Happy Blogging...

I will be gone for 10 days to British Columbia...so happy blogging while I'm away, and I look forward to returning with more awesome photos. After all, you have Baggins to keep you company.

Jennie

Mystery Frog

As we were unable to consult our field guide, since it only covers northeastern states, we searched the web and found out that your little frog friend is a Pacific Treefrog, Pseudacris regilla. Some very nice pictures can be found here. He is apparently well-known for his big froggy voice, commonly used by Hollywood for sound effects. Fun! Thanks for documenting the little guy. The boys really enjoyed looking him up and learning more about him.

His name is 'Baggins'!

I have a lot of pictures saved up for some short posts, so hopefully will get a few shorter posts on in quicker time, esp. with snow and colder temps outside to keep me inside!
We were very fortunate to find a young out-of-work man, one of JoAnn's friends to help us out in the yard for the last few weeks. Nate was a real help, and since he had some landscape knowledge and experience we really put him to work. Here is Nate's back, along with the insurance man working on re-structuring a berm we have out front. It needed to be spread out and the grass removed, so the beautiful tree could be featured. This is a blue spruce that Grandma Bethel gave us as a small sprout. The insurance man also used up some of the many lava rocks he had dug up in his work in the back yard.
While working Nate found a frog and brought him or her to me. I told him to wait a moment while I dashed for my camera. I told him the 'boys' would be delighted to see his find.

This frog definitely had a smile on it's face. Sam and Will, what kind of frog is it? The markings were beautiful, and it wasn't very big. But it did have a big 'froggy' voice.

Will the four of you decide on a name for this frog, and leave it in the comments section? Then I will add the name to the title of this blog. You are so good at names after all.

Just one of the joys of working in the outdoors...God's handiwork.

Summer to Winter

We woke to this beautiful snow this morning. We had a snowstorm all morning long while in church, and I think about a 4 inch total. It was what we call a 'valley snow', moist and wet and heavy. We sat and enjoyed watching it with hot drinks in the early am. Yesterday we were working out in frigid temps till dusk working like beavers to get our yard finished up, and it felt so good this morning knowing that most of it was done.

Here's a photo of the back corner of the yard where the insurance man has been working all summer. Julie, here's the pergola although you didn't expect to see it in the snow did you? Dad just finished the floor of it yesterday. Whew!

The snow was so heavy there were a lot of tree branches down. Our neighbors tree lost the center out of it with broken limbs, and the insurance man was out helping them clean it up this afternoon.

The funny part is that a week and a half ago it was 92 degrees...what happened to autumn??

Last of my Seattle Trip

Towards the end of my week in Seattle, I met up with some high school friends that ended in my 40th class reunion.

At the age of twelve, after 6th grade, I decided to go to a private Christian school called King's Garden. My grandparents had saved all their lives so that if my brother and I decided to go to private school we would be able to. King's was a long ways from home in Edmonds, a northern suburb...so it meant a lot of long bus rides. I met some wonderful people in my six years there, and am still friends with many today. The campus was an old TB sanitarium and acreage, complete with a farm. In those years King's was one of the only boarding schools in the area, so we had many foreign students as well. The architecture of the buildings was and still is just beautiful...like a college campus in the east in many ways.
One of my good friends Martha was unable to come to the reunion, so I met her for an afternoon lunch and catch-up in Everett, just north of Seattle. Then another good friend, Lois, flew in from Chicago, and came and picked me up Saturday morning at my brothers'. We drove and picked up another friend Bev, and spent the day together. We were all friends from junior high at King's, as Bev left after 9th grade. We had a wonderful day in Seattle, with great weather to boot. (Not a small blessing in Seattle!)

We had lunch at Ivar's on the shore of Lake Union. Lois is on the left, Bev on the right. We asked a young man to take our photo, and when he asked what the occasion was we told him we were junior high friends getting together after 34 years. You should have seen his jaw drop : )

It was a beautiful and busy day on the Seattle waterfront. This was the view from our picnic table as we feasted on fish and chips (not hamburgers!)

