Light Show

Check out our lightshow this afternoon, just before sunset.

And, here is my oldest daughter standing in the orange glow admiring the clouds.

Fantastic.

An Ordinary Post

I know everyone out there in the blogsphere is posting Christmas posts. I am getting ready to enjoy the Christmas season...really I am. I just take a while. I feel like I have to have my X's checked off, then I can enjoy things. I've learned in my life to not get too involved in anything at typically busy times in life. I'm just not the sort of person that enjoys that sort of thing.

What I do love is Christmas day alone with my lovely little family, reading the true Christmas story out of Luke, listening to the girls sing Christmas songs, and realizing that they really get what the real meaning of Christmas is. So, I still will wait on the Christmas posts.

Today I was heading out with my lovely eight year old to go shopping - a day with just her and I. It was a little tiring for her (and I), but I think it was a good experience and a bonding time, nonetheless.

On the way out of our place, I thought, "what a typical day it was today weather wise for this time of year (and beautiful too in it's own way)". So, I wanted to share some pictures of the landscape (and weather) as I was driving out.

Below is our home. You can only see a small bit of it. The trees are the property line on one side, but our little "farm" extends to the left far beyond this picture and way down the hill along the trees, where you can't see it. This fogged in look is typical. It really isn't foggy per se. It is rainy and those are clouds hitting the foothills. Usually when there is fog in town, we are fortunate to not get any right where we are because we are a little higher than town.

The following is looking back to our little valley we live in and you can see the foothills rising all around - foothills to the mountains. No volcanos right nearby, but there are plenty of almost 4000' mountains just a little to the East.

Isn't this next picture striking? I've always thought that one Oregon White Oak in the middle of the Firs to be striking. There are a lot of tree farmers in our area. Those small trees will be big in a few years.

Moulton Falls

Long Beach Sandcastle Contest

I cannot believe how many great pictures I got from the sandcastle contest at Long Beach this last weekend. My husband and I just happened to be at Long Beach for the weekend. We had no idea about the Sand Castle contest. It was also a lovely weekend. Here is a selection of pictures from the contest. I really didn't have time to process any more pictures. These were from my three favorite sculptures:

The first set of pictures here is Some Maintenance Required. These guys were fantastic to watch.

This was my favorite of all pictures. This guy was a maniac. That is sand flying as he is stomping down the sand.

This second set of pictures is Two Scoops. This sculpture was originally supposed to have a vertical ice cream cone, but after it collapsed they made due and changed it to a two horizontal cones.

This third set is from a sculpture called Parrots Of The Carribean.

Here is the original mold. Fascinating how these teams made these sculptures.

Above you see the ship and parrot emerge out of the mold.

This was a fun thing to spend the day watching. I have a lot more pictures. The Long Beach Sand Sculpture contest had a lot of different categories, including Novice, Intermediate, and Family. Even beginning sculpters had some terrific results. More to come later.

Dogs At Sand Castle Contest

My dear husband and I went had a lovely, romantic little weekend at the beach. Surpise to us, there was a Sand Castle Building contest that weekend. I have some neat pictures to show you from that. But they will have to wait. I have never seen so many different dogs at one place, with the exception of a dog show. I really should have taken more pictures. But, I wanted to share the pictures I did take. It is amazing to me the variety of dogs that exist. Enjoy.

An Australian Shepherd. We own an Australian Shepherd. Unfortunately, I am never able to take her to a public event like this. She would bark like crazy. I saw several Aussies at the beach, however. They come in a wide varieties of looks. I saw one that looked just like ours, but didn't get a picture of him. This one happened to have three legs. An amazingly sweet dog.

I'm not sure on the breed of this dog. I'm thinking some kind of terrier. Really cute though.

This is a very sweet Rat Terrier. She was a little nervous to be among so many people and dogs. She was about twice as big as the dog in the previous picture.

Is this some sort of Pomeranian? She belonged to one of the sand castle builders and just hung out all afternoon.

I loved this little bull dog. She's about five months, her owner told me. Isn't she just adorable? She seemed pretty calm too.

3/4 Pyranese. I love the mellowness of these dogs. When I was looking for a dog several years ago, I shyed away from this breed because the literature said they could be defensive of their family (aggressive). They seem so mellow though.

Weimeraners are such a beautiful color. They remind me of my parent's dogs, which are Rhodesian Ridgebacks, but just a little calmer. I think this breed tends to be quite energetic like the Ridgebacks, however. But, seemingly, a little more easily trainable.