the county fair

The week of the county fair was a whildwhind of last minute sewing, mounting photographs, trips to the fairgrounds and lots of prep for our fair entires. The girls entered art work, baked goods, etc. in the 4H division and they pursuaded me to enter my knitted animals in the adult division. My favorite part of fair week was watching the girls perform in the performing arts division (Annah sang the Shirley Temple song, "An Old Straw Hat" and Mira played a piece on the piano) and watching them do the fashion runway show. Mira won a reserve champion ribbon for her whole wheat graham crackers, Annah won lots of rainbow ribbons (the littlest 4H'ers can't win prize ribbons) and my knitted lamb even won the grand champion ribbon in it's division. I think the highlight for the girls was the bubble "ride" that aunt Leyah took them on. West and his friend Issac had fun watching it.  The top photo is Mira and her friend Abby Sue with their performing arts ribbons.

family camping 2012

Every summer we go camping with both sides of our family and it is always a highlight of our year. This summer we stayed closer to home and went to Silver Falls State Park; one of our favorite places. Because we were only about 20 minutes from home Lissa and Granny were able to join us for an afternoon and evening. The girls, Silas and I all slept in the trailer and Shane and West slept in the tent.

 Campfire cones: fill a waffle cone with all kinds of yummies including marshmallows and chocolate, cover in tinfoil and place on grate over fire for a few minutes. The kids loved these.

Family game night. Throw the cheese ball on the shaving cream hat, water ball toss and potato sack races.

 Below: orange cinnamon rolls baked in orange peel bowls in Dutch oven.

Grammie and "Papa": two of Weston's very favorite people.

4th of July memories

This 4th of July was our first year home (not camping) for Independence day in several years so we decided to go to the St. Paul Rodeo. It was a full day event starting with the parade, a carnival and then the rodeo. We came home in time for a backyard party at Mimi's house and fireworks in My. Angel. It was a busy day, and not as relaxing as past 4th of July holidays when we usually are camping and celebrate in a more low-key way, but Mira LOVED the rodeo and it was fun to have the experience. Since I spent much of the day with a toddler in an Ergo on my back, pushing a tired baby who refused to nap or watching the rodeo through the bleachers from the shade under the grandstands I hope that next year we can go back to our lazy picnic way of celebrating. However it was a fun day and we made lots of memories.

garden helpers

evening walks to Lissa and Granny's new house

garden journal

This post is just a quick little garden update so I can remember next year how much we fit into our garden and what we're harvesting. My favorite part of the day is the early morning when I'm picking our greens for the day and checking on the garden.

Right now our garden is amazing and producing most of our produce. These photos are about a month old so all the small green plants are fully grown now and we're harvesting from them daily.

We're picking 2-3 huge bowls of lettuce, kale, chard and spinach every day and more peas that we can eat. Since we're making 6 green smoothies every morning we easily consume 2 big bowls of greens just for breakfast. 

In our relatively small 20x20 garden space we have planted:

• 45 spinach plants
•  46 lettuces (romaine, green and a mixed blend)
• 20 Swiss chard 
• 40 sugar snap pea vines
• 12 kale
• 16 green beans
• 7 potato plants
• 30 radishes
• 36 carrots
• 9 onions
• 18 leeks
• 1 zucchini
• 1 butternut squash
• 4 cilantro
• 4 parsley
• mint
• thyme
• sage
• rosemary
• basil tomato plants
• lots of raspberries (picking a big bowlful every day)
• 30+ strawberry plants although they are now done for the season

oh my, I love this boy

Long Weekend in Bend

I'm finally getting caught up with this family journal and blog! In mid-June we took a trip over the mountains to Bend for Shane's sister Devin's University of Oregon graudation party. We had such a great time that we ended up staying an extra day. It was hot, sunny and such a fun weekend with Shane's family.