Fall has arrived!

We were starting to think that Fall was passing us by this year.  Up until October 12th, the Seattle area had been experiencing unseasonably dry and sunny weather.  However, that day Mother Nature decided to flip the switch -- and fall arrived.  Over the last TWO weeks, we have gotten approximately 3" of rain (just at our house).  Knowing this, we decided to come take a look at the Tolt River today in Carnation.  We had made quite a few trips to the river this summer...mostly for Indy's pleasure.  We had a dry day today (albeit it cloudy), so we thought we check out what a few inches of rain does to the river.

Here's what the river looked like today.  It was quite high and muddy -- and moving at a decent pace.  So much so that we decided to leave Indy on her leash while she submersed herself.

To refresh your memory, here's what the same section of river looked like Labor Day weekend.  Quite a difference, huh?  Granted the picture Kristina took today was with her mobile phone, so she couldn't zoom in the same, but you can see that the rock bar that was present in September is completely covered with running water now.

A good shot of Jared enjoying the river...

And of course, our soggy little doggie got to experience the river too!  Look how wet she is! 

Happy Fall...

Tree Hugger -- the final installment!

Tree removal turned out to be a little more involved than we would have liked.  The team did a great job, but they underestimated the job and therefore it took longer than we would have liked.  Otherwise, it was just fine.

Tree removal took 3 days and 4+ guys to remove.  First they had to cut up the rounds (which was no easy task).  After the rounds were in "manageable" pieces, they moved the pieces to the front yard and then eventually loaded them onto a trailer or into a truck.  Like we said, no easy task.

Here's what the yard looked like after clearing away the wood...

Some of the machinery used to move the wood from the back to the front caused the lawn to be ripped up and some muddy areas in the yard.

In the next few pictures, you can see how much saw dust remained after tree removal.  By the way, Jared raked all of this up today.  Come next spring it looks like we'll be buying another truckload of dirt and spreading it out on the lawn and re-seeding again.

This is a good shot of the remaining stump; you can see how large the rotten core was -- bigger than we thought.  Keep in mind that the stump is about 5 1/2 feet in diameter.

Interesting shot...this is where a large part of the tree fell on the yard while it was being cut down. 

This shot is funny because you can see Indy in her fenced in area; she is just waiting to be let out so she can cause trouble.

We sure are glad that's over with for this year.  Hopefully the other Cottonwood won't need to be cut down for quite some time.

Indy and her toys!

Indy loves to play with ropes, but she is pretty tough on them.  A few weeks back while Kristina was picking up she thought it might be a good time to buy Indy a new rope.  So, Kristina went online and found a cool Halloween colored rope.  But, you know Kristina, she just couldn't stop at a rope...she had to buy more toys.  That being said, Indy ended up with a new rope, a duck, and two new balls.  One of the balls makes funny noise when it rolls and bounces while the other one just squeaks.  Kristina did a great job of getting new toys for Indy because she has been playing with all of them since they arrived on Saturday.  That Indy sure is one spoiled little dog!

Look at that supreme concentration...Kristina told her she had to wait.

Still waiting, but she had to get closer to the toys...:)

Pumpkin Pie Time of Year!

Well, it is that time of year.  The weather has changed; we have gotten approximately 3" of rain in the last week and there is a definite brisk feeling in the air (we don't even think it reached a high of 50 degrees today).  It snowed at the mountain passes this weekend (both Snoqualmie and Stevens).  That being said, it is Pumpkin Pie time!  Jared LOVES Kristina's Pumpkin Pie, so she decided to make him one today (a practice one for Thanksgiving) -- and boy is he loving it!!  The recipe that Kristina uses makes two pies, so our lucky neighbors got the other one.  :)  Here's to Fall!

TEN YEARS!

Well, believe it or not, Jared and Kristina have been married 10 years today.  Earlier in the day we considered that 10 years ago we were on a beach in Hawaii -- that was a GREAT day!  And as the saying goes, "we've come a long way since then!".  We celebrated our 10th Wedding Anniversary with dinner at Le Grande Bistro Americain located in Kirkland, WA.  It was a spectacular meal with an awesome view of Lake Washington.  Here's to at least another 10!

