family vacation: camping in Manzanita (our favorite beach town)

summer in the valley

Our little town of Silverton is surrounded by miles of farmland on all sides. Whenever you leave town, no matter which way you go, you'll be driving past farm fields. Many of these fields are right now blooming with cover crops in bright colors like this purple field of Cosmos.

summer dresses for the girls

I had planned to make these dresses for Easter but just got around to finishing them. Mira actually made hers herself with some help from me and she entered it in the county fair where she won a blue ribbon. The fabric is a super lightweight voile from my favorite designer, Anna Maria Horner.

balloons over bend

A couple weeks ago we headed over the mountains for the annual Balloons Over Bend, a hot air balloon festival in our beloved Central Oregon. First we spent a wonderful day and night with Shane's mom and Darell and had fun swimming in their neighborhood pool, riding the four wheeler and hanging out together.

 After a night in Crooked River Ranch, we drove into Bend and hiked around Lava Lands and drove up to the top butte where we hiked around the perimeter of the lava butte. I'll admit I was a little nervous taking 5 little ones up there but they loved it and the view was spectacular. It was also very educational as we learned about volcanoes and various kinds of rock in the museum/information building.

 After leaving Lava Lands we were super hot and needed a treat so we drove to nearby Sunriver to get some ice cream and wander the shops. Here is West sharing his ice cream with Silas.

We next headed to a house we rented in Bend with our friends the Mulkey's for the weekend. Shane's parents met us for pizza dinner there and then the girls and I headed out to the night glow for the Balloons Over Bend festival.

 The next morning we got up at 5:30 am in order to go watch the hot air balloons get ready and although it was painful waking up five peacefully sleeping children we did and it was a lot of fun once we were up and there. Unfortunatly all the balloons were gone by 6:30 am and we were left with nothing to do at that hour except find the nearest bakery and get donuts!

Would you believe that the following morning we did the same thing and went to watch the balloons take off at 5 am?! We did! During our weekend in Bend we also had lots of fun walking around Drake Park, downtown, visiting the old fashioned candy shop and preparing big meals together at the rental house. Our friends that we went with also have two girls (one of their girls is named Tirzah!) and two boys just our boys ages.

The baby boys in their strollers in front of the candy shop; not old enough to know what they are missing.

 

blueberries

In between our July trips we've been trying to sneak in lots of berry picking. Shane and the kids were able to pick about 50 pounds of blueberries last month. We'd love to get more but between strawberries, blueberries, bread and all the chicken and other meat we buy locally and freeze our extra freezer is pretty full.

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.