What a Week!

 

Ian's oldest son Doug flew up to spend the week with us and the weather was pretty cold and misty the whole time.  His work schedule changed and suddenly he had six days available and decided to spend them with us.  He's from San Diego and weather conditions never crossed his mind.  This is Dougie with Matt and Julia.  We're visiting at Bridge 99, a very small microbrewery that just recently opened.  Dougie had planned to fly into Portland, then rent a car and drive over.  When he realized he'd be driving over the Cascades on a sheet of ice, he changed his plans and flew into the Redmond airport, an adventure in itself.  The roads into Redmond were icy when we picked him up on Tuesday, confirming that the added expense was worth.

Our visit was just until Josh got off work and we could celebrate his birthday at Wubba's, a barbecue joint next door.  Birthday boy Josh and my wonderful DIL Missy!  

The food was great, the restaurant wasn't noisy and afterwards they brought out this warm brownie covered in ice cream and chocolate syrup.  The boys were thrilled.  He shared :)

We ate out every day that Dougie was here.  Saturday we put him on the plane but not before we had breakfast together at Jake's, a local greasy spoon and breakfast favorite.

Last Sunday was originally our planned tree cutting day but the cold icy weather nixed that plan, so yesterday we piled into two trucks and drove into the Deschutes National Forest above Sisters.

Josh and Ian started this tradition 14 years ago, and somehow Josh has fallen into the position of tree scout, and in fact, he found our tree for us this year.  

Trees are loaded - time to eat!  In spite of this long tradition, cutting trees in the Cascades is completely   different from cutting trees in the Sierras.  It was so much easier to get to the trees and they are different.  They seem to grow straighter with slimmer trunks so they were lighter and easier to carry.  From the time we left the asphalt to the time we returned was only 45 minutes.  We didn't hurry yet we had selected and cut three trees.

We have traditionally gone out for breakfast but this year we chose wood-fired pizza at Pizanno's instead.  Good choice!

I couldn't resist this picture of my boys chatting in the parking lot afterwards.  They see each other all the time and still have more to talk about.  This reaffirms our move yet again.

Rain was in the forecast yesterday so we decided to put up the tree right away instead of soaking it in the garage for a couple of days.  For one thing, these Cascadia trees aren't dry like the Sierra trees and don't need to be hydrated.  I think this is the prettiest tree we have cut yet.  You'll notice the eyes and ears of a curious Maddie in the lower right.

The predicted rain woke me up this morning, thundering on the skylight.  It's making short work of the snow that fell two weeks ago.  No wonder it's green here.

I plan to finally get back to weaving today but it's going to require the Ott light.  Even with the skylight my studio is dark.  What a week!  I'm afraid to step on the scale :)