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WELCOME TO THE MOYER FAMILY YEAR IN REVIEW! 

​2017 was our first full year in our new home, Dagmar's Buttercup Cottage. I joke that this house was built by Norwegian hobbits because the ceilings are only 8 feet high (our century homes have always had 9- or 10-foot ceilings), the kitchen counters seem low to us, and everything is very snug, little cubbies, smallish rooms, but we love it. It's perfect for our lives in Astoria right now and ushering our girls into and through high school. It was really built by the Larson family in 1918, and Dagmar is the woman everyone remembers. After buying the house, we left flowers at her grave as a small way to thank her for our little house.
All of our homes have always been full of color and art and kitties, and this one is no exception. It's pretty awesome, tucked here on a dead end street right next to a forest. Our neighbors grew up on this street, we have four-legged critters stopping by every day, and the birds have finally found our feeders so it's like an airport out there, which the cats love.  Kitty report: Sandy is our oldest 18.5, Jack follows at 11, Diego is 9, Finnegan is 7, and Loki is 5. We have two hamsters, and three fish: one last mollie that was born in our tank, and two (now) HUGE goldfish that are getting bigger every day. 

Sandy looks a little shell-shocked in her photo, because she will not stand still -- any attention makes her think she can crawl on me. LOL Very sweet, but hard to grab a photo. Merriam-Webster is my Valentine's Day monkey I saved from the Safeway. Then she had a baby. LOL Sea lions, deer, elk, and somewhere in this letter I have a pic of some of the raccoons. Enjoy. 
On to 2017...
​January and February brought us SNOW!! This is rare and doesn't usually last long, but it was very pretty... before it melted! 

Astoria schools tend to shut down when the white stuff falls, but Charley always heads up to the woods, and spends his days sliding through the forest. He's still with the Oregon Department of Forestry, working as a reforestation forester: please see his slideshow at the bottom for some AMAZING sunrise photos!  (These snow pics are just a sampling!) 
Happy birthday, Mary Pearl! 

Mary Pearl turned 12 in February... she wanted a castle cake, but a DRAGON castle cake, so I went with darker colors, vines, tiny flowers, and then finished the table with awesome cutouts of the five dragons from the book series "Wings of Fire" -- her favorites. We also had How to Train Your Dragon napkins and plates, to round the whole dragon theme out. Her BFF Rylie came over with her family and we all had piles of fun. 

The rain year was still in full force in the spring... we topped 120 inches for the rain year (October 1 to whenever it stops in the spring), and after eight months of that, we were ready for some sun!
March 29th was our 20th Wedding Anniversary! 

Emily made this amazing display and Mary made two awesome cards that were all on display in the living room for most of the year. We invited EVERYONE and the Buttercup Cottage WAS PACKED. For our cake, I made a fantasy cottage cake with flowers and a river and a beach and rocks and swirly fantasy trees. The little cabin on top of the cake was actually on our wedding cake, which also had a cabin-in-the-forest theme. 

It doesn't FEEL like 20 years! LOL 
Our wedding was held in Shoreline, which is a city, but more like a section of Seattle. Charley and I were living in Neah Bay, Washington, at the time, a four-hour drive. Neah Bay is the home of the Makah Indian Nation, and so after a wild wedding week of craziness, returning to our quiet home on the reservation was our honeymoon. LOL 
Spring!!! 

Our new backyard brought us red and white camellias, candy tuft, and azaleas and some little blue weed that we like, so we left it. 

We also made it over to Fort Clatsop, the replica of the actual fort Lewis & Clark and their team built in our county all those years ago. In the winter, you usually have the trails to yourself. (yay!) 

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Happy 50th birthday to me!!

So, on March 29th, we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary, and then one month later in April, I celebrated my 50th birthday! (See what I did there -- I got married one month before turning 30... BOOM!) 

By the time my birthday came around, we were all still completely partied-out from the MEGA ANNIVERSARY PARTY, so we had a very low-key night, I made sweet onion pie the night before, but I think we went out for Thai on my birthday... I can't remember. LOL But that sounds like something we would do. 

​So many parties for a family of introverts! 
Emily Rose turned 14! 

Even though her birthday is at the beginning of May, we waited a few weeks to have the party, hoping to hit some CLEAR weather (as it had been raining and raining and RAINING around her actual birthday!)... and our plan worked!! May 20, the day we scheduled the party, was amazingly clear, no rain, and warm enough for a massive water balloon fight!

Emily wanted a "rainbow star" cake, and that's what she got. She's always asked for rainbow cakes, so I wasn't surprised. 

The house was full of wet eighth-graders, and the water balloons were a hit -- literally -- make sure you have a huge bucket to hold them all! 
Road trip to Vashon Island!!! 

For Mother's Day 2017, we headed to Vashon Island, to camp in my friend Tina's beautiful backyard and help her celebrate HER 50th birthday. We hadn't been camping in years, so this was a great time to dust off the supplies, load up the car, engage a cat sitter, and head out of town.

Tina's house has the most absolute amazing view of the water. Words really can't express... plus we got to ride a ferry from Tacoma, and that was fun too. We met Tina's family who'd flown in for the weekend, and we met all of her animals -- especially Clovis the gander... he's in charge there -- and then we spent some time walking on the beach, checking out their lighthouse... really gorgeous weekend. And it didn't rain. :-) 
Summer!!

