For my MIL..bird pictures

My mother-in-law is a great photographer and she loves taking pictures of birds. She'll wait for an hour just to get that perfect bird shot.

And I like to think I'm a good photographer but I just don't have her patience. If I can't get the shot in 10 minutes (or 15 shots in 10 minutes), well, it's time to move on. Plus, my photography interest really isn't with birds.

My interest is with flowers...

or sunsets...

or Charli.Every time we go to the San Juans, my MIL asks if we're taking bird pictures for her to see. This time I made the effort. These certainly aren't wonderful...blue heron tend to be pretty skittish as you near them. So these were shot from a distance; then cropped. Don't be looking for digital perfection here. But they're okay shots.

Then there's this picture of my favorite subjects.

And I know she'll like it because they're also two of her favorite subjects!

San Juan Sunsets

We were up in the San Juan Islands recently and were lucky enough to be there during a particularly hot spell in Vancouver. It was in the high 90s in Vancouver; it was 80 in the San Juan's...and absolutely beautiful. Again. Still. As always. And no, I am not a bit biased.I mean, come on...look at that sunset and tell me that is not beautiful.Or that one. It was just like living in pictures from a travel magazine. And of course, part of the charm is the sailboats reflecting in the water.This was the view from our bed the first night. It's difficult to close your eyes when this is the view outside your window.

Even Charli was spellbound.

Rain, Rain and More Rain

I've been very bad about posting. Or rather about NOT posting.

It's not that I haven't thought about posting lately. It's just that the rain has me down. I keep thinking that as soon as the sun comes out, my mood will lift and good thoughts will come pouring out.

I've been waiting now for over three weeks. The sun was out Saturday but I wasn't home (a different post still to be written) so couldn't blog then.

And while there are thoughts pouring out of my head today as I watch the rain pelting the ground yet again, I don't think I'm quite ready to share most of those thoughts; they come from a dark, dank place deep inside. Plus, I'm not sure that kind of language is proper for blogs!

Suffice it to say, we've had a LOT of rain in the past two months - like record-setting amounts of rain. This is Rose Festival week in Portland so it's natural that it should be raining. It pretty much always rains during Rose Festival.

Despite the rain, we do still get Charli down to the river for her daily swim. We discovered on Thursday of last week, however, that our beautiful sandy beach has been consumed by water.

See that red line?

Yeah, that one. That's normally where we walk on a nice sandy beach; it's now under several feet of water. So we can't walk. We just walk to the bottom of the path and stop.

And Randy throws the bumper for Charli.

And she swims out to retrieve it because...well, because she loves to swim and she's a labrador retriever...it's what she does. And while Charli loves to run on the beach and roll in the sand, she really loves to swim. So, even though there's no beach for us to walk, we continue our daily trips to the river.Because Charli doesn't care if there's a beach; she just wants to swim.

One Sad Dog

First let me say that Charli gets out for a swim pretty much every day. Even if it's raining (not pouring, just raining and yes, there is a difference; I live in the Pacific NW, trust me, there is a difference), she still gets out for a swim.

And this is how she gets us to take her.

She just stares out the window. Even her reflection looks sad.

Then she does this:

Is your heart breaking yet? If she doesn't get a response, she goes back to the window and breathes out a big, noisy sigh. It's pitiful. Really.

I swear if you could look into her brain at what her favorite scene is, this is what you'd see:

Poor little yellow dog.

The beach

We spent the weekend on the Oregon coast a couple weeks back. A couple from our sailing club built a home there a few years back. Each fall, they invite a few couples down to enjoy their house and the coast. Luckily, we're always one of the couples!

A huge storm had gone through the night before we went down so we left early on Friday in order to see the waves before sunset. The Oregon coast is a great place to be during storms because the wave action is pretty dramatic - it's hard to show that in a still picture so you'll have to take my word for it!

This year, we also saw something we hadn't seen before. And that was a lot of seafoam. It was literally in drifts on the beach. As it was blown apart and along the beach, the pieces of foam rolled into what looked like snowballs...I think Charli did think it was snow - until she dipped her nose into it!

Here are some of my favorite shots, and a video at the end - I hope you enjoy them, too. Here's the video...the wind was stong the day I shot this. You'll hear it on the video!

It was a great weekend with great friends and way too much great food and drink!

North Clark County in the Fall

We went for a drive a couple of weeks back to check out the fall colors. We've had a very mild fall with little wind, so the trees hadn't shed their colorful leaves and I wanted to get some pictures.

It was a slightly overcast day with the sun trying its best to peak through the clouds...without much luck.

But it was wonderful light for shooting landscape pictures! Our journey took us along the East Fork of the Lewis River in the northern part of Clark County. We've always loved this stretch of river and used to take our black lab, Heidi, there on warm Sunday afternoons. It was Charli's first time there and she loved it!

Our first stop was at Moulton Falls for a hike.

To say it's beautiful here is an understatement.

Randy and Charli went on ahead because I was stopping every few minutes to shoot some leaves...

or some wet rocks...

or a stairway.

But once in a while, they'd actually stop long enough for me to get a quick picture of them.

More often than not, though, it was Randy posing Charli.

She's a very picturesque girl!

After our Moulton Falls trek and photostop, we continued our tour north to the Grist Mill.

We'd been here with Randy's folks last Spring but knew the fall colors would be great there now. And we were right. I love this covered bridge!

I love how the moss hangs off the trees here.

It was a beautiful day and one that I really enjoyed.

The only downside? The Dairy Queen that used to be in Woodland, and that was our last stop when we'd taken this trip in the past...we discovered that it closed. And I could taste that Peanut Buster Parfait!