out.

Now all we have is a stump for Chet (and maybe a few friends) to muscle out of the ground. Oh, and no privacy from our neighbor's yard! Luckily, they are nice folks... but it will be nice to get a new tree in there soon.

We're excited to see what these changes look like as things start to grow this year... and to get to enjoy a beautiful, relaxing yard all summer long. :)

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Chet and I decided, despite him having to work tonight, to celebrate St. Patrick's day with a Americanized Irish meal. :) A little soda bread, potatoes, cabbage, carrots and corned beef. Oh, and the not-so-Irish dessert of lemon bars. We ate far too much but it was quite delightful.

Whole wheat soda bread... from one of my favorite food blogs, Finding Joy in My Kitchen.

Slow cooker corned beef and veggies. Yum!

Meyer lemon bars. I kept stumbling upon lemon bar recipes tonight as I was looking at websites and I had a bag of Meyer lemons in the fridge just waiting to be used. I took it as a hint that I should make my sweet hubby a treat! They are delicious!

Catch-up Post!

Here are a few other things that have been going on recently.

First of all, I have to say that I'm very proud of my husband... I give him a project and he always figures it out! We have had the below hole in our wall since we moved in. I think, though the previous owners had remodeled quite a bit, they must have just run out of time... since there was a large hole with a shelf in it.

So Chet transformed it into this!

Also, Adam and Brenda got us out and about... we went to Benihana for the first time ever! The cooking was very entertaining and the food was delicious. I especially loved the onion volcano they do.

Then, we've also gone snowboarding a few times within in the last few weeks. One of the days we went up, there was about 2 feet of fresh snow! It was awesome (and exhausting because we kept getting stuck in deep powder). We even ran into a friend of ours, Erika, and did a few runs with her.

We'll see what spring brings... I finish my current job in less than 2 weeks and start my new job on April 4th! I think this year is going to bring many changes and we are excited to see where things are going next. ;)

Flower and Garden Show

I'm a little slow on posting about what has been going on lately... and then discovered that I had a month's worth of pictures still sitting on my camera. I suppose that means that it is time to catch up!

Last month, on a whim, I decided to meet my friend, Renee, down at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. Neither of us had been there before and I was pretty amazed by the detail work of the exhibits. The hours put into making each exhibit was spectacular and, since the theme this year was fairytales, it was neat to see how they designers imagined them into being!

The desire to go the show is somewhat rooted in my current plan to fix up our yard. The front yard is tidy but has nothing interesting... just grass and a solitary tree. I really want to put in flower beds and have something delightful to look out the window and see each day. Also, it may give the front of our house a little more privacy and curb appeal. In the backyard, I just don't know what to some of the empty shady beds along the back of the yard... that are right under a neighbor's holly tree. A little perplexing to figure out what to do... especially on a budget. So, it was fun to see what is possible (granted, with unlimited money, but possible).

The Rapunzel exhibit... lots of blooming bulbs!

Exhibit using recycled materials... by high school senior. It was definitely one of my favorites.

Part of the above exhibit. She used old heating vents as part of this rock garden.

Spectacular tree brought inside as part of this exhibit. It was huge!

Waterfall as part of the above exhibit. Very woodsy, natural exhibit.

Corkscrew Rush... very appropriately named.

I loved all the textures of this one... and it seemed more like something I could use for my own yard.

Renee looking at a cottage-like exhibit. Loved it!

Isn't this lovely! I would love a patio like this!

This was another one of my favorite exhibits... it was the "Three Little Pigs".

Ranunculus... love this flower! Planting some in my yard for sure this year.

Another view of the three little pigs exhibit. Brick house, wood house and then straw house in the distance. Very creative.

If you ever have a chance to go to the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, definitely go! It is very well done and fun to see all the exhibits and booths!