Otter and Big Creek Falls

I love a good hike, and this was a good hike.  The hike to Otter and Big Creek Falls was fairly easy, maybe slightly longer then I was ready for (10 miles round trip), but I made it back to the car so all is well.

We were at the Snoqualmie Lake trailhead by 10:30am to start our hike to Otter Falls and then Big Creek falls after that.  The last bit of the road leading there is quite full of potholes and my car is absolutely filthy!  The road wasn't so bad that it can't be done by a regular sized car, you just have to pay attention to where you're going before you get there.

Right at the trailhead is a bridge that crosses over the Taylor River (see picture above).  It was absolutely beautiful and I could tell we were going to have a wonderful day.  Thankfully the rain was only a sprinkle from time to time, barely enough to make it through the trees.  The trail is beautiful, winds through old growth.  There was moss everywhere and the ground cover was beautiful.  The bleeding hearts were in bloom along with violas and a few trilliums still had their blooms.  Along the entire hike you could hear the river, waterfalls and birds.  It was just perfect out today!

Richard was slightly surprised by the number of people out on this trail as it's not one that is commonly called a busy trail.  I didn't think it was all that busy, especially for Memorial Day weekend.

We stopped at Otter Falls and had lunch, so beautiful.  I was reading online that you can't even see the top of the falls from where we were.  Now I want to hike somewhere I can see the whole thing.  It is the third highest falls in the state.  I loved the way the water slides down the rock face!  Just beautiful.  It falls into the beautiful, tiny and incredibly clear Lipsy Lake at the bottom!  I loved it!

After stopping for lunch at Otter Falls we went the extra half mile to Big Creek Falls, they were gorgeous as well.  There is a bridge built by the falls, at one point and time there were plans to build a road out here, for one reason or another those plans never happened.  The bridge makes for a great place to sit and enjoy the roaring fall!

After Otter Falls and before Big Creek the trail isn't quite as well maintained.  I caught a pretty neat picture of Rosco and Richard jumping the fallen trees!

There was this really cool looking cracked boulder in between the two falls, I said to Richard "Take my picture in the crack".  He says, "Why, are you serious?"  I say, "Yes I'm serious, people take pictures of silly things all the time".  I think the picture is cute.  Here's that picture and the boulders without me trying to squish between them with my pack on.

Did I mention just how amazingly green everything was?  The moss was hanging off of everything, drapping the trees in green. It was absolutely beautiful!  There was another small fall with a bridge crossing it along the way, Martin Creek Falls, I love the picture I got of that.  One of the washouts that was rebuilt has quite a few little rock piles that people have made, I always think they look neat.  Lets see what else did I take pictures of? Oh yes, the mastedon tree, we liked it. 

Thanks for checking out the pictures from my hike, I hope you enjoyed them!  I had a great time hiking, so many beautiful things to see.  God really did make a gorgeous place for us to tend! 

The rest of the veggies are now planted!

After thinking about how lazy I had been with the planting last weekend I ended up planting the rest of my vegetables on Tuesday night.  I went out and bought a new little planting shovel as well as a couple weeding tools and a new hose and nozzle for the backyard.  Now it's all ready, I just have to water, weed and wait for the plants to grow!

Here are the yellow zucchini squash and their patch

In the planter box we have the french filet beans in the back they should become a bush bean, then the loose leaf lettuce, the four butter crunch lettuce which is a head lettuce so they should take some space and in the front part I planted carrot seeds.  I can't wait for the carrot seeds to come up!

The two cauliflower are in front patch closer to the fence and the three broccoli are in front of that, after the tree is the green zucchini patch.  There are six zucchini plants in each patch, I should have zucchini up the kazoo.  I've been looking for recipes, it seems there is a never ending list of things you can do with zucchinis!  I'm excited because I love zucchini!

I'm finally getting some stuff planted!

Last week I started getting some stuff planted in my pots. I now have three pots with tomatoes, my hanging topsy turvy strawberrys, a smaller pot with strawberrys and my herb garden pot.  After getting those planted it was dark so I couldn't get anything in the ground.  For some reason that ended up equaling me not getting anything planted all weekend, oops.  I might have been a bit lazy this weekend, but I really did have a very fun and relaxing weekend.  It really was worth my plants not being in the ground. 

Here are a few pictures of what I did get planted.

And last but not least I finally  put out one of my garden gnomes. I hear you really can't expect your plants to grow without one.  Seriously though, I think he's adorable.  He needs a name still, if you have any ideas let me know!

You've been Flocked...

"Hey Nanc, when you get up look out in the front yard, somebody put a bunch of flamingos out there... I don't know who did that but um there's a whole lot of them... so don't be to surprised... 'kay so take a look out in the front yard, look out thru the bedroom window if you want ... but it's weird looking... there's a bunch of them. anyway, love you bye."