Tree Hugger -- Part 2

Let's just say, getting a tree of this magnitude cut down is expensive (much more expensive that we expected), but after watching the teams over THREE days, we definitely know why.

We had called around the area and we received estimates from several different companies, but we decided to go with Arbor Magic.  When one of their arborists was out, he was truly sorry to have to tell us it was time to cut down the tree (which we appreciated over the other companies with nothing but money on their minds).  In addition, the teams the showed up to cut down the tree each day were very efficient and they did an excellent job of keeping things tidy (you know how important that was to Kristina).  In addition, they didn't take out any trees other than the GIANT Cottonwood Tree.  We would highly recommend these guys and we will definitely use them in the future.

The first team showed up on Monday afternoon (we weren't expecting them until Tuesday, but finished another job early and wanted to do some prep work on our tree) and immediately got busy.  Here's a shot of Josh climbing up the nearby Maple Tree to get to the Cottonwood Tree; we were amazed at how we just 

quickly he scampered up that skinnier Maple Tree.

Here he is on the Cottonwood, getting down to business. 

A zoomed out shot, you can see Josh in the tree, if you look closely. 

And the tree starts coming down...  As you can see, there are several people here working on taking this tree down.  There are tons of harnesses everywhere and everyone was working well as a team to get this done as efficiently as possible with minimal damage to the yard and surround trees (that was important to Jared). 

The Cottonwood is starting to look naked at the top...

Team below trying to control where the limbs fall.

This reminds us of cartoons when we were kids; you always saw the wedges being cut out of the trees just before you heard "TIMBER!".

This is what is looked like at the end of Tuesday, you can tell they didn't quite get it all down, so they will have to show up tomorrow.  Before they could even start this job, they had to buy a special chainsaw, and we're sure it was put to good use.

This is what the backyard looks like now.  When they came back on Wednesday, they brought along a newly purchased "mechanical come along" to finish the job.  Something that they didn't expect, but put to good use and they will use for future jobs.  See that Indy is checking for squirrels.  :)

From these photos, you can see that the tree was indeed rotting.  It might have lasted another year or two, no one knows for sure.  It is nice to know that we did the right thing.

Now we just have to wait for these GIANT rounds to be picked up by another company.  Arbor Magic chipped and took away as much as they could, but these rounds are too large for them and their chipper, so another company will be out on Monday or Tuesday to take the rest.

Stay tuned...

Kristina's Kale

Since moving to the Pacific Northwest, we have really gotten into eating Kale.  It sounds strange, but it is very common to see at the grocery store, farmer's markets, and in restaurants.  Both of us really like it and it is apparently a fall vegetable, so Kristina decided to give it a go.  She planted romaine lettuce at the beginning of summer, and it did awesome.  Since her deck top container was empty she decided to try Kale.  So far so good.  It is growing quite well, and we look forward to enjoying it soon.

Tree Hugger -- Part 1

For those of you that have visited us, you may remember that our backyard is FULL of huge trees.  All of the trees provide a very nice canopy for the yard and you get a bit of that "ahhh" feel when you are out there and the sun is shining through the tree limbs.  Not to mention, the huge trees are GREAT for hanging up Kristina's hammock.

Of all of the trees in the backyard, our favorite is the GIANT COTTONWOOD.  It is huge and the biggest tree back there.  It always amazed us how big it was.  Apparently, we weren't in the minority either; several people had seen it and said, "Wow, that's the biggest cottonwood I have ever seen -- still standing!".

Here's a shot of it on a sunny day...please note that Jared had to stand WAY back to get the entire tree in the picture.

Here's a close-up of the trunk...this "knot" here is big enough for Kristina to stand on...

And here's a tape measure wrapped around the base of the tree.  The circumference of the base of the tree is 17 FEET; which means that the diameter of the base of the tree is 5.4 FEET.  See, we aren't joking when we say it is a GIANT tree.

