Take a deep breath and a sigh of relief

I know many of you have been incredibly busy this holiday season, and we can count ourselves in on that too! The holidays are always fun but I know I'm usually tired and glad when they are over. All the prep work for decorating, gift making and buying, food cooking, card writing, house cleaning... you know what I'm talkin about. It is all worth it in the end though and hopefully everyone out there had a warm and lovely holiday. Did everyone get what they wanted from santa? We certainly did! I'd list our presents here but I have a feeling only outdoor folks and tech geeks like us would appreciate them LOL. Thank you to everyone who sent us cards and presents.... and food : D ... it made us feel the love even across the miles.

That all being said, I would would like to apologize for getting so backed up on the blog. Below is a  re-cap of what we've been up to.




It was unfortunate that we could not make it back to FL this first christmas but we still tried to surround ourselves with people we care about. There were many holiday parties happening in our little town, a couple of which we made it to. There is one party that is held every year here where a local resident harvests the chestnuts from the tree in her yard and invites everyone to come and roast them in her chestnut roasting machine! There was another party where wine (for me it was sparkling apple cider) and conversation, and later dancing and drumming took center stage. And we ourselves hosted a small get together.  Angus, the lodge owner, was one of the only Stevenson folk who didn't have any plans on the 25th so we invited him over to dinner. He gave us an awesome gift, a certificate for a stay at his lodge for ourselves or any family or friends for any amount of days we need! In addition to that he also invited us to come along and paddle his tandem touring kayak on a 14 day trip down the hudson river to woodstock ny then ultimately to the big city! We are very excited by this prospect and are working through the logistics to see if we can make it happen.

 So the holidays are supposed to be all about the kids right? Well we have 2

two kids of our own, furry as they may be, who got in on the christmas action:

We have had some beautiful days here lately and I'd like to share some photos of our ever changing living room and office view:

A few days before the 25th we drove down the road to explore the Bonneville dam. We always pass it on our way to Vancouver but had never stopped before. We'd heard that you could see sealions in the river where they come up from the ocean to eat the easy to catch salmon and trout in the fish ladders of the dam.

Sure enough we were lucky to see some playing and tossing their food around as well as some other really neat sights. I've made a rather long video of our day trip posted in the link below, after the page comes up look to the right side of the loading bar where you will see 360p. click on that and select the 480p. This will reload the video in a higher quality.  Please pause it and allow time for it to load, it's about 9 minutes long.

Our day at Bonneville --CLICK HERE

The other day our friend Tressa sent us a picture she took on her phone of some frost on the roof her car in FL. It made us laugh because only a couple months ago we would have been really excited about a little frost too lol. We've been having some light snows on and off, nothing sticking, and nothing like the one week where everything was white. But still we're getting some nights where our whole van is covered in a dense layer of ice. We finally broke down and bought a scraper from the dollar store. I'm still finding it amusing, but its funny how quickly you become accustomed to new weather patterns. One weather pattern we got used to but were not really expecting was the wind. Alot of the businesses here are called "wind river" something or other. We quickly began to realize why that is. On any given day wind gusts of up to 40 mph come whipping down the gorge. Some days it looks like the hurricane days we use to have back in FL where all the trees are swinging about, you can hear audible whistling and howling of the wind, and you think any minute your roof may come off. Of course it doesn't come off, and honestly all the plants here must have adapted to it because you don't even see downed tree limbs or moss or anything like what we would see back home after a wind storm.  The other day we took a walk across the road and down to the river. The river level was much higher than it had been the last time we were there and we noticed a floating bridge extending out by the park's boat launch. We walked out onto it and felt it rocking soothingly up and down. The view from the end was so incredible, I wanted to take a video but my camera batteries were dead :(. We lay down at the end of the dock and allowed ourselves to become amazed all over again at the natural beauty that surrounded us. You would only just have to turn your head to the side to see an eye full of magnificent snow dusted mountains and majestic waves rolling across the water's surface. And just then, tiny beads of snow began to fall on our faces as we stared up at the clouds. In that moment we couldn't believe we were actually there, laying on a dock in the middle of the cloumbia river, in washington, being snowed on. It was perfect, if not a little too surreal. 

~Kris

Tis the season......

....for creativity it seems, at least in my world. Maybe its all the pretty colored lights people put up, or maybe its the excuse to make decorations and gifts for people. I'm not really sure but whatever it is my creative juices really really start flowing this time of year. I've been busy working on arts and crafts lately, and as a side note to this blog I sold three more wire pieces recently! But on the home front Ash and I dug up our live holiday tree and its now happy and healthy planted in a large container in our living room. It stayed bare for a couple days until we started making decorations for it. Now is all shiny and rainbow colored! I've put up some pictures of the tree and the home-made goodness we've covered it with:

CLICK HERE for photos of holiday crafty fun

These pics above show what it looked like around our house a week ago. Now the snow is all melted and I dont think we are going to get any more before christmas. I hope we do though because I've never experienced a "white christmas".

While I've been getting crafty with art supplies, Ash has been getting crafty in the kitchen. She regularly whips up delicious foods for us to enjoy but of particular note lately were the soft movie style pretzels, they were sooo good. She made some honey mustard sauce to dip them it... OMG...

