How Our Days Have Been Spent

:: picking tri-color raspberries behind the house ::

 

:: lake swimming ::

:: eating cherries from the orchard ::

:: bowling ::

:: throwing rocks (lots and lots of throwing rocks) ::

 :: hammock time ::

:: evening fishing off the dock (my brother-in-law and nephew shown here) ::

Thank you, Montana - - you've been good to us this summer.  We'll miss you!

Photos: Unedited

My new thing: bare-bones photography.  I've been challenging myself to take photos and use only the settings on the camera to alter the effects.  If the picture doesn't turn out, it doesn't turn out -- no Photoshop allowed.   In some ways, it's refreshing.  In others, frustrating.  But I think making a few arbitrary rules like this will help me to become a better photographer now, when I have the time to mess around endlessly.  A few selections below -- perhaps editing could make these better, but here they are, as is:

Most of these were taken not from our house, but from the home of a family friend, where we spent yesterday evening at a fourth-of-July picnic.  The one at the very top was taken from our moving car; I desperately wanted to stop and take more photos of these beautiful, startlingly yellow fields, but impatient kids who have probably spent far too much time in the car recently made that somewhat impossible.  Maybe I'll be able to sneak away and take a few more photos at this spot some other day....

We've Arrived.

 We're here!  After a 24-hour flight, a week of stopover in Portland, Oregon, and a 12 hour drive through the western states we've arrived in heaven (also known as summertime in Montana.)   This is where we'll be spending the majority of our time during our trip and also where we'll celebrate our marriage come August.  My family has a house on a lake here.... a place very dear to my heart, it was built by my great-grandparents, immigrants from Lithuania.  Though it's been a few years since our last visit, upon arrival it feels as though we never left.  Just as with a few rare and magical friendships, it seems we can pick up exactly where we left off, regardless of how much actual time has passed. 

I thought I might use the rest of this post to share a few photos from the drive -- one I've been doing for 18 years, but never fails to stun me anew with its breathtaking beauty and inherent sense of Americana.  We stopped at a roadside diner in Ritzville for BLTs, burgers, and homemade pie; we drove through a tiny, one-street town aptly named "Paradise;" we passed countless farms and roadside fruit stalls....It was a good drive, getting better and better as we came closer to our destination, recognizing important landmarks and finally, thrillingly, spotting the lake as we crested a hill.

I love the additions of the windmills through the Columbia Gorge.  There's something truly majestic and beautiful about them.   No aesthetic objections here -- a far better sight than pollution any day.

P.s. I spent the more peaceful parts of our drive today reading this amazing, brilliant book, which happens to be written by my brother-in-law, Eric.   I literally could have kept my nose in the novel through the entire, gorgeous drive but it was also an enormous treat to put it aside until our arrival and savor the final chapters as I nursed my babe to sleep.  The late sunset outside, the sound of crickets chirping through the open windows, the last, satisfying pages of a wonderful book.  Bliss.