I’m back. Four miles ran, and now my tootsies are on ice while I complete this blog entry. Josh is out running another 9 miles (no thanks).

Walking your dogs in nature is free! How about that.

Enjoying the brief life of the magnolia blossoms before they all fall to the ground. Sigh!

Also enjoying our back patio in the late afternoon. Mmmm hmmmmmm.

Warmer weather means the re-appearance of popsicles into my life. Thursday and Friday it was around 70 degrees. I would be content if it stayed at that temperature all summer!

Black dogs agree.

Friday the weather was glorious and finally warm enough to enjoy Marymoor, one of my favorite parks around Seattle and one that boasts tons of areas for Maggie dog to get wet and swim AND fetch, one of her favorite activities.

I invited a bunch of people (at the last minute) to meet us there and no one took me up on my offer, but that’s okay, we still had a grand time.

The dog park is my Happy Place.

Bliss!

It’s a good thing I took the girls to the park and wore them out thoroughly, because Saturday we abandoned them for the majority of the day to…

…hike on Mount Rainier! Yes! This was my “punishment” for losing our dietbet in January. The original punishment was skiing but later that morphed into a hike on Mount Rainier. I didn’t really fully comprehend that I would be hiking IN SNOW until the night before. A lot of whining commenced. You understand.

It took over two hours to drive up to the “Paradise” location, and the final section of that drive was extremely wind-y. Being a perpetually carsick person, I should have taken over and drove, but I thought I could just out-“think” the carsickness (wrong!). The carsickness made me anxious, but as soon as we hit the Paradise parking lot and I got out of the car I was fine. Ugh, I hate carsickness. I drove back DOWN the mountain, and was fine. Note to self: do the driving! Always do the driving! Sheesh.

In spite of the carsickness on the way up (note the grey Seabands still on my wrists), I got over it quickly once we started hiking. It was warm! My hands and feet stayed warm up until the very end of our hour and twenty minute or so hike, so I was happy. Warm feet = happy Liz!

It was a stunning view of the Tatoosh Mountains. Unfortunately, there was a layer of clouds over the top of Mount Rainier, so I never got to actually see the stunning summit close up. We had high hopes! Josh couldn’t believe it.

“All the times that I’ve been up here, this is the first time I’ve never seen the summit!” he exclaimed.

“Welcome to my life!” I shrugged. Eh, close enough! I can always look at pictures!

After the hike, we “tailgated” in the parking lot–him with a Nattie Ice, me with my usual ginger ale; snarfed some turkey wraps and enjoyed people watching.

You can see that even during our drive home, Mount Rainier still has a lenticular cloud covering the top of it! Ohhhh you naughty, naughty mountain! Maybe next time you’ll let me see your top.

Now I get to finish painting the guest room, ice various parts of my body and boss my husband around for the rest of the day, which sounds pretty excellent to me. The bossing around part, that is. Have a fabulous week, blog-logs!