Walla Walla Anniversary

Heidi and I celebrated 7th Anniversary touring the Walla Walla Valley wine country. We spent three days and visited several wineries in the area. It was a lot of fun and since it is fairly close to home, very easy to get to for a quick three day weekend. There are over 130 individual wineries in the area and we only scratched the surface. Wine touring in Walla Walla is fairly easy. There are three different areas that hold the majority of the wineries. You can find good information on the wineries and a map of the area at the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance website. It has a ton of info and you can pretty much plot out your tour using the map. I've included links to the wineries that we visited under the pictures. Check them out.


Waterbrook Winery


Sleight of Hand Cellars


Heidi and I were able to spend one morning at the local farmers market. Lots of people and vendors were there. The produce was right off the farm and cheap.


Spring Valley Vineyards


Northstar Winery


Saviah Cellars


Basel Cellars Estate Winery


Preston Premium Wines



Here is all the goodies we brought home from our trip. I also included a couple of links to a few wineries that we visited that we didn't get any pictures of. We would definitely go back.

Fort Walla Walla Winery
Va Piano Vineyards
Zerba Cellars

N.I. Fair

Elise and I went to the fair on Wednesday night. She had fun in the critter barn with all the animals. She wasn't afraid to touch the snake or pet an alligator. She had lots of fun.

Foundation Progress

Footings are poured and the forms for the foundation walls are being set. They are supposed to finish the walls tomorrow and pour the concrete. They'll come back on Friday and strip the forms. By this weekend we will have a complete foundation minus the floor. The plumbers will come in after the foundation drains are installed and is backfilled and do all the initial plumbing. After that the floor will be poured and it will be time to frame!



Elise is checking out the future rec. room. This is taken from where the Laundry room will be.



We are going to have a patio out front on this lower level instead of a deck like we had originally planned. We can make the patio bigger and that will help with not really having any yard to speak of.

Swim Lessons

Elise has been taking swim lessons this summer at a private pool down by NIC. She has been doing really well and has learned how to jump off the side. The photo is kinda blurry but you can see she's got some pretty good hops!


This is on the last day of swim lessons for the summer. Next up, Gymnastics!

Excavation Update

Here's a look at the home pad and driveway. As you can see it has been quite an undertaking. We are getting ready to pour the foundation for the house. Where Heidi and Elise are standing now will be the future basement just below the living room.



The driveway looking up toward the home site. It is at a 10% grade.



This is the slash pile that I foolishly tried to chip with a large rental chipper one beautiful 105 degree summer afternoon. As you can see, I didn't get very far.



This road was raised approximately 3 feet all from materials taken from our excavation! The neighbor wanted to raise the road bed to match the future Fernan Lake Road improvement and gladly took the material we needed to remove. Worked out pretty well for the both of us.



Elise likes it! She even got a new hairdo and purse to mark the occasion!

Camping Kids

Elise, Roslyn, and Brennan had a lot of fun up at the river the other weekend checking out worms and crawdads!

It's been busy. We have been doing a lot of this lately and so I have been neglecting the updates. We've been spending a lot of time up on the St. Joe and CDA Rivers. It's been hot! More to come!