We also spent some time at Greenlake, a famous Seattle lake and park, just being together and chatting.

After driving back to my brothers, we changed clothes and picked up the insurance man for our class reunion. We met at Anthony's, a nice seafood restaurant and you guessed it, right on the water, except it was Puget Sound in Edmonds, close to our old school. We enjoyed an excellent meal, and watched the sun go down across the water as we talked and shared stories. My graduating class wasn't very big, but now people are spread out literally over the U.S. and the world. So there were only nine of us there, but with our spouses it made a nice group for visiting. Here is a small photo of the insurance man and me enjoying the dinner. We had a great time, and the restaurant staff had to finally kick us out as no one wanted to leave and it was a beautiful night.

The following day after Church, we drove to the school grounds for an Alumni barbecue. My brother joined us as he had graduated there too, four years after I did. Here we are being greeted by a 'Knight', as the sports teams are the King's Knights (my grandsons should appreciate that.)

We got a better picture of the group of us in the daylight. We were missing just one from the previous night. Who are all those gray-headed people??

Going to a Christian school was a great blessing for me...more than words can tell. Each of the people pictured above is following the Lord down the path of life, and it makes for a very special bond and rich fellowship.

The insurance man and I left the barbecue Sunday afternoon and headed back down I-5 for home. It was good to get home, but I had a very special week and felt blessed.

Memory Lane Part III

In order to talk about the last house on my tour of our old houses, I have to give a little family history along the way....

This is my mom, Susie Erskine. She grew up on a farm close to Scio, Oregon...the youngest of eight children. In 1935, when she was eight, her mother died of spinal meningitis. Her father decided to send her to his oldest sister Minnie, who was living in Seattle. Minnie's first husband Will Parr was an early builder in Seattle. Will purchased property on the top of Queen Anne Hill, and built three houses there. He died just before the one for he and Minnie was completed in 1923. They were never able to have children, and Minnie finished the house by herself and moved in. She married again in 1927 to George Kuentzel...then in 1935 they took my Mom to live with them.

This is a photo of Minnie and George in front of their home on Queen Anne in the 1960's, the same home my Mom came to live in. She had a hard time adjusting to life as an only child in the house, and life in a very big city.

This is the grade school she attended just down Bigelow Avenue from where she lived. My brother and I again parked our car and walked all around the old building. It is not part of the Seattle school system any longer, but is used as a private school. Don't you just love the details on the old buildings?

This school was first through eighth grade, and a BIG change for Mom from her one-room country schoolhouse. As you can see the building is in good repair generally, and it's nice to see these old buildings kept up and used.

This is my mom Susie in high school. She also attended high school close to home, on the hill at Queen Anne High.

In the 1980's the high school was closed and sold. Fortunately, it was purchased by a friend that I graduated with and remodeled into nice Condo's.

Here is the entire building, which is a beautiful one, with a spectacular view. They did a wonderful job on the remodel.

My mom left Queen Anne when she married my dad in 1946 after the war. They left Seattle for a while ( I was born in Oregon), but then returned when dad got a job in banking there. While my brother and I were growing up, we spent a good deal of time on Queen Anne with Aunt Minnie and Uncle George. They had become my mom's surrogate parents, although she remained very close to all her brothers and sister. They adopted my mom when she was 27, so they would have a legal heir. Uncle George died at age 94 in 1964, and Aunt Minnie continued to live on in the house, as she had NO plans on ever leaving. After a few months of quick trips across the city to check on her, my parents decided to sell our house and move in with her. So in 1965, our family moved to the house on Queen Anne Hill. I'm quite sure that it was hard on mom again, to move in under Aunt Minnie, to a house that wasn't really hers. But they did take care of her there until her death in 1968.

