Down by the River

Today, the weather cleared for a while and we took the opportunity to drive down to the Cedar River to see how high it is after all the rain we've received lately. Pretty high, but not as high as I've seen it. Still an impressive sight.

While we were there, we snapped a few shots around the little park off of Issaquah Hobart Road.
Unfortunately not as clear as I'd like, but I had to post it just because I love it so much.

Looks kind of eery with D in the background...

Courtesy of K...

K pointed out the one flower in the visible area, so I had to shoot it. I love that the bug was sitting there...

Rainier Walk

We went on a drive and short walk today at Mt. Rainier National Park. It's amazingly less than 90 minutes away! Why did we never take advantage of this before??? Such a beautiful place! Following are a few pictures from the day...

Me and the boys - S, O and D...

O got tired... From what I hear, it's payback from when I was little and complained about walking around Green Lake. ;)

K leading the pack along a nice easy little walk with amazing views!

Like I said, amazing views of Mt. Rainier. Gave me a chance to try out the polarizing filter from my mom.

Another view...

Sunset Stitch

Here's a panorama of that same evening. To create this, I stitched three photos together using Windows Live Photo Gallery. Yah, the right end of the shot is less exposed than the rest, but for a quick and easy stitch (you just select the photos you want to stitch and click "create panaramic photo"), the Photo Gallery does an awesome job, I think.

Beautiful Sunset

I was just going back through our pictures from the summer and found this one of a stunning sunset out our back door a couple weeks ago. Check out the swirling clouds on the horizon... If only I had my D80 that night... ;-)

Getting My Hands Dirty

(Edited to remove the full name... Sheesh, guys, you need to tell me when I've forgotten and included someone's name!) :)

There's something really satisfying about getting my hands dirty doing yard work... Among other important things (i.e., S's bapism and my dad's birthday -- Happy B-day Dad!), I was able to spend some time this weekend out in the yard. Our grass out front grew (spotty, I might add) at a slight slope down to the edge of our yard, where it met the neighbor's barked planter area. I was a royal pain to mow it and not dump a bunch of clippings into the neighbor's bark (bothered me more than them, I think), so I ripped out the grass, made a nice clean curve and backfilled it with bark. I gotta say -- it looks good (I'll post a picture sometime), but it felt even better to get my hands dirty in my own yard.

I also finished a garden box for K and filled it with a mixture of peat moss, compost and vermiculite. Hopefully, she'll get a chance to transfer her starters from the house out to the box today, as they're getting too big for their starter pellets.

Sometimes I wish we owned a little farm or something, so we could spend time on a regular basis doing some "real" work with real land... But, alas, our little yard is all we have (and all we have time for right now, frankly). It feels good to grow/cultivate something useful and beautify where we live. The good things in life...

So, now that I've "connected" with the land, I need to get me some fishing gear, so's I can "connect" with the water and teach my boys how to appreciate nature! ;)