Eagle Creek

Nothing like a kiss from a bearded girl.

The weather this winter has rocked. Last weekend Molly came down for a visit and we were lucky enough to have great weather. There's not a ton of indoor activities in the Gorge so we always hope for good weather when friends come down, otherwise we're stuck in North Bonneville suggesting a game of Monoploly to our guests. The good weather motivated some of our boater friends to throw themselves off a 35 ft. waterfall on Eagle Creek. Jarred, Molly and I spent Saturday morning watching these guys and questioning their sanity (or at least Molly and I questioned their sanity, Jarred wondered why he'd not brought his kayak). If anyone every gets down to the Gorge, Eagle Creek is by far, the best hike in the Gorge. It's got about five amazing waterfalls and beautiful cliffs.

The New Digs

This is my dream barn (minus the indoor). I have the whole (two stalls) to myself and can keep it as neat as I want. I'm a neat freak and love the fact that I can finally keep my barn the way I want! Now we just need to move closer so I'm not driving 40 minutes to see my horses.

Together Again

February seemed like a crazy month. Between work, our obsessive house searching (and dumping) and trying to have a little fun it seemed like the month flew by. I finally found a great place to keep Sophie and Nic that wouldn't break my pocketbook and that was ideal for both horses. I spent December and January driving all over Southwest Washington taking care of both horses as I had to board them at different facilities. I moved Nic and Sophie at the start of February. Their new home is great. It's close to my school so I can just ride my bike up after work. They've got pasture turn-out and stalls and they're not standing around in mud. I lease the barn from a teacher who is also a great horse person, so I know they're always in good hands. I don't think Nic likes Sophie too much as he's a serious guy and Sophie would rather play grab-ass over the fence, but I think he appreciates finally being coddled again. He's not a real horse and would instantly die in the wild.

It's All About the Staging

We actually really liked this house as it had the potential to be a cool place, if we had about $50K cash to update it. I felt like I needed to be wearing a poodle skirt and have plastic curlers in my hair. The upstairs had original wall paper. I imagined this place as being quite the house back in the day.

This was described as the "man" cave. Notice the amount of fur covered animals scattered about.

Has anybody ever heard of shoving the recycling in a cupboard for the photo?

Just didn't have time to put the laundry OR the potty away?

Jarred and I have been hitting up the house hunting this past week. We're looking at the lowest priced houses in the best neighborhoods in the Camas/Washougal area. This generally means we have to see the places not as they are but what they could be. Some have just too much work to be worth the low, low price and some just need a professional organizer to come in and take over. The craziest part of looking at these places is that most are empty as they are either bank owned or short sales. This kind of bothers, where have all these people gone? Why are we continuing to build new houses when there are so many empty ones?

Here are a couple of my favorites.

10 Things I Hate About North Bonneville

I've been neglecting the blog lately. Yes, Jarred and I have been having our usual biking/boating/riding adventures but as of late, we've been house hunting in Camas and trying to finagle our way out of our North Bonneville house. What a hoo-rang.

Many who visit our house ask why we want to sell the place. We have great views a giant yard full of grass, good neighbors and a practically new interior, thanks to our hard work over the last four years. This is where my speal on 10 Things I Hate About North Bonneville comes in. It extends beyond NB to our nation, but that's another rant.
1. North Bonneville is really a retirement community. Over 80% of the population is over 60. Don't get me wrong, I like old people but I don't want to live with them. I want to surround myself with vibrant young people who don't hobble around paved paths and complain about leash laws and lawn length.
2. North Bonneville is not a town. Towns have amenities like grocery stores and restaurants. North Bonneville has neither.
3. Someone on the "city" council years ago thought it would be a good idea to let a large housing development be built in NB. Who lets a housing development of over 100 houses be built in a town that has ZERO commerce next to a town that has next to ZERO commerce? Just imagine...100 new houses, no buyers, builder goes under, houses must sell...but where are all the buyers? That's right, there are none. Since these houses are not selling the bank drops their prices well below market value. This drastically affects the market value of all other houses in NB. What did I say about the stupidity of that oh-so-smart "city" council.
4. The soil is bad. Actually, we don't have soil, we just live on top of river silt.
5. North Bonneville is not close to anything except one Chevron station, a small town with three restaurants and two good hikes.
6. Someone hit my dog yesterday. Makes me hate the town for no good reason at all, other than my dog was hit by someone going a max of 35 mph.
7. Every lot in NB has nearly a half acre of grass. WHY? Who wants to spend all their time mowing grass that grows faster than their hair?
8. North Bonneville is not on the way to anything cool, except mountain biking and we can take Interstate 84 to get there, passing by NB is not necessary.
9. Since only old people want to and currently do live in NB, selling a house is impossible because old people are conservative and smart with their money. They saw the market do this during the Great Depression!
10. North Bonneville only had dial up Internet until last year.

The real question is, why did we move to this useless town? Desperation. Jarred was living in his car, luckily we had the Jetta at the time. We also felt that if we didn't buy something, the market was going to keep spiraling upward, to the point where we'd never be able to buy something....had we only waited!

As you can see, I'm really just frustrated with the fact that Jarred and I can't sell our house, it's now worth about $30K less than what we bought it for simply because of the market and the huge housing development in town that went under. To make matters worse, we can't get a loan now to purchase another cheaper house closer to town because we own a higher priced house and banks won't loan to people who want to buy down, this is a red flag to them that these people may be out to save a little money and maybe, just maybe, default on their loan because their house is now practically worthless. Defaulting on a loan is a bad idea in Washington state but getting out of a house that isn't worth what it used to be is just as tough since no bank wants the majority of a home loan paid off by a sale...the rest of that money has no collateral backing it. These banks would prefer that owners just keep their houses wait to build up equity...what they don't mention is that the market is so upside down that people like us don't care about equity, we just want the day to come where our home is actually worth what we OWE on it.

I've been rolling this rant around in my head all week. I even went on a run the other day and wrote this in my head.

Shuksan's Adventures With Cars Part II

Those of you who know Shuksan, know he's had quite the life. He's a dog with 9 lives. When Shuksan was one I watched him get rocked by a motor home. He came away with a couple of scrapes and a sore body. When Shuksan was five he suffered from a brief bout of kennel cough. At the ripe old age of 5 and a half he lost a portion of his ear and almost lost an eye. Last year Shuksan came in the house with a sturgeon hook stuck in his lip. And to top off, today he was hit by yet another vehicle. We're not totally sure how this incident took place as virtually no cars drive down our street but at about 7:30 AM, I got a call from the grouchy lady who runs our "city" hall. She informed me that he'd been hit and carted off to the Humane Society. Luckily, he's fine, just a little sore and swollen. Poor little guy.