The Annual Family Apple Squeezing Fest

It's that time of the year again.  Time for the annual family cider bee at my brother's house in Chehalis, WA.

Every year now for quite a while, my brother Hank has gone to eastern Washington to get a big tote full of apples to be pressed into cider.

We gather, rain or shine, to attend to this ritual.  We've been fortunate weather wise, with only one rainy fest day.  We were treated kindly again today as the rain dried up in time for the working and playing and eating and talking.

With my mother's passing just after this event two years ago, we still feel her presence and miss seeing her sitting there in her chair surrounded by activity.  My sisters and I are the grannies now, and we do our best to meet her high standard of grandmotherliness.

                                              (October 2011)

Here's the scene in pictures, with few words.

 Sister Laurie, grand niece Mia, cousin Kris. ↑

 Cider maker in chief Hank ↑

                              No bad apples in this bin.↑

 Cousin Dan, Tom, Brother-in-law Mike, sister Ilene, sister Laurie.

             Watch out for this bunch!

Thanks to Hank and Cindy for hosting and supplying the apples.  Thanks to everyone who brought abundant food and supplied lively conversation.  Thanks to the kids for being delightful.  And thank you to Niece Katie for some of these photos which I stole from Facebook!

It's truly a family project!

There's Trouble in Paradise

You know all that lovely technology I have been boasting about?  Such a paradise of connectivity, right?

Well, it has caused my life to be a mess lately.  The desk top computer has rebelled because someone had the audacity to install the iCloud on it's strictly Microsoftness. Apple and Microsoft are having a war in my PC, and the result is that it has lost connectivity to the internet via the cable, wired in, connection.  

My tech guy Tad is totally pi**ed off with me for messing up the machine over which he has technological custody. He keeps telling me not to touch anything, and I do anyway.  He thought he had it fixed Monday, but this morning it was all wacko again.  And I do not accept that it is my fault this time.  I didn't do it! :-/ 

I have communicated with Tad and he says the whole thing will need to be scrubbed.  

In the meantime, I connected it to the wireless, restarted it, and it is working fine - just not the way it's supposed to.

And that's the odd thing, of course.  The cable signal is going to the wireless router and everything else is doing fine.  These machines are crazy.  Can't live with them, can't live without them.

And that's on top of the major grumpiness many of us in the Seattle area are feeling today anyway.  Our beloved Sounders soccer team has lost badly two games in a row, one last Saturday to Colorado  and one last night to Vancouver BC.  We were at the top of the league a week ago.

Last night 38,000 of us eagerly anticipated watching a good match at the stadium on a lovely fall evening.  Many others were watching at home on their TV sets.

We love doing the March to the Match and it was a rousing one last night, flares, smoke and all.

Today many of us are feeling more blue than green.

Which Camera? Which Device?

(photo by Tom's iPhone)
We had a great time on the Oregon coast last week.  Can you tell where I am?  Yep, I'm eating a Tillamook cheese sandwich at the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  Yes, there was ice cream for dessert after some shopping in the gift shops.  Can you see what I have in my hand?  Yep, it's my new Apple smart phone.  

One reason I have avoided getting a smart phone was because I was afraid I would become addicted to it.  I did.  I was concerned that I would become one of those people who always has her nose in her phone.  I am.

Well, at least that was the case while we were traveling.  There were so many reasons to be checking in - to take quick photos that could be instantly posted on Facebook, to check email and Facebook for responses and to see what "my people" were doing, to check the weather, or get driving directions, etc, etc, etc.

And there was so much to learn!  Looking at my last two posts, I see that they are not up to my usual standard, but I'm pretty pleased with myself that I figured out how to post with my phone!  And I'm pretty impressed with my phone that it could do it!

Let me tell you that blogging on a smart phone is clumsy and difficult.  When it comes to blogging and posting photos, my phone is tricky, my lap top is OK, but nothing beats my desk top.  All of my photos are now stored in my picture library in my good old windows PC, where I can do whatever I want with them, easily.