This is the message that my dad left on the answering machine for my mom sometime around 4:30am.  It appears that today didn't quite start out like a normal day at my parents house.  Sometime the night before somebody flocked their house with flamingos when they weren't looking.  It's not every day you wake up with 23 pink plastic flamingos out on your front yard, especially when they weren't there when you went to bed.

I know who did this and I know why... so here's the scoop on the Flamingo Flocking!

When I was in highschool I took part in Young Life club.  I went to all the meetings, drug my friends to club with me, went to Malibu club for summer camp, learned to snow ski at Whistler during a Young Life ski trip and even went through training to become a student leader my senior year of highschool.  As we all know, when most people go off to college and leave your parents house for the first time not all good intentions continue on.  In the years that followed, I lost track of YoungLife and quit going to church.  While I have always believed in God, one might say I fell off the path of walking with him on a regular basis.  Through the grace of God I have managed to get in touch with a friend from highschool who is now a Young Life leader at Lynnwood Highschool.  Enter said Flamingo Flock.

Every summer a group of high schoolers from Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace HS (and hundreds of other highschools as well) head out to various Young Life summer camps.  Camp isn't exactly the cheapest thing so most of the kids end up doing fund raisers to earn the funds so they can go.  Back in the day when I was fund raising we volunteered at a firework stand for the 4th of July and we earned quite a bit towards camp that way.  Apparently YoungLife won't allow that as a fund raiser anymore, I think it had to do with legal reasons or something, so they have had to come up with different fund raising ideas.  They have done bowl-a-thons, sold programs at Mariner's games and this year they have started flocking peoples houses at night when they aren't paying attention.  The flocking is a great bonding experience for the kids and leaders not to mention a great fund raiser to get more kids to camp. 

For only $20 you can get the kids to go out and place a flock in someones yard, they then suggest a $25 donation to have the flamingos removed, though they do not require you to pay to remove them (they do need the flamingos again after all).  They also give you the option to pass the flock along to someone elses house for the $20 flocking donation.  How fun is that.  And it's all tax deductable and going towards a good cause.

Apparently I've skipped over the "What exactly is Young Life?" question you might be having right now, so let me do a brief explanation.  YoungLife is a program that gets Christian adults who care enough about high school and junior high students to take time to do things with them, get to know them, give them a safe environment to learn about God's love, and if all goes well it brings the kids to a place where they actually know God's love.

Now for the long version, this is the "What is Young Life?" from their website:

"Young Life doesn't start with a program. It starts with adults who are concerned enough about kids to go to them, on their turf and in their culture, building bridges of authentic friendship. These relationships don't happen overnight — they take time, patience, trust and consistency.

So Young Life leaders log many hours with kids — where they are, as they are. We listen to their stories and learn what's important to them because we genuinely care about their joys, triumphs, heartaches and setbacks.

We believe in the power of presence. Kids' lives are dramatically impacted when caring adults come alongside them, sharing God's love with them. Because their Young Life leader believes in them, they begin to see that their lives have great worth, meaning and purpose.

This is the first step of a lifelong journey; the choices they make today, based upon God's love for them, will impact future decisions … careers chosen, marriages formed and families raised. All ripples from the time when a Young Life leader took time to reach out and enter their world."

In short, I think Young Life is a very good thing, it's a place where kids can grow and learn and hopefully become better people.  It's an accepting place where you can come as your are and hopefully leave knowing God's love.  Even if the kids don't find God's love, at least they will feel like someone cares about them and right now that is very needed in this world.  I know Young Life was a wonderful experience for me, I really do wish I had stuck with it when I went to college.  Though at the same time I'm also happy that I've followed the path that I have, struggles in life really are great learning experiences.  I'm happy with my life right now; I've started going to church again and am really feeling God's presence in my life, I have a wonderful husband, we have a roof over our heads (and so far we have been able to pay the mortgage), and I have even been able to donate money from time to time for the kids who need it.  Someday I wouldn't mind donating more of me and my time to Young Life, but for now I'll just have to stick to flocking peoples houses, donating to bowl-a-thons and supporting Young Life as much as I can.

Spring Softball 2010

You'll often find me saying I don't really enjoy playing softball or that it's really not my thing.  But this last season really wasn't all that bad and I really did enjoy myself (minus a game or two which I won't get into).  I think this time was one of the first times I've really felt like part of the team and not someone just playing because they needed another girl so the guys could hit. 

I've decided just to be a sub for the summer season.  I really am tired of having every Sunday spoken for, between church and softball I really haven't been able do much.  While I know I could take a day or two off from softball and they would normally be able to find a sub I always have this guilty feeling if I sign up and then say I won't be there when I really could have been.  So it's best for me to be a sub and not be tied down by another thing for another day of every week.

