Four Days Later

Four days after our first visit to Mt. Rainier, the kids and I went back again,

but this time we took Grandma.

We took an easier one mile hike that had plenty of views like this one.

Our destination was Myrtle Falls,

and this was the view looking up from the top of the falls.

Half of the kids thought the bridge was great

(the other half weren't so sure it was engineered properly), 

and they were all delighted to make a new friend

(from a distance).

Too much fun and way too beautiful to only go twice...

Mt. Rainier

On Sunday, we went up to Mt. Rainier on a four mile hike.

And when I say "we",

I mean we ALL went.

See?

The hiking part was fun,

and the mountain was even more beautiful the closer we got,

but crossing the snow patches on the trail was the most fun.

(Especially when we got to slide down the snow-covered trail on the other side!)

We saw a buck, two does, a marmot, and a lot of wildflowers.

A lot of wildflowers.

(So many that I got overwhelmed trying to pick which pictures to post.

So you get to see two.

I'm sorry and you're welcome.)

Too much fun and way too beautiful to only go once...

In The Back Field

The Bookshelf Saga: Part 2

Once the bookshelves were finished, I started loading them with books, beginning with the shelves we bought.  Those shelves are at the end of my new shelving system, and I alphabetize our books by author, so I started with Z and worked my way backward until I filled the shelves...

...and ran out of room.

So I got creative!

I found this set of retro mustard yellow suitcases at Goodwill earlier that week, and I still hadn't figured out exactly what I was going to do with them.  So I used the smaller one as a bookshelf at the east end of the lighted bookshelves!

(I filled the big one on the bottom with denim I'm saving to make quilts for my kids some day.  

Storage in plain sight; I love that!)

This is my Desert/Cowboy Corner:  a rubbing of a Native American petroglyph (my step-grandma made it along the Columbia River in the 60s for an art class, before the dam flooded the area), a paint-by-number my grandpa did, jars of jawbones my kids collected in Nevada, a too-small cowboy hat and too-big cowboy boots, and a desert-scape picture my brother-in-law took in South America (the frame belonged to my great-grandma and is made out of cactus).

On the wall facing that, at the west end of the lighted bookshelves, I stacked up a few old wooden crates from my mother-in-law and filled them with books (because I knew by the time I got to the M's that I was going to run out of room), and I used a horseshoe-shaped book holder turned on end to take part of my Louis L'Amour collection vertical.  To continue my cowboy theme, I filled some too-small cowboy boots with coins to use as bookends and added a red bandanna and my father-in-law's moose jawbones.

I'm happy with my little extra shelving solutions, and the bookshelves we bought and assembled are very nice, but my hands-down favorite are the lighted bookshelves!

I love how easy it is to read the titles, even on the oldest and most worn spines,

and really I love the soft glow that showcases my beloved friends books;

especially at night!