And there are bunches of photos, of course.  Some were taken with the iPhones, some with my little Canon Powershot, and some with my big Nikon 35 mm.  How to decide?  I carried my phone in my pocket some of the time, I used my Canon when I was going for long walks, and I used the Nikon for serious photo shooting.  I'm not sure you can tell the difference unless you want to enlarge or print the photos.  

Here is a review of our trip in photos with some commentary.  It's mostly about sky and sea at the coast.

After driving through lots of rain on the way, we arrived on the coast to find clearing skies.

                             ( iPhone, above and below)

The severe storms over the weekend had left mounds of sea foam on the beach.

Cormorants don't usually hang out on the beach. I think these were still stunned after the storm.

                                                          (Canon Powershot zoom)
That evening we were treated to a wonderful sunset which I captured down the beach, between the Twin Rocks.

                       (above and below - Nikon )

Wednesday was cloudy with heavy rain squalls.  That's when we went to the cheese factory, along with a lot of other shopping and browsing.

I did get a beach walk in later in the day, but I also got caught out there in that squall you see in the photo above.  

The sun managed to find one small hole to shine through on it's way into the sea, and then the sky let loose with a squall that roared with rain.

But then in the morning, clear blue sky!

We were off to wheeler to do some antiquing.

And enjoy the scenery on Nehalem Bay.

We did a lot of exploring, and got back to the cabin for a long afternoon of beach walking, browsing shops in Rockaway, and eating ice cream in the sunshine.  The sunset on Thursday was subtle.

Friday was another beautiful day.  I was out on the beach to greet the sun as it came up over the coastal mountains, casting long shadows and lighting up the Rocks.

This was Tom's day, his birthday, and we started on the Tillamook Bay jetty at Barview.

 We drove around the bay to Bay Ocean for another beach walk.

And then we drove on down the coast to Oceanside for lunch at Roseanne's, followed by another beach walk that took us through the tunnel in the headland.

 And out the other end.

We had dinner that night at Pirates cove and caught the sunset on the way home over the bay.  And then my Nikon and I went out to capture the lingering show.

 Saturday was another beautiful day, but we were due to return home.  We cleaned the cabin, packed up, and headed north up the coast.  We stopped in Astoria at the Bow Picker for lunch, waiting in a long line for the famous fish and chips, with warm sunshine and with a great view of the Columbia River.  

We headed inland up the Columbia River to the crossing at Longview and back into Washington State.  From there it was smooth driving the remaining two hours to Seattle and home.

                                         (iPhone photo through car windshield)
And there you have it.  We've been busy since we got back, of course, with more family birthday celebrating, groceries to gather, laundry, catching up with stuff.  But we already had our email read, thanks to the new phones!

Tom got the Air Rave phone signal booster installed, and now the phones work great in our house too.

But I promise, Facebook friends, I will not be posting five times a day now.  We're home, and back to the ordinary, though hardly ever boring.

Tom's Birthday

I began Tom's birthday by greeting the sun rise out on the breach. Those photos are on another camera. With my phone I now have pics in three devices.

It was another beautiful day and our first stop out and about was the  Tillamook Bay jetty.

We planned to next have coffee and goodies at the Garibaldi bKery but, sadly, it was closed. We went to Starbucks in Tillamook  instead.

We had some research to do on new heating sources for the cabin. With that done we drove out along the bay to the beach at Bay Ocean.

Then we drove to Ovean Side for lunch at Roseanne's before walking on the beach and through the tunnel in the headland.

It was mid afternoon when we got back to the cabin. I went for another beach walk and Tom took a nap. We both spent se te reading.

Birthday dinner was at Pirates Cove in Garibaldi :oyster stew and. Fried razor clams. Yum!

We watched the sun set through to restaurant window and then captured the lingering color as we left to return to the cabin with a wonderful day winding down.

Phone Fun

I am trying to post a blog with photos from my new phone but I'm not sure what I'm doing. We had great weather here on the Oregon coast today. We went antiquing, took beach walks, ate ice cream in the sun and have been spending a lot of time setting up and playing with our new phones.

Let's see if I can actually post this.