Winter or Summer?

This weekend ....
Last weekend....

Typical Oregon... you never know what you're going to get. Last week we shivered through a snowstorm and hailstorms all weekend and had a constant fire in the wood stove and this
weekend was beautiful and we ate lunch and dinner outdoors. I even got to do one of my very favorite things: hang my laundry out on the line. I love the smell of air dried sheets and a clothes line dancing with socks and sheets makes me happy.

Other highlights from this weekend:

Saturday:

• Enjoying a lazy morning with a hot latte and a pile of my favorite magazines: Country Living and Country Home.
  
• Cheering on Mira's soccer team while eating a picnic lunch
• Picking up fresh produce from the local farm stand.
  
• Working in the garden and getting the sandbox ready for another season
• Making whole wheat rolls and candied walnuts together with Annah (Annah loves to help in the kitchen more than anything and we usually bake at least one thing together everyday)
  
• Dinner at our friends from church house in the country and sitting outside on their patio watching all of our kids play for hours in their field.

Sunday:

• Sleeping in until 7 am and having buckwheat pancakes with strawberries for breakfast.
• Baking two loves of whole wheat raisin bread and a strawberry-rhubarb crumble before church.
• Church and fellowship with friends at Silverton Friends church.
• An outdoor brunch (our fresh bread, salad and the crumble) on our patio with Mom and Chip followed by a game of croquet.
• A long afternoon of playing in the sandbox, drawing and enjoying the last rays of sun before tomorrow (rain is in the forecast).

School Days

These days Mira has been keeping busy with a farm class and art classes. You can usually find her either in her "art room" (also the laundry room) or reading in the beanbag. She loves her farm class and Shane went last week for the first time along with her and he also loved it. They had fun gathering eggs, tending to the newborn goats, mucking out the horse barn and other farm chores. The class is held at a local non-profit farm and is a class for homeschoolers. A long-time dream of ours is to have our own small farm so this is a way for us to experience and live farm life without actually moving to a farm. Someday we hope to have our own small homestead.

Here are some other highlights from the last week:


Mira drawing and making paper dolls in the art room

Mira worked hard on this self-portrait.

Mira and Annah found a caterpillar in the backyard and named it "Katie-Kate"


Yes, the caterpillar is now a member of our family and lives in this box in our living room where hopefully he will soon create a chrysalis.

Mira has been working on her farm lapbook - a book with various projects and things she's been learning related to farm life and farm animals.


Mira drawing her self-portrait.

Summer Weather

Today was a beautiful warm and busy day. We started the day off with a picnic at Bauman farms where we visited the farm animals, played on the playground and had fresh donuts in the farm store. We also had fun on the covered wagon and in the tepee they have there. After the picnic we went to Mira's soccer game and then home to do some yard work. We barbecued burgers for dinner and Mira and Annah had a waterfight after dinner. We really enjoyed the unusually warm weather, especially since rain in in the forecast for next week.

Mira is the player facing forward, about to kick the ball

The girls got soaking wet during their water fight.

Annah washes the windows.

Our tuplips in bloom in our front yard.

Busy Girls

Annah plays office while working at Mimi's computer. Love the glasses!

Since learning to read this year Mira always has her nose in a book. This week she's enjoying the American Girl books about the Swedish girl Kirsten.

12 weeks until Denmark

Home Exchange

Our Summer Home

This blog actually started out as a place for us to talk about home exchange with others interested in exchanging homes with us. We are so excited about our first real home exchange which we've been planning for almost a year. This summer we'll be exchanging homes with a nice Danish couple who live about 30 minutes from my dad in a small touristy and coastal town called Ringkobing. We're leaving in late June and returning in early August so we're looking forward to spending most of our summer in Denmark this year. This will be Mira's second visit to Denmark and Annah's first.

Ps. Our home exchange was inspired by the movie The Holiday with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz and if you want to try it visit: www.homeexchange.com.

Here are some photos of the lovely home we'll be spending our summer in. We've had a great time getting to know the people we're exchanging homes with over email. And yes, we're also exchaning cars. :)

The backyard

The beach, just a few meters from the home we'll be living in

The path along the fjord where I'm sure we'll take many afternoon walks

Mira the Artist

Mira has been taking a weekly art/drawing class at a local art studio. She loves it and happily would spend all her free time drawing these days. It looks like she's taking after her Grandpa Ben and her aunties and showing a passion and talent for art. Here's a portrait she recently drew at a class where they learned about shading techniques.

Spring Time Fun

We've been enjoying the last couple weeks of sunny weather with soccer practices and outdoor fun with friends. We recently spent an evening with friends at their house up the hill from us. We had a bonfire and roasted hot dogs. The kids explored the property and got down and dirty. Fun times!


We also recently visited a friend and her three kids on their 50 acre property. We enjoyed a long walk across the property to the sheep farm on the other side and the kids explored puddles, got soaking wet in a small stream and even discovered a full sheep skeleton! That was definitely the highlight for Mira as she's fascinated with skeletons and bones right now. Sadly, when we returned from the walk exhausted and hungry, I discovered that my wedding ring was gone. It has fallen off my finger somewhere in the 50 acre field. We searched then and Shane and I even went back again another day with a metal detector but didn't find it. The field is a grass/sod farm so maybe one day next summer a family will have a nice new sod lawn unrolled at their house and my ring will be laying in it! Too bad they'd never know who it belonged too.... Shane and I will celebrate our 10 year anniversary next year so maybe it was time for a new ring??? Of course it will name be the same....

Spring time also means soccer and Mira has started her first season on the Silver Falls Soccer League playing in the U6 division. She enjoys the two (sometimes three) weekly practices and Saturday games. Tomorrow her game is bright and early at 8:30 am! Here is a picture of Annah playing on an old tree stump while Mira's soccer team practices in the background.

Spring has sprung!

Annah LOVES having her picture taken

Spring has officially arrived and the cherry trees that line our street are in full bloom. We're enjoying our spring days with lot's of nature walks and trips to the park. We also started nature journals last month and are enjoying documenting the budding flowers, caterpillars and birds in our sketch books. Of course, Annah mostly scribbles circles but she enjoys looking for signs of spring with us. Last week the girls delighted in watching a robin take a bath in a mud puddle on the dirt road near our house. Annah thought it was about the funniest thing and laughed for a long time!

The cherry trees that line our street - Third Street

The girls show off the daffodils blooming in our neighbor, Dora's yard. Mira is wearing her Girl Scouts "Daisies" smock. She attends Girl Scouts twice a month at a friends
house just a few doors down.