Payton

How can you NOT love this face. This is my granddaughter Payton doing what she loves best playing at the park. It's not often she sits still enough for pictures to be captured.

Mt. Lassen

That is Mt. Lassen you can barely see in the distance in the first picture. Helen and I took a long drive to see the park. Mt. Lassen, in northern California, is what's left of a huge volcano that erupted back in the early 1900's. It's still active as you can see by the thermals below. It's really awesome to stand beside the thermals and actually feel the boiling beneath you, smell the sulfur and feel the rumble of the boiling resonate through your body. The sidewalk and road are really warm to the touch. It's almost unbelievable that you can stand on top of all this activity right beneath your feet. Amazing! To see more pictures click here.

Ahhhh Southern California!

I visited my brother, Brandon, recently in southern California. We walked along the Huntington Beach pier, although it WAS cold. There were quite a few people fishing from the pier and what about those crazy people IN the water surfing! Nothing like the Pacific Ocean at sunset. More southern California pictures click here.

An outing with Grandma!

Seattle and I took a drive into the hills to see if some of our favorite spots had been burned in the most recent fire. Thank goodness the pumpkin farm was safe, we love to go there every year and sometimes more than once a year. We then drove further into the foothill to look at Bouquet Falls. That's Seattle standing in front of the stream right below the falls. No damage there either. But there was devastation as we drove to these favorite spots. Fire is weird in that it just picks and chooses what it wants to devour. There would be a group of 4 or 5 houses and just one or two of them had been burned completely down....the others would be untouched. Amazing! Seattle kept asking over and over again to go down to the water but it was so cold and the water would have been much worse. Alas, Grandma had to say no.....drats!

Savannah

It's very traumatic when your one and only "favorite" blanket is being washed and dried. It is almost like you will NEVER see your favorite blanket again. Sooooo, everyone must suffer her loss for that hour or two. Sorry about the blurry pictures but Savannah was moving around the room so fast in this her dramatic scenario. Actually, at this age everything is either in black or white, good or bad and I am sure she sees this as a bad thing!

Campfires!

I just love the smell and warmth of campfires. Which is why I probably loved camping so much. We decided to build our own - no store bought fire pits for us! With a little ingenuity and spare parts around the property, we had our very own fire pit. I love it! Unless it is completely freezing that's where you are going to find us - around the fire. Yeah!