And Who the Bosses Are , Really

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Sorry about the scribbles in between pics...I can't exactly figure out what to erase to get rid of them...
So these are cute pics eh? lori and Lawrence sent me the ones of Mom and the family at Christmas. That is Christopher,next to mom...boy oh boy..."Isn't he all growed up!" Then Mom has her scowly face on. I can't believe qanyone actually got her to sit still for a picture. She was hiding her face at my house. Anyhow, I think she was pretty happy to have her boys around.

Then there is this boss thing that is alive and well. The boys suited up in their aprons for Phoebe's party...claiming to be the bosses...NOT
says Phoebe and Ronda, who both found the director's chairs...you know, the place where the "Real Bosses" reside! Ha-ha! Good on you two! keep those men in their place! I heard atht John only gets to be boss once this next year!...We'll keep posted as to how that all goes! Thanks for the funnies ,Ronda.

So, you've seen and heard enough about the trip. I think it is all out of my system, now. Joyce came out on Sunday for a hot-tub, but before we did that, we had a lunch of the last of the oysters from Willapa Bay. we breadcrumbed them and fried them all up. Yum..enough about oysters already!

So Leah, booked her Partylite party for Jan 22nd...next week. I have, in my hot litlte hands the new Winter-Spring catalogue with the new Partylite offerings.
There are lovely new Pillar candles that are etched with vertical striations for a new effect. The colours and fragrances are also new,such as a soft lettuce green called Linden and Fig, or a new red called New Red Tea and Sweet Flag. All sounds good enough to eat! If there is any product you'd like to order, let me know and we can work it out to be ordered at Leah's party.
Also, I'll be demo-ing some 2nd Nature products and putting in another order soon, so let me know if you require anything. The lovely and precious Ginseng and Bee Pollen and Calcium- mi Vitality will once again be ready to ship after a hiatus of a few months. Two a day and I can honestly say that your immune system goes into high gear and keeps those bugs away. I had a bit of a sinus thing after Christmas there,but it never got really bad. As soon as I felt any worse, I'd go back to taking two or three tabs twice a day. I think, for the price, it works better than Cold FX and is probably less expensive.
Ok, that is my plug for mi Vitality...my new favourite supplement, besides my One a Days- System Support Formula.
Half Past bedtime...have a good one.
PS I saw a coyote on the way to work this morning...Looked like he just dined on someone's chickens...nice and plump and a lovely coat.
Did you get snow today? It was what I'd call butt ugly out there...snowy. However, I didn't feel so bad after meeting "Martha" ,from Oklahoma...she couldn't fly out of Oklahoma for nearly a week,due to the ice and snow storms down there...and her skis were stowed away in Spokane,waiting for her to come to Canada to go skiing...Wait a minute...what is wrong with this picture???

"The Creator"

Along the Columbia I-84

 

Leaving Long Beach& from Astoria to Longview

Once again, we have a random smattering of photos, but it will give you an idea of the nice long tree lined hill we climbed to get out of Astoria thru a pass that lead to Longview. The trees were all leaning precariously over the highway with their extra heavy coat of fresh wet snow. Ever so often, a gust of wind would bring down huge clumps of snow from the tree-tops and it would white us out as it smashed into the windshield. The road must have been treacherous earlier in the morning,as there were numerous vehicles in the ditch, including a "Medix" ambulance that was probably on its way to help someone from one of the other disabled vehicles. All in all, I was happy that a tree didn't crash down from all the extra weight of the wet snow. There was much evidence of fallen trees from a previous wind storm. In an hour and a half we completed that leg of the journey,when it should have been a smooth travelling route of around fifty minutes. Once we came down into Longview ( other bridge with smokestacks from mills), the roads improved, and we headed south, skirting around Olympia, and on down to Vancouver Washington. We crossed the Columbia one more time, back to Oregon, and followed the I 84 along the Columbia river. This was one splendid twinned highway with gorgeous scenes at every bend. Large cliffs flanked us on the right withvery interesting rock formations, such as "Rooster Rock" where the water streamed down the face in a perfect little waterfall. This was repeated many times along the way, until the mountains...some like loaves of bread half pushed out of the ground, gave way to rolling plains, not unlike Alberta. The winds picked up and we just kept on going. After Kennewick, we expected the freeway to drop off to two lane traffic, but much to our surprise, the divided highway continued ( I-395) all the way into Spokane.
The temps plummeted to -13* and by the time we were going over the Williams Lake cut-off, it was -17*. Super brrrr.
We were happy to arrive home to a toasty house,and a warm beddy bye!
Good to go away, but always good to return home to your own bed.
What we learned, is that if one wants to get to Oregon in a hurry...just zip diagonally across the country and you'll be there in 8.5 hrs from Spokane. Miles of ocean beach await you and thousands of others if it is summer...but little seaside vacation spots such as Long Beach and Canon beach, make for a beautiful holiday and great seafood eating!
Nighty Night.
"The Creator"

Back to work tomorrow...