In other news updates we got a vehicle of our own now, a 1995 Plymouth Voyager Soccer Mom mini van! It runs so great and it's really comfy. It gets good gas mileage and fits any and all outdoor equipment we will be putting in it. My cousin Lisa is to thank for this beauty, she rocks! Thanks so much Lisa for this fantastic present, you have no idea how much it helped us!!!

Today Skype allowed me to spend some time with my family from over 3k miles away. It was really nice to be able to see and hear, and in some strange way feel like I participated in a yearly family gathering. I will make sure I can attend in person next year though, because there is something special, important, and unique about a real life hug that you just can't get through a computer screen, not to mention missing out on all the yummy home made foods! Now we just need to get Ash's parents to use skype so she can feel a little closer to "home" this holiday.

Excitement is brewing in both ash and I about our plans for the upcoming weekend: Whale Watching! We're gonna drive down to depoe bay oregon to see the winter whales, we're soooo happy! Stay Tuned for photos from our encounter with the aquatic giants.


~kris

An Unexpected Day

I awoke this morning with a list of somewhat normal things to do: laundry, house cleaning, composting, etc. Ash was sleeping off her overnight shift so I set out up the street into town to get to business. First stop was the laundromat. I put my clothes in to wash and walked across the street to the Bahma coffee shop to get a drink and pass the time working on some holiday ornaments for family and friends. This is where the day took a turn from the ordinary to the unexpectedly wonderful. I was sitting in Bahma making an ornament (who's future owner's identity shall remain secret to keep the gift giving surprise factor) when two quirky, eccentric, sixty something ladies sat down across from me. They inquired about what I was making and were complimenting me on a completed little wire lizard I'd brought along. I love how wire work is such a great ice breaker.... the three of us ended up chatting for over an hour about all kinds of stuff. When they were getting ready to leave they told me they loved frogs so of course I told them I would be happy to make them one in the future and gave them my business info. Then one of them asks if she could buy the little lizard there on the spot! Score one for wire girl! Once they left I realized I needed to go put the laundry in the dryer. I asked the lady behind the coffee bar if I could place my finished ornament and wire supplies with her and told her I'd be right back. 10 minutes later I came back to Bahma and the lady behind the counter informed me that the owner of the shop saw what I was working on and wanted to buy my little ornament..(or one like it). Score 2 for wire girl! At that point the coffee shop was closing so I collected my stuff and met up with Ash for dinner at what is becoming our favourite restaurant in town, the "big river grill". They have a killer veggie burger and vegetarian black bean chili, and Ash says their meat-stuffs are tasty too. Some time earlier while I was in Bahma I'd overheard that there was going to be a holiday parade down our little main street later in the evening so Ash and I decided to check it out. Our neighbor was having a pre parade party at her house so we went and visited, then the whole party made a mass exodus down the street in time for the parade to start. Here's a little collection of clips from the parade which was a very cute little "piece of small town americana":

You know how they say *when it rains it pours*? Well, after the parade everyone made their way back to our neighbor's house to continue the festivities. In that group of people was the fantastic owner of a beautiful local lodge whom we've befriended (the one who let us borrow his station wagon when we were carless). About a week ago he let me put my life sized horse bust sculpture down at his resort to get some exposure. He told me that today he saw some of his guests admiring it and inquiring about my contact info. He decided he'd become too fond of it to let it go to someone else so he purchased it right there! How many points does wire girl have now? I think that one deserves more that one point since it's been my most expensive piece to date and I've been trying to sell it for like 5 years now LOL. AND it doesn't quite end there, that same wonderful lodge owner was so kind he took it upon himself to set up an appointment for me to meet with those guests tomorrow morning to discuss some commission work! Wowza... I never could have imagined that such a normal looking day would have turned out to be this amazing!

~kris

Video of the snow covered woods

Somehow in my last blogs I managed to pass over this little clip showing you some beautiful woods we hiked through:

A little tip for those not used to viewing online videos, wait till its fully loaded before pressing play, it will help with the playback interruption. Also, to make the video larger, you can press the button of the 4 arrows pointing in opposite directions, when you mouse over it it will say full screen. Warning though, sometimes the video will look less clear when enlarged.

As a tail on this post I will tell you that we've been in full swing preparing for the holidays here, lots of crafts and whatnot are being made and hung and its starting to look quite festive! Today we drove out into the woods to find ourselves a tree to bring home, funny how naive I was thinking we could just dig one up with no problems lol. We discovered that the root systems of a tree the height we wanted were long and thick, and in this particular location the trees were growing up through about 2 feet of rocks. We managed to clear away most of the ones around the base with our hands but saw that we would have to spend all day moving rocks and digging before that little tree was going anywhere. Interestingly while we were digging around the tree we noticed the scent of it was unlike normal "christmas trees", these had a delightful fruity smell to them. We gave up on that location and are going to try again tomorrow to find a similar tree growing in more of a soil sub strait. In more accessible news,  there are holly trees growing all over the place here and I plan to make some wreathes from it. I'll be getting up some photos soon of all the crafts and decorations happening around here so check back.