All the pretty flowers...

One thing I absolutely love about WA in comparison to Texas, besides the weather, fishing, and scenery, are the flowers! Flowers of all sizes, shapes, and varieties grow like mad here. In Texas I couldn't even keep a cactus alive much less flowers! I have been shooting all the lovely floral displays in our yard, the garden and anywhere else I spy some pretty petals. I am loving it! What I am most excited about are the mammoth sunflowers I have planted in my garden. I have always wanted some. I planted them from seed and they are growing like crazy. Can't wait to see them in all their glory! I also have peonies, roses, snapdragons, pansies, delphiniums, petunias, marigolds, irises, daisies, dahlias, tulips, and more. All the flowers have sure made it feel like spring and now, summer, here. I am amazed at how things just grow so well in our area. Can't wait to have our own place where I can go crazy in my very own, planned-from-scratch, garden.

4th of July Fun

In our neck of the woods, a great 4th of July was had. We celebrated a friend's birthday, did some fishing, ate some good food, had great weather (the coolest 4th of July in my books), and watched some incredible fireworks over Curlew Lake. Hope everyone had a great 4th and took the time to reflect on the origin of our Independence Day and how great it is to be an American. God bless this land of the free and home of the brave!

Good friends



We were freezing waiting for the fireworks to start!



Fireworks over the lake...

Back In Blogland

Whew! Now that I am pretty much caught up on all things horse in the blogging world, I figured I better scoot on over here and do some updating on all the other happenings in our life. We have been busy non-stop since spring and life just keeps on comin'. I felt spring fly by and land smack in the middle of summer. We have had all sorts of adventures...weddings, races, jewelry making, the hubby's work, the horses, new friends, travels, gardening, and much more. I have made jewelry for 3 weddings and loved my spring volunteer "job" coaching high school fastpitch softball. Mainly we have all been enjoying the warmer weather. We have also had a lot of rain and it has been hard to keep up with the mounting yard work. I swear, we will mow and the grass will grow 3 inches overnight! So, to sum up spring without writing a novel-of-a-blog post check these out:

Hunting for field mice...

Pretty blue birds on the fence

Lots of birds with the warmer weather...

Tulips in the back yard

Our friendly hummingbirds

Springtime sunset

Geese "arguing" in the river...mating time

First spring bonfire

We even had a spring wedding...check out the bride's jewels created by your's truly :)

A friend and I even did the Spokane Bloomsday race in May...12K!

Everyone dresses in layers for the cool morning start times then sheds the layers and donates them to Salvation Army by chunking them in the trees downtown....too cool!

Waiting for our start time with the crowds

So proud of our race numbers

Doomsday Hill...one of the portions we walked, but we did jog most of the course

The climb up Doomsday...it was a killer!

The finish line is in sight!

We made it!!!