Before and After

I've been very busy lately with various tasks around the house and I have the pictures to prove it.

PROJECT #1
First, my garden. After winter my garden looked like this, full of weeds:

Then, after lots of weeding I planted seeds and it looked like this: (see my blueberry plants?)

And it grew into this with beans, tomato and blueberry plants:See the nice blueberries? They are delicious. This sunflower randomly grew in the backyard:

PROJECT #2
Our garage has nice shelves on the sides but see where the fridge is? We don't use the fridge to keep things cool, just to store stuff on top of it.
So I had a great idea to build some more shelves. For $7.00 (the cost of the screws) and the use of some old wood we had I was able to build these with the help of my dad:

PROJECT #3
This ugly bathroom was the biggest of the 3 projects. Here are the before pictures:

So I had new floors put in:
And my mom helped; here she is doing a great job of not cursing at the leaking plumbing like I wanted to (thankfully a call to grandpa and he told us how to fix the leak):
And the finished project!
I'm so happy with how it turned out and appreciative of my mom's help so I could complete this project in 1 weekend!

Happy

Finally Ben's turn has come for R&R. We didn't do much since Ben just wanted to relax but we were able to go on a 6 mile hike to Opal Creek. It was a beautiful day and a great time to spend together and in the beauty Oregon has to offer.

My Birthday Hike

For my birthday my parents and sister and I went to Multnomah Falls to go on a hike. I found a recommended hike online at this site which warned it was moderate in difficulty but that didn't scare me. The hike was 4.9 miles with an elevation gain of 1600 feet. Literally, the first 2 hours or so of the hike was uphill. The hike took us past 10 named waterfalls and countless cascades and intermittent falls. It was a loop following the Wahkeena Trail for the majority of the time.


Isn't Oregon beautiful with so much green?!?

Fairy Falls:

View of the Columbia River:

Wahkeena Springs (Brittany and I drank from the spring, it was great tasting water):

Ecola Falls:

Little Multnomah Falls:

Multonomah Falls:

Multnomah Falls and Benson Bridge:

After this spectacular hike we headed to Red Robin where I got my free birthday burger. It was a great day and a great birthday.

Oregon Beauty

Last weekend my dad and I had the opportunity to go to Opal Creek for a 6.5 mile hike. It was really nice.

Today, my parents, 3 foster kids and I went to Drift Creek Falls. The hike was shorter, only a little over 3 miles, but we got to go over this 240-foot suspension bridge (the longest in Oregon) that hovers 100 feet above Drift Creek:

My mom was scared, see?

But in her defense, look how high up we were:

Here is the another view of the cascading 80-foot Drift Creek Falls.

Even though it rained a little, it was a great trip!

Can you see now?

Since no one could see my trees from the previous post, I am posting an updated picture. Both trees now are beginning to grow leaves so you can see them now!

More house projects

James 2: 15-16 says "Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?" This verse is talking about faith and deeds but a couple weekends ago I was able to appreciate it for another reason. Since Ben is gone a lot of people have said they're there for me whenever I need something. As kind as that is, sometimes those words fall flat. But not always.

Two of Ben's friends from high school offered to come over one Saturday afternoon to help me with any yard projects I may have. Ben and I had begun a yard project before he left but didn't finish it and I was too overwhelmed with maintaining the rest of the house to tackle it. I appreciated so much the help they did so that I (with the help of Kyle digging the hole for the trees I wanted to plant) could finally complete another project in our backyard. Here is a picture of the finished project:
Also, because of this great weather we had I was able to finally paint the trim around my new windows. Don't they look great?

My newest card

Here is the latest card I sent to Ben (minus the note I wrote in it -sorry Charissa):