Wednesday on the Homestead

Good Morning!

I hope your week is going great!  Did you enjoy the holiday weekend?  My hubby had to work it but we enjoyed Sunday with our oldest son here. Other than that, we had no big plans. 

Other then the weekend plans the rest of the week since I was here last has been business as usual. My youngest son was here a couple of times for a visit and I chatted with several of my children.

I was finally able to get the flight arranged for my oldest grandson to come out and stay with us this summer. I had to wait for dates from my daughter first.  Now for the flight home. There was no advantage to making a round trip flight for him and I was arranging for him to fly here with my son's girlfriend who will be in that area in June. Saved the cost of him flying as an unaccompanied minor and will give him a friend to make the long journey. 

 

Goals

Today's goals are pretty simple. I have a little housework to do and then I want to take advantage of the sunshine and get a good walk in. 

In the home:

~Let the Roomba do its thing! :)

~Sweep & mop the kitchen floor

~Do a quick clean in the bathroom

Dinner is leftover chicken fried rice so I don't have any cooking to do today. 

For the Love of Books!

I finished Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and really enjoyed the book. 

I struggled on what to read next. So many choices. In the last couple of years I've been on a quest to read mostly classics. I discovered that I really love classic books (well not ALL of them :D ). 

After downloading a few books from Amazon (freebies) and then looking at all my books I settled on David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. It's a longer book and I'm guessing it will take me more time to read than my previous books. I just got into it but so far, I'm enjoying it.

Projects

My scrap quilt top is my main project. I got all the squares cut out. I showed you last week the large piece of "fabric" I made by sewing scraps together. I ended up adding more scraps to it to make sure I could get the last of my squares cut from it...

 

After sewing my lengthwise strips together I made some more strips from scraps and sewed those along the bottom. Then I cut out my squares..

 

I cut 4 of them side by side on the fabric and for the last square I turned the template diagonally and cut the last square..

 

That one is my favorite of the 5.  Now I'm ready to start putting the top together. I have decided to put sashing on and it will be navy blue. I want a dark color that will allow all the different squares to stand out better. 

If time allows this week, that is what I plan to work on this.

Fitness and Health

I had a great week for fitness! Not only did I get out most days for a walk but my son and I went and did another hike. I hit a major milestone on this hike. For the first time I hiked 8 miles! That is huge for me. I was plenty sore when it was all over but felt so accomplished. 

Each time I hit a new milestone I think of where I was last year after my disastrous surgery which was a difficult recovery, my eyesight issues which weren't solved until September and I was still recovering from anemia. I truly praise God for my health and strength today.  It's been an effort for me to get to this point, but so well worth it and I pray I can continue to get stronger. 

My son and I went over to the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge for this hike. The trail started on the Pacific Crest Trail.

This was the town that the Gorge forest fire started in about 2 years ago. As we walked the trail there was plenty of evidence of the fire in the burned trees. There was also lots of wildflowers and vegetation growing now showing signs that the forest is making a great comeback. 

Our original plan had been to hike into a waterfall and turn around and hike back out. That would have made it a hike of about 4 1/2 miles. The trail was very busy that day (a holiday weekend so we expected it to be). The falls were very pretty..

At that point we wanted to hike a little more before going back so we set out for another view point which was some rock formations. The viewpoint was supposed to be in about 1 1/2 miles. We crossed this little bridge and started out..

 We came to a fork in the trail and had to make a choice, right or left? We chose right. We hiked for quite a ways and saw some beautiful views..

But never found what we were looking for. I checked my GPS hike tracker and realized we had hiked in 4 miles already (from the trailhead).. I was feeling a little concerned knowing we had to hike out 4 miles still! We turned around at that point and headed back. We're setting that viewpoint as the goal for our next hike and approaching it from a different side of the trail. 

In any case, as we got back to the start of the trail I was thrilled to know that I had done this awesome thing! :D My son got this picture of me at the end of the hike and we took another one of the two of us..

 

I have to say, I most certainly have been bit by the hiking bug and can't wait for our next adventure! 

 

View from my Deck

It's looking like it will be a beautiful day! The sun is out and while there are thunderstorms possible in the forecast, I am looking forward to getting out and getting my walk in today. Hopefully I'll miss any possible rain! :)

 

Today's weather: High: 72  Low: 53

That's all for this week my friends,

Crystal