These are a few more photos taken around the peninsula on Long Beach. You can see Emil heading back to the resort,as it was about -3* with a nice nippy breeze that was freezing his ears off. Silky wasn't even arguing his decision! We decided to do our touring around in the car,instead. We toured around the peninsula to little hamlets like Willapa bay, Nahcotta , and Oysterville...all fishing and oystering communties with cranberries tucked away somewhere in between. I can't say I saw a cranberry bush, but they must have been there somewhere! In fact,I don't know if I would recognize a cranberry bush if I saw one. Oops, upon research at the link, I should have been looking for cranberry bogs. Yes,there was a lot of boggy stuff going on. Each low lying area was a water filled slough. I suppose some of them could have been full of cranberry bushes after all:-)
If you check the Cranberry Link, go to the recipes for some interesting twists on old favorites like broccoli salad using cranberries in it..yum!
Here is a recipe that looked good...

CRANBURGER SAUCE


1 16 oz can jellied cranberry sauce
5 tablespoons (A-1?) Steak Sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon salad oil

Beat jellied cranberry sauce until velvety. Add steak sauce, sugar and salad oil. Chill.
Use on Hamburgers!
All sounds good.

Okay, I am going to bed after I look over a few more of those recipes and then it is off to work tomorrow.
Have a great Monday and a great week without being weak.




"The Creator"

Online Education Free

Online Education Free
Check out these free online courses...many of them offered through Itunes Podcasts.

Costco.ca Photo Centre

Costco.ca

Going to Costco? You can pick up prints that you have emailed to the photo centre at any Costco. You can make your Xmas cards here, or any other cards you like...so what are you waiting for?

Happy Ukrainian New Year!

Culture - some interesting things about the Ukrainian people
Just got reminded from our friend, Jean, that today is Ukrainian New Year's Day.... a time of gift giving...equivelant to our Christmas.Okay, I already did all that on Christmas, so we'll celebrate with blueberry muffins instead.I did a little purge of my fridge after I grocery shopped today.....Ugly after being away...All better now, after I removed about eight apples from my crisper. I peeled and sliced them and nuked them with a little water and sugar for applesauce or apple betty.I found the blueberries in the depths of the freezer. Not really my fruit of choice, but okay in muffins. I made Sonia's orange muffins and added blueberries... They are delicious.
Hmm I thought I had her recipe on my blog...It is easy,so I'll write it out for those of you yearning for a hot muffin.

Sonia's Orange Muffins.

Recipe is doubled already in order to make 24 muffins.
This recipe is easy to alter for your own ingredients on hand, such as lemon and poppy seeds ,instead of the orange, or you could add chocolate chips or cranberries,mango pieces,pineapple or apple chunks.
heat oven to 375*

1 1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup margarine
2 eggs

4 cups white flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp. salt
grated orange peel of one orange
orange juice you can make it a little stronger if you are doing it from frozen juice. ZYou'll use as much as it takes to make the batter look like muffins...or a thicker cake.

Cream sugar and eggs and margarine together until well blended. In another bowl or large 8 cup measuring cup, mix the flour and baking powder and soda and salt and grated orange peel together. Then, add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture, while beating. If it gets too thick,add orange juice to thin it a bit. Continue until all flour is added and enough orange juice is added to make it the consistancy of muffins ( around 3/4 cup? liquid )...on the thicker side if you are adding juicy fruit. Then fold in your chocolate chips or your blueberries or mango pieces or poppy seeds or apple chunks or whatever.

Spray your muffin tin with Pam and fill 2/3rds full with batter. Bake for 15 + minutes,turning the oven down to 350* near the end if you smell the bottoms scorching.I always start the muffins in a hot oven to get them rising quickly. Once they are up and firm, you can adjust the oven back to 350* for the last five minutes. I have a convection oven that cooks everything pretty hot and fast, so 15 minutes is plenty for muffins. Just poke a toothpick or knife into the muffin to see if they are cooked through.

Turn out of pans immediately and start eating them!Yummy! Thanks Sonia for sharing...

Oysterville...north Island on Willapa Bay

We took a pleasant drive up to the north end of Long Beach to see lots of new housing going in. The locals aren't happy about all the developement. Something like 350 new houses all ready to move into. The prices were still pretty high for hoses not on the beach and what you would call a basic bungalow.Also there were timeshares and townhouses-and apartments to purchase...all could be managed andd rented out when you weren't there. There was even a golf course or two!
We turned east and drove the five miles across the penninsula to Oysterville, where we loaded up on fresh oysters to take back for our dinner. Just dipped them in egg and rolled them in cracker crumbs, then fried them up to perfection in a couple of minutes. Oyster farming and Cranberry farming are two of the mainstays, besides fishing and tourism.All we could see was mountains of oyster shells. Don't ask if they reused them all, but it was clear that some were reused to "Seed" the oyster beds.