So, you may be wondering why we are writing a post on a tree, well, all good things must come to an end.  The tree is rotting (which you can see in the picture below this paragraph).  We had been trying to put this off as long as we could, but it has gotten to the point that we have had several arborists tell us that it should come down; otherwise, it might come down in a storm on our house.  That being said, the tree will be cut down this week.  Ugh!  This isn't something that we want to do, but we also don't want a tree in our house.

Stay tuned for more...

Skagit River Float Trip

A couple of months ago, Kristina was becoming familiar with Groupon; she had been aware of it in the past, but it seemed like everyone she was talking to/with as of late had gotten a "rock star" deal using Groupon.  That being said, she decided to check it out again.  She was on the website actually making a donation to a "dog cause" when this offer for Skagit River Float Trip was listed as well.  The float trip sounded like a perfect gift for Jared, so she decided to take a chance and go for it.  So at the end of August, she bought the deal -- and we were able to use it today.

The float trip is a 4-hour raft float down the Skagit River.  She signed up for the 9:45am float, so that meant we had to get up and out of the house by 7:15am.  When we woke up, it was clear, dry, and sunny, but chilly; the thermometer outside our house was reading 38 degrees.  We did know though that it was supposed to be close to 70 degrees, so it was a "layers day".

We arrived at Howard Miller Steelhead Park in Rockport, WA and met up with the group.  We weren't sure what to expect, but it turned out that in our group there was 5 rafts of 8 people and a guide.  They loaded us on a bus to the start point of the float and then we float down the river and end up back where our vehicles are all parked.  It is funny; Jared and I had sized up the guides independently and  in the end we had chosen the same guide without even discussing it.  Well, Jared and Kristina have always been a perfect match for each other.  :)  That being said, we piled into our orange raft and headed out onto the river.

Here's a shot of our raft, we were assigned to this one and it proved to be a nice float down the river.

Here's a shot of our guide Dave.  He has lived in the area for 30 years and has been floating down the river for that long.  He was an invaluable fishing resource.  As we stopped throughout the float Jared was able to ask him lots of questions and "pick his brain" about the area.  Let's just say, we have some more areas to check out for fishing!

For having such a big group of people floating, all of the guides did a great job of spacing out the rafts along the river.  We definitely didn't feel like we were out there with 40+ people.  It was quite serene and very relaxing.

One of the main attractions of the float was salmon spawning and did we see salmon!!  Most of the salmon appeared to be Kings (based on their size), some of the smaller ones could have been Silvers.  Dave said that he had seen a school a Silvers the day before our float.  The Kings were all really good size -- most of them appeared to be in the 30-40 lbs range, but we saw a couple that were at least 60 lbs.  A 60-lbs fish is a BIG fish, especially when they are THAT close.  It was impossible to get a shot of the fish in the water, but here's a shot of how clear the water was.  The salmon seemed to like the more shallow water, and as we floated through, the fish could be seen darting off in different directions.  Dave was normally the first one down the river, so we got to see the most fish.  Dave indicated that there are also Steelhead and plenty of trout (Rainbow and Cutthroat) in the river as well.

Another attraction of the float is seeing fall colors.  Since we have been dry and still fairly warm for the area, a lot of the trees had not changed color drastically yet.  However, there were a few glimpses of things to come.

A nice shot of a snowy mountain that was behind us as we floated down the river.  We believe that this is El Dorado Peak in the North Cascade Mountain Range.  

This section of the river reminded us of the Main Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho.  It was odd that instead of there being a bunch of boulders to avoid as we floated down the river (like in Idaho), the Skagit River has bunches of old tree stumps that need to be avoided as we went down the river. 

We saw many fisherman on the river as we floated down -- most of them in drift boats.  However, this fly fisherman was doing his thing with a little pontoon boat.

Another attraction on the trip was Bald Eagle Spotting -- and we were pleasantly surprised with how many bald eagles we saw (young and old).  They seemed to be on every part of the river.

Here's a couple of shots of an adult bald eagle perched up in the tree.  It is amazing that Jared was able to capture these shots.  In our opinion these are the typical bald eagle shots of him/her looking regal.

Here's some great shots of one of the younger eagles.  This eagle was probably just born earlier this year.

Here's one last parting shot of the river...

We couldn't have asked for a better day to float and experience the river!