fishing spiderwebs

Our house is covered in spiderwebs from some seriously industrial spiders.  Some of the smarter birds have learned to raid their catch.  It is amazing to watch

Wedding

It's official, Eric and I are married!  

July 19, 2014

It was an amazing day.  These are a few of the pictures from friends and family, of course I didn't take any.  

Rin was mildly traumatized by the adoring two year olds

The garden didn't look too bad considering it went in two months before the big day.

Food was of course the focus, with our favorite restaurant Alium catering.  And the amazing Shawna of neighborhood fame put all the spectacular flowers together. Even my bouquet, which I happen to think is the prettiest bouquet ever.

Mom, Keith and Uncle Dave.  Funny how mom and Keith match

The youngest guest at the wedding: 3 week old Talullah

I'm so happy and a little shocked that Polly and Luke actually made it up.  

The official pics are on Jordan's website: http://www.jordansleethphotography.com/Weddings/Heather-Eric/

Puertoricanos

Raissa Roberto and Alvaro came to visit us before the wedding.  I was a little distracted with wedding stuff, but I still managed to drag them to the places I've been dreaming about ever since they gave me a tour of Puerto rico.  

First stop: the Deschutes River. 

Next a drive through tour of the gorge and its waterfalls

Finally the Oregon beaches to contrast the warm flat beaches of Puerto Rico.  

It was a bit cold for Roberto, but Alvaro didn't like his dad hiding.

Roberto was super excited about the goonies connection

Alvaro on Sam

Fishing in Alaska

For the past few years, Eric and his family have gone fishing in Alaska every summer at the lodge that Nancy does paperwork for in the winter.  I will admit to some jealousy, so it's a good thing I finally got to go along.  

Sportsman cove lodge is in an absolutely beautiful place on Prince of Wales Island.  the lodge itself is an old saltery.

It's a pretty intense trip, so the first night was the only time we really had any energy to explore.  Eric and I hiked above the lodge to a little lookout point.  Beautiful and wet.

Sunset was beautiful.  Little did we know tho was the best weather we were going to get. 

 Day 1 of fishing

Excited

 Not our boat obviously, but basically the same thing

My first catch was less than impressive.

It was a little wet and miserable, but we had the gear.

Eric caught the first halibut

What was most fun was 'fishing' for eagles.  Fish that blew their bladders so couldn't be released, but too small to keep make great eagle bait.

That night we went on a little tour up a neighboring fjord.  

The cool part, other than the stunning beauty, was how many bears were out.  It was just before the salmon run, so they were hungry and wandering the shores looking for anything to eat.  Now, long distance photography on a boat makes for blurry photos, but these are the best I've got.

 Day 2

On the second day we had a little better luck fishing.  We caught salmon and halibut as well as rockfish.

And lots of eagles!

These cuties stank.

More eagles

It was a really lovely trip.  I love the Pacific North West!

Landscaping

So.  The wedding is coming up and I am really excited about having it at our place, but as of March, the land around the house is truly nothing but a weedy mud pit.  Now I love gardening and Eric has graciously given me quite a budget to play with (no limits in the nursery!!!!!), but the speed of this made the spring a little tough.  I don't have too many pictures because Eric is not a picture guy, and my hands were too muddy, but this is a small collection of the process.  

This is the front lawn, where the ceremony will be held.  Weedy pit, no?

Sod being delivered in May

The lakefront side of the house.  Finally making progress on the weeds on the burn

 The Mediterranean garden by the front door was such a mess for so long.  The paths finally went in in May so I finally could try to deal with this.  Look at the weeds! (The blackberries in back look under control for once though)

 The path by the front door. Go Tom! Fun fact, we got the stones for this path from my Dad's place

 By June, I was really sweating.  The wedding is in a month.  I finally got flowers in the berm, but the irrigation system took forever to figure out.  

This looks a lot better than before, does it not?  

By mid June, the sod doesn't look bad, the flowers are in, if small.  All that's left is the irrigation and mulch.  You can see the ladder on the right. We got a lot of cherries this year (nice to be here in the fight against birds and rain, in the past they would always mold or get eaten before I would make it up.)

 The wedding is one month away.  The mulch is finally on.  We basically gave up on perfecting the irrigation and are hoping it is good enough.  

Now it's time to focus on all that other wedding stuff... oh help, maybe landscaping an entire place in 3 month wasn't so bad after all!