Oysters Are Cool

Oysters Are Cool
Much information about Washington Oysters.Click on the link "an Oyster's Life" to learn how the oystrers are grown and harvested...and who would have known there are several varieties of Oysters out there. Clams are also plentiful, but I didn't know enough about cleaning them and getting them out of the shells etc.Shucked oysters were easy to prepare.mmm! As well, we had a little crab feed with Tillamook butter. Yum!
Ok..time for some breakfast.. I only took about 200 photos,so this story will go on for a few days!

Danger !

I guess this batch of photos depict the area around the lodge a little better. We had the corner suite on the left. Neat and tidy with a separate bedroom and a fireplace that burned Presto Logs. They left us a new log evey day,and we bought a few at Jack's General store. You might see in one photo, the downed tree. Well, there were lots of trees all along the penninsula that had been blown over with their last storm. the park, in front, had many flooded areas from all the rains. The nice thing is that they had a hot-tub and sauna room at the park for everyone to enjoy. I think we may have been the only ones at the resort, so we didn't have to fight for a turn in the tubs! It was just nice to relax and enjoy the ocean and knowing that one didn't have a thing to do.

The Dunes and Pacific Ocean

 

 

 

 

The wind has blown the sand all up into the dunes. The shot was looking back down the trail towards Sunset Lodge. We didn't know we had a view of the occean from our room until day two, when the mist and clouds rose!

Silky ,having a ball on the beach.

 

 

 

 

A huge flock of seabirds flew in front of my camera...too bad I wasn't focussed on at least one of them. You can see thqat Silky was smiling! I think that she would have run for a mile if she had been off the leash! We had to watch for the occasional vehicle taking a drive down the beach. We became too chicken in our new Vue to attempt it. Also, it seemed to be high tide,every time we drove down to the beach. Less space between you and that angry ocean! For some reason, it was a lot more do-able with our big 4x4 truck! I recalled seeing lots of tow-truck operators in Ocean Park!

Long Beach Photos

 

This was a huge wave that crept right up onto shore. Amazingly, the birds always keep to the edge of it.

Our Mini Trip Con't

So here we are at a rest stop about half way down from Port Angeles to Olympia. The highway travels alongside Hood Canal where crabbing is a big way of life at all the little communities along the way. You can see the crabbing pier going out into the canal that separates the mainland from what appears to be an island you see from Seattle, looking westward.Although it looks like an island, it really is a long irregular pennisula that connects to the mainland at Shelton, a city north of Olympia. The Canal curls around the base of the pennisula where a body of land five miles wide, keeps that piece of pennisula from being an island. (Click on the map at the link above to make it larger. )
The drive was an eyeopener to another way of life...one of fishing, crabbing and oyster farming. We stopped at a roadside cafe and settled for fresh shrimp and fries and a delicious Oyster burger...Yum! That got us started on fresh Oysters for the remainder of the trip!
We skirted around Olympia in a blink of the eye and took the I-5 south to Longview and then westward over to Astoria. The bridge photos are of the amazingly long bridge and causeway that crosses the Columbia river at Astoria, and also serves as the division between Oregon and Washington State. We crossed that mighty Columbia,so many times on our journey, that the styles of bridges became more and more fascinating -almost as much as where the next bridge might actually be located! The river is so wide that any bridge is an engineering feat,as all must be high enough to allow freighters and ships to pass beneath them.
On my map, it shows the bridge at Astoria to be 4 miles long. It felt like it when you came to the crest of the bridge and could see the long stretch of causeway joining the main structure to the other side of the river... Not to mention, it was a beast to cross on the snowy morning of our return! I'll have to continue the saga tomorrow when I am awake.
have a great week-end...Remember...it is Hockey Day in Canada and all of the focus will be on Nelson! Tune into CBC all day tomorrow for coverage of the big event.
"The Creator"

Quick note from Long Beach

Ity is so nice that Internet service is available everywhere.. I am at the local library, only a a half block from our Inn, the Sunset Lodge, north of Long Beach at Klipsan beach. We have a lovely room with a view of gardens and walking area and hot tub area, witht he dunes in behind. This afternoon, we'll walk on the beach as the weather is decent. We had a beautiful drive down the penninsula,after crossing on the Cojho. That was a little rocky-rolly alright.
We made it to Astoria,just as it grew dark. All the way down, from Port Angeles we could see serious evedince of major storms..lots of downed trees and even power lines. We were happy to get out of the Park areas.
Ok, my time is nearly up on my puter...so we will talk to you all again. We are here for three more nights.
Have a good one! No snow here yet!


