We welcomed our new grandson, Samuel Vernon Jensen, on December 6, 2008. And here are our other beautiful grandchildren, Evan, Seth, and Emily, who all took a three-month trip with their parents across the USA in a motorhome this year.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO OUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY
Christmas at our house---a few favorite things and a lot of music, Vern's art, the family. What are we doing?
The day before Thanksgiving was Sofia's birthday. She turned six. She like blueberry cheesecake (in the background with candles). She and her sister Evelyn spent the summer picking their father's blueberry plants clean every day and coming in with purple faces and hands.
I just finished a quilt for a new grandbaby to be born to Steve and Sandy in December. We don't know if it will be a boy or a girl, so it is appropriate for either! Very soft and fluffy.
It's nice that Chris and Sera, Joe and Griselda and families live just across the Columbia from each other now. Just a 15 minute ride. Last weekend the brothers and kids got together for a hike and found a deserted beach on the river. Not only did they find a deserted beach, a very appealing discovery to those boys of yesterday, but they found some old abandoned bricks. Wow! Something to build with! So they spent a pleasant Fall afternoon building a castle, while the kids built sand castles and watched an ocean-going vessel come up the channel. I wish I could have been there, but I chuckle to think of the fun they all must have had.
Chris and Milo proudly display the four pumpkins they grew themselves!!
Linda and Herb sailed in on the Princess to Astoria where Nathan lives, so we came to visit, as did Chris and Milo on Oct 1st. We had a wonderful day together. We visited a mansion, went to the historic Astoria Column on the hill and saw the view. Then Herb took us all to lunch. Linda and I saw some beautiful things in a shop there but had to rush along to the Boat Museum (as Milo called it----actually the Maritime Museum), where Milo loved the sailboat. He took his shoes off and laid down on the bunk in the boat. He also loved navigating at the controls.
After all this fun we had to say goodbye to Linda and Herb. We then took Milo on a trolley ride and then said goodbye to everybody and went on to Vancouver and spent the night with Joe and Griselda before heading home. So here is our wonderful trip!!
This is a beautiful old mansion we toured. Inside everything was so beautifully crafted; we just oohed and aahed. Every window was covered in wooden slats and panes and sashes, and wooden workmanship was everywhere. There were lovely oriental tiles in the fireplaces and oriental wallpaper. I've never seen such an elegant mansion anywhere. The owner was a very wealthy Danish shipping magnate.
Astoria is built on hills, and almost feels like a miniature San Francisco with its streets going straight up and down. The houses are victorian and there are many beautiful old mansions. People are buying them and fixing them up, and it is becoming a nice retirement community. Linda and I would have loved to shop at the many crafty bohemian little shops downtown!
Nathan's house is on the hill. He has a great view of the mouth of the Columbia, the ocean beyond, the bridge, and the ships that come in.
After dropping Herb and Linda off at their boat, Chris and Milo, Nathan and Val and I took the trolly car the whole length of Astoria, as it follows the Columbia river. The man who "drives" the trolly narrates the history of Astoria as we go, and it was very interesting. The town was settled by many Scandanavian immigrants who came there as fishermen, and they built their houses with very steep roofs to keep off the show, not knowing that it doesn't snow in Astoria. We saw many very interesting houses, many of them old Nordic mansions with steep roofs on the hillsides in the east side of Astoria.
Here in the TriCities we have a lot of color, but in the desert around us, fall color consists of mainly the sage brush, poplar and aspen trees, and the brown hills. It has its own beauty.
Our October garden has sunflowers as tall as trees and ripening fuji apples, squash and pumpkins, grapes, hordes of tomatoes, and of course the ever faithful zucchini and summer squash, green beans, chard, and lettuce. Val dug up the yukon gold potatoes yesterday to store with the squash.
With this cooler weather our plentiful summer blackberry crop is dwindling. We go out to pick every day and still have blackberries for breakfast, but we find fewer and fewer ripening ones.
At the end of August Steve and Sandie and our grandkids came to visit on their big journey across the U.S. Evan, Seth, and Emily loved picking fruit in the backyard, riding bikes, swimming over at the Villas, and playing with our neighbors' boys, although Emily would have enjoyed a little girl to play with. We filled 'em up, fixed up the Minnie, and sadly saw them off after a wonderful visit.
These are some of our tall tomato plants with grape vines and strawberries in the background. Tomatoes are just starting to ripen and be picked for the table here in our northern late summer. Grapes are ready to be picked but could be a little riper. Peaches are about through. They have been huge---as big as softballs this year! We have given away many peaches, and I will be canning the rest this week. And blackberries are so plentiful right now that we picked three gallons today. They are as large as cherries and so beautiful. Strawberries need to be picked every day. We get at least a quart a day from our small circular bed. We make a great dessert of strawberries and blackberries with maple syrup on it.
OUR VACATION
Emily, Seth, Evelyn, Sofia, and Evan (in the canoe) were enjoying a lake in Oregon on a camping trip.
These are some photos from our vacation on Olympic penninsula. The wildflower pictures don't do justice to the flowers we saw, because where I saw fields of orange paintbrush, we couldn't pull off the road. But they were so beautiful. Val and I had lunch with a deer and about 15 Clarks nutcrackers (birds) who sat on our laps and ate from our hands. Also a crow sat at our feet. The animals were so tame. We fed them vegetables and fruit.
