Happy Thanksgiving Birthday!

Gideon was born the day before Thanksgiving. This year his birthday landed on Thanksgiving so we celebrated them together.

Here he is bright and early.

Here is his cake. It was a joint effort from Ruth and Dana.

Gideon was very excited and wanted to eat his cake right then.

Thanksgiving meal prep started Wednesday night and went on, full tilt, through Thursday. Everybody worked hard!

Except these guys. They played on the floor most of the day.

We think Gideon had a pretty fun day.

And finally time to eat! Thanks for getting the picture, Ivan!

After dinner we sang “Happy Birthday” and Gideon got to break into his cake. He thought the cake was more interesting than his presents.

Magnus enjoyed all of Gideon’s gifts, though.

We are so grateful for all our blessings this year! Thank you, all!

Snow Day Waterfalls

Mid-November brought a snow storm to our area and I happened to have the day off already. So, wanting to go out in the snow, I headed up the Gorge to see some waterfalls. First, I went to Panther Creek Falls. The snow was falling and it was beautiful. There was lots of ice coating everything as well.

The lower portion:

The snow really started to fall, so I headed back down to lower elevation and across to Oregon. I parked at the Eagle Creek trailhead, which was completely empty (usually a very busy spot). I hiked to Metlako Falls:

And even found a different view of it.

Then Punchbowl and Lower Punchbowl Falls

It was great hiking there in the utter silence and peace. The snow looked wonderful.

I made it home safely and enjoyed my snow day.

Into the Gorge Again

Anton invited us to go on a hike with him and his girlfriend. We had some time, so we went on part of the hike with them. It was nice to meet her and go on this little adventure.

We met on Crown Point. I liked watching this cloud bank on the river swirl around in the wind.

 

We hiked with them up to Fairy Falls on the Wahkeena Falls trail.

Wahkeena Falls:

The trail is steep but very pretty:

At the top view point:

Dana showed Anton the old abandoned view point at the top of Wahkeena Falls where you can see the ‘Necktie’.

Fairy Falls:

We had a nice time and loved seeing the pretty waterfalls and exploring.

November Waterfall Hunt

In early November I went out to find a difficult to get to waterfall along the Columbia River Gorge Historic Highway. Upper Bridal Veil Falls does not have a trail to it and most people don’t know it’s even there. It found the obscure road and the unmarked pull-off. Then it was down into the canyon on the wet and muddy steep slope. But it was awesome…

On the way home I made a quick stop at Sheppard’s Dell Falls:

And then Latourell Falls (a favorite), the autumn colors here were very nice:

This was Halloween

We had lots of fun for Halloween.

We carved our pumpkins. (Magnus drew the face for the second one and Dana carved it.)

We even all dressed up as the Guardians of the Galaxy. Magnus was Groot and Gideon was Drax the Destroyer.

And we even did some Trick-or-Treating.

Good Times had by all.