"The Creator"

Quick note from Long Beach

Ity is so nice that Internet service is available everywhere.. I am at the local library, only a a half block from our Inn, the Sunset Lodge, north of Long Beach at Klipsan beach. We have a lovely room with a view of gardens and walking area and hot tub area, witht he dunes in behind. This afternoon, we'll walk on the beach as the weather is decent. We had a beautiful drive down the penninsula,after crossing on the Cojho. That was a little rocky-rolly alright.
We made it to Astoria,just as it grew dark. All the way down, from Port Angeles we could see serious evedince of major storms..lots of downed trees and even power lines. We were happy to get out of the Park areas.
Ok, my time is nearly up on my puter...so we will talk to you all again. We are here for three more nights.
Have a good one! No snow here yet!


"The Creator"

More Adventures in Victoria

The photos arrived in back-assward mode here,as I have to use a rather awkward system to upload them, so pardon the random confused mess.
Last night started off fairly normal, until Annette noticed a small patch of wet on her bedroom rug. Yes, it was pouring rain out,and yes, it was windy as ever, but who would have thought after all of these dry years in this house, that the tiny wet spot was the result of water pouring into Annette's bedroom from under the wall. The only option was to rip out the carpetting to see where it was originating from. Under the carpet was the underlay...soaking up the water like a huge sponge. Out it came in pieces and straight to a garbage bag.

The water was streaming in from under the baseboard. Sonia brought down towels and a mop and Steve brought in the shop vac. We cleared all of the bedroom out, that Annette had so nicely set up only days ago. She was clearly upset, given that it has taken weeks to get everything out of boxes. Her bed ended up in the rec room, along with the majority of everything in her bedroom.

Steve headed outdoors in the downpour to see what was what with the drains. The problem was that they were filled with mud and overflowing with water. When he stuck his hand down the drain,all he could feel was roots from the nearby ceders and shrubs.
Fortunately, he cleared the drain enuf to get it to take water again,and at about the same time,the rain stopped. Within another hour or two, we had no more water to mop. Meanwhile Sonia had called all of the Roto-rooter guys in town,and they were so swamped with calls, they said it would be next week until they could come out.

Steve did the job himself this morning,when he dug up all of the weeping tiles alongside the house and pulled out what seemed to be one large tangle of roots and muck ( the sideways photo). By the end of today, he had replaced all of the old tiles with new drainage pipe. The bedroom has a fan going in it to dry it out,and Annette is camping in the rec room.

Emil and I took our grandaughters up to Eileen and Austin's for a little post Christmas visit. It was great to see them again. Eileen called up her son to bring her grandkids over so they could all have a visit. Robin and Michael came upstairs for a hello...hadn't seen them in an age also. Eileen put out all kinds of appies and best of all was a lovely cheese ball, essentially made from a carton of Imperial cheese, a large package of cream cheese and a half cup of real butter...all mixed together with a dash of Worchester sauce.You line a bowl with saran wrap, turn the cheese mixture into the bowl and let it set overnight, then turn it out of the bowl when rready to use,and decorate it with slivered almonds. Serve with crackers. Other herbs or smoked salmon could be added to the cheese mixture, but this was delicious as is. I had to have several helpings! Thanks to Eileen and Robin for the recipe!

We returned home just as Steve's load of gravel arrived and then the phone rang. It was Nadine to say that her and Dick were in the neighbourhood and would pop in with little Georgia before they went out for dinner to his sister's. The timing was perfect and little Georgia was a sweetie, chasing the "Ruff-Ruff" and playing the piano with Maddie. We had a short but sweet visit...again it was nice they made the effort and gave us all a chance to see their little cutie.

After they left, we returned to our plans to go out for dinner at Jason and Richard's new Fish and Chip restaurant out in Langford... YUMMMMMMEEEY!!!!! Emil and I had the captain's plate with scallops and oysters and shrimp and halibut done to perfection! Everyone else had variations on the halibut theme and we all came away totally in fishy heaven!

The night wasn't over until we engaged the kids in a wild game of Train. Maddie has to be commended for her wits as she ended the game by lying down her whole deal of tiles and made the rest of us count up a bunch. Lets just say , I was in the losing end of the game points...
Tomorrow, Sonia is off to day shift and Emil and I are off to the States. We'll try to catch the Coho which will take us to Port Angeles. From there we hope to go to Astoria, then toodle up to Long Beach Washington the next day for a few nights. They were under a severe weather watch that we hope will be over by the time we arrive.

So that will be about all the blogging I can do until we return home at the end of the week....unless I happen upon a computer!
In the meantime, we are having the time of our life...so much fun with our grandkids and so nice to see Sonia and Steve and Annette...all under one roof. Silky hates little Spike, so we keep them separated. Like Co-Co, Spike wants to be a close friend to old Silky, and she wants nothing to do with him. Snappy old B*tch!

"The Creator"