​Days spent in everlasting sunshine.... after that wet winter? FINALLY! Seaside... kitties in the catio... Jack the cat got to go outside (if he was with Dad, because we have too many raccoons around), and we also put the school year to bed.

Mary finished 6th grade, and her spring sport was track. Emily prepared an end-of-the-year project for their showcase, and then posed with friends for photos. LOL And then it was SUMMER VACATION! 

Strawberry season this year was TEN DAYS LONG. That was it! So we ran to Sauvie Farms as soon as they were ready to pick so we could start filling up our berry freezer. We picked a couple dozen pounds of raspberries too -- and found a bird's nest with an egg inside! June is also lavender season, and so we had to go there so I could smell the fields... ​
And then back in Astoria, we spent more days walking on the river, looking and leaving painted rocks...  but in the early part of July, we spent a weekend painting Charley's office! It was went from drabby beige to FABULOUS. Then my friend Leslie and her two daughters came to visit! ​
REDWOOD FOREST, BABY!!!!!! 
Four nights, five days of hiking in the big trees of Northern California. July 2017.
ARCH CAPE, OREGON in JULY 2017
We also got to visit with our friend Anne and her family at their reunion in Arch Cape. GORGEOUS! 
SADDLE MOUNTAIN, SEASIDE, OREGON
Charley and Emily did their MASSIVE HIKE up Saddle Mountain in July too! 
(Emily took nearly all of these photos.) 
Charley gets a birthday too!! 
Charley turned 44 in August, but instead of a cake, he wanted our Christmas breakfast tradition -- Sticky Bun Goodness (monkey bread LOL). So, that's what he got! The girls and I also surprised him with a little mini fridge for his office! The break room is nowhere near his office, and so now he has a spot to keep his pop, lunch, whatever. 

We have plenty of Lazy Cat Photos to share, and we also had an eclipse in August. THAT was pretty exciting! Where we live, it was supposed to be at about 97% coverage, and it was, we saw it with our glasses, but it only got slightly dark. Not really. It definitely changed, though. And some dog down the street, that I didn't even recognize, started barking and barking, then stopped barking as soon as the moon moved away from the sun. 

We had a beautiful summer... long, sunny days, warm temperatures... no one wanted school to start. 
ASTORIA COLUMN -- late summer/fall 
This sits on the hill above our house... a little too far (for most) to walk, but it's a short drive. I like to run up there after dropping Mary off at school and check out the sunrise. 
September! WUT! 
Mary started 7th grade and Emily started high school! While Mary is doing great and loves her classes and teachers (just not getting up at 6 a.m.), Emily went to high school for one day and fired it. BOOM! 

So instead of being a Fighting Fisherman at Astoria High School, she is an Orca instead... Emily is doing online school through Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA), an online public school program available to anyone under the age of 18 in Oregon. It's AMAZING. She loves it and has been sitting at 98% grade-wise this entire semester. They sent her a pile of books, and everything's online, she has a teacher for every class, a guidance counselor, an academic counselor, a principal, vice principal... and I am her Learning Coach. LOL #FANCYTITLE

Mary followed in Emily's footsteps and played on the volleyball team (instead of cross country) and kicked butt and had a blast!! 

​(And... obligatory Lazy Cat Pictures.) 
Rounding out the fall...
We headed to Hood River, Oregon, for the Hood River Apple Festival and it was perfect weather. We usually just drive over and back again the same day, but this time we grabbed a hotel night in Cascade Locks on the banks of the Columbia River, making for a much less stressful road trip. In the morning we walked all over the park at the locks, checked out a gift shop, and took plenty of photos of the Bridge of the Gods. On our way back to Astoria, we swung into The Patch -- our favorite pumpkin patch -- and brought home some HUGE pumpkins to go with our HUGE box of apples. And then we knew fall was ending when Charley drove up to the woods one day and there was snow... he even made a tiny snowman. One last trip to Coffinbury Lake and the Peter Iredale Shipwreck, and then it started raining. 
What's up in the forest? 

Charley works as a reforestation forester for the Oregon Department of Forestry  on the NW tip of Oregon. 

He and his crews come in after the trees are harvested, gets the ground ready for the next crop of trees, plants them, and then over the decades, make sure they're growing into healthy, strong forests. 

And he grabs some incredible photos while he's out in the woods.
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TREETANGLE PUBLISHING!
(Cynthia's new baby!)
I launched my new company this year, reworked and reformatted and even lightly edited my five novels, and then I republished them under Treetangle Publishing! I got the name from the piece I did below. It was an anniversary present for my dear friends, and the word just popped into my head. I recently launched this website (the CynthiaMoyer.com website) after my domain company emailed me to let me know it was finally available. Since the relaunch, I've released the third book in the Elliot Lake series, attended 2 writing conferences, studied marketing, and have updated my business plan for 2018. My new company is flexible enough to allow my artist side to play, not just the storyteller... and as you can see, in addition to the needle arts, painting has been getting a lot of attention as well.  ​I'm really looking forward to 2018! Stay tuned! 

From our house to yours... love, light, and a happy  new year