While hockey will always be my sport of choice to watch or play, softball isn't nearly as bad as I like to make it sound when I get to complaining.  I don't intend to sign up to play a full season again, but it's not entirely out of the question either.  This season was pretty fun. 

w00tstock 2.0!

What is w00tstock you ask? Well, THEY said it was 3 hours of geeks + music (but apparently geeks can't count because it was really 4 hours of geeks + music), or maybe they thought an hour of it wasn't all that geeky?  I think they are delusional if that's the case. The show featured Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage and Paul and Storm (and a bunch of special guest preformers).  OH! And ceiling cat, you can't forget ceiling cat.

Special Guests (these are the descriptions from Paul and Storms website with info for w00tstock):
- Lone Shark Games‘ James Ernest and Mike Selinker
- Presidents of the United States of America drummer and bearded human Jason Finn
- Internet guy and Nerd Songster Hank Green.
- singer/songwriter/professional adorable person Molly Lewis
- sketch comedy funny-video-making people LoadingReadyRun - nerdcore pioneer MC Frontalot
- Microsoft guy and Xbox Live banhammer Stephen “Stepto” Toulouse

To start the night off we had Wil Wheaton come out and introduce the show.  I've never been much of a star trek fan so I don't know him from that but I do know who he is thank you very much.  He was in the last season of the Guild after all and the Guild is pretty awesome.

Following the introduction Paul and Storm came out and sung their "We are the opening band" song, I do believe that is their most known song (at least it's the one I knew).  They are amusing, certainly not my normal music listening but good for what they do.  Jason Finn joined them for most of their songs, he's the drummer from the United States of America, peaches anyone?

Then Paul and Storm introduced Wil Wheaton again so he could introduce LoadingReadyRun.  As he said, it's not everyday you get an introduction to give an introduction, oh they really are a bunch of geeks aren't they.

There was a thing with LoadingReadyRun who were quite amusing.  They do sketch comedy and make funny videos that you can find on youtube, I haven't looked them up yet but I do intend to see what they are all about.

After that Molly Lewis came up and sung a few songs.  I have a video of her singing her newest not finished but sung anyway song about having Steven Fry's child, but it was done on my camera and is seriously horrible so you just get pictures.  Seriously I can see her point about wanting to carry his child, it's sad his DNA will not go on, he really is brilliant.  The second picture is from the School House Rock song Conjunction Junction, it was pretty awesome.

Let's see, there was also a couple guys from Lone Shark Games (James Ernest and Mike Selinker), they did some video puzzle thing and then one of the guys had a spinning plate on a pole on a spinning lunch tray which was a bit impressive.  That was all fine and dandy but not particularly exciting to me.

Wil Wheaton seems like someone that would be a fun guy to hang out with, he's just so cool in a geeky kind of way, I think I may just have to read his book.  He read a passage out of it about the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I've never gone and seen it but was always interested.  I guess I just didn't have someone to drag me along with them when I was younger, otherwise I'm certain I would have gone.

MC Frontalot sung a few songs, he's nerdcore, Richard listens to nerdcore music quite often.  He's pretty good, the sound quality was horrible on his songs though, quite sad since he was singing new songs that we hadn't heard before.  Richard looked them up online when he got home and put them on a CD for us to listen to while driving to his parents house the next day, very funny stuff.

Hank Green, a youtube nerd guy played a few songs, his songs were amusing but he wasn't all that exciting to me, maybe if I watched more youtube I would understand.  I thought the writing on his guitar was pretty funny though.

In between all this there were musical interludes, video breaks and Wil Wheaton talking or doing general silly stuff will Paul and Storm. 

Stephen "Stepto" Toulouse from Microsoft he did a bit on the jerks that play Xbox Live and the blocking of the stupid people that do that stuff.  Very amusing.

Adam Savage told some stories, show us pictures of an upcoming episode of Mythbusters and wasn't allowed to blow anything up.  So sad.  But he was amusing, I  got the feeling that he didn't really want to be there.  I'm not sure if that is just his personality or if he really was bored with it all.

Paul and Storm were last, they did a few songs and then Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage joined them on stage for the last song which lasted something like fifteen minutes but it was fun... Argh!

So that's w00tstock in a nutshell, I'm just tossing in a picture of The Moore theaters ceiling to the end of this blog because it's just gorgeous.  Yep, I had fun, laughed alot and realized I really am a geek, but not a really really big one. Oh! And I love the lighter app that they have for the iphone (and ipad), I will stick with my boring phone that doesn't do much, I don't need anything that fancy as I rarely use it for anything other then an alarm clock and time teller, but the lighter app is pretty spiffy.

And last but not least here is the link to Wil Wheaton's write up on w00tstock 2.0 (and 2.1) 

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2010/05/making-a-note-here-huge-w00tstock-success.html