Here is the house today, at 404 Comstock Place. When my Dad retired in 1980, they sold the house and moved to Oregon. They sold it to a friend who worked with Dad, and she still owns it. She has done a great job of restoring and maintaining it. My brother and I again had a good time walking around the house, and chatting with the neighbors. All three of the houses Will Parr built are still there and are worth more than $1,000,000 each. I think my Dad's old saying of 'location, location, location' proved correct in this case, and I can just imagine what Will and Minnie would think of that today.

Here is one of the views from the house. If you go to the left there is a view of Lake Union and the boats from our old dinning room. If you go to the right there is a view of Elliott Bay and the ferries crossing to Vashon Island from my old bedroom window. I used to love seeing the ferries at night all lit up on the water. If you look close enough you can even see Mt. Rainer in the background of the photo, although the smog keeps it from being clear nowadays.

Joe and I had a grand time viewing our old homes, schools and even mom's schools. We drove all around Queen Anne, which is a wonderful community all in it's own world, and relived a lot of old memories. What a great blessing it was.

When we finally headed home, it was late and Joe spotted one of his favorite hamburger joints, Kidd Valley. We enjoyed hamburgers, cheese fries and milkshakes (I think everyone I was with all week wanted hamburgers!) and it was so good to spend time, just the two of us.

Memory Lane Part II

After I had started the 6th grade, my parents decided to buy a new house on the outskirts of the Ballard area. This was quite a step up for them, from a wooden house to a brick home. It is larger than it looks as it has a full daylight basement. We moved here in 1961. The lot sizes were larger here, and there is a beautiful park-like yard with this house, which suited my Dad as he was the gardener in the family, and would work off stress when he came home in the evenings. Off to the right in the photo is a slope down to a little stream, and the slopes were beautifully landscaped with a little gravel path down. The house itself was interesting in that it had a 'new-fangled' heating system, with hot water pipes in the ceilings of the rooms. Dad didn't like it because the floors were always so cold. The bedrooms all had built in wooden beds and shelves and closets. We only stayed here for about 4 years, so I don't have too many memories. One special one though, is that I was baptised at church when I was 12, and we had a party in the basement here afterward. I remember it so clearly...and since I accepted Jesus as my Savior when I was five, it's the baptism that has stayed with me and provided me assurance all these years.

This was the street corner we lived on. We also had a peek-a-boo view of Puget Sound that my Mom was thrilled with. Since Ballard was a primarily Scandinavian neighborhood in those years, we had Swedes and Norwegians all around us at home and at our new Church, Sunset Hill Baptist. I remember some wonderful holiday baking from them.

This was my new school, North Beach Elementary. It certainly lacked the charm of the old Bryant School! It was almost new in 1961. That's me out in front during my week in Seattle. On this day, I met up with an old friend of mine, Trina Hegge Patrick. When I moved here, her family was attending Sunset Hill Church and she lived only a few blocks away. So technically speaking, she is the friend I have known the longest (and greatly value the connection). We attended sixth grade together here, and so we drove to our old houses on this day and walked back to school just like we once did.

This is the view from the school...isn't it great? I have to admit though, that I don't remember valuing it at the time. Trina and I walked to the spots where we used to be on 'safety patrol', safely crossing the little ones across the street. This photo was taken from one of those spots.

This is Trina herself, a Norwegian whose Dad was a halibut fisherman in Alaska. She is standing in front of the trail we used to take to school from our neighborhood. We walked the old trail together for the first time in 46 years...and really had fun doing it and laughing about the good memories. Trina's lovely Mom passed away this past March, leaving behind her old home. Trina and her siblings are in the process of cleaning it out but it remains in the family for now. We spent the morning sitting on folding chairs in the big picture window of the house, which has a view similar to the one from the school. What a treat, after all these years to walk back into the house, basically unchanged, and re-live our memories and fun times. Later, we had a hamburger at an original drive-in in Seattle, 'Dick's'...and I got to see where Trina lives now and meet her two youngest children. Truly a memorable day.