Moments from June

My wonderful mom turned 60 today. Happy birthday Mom! We celebrated in her backyard tonight with a wonderful German chocolate cake made by Chip.

Here are the girls playing dolls at Mimi's house (my mom). They can spend hours in her spare room (soon to be my grandma's room) playing house.

Our nice neighbor's gave us a slip-and-slide last week and yesterday we got it out for the girl's first time ever on one. They loved it but couldn't quite figure out that they needed to really drop and "slip" in order to really slide, so Shane had to toss them down the slide as in the photo below. Chip took these great photos.

Also, last week we harvested the last of our peas and the first carrots and beets. The carrots are perfect and delicious. We've been eating peas for a month now and are getting tired of them! Our freezer is stuffed with 16 bags of snow peas for winter stir-fry's and some spinach from the garden. We ate all the broccoli and chard while it was fresh. We also froze about 9 gallon size bags of strawberries this month and canned enough jam to last us until next June. Unfortunatly my allergies have made it hard for me to spend much time tending to the garden this month, so it is quickly becoming a weedy mess.

The girls holding up our first carrot and beets.

Last week we spent a fun day at a local State Park our good friends, the Ortega's. We went on a long bike ride all over the bike trails, had a picnic and also went Geocaching for the first time. There are Geocache places all over the world and using a GPS and the coordinates found on this website: www.geocaching.com, we found two "treasure boxes" at this park alone. The idea is that once you find the treasure box you can take a prize and leave a prize for someone else. The kids LOVED this treasure hunt and I think the dad's liked it as much as the kids.

Summer Vacation Begins!

To celebrate the end of our school year, the girls and I tagged along with Shane on a work trip to Seattle last week. While Shane was in meetings, the girls and I explored the city where we used to live and work and where Mira was born. We all enjoyed our three day vacation and we had a wonderful time visiting old hangouts, catching up with an old friend and eating lots of good food.

We parked at the Seattle Center and rode the monorail into downtown to go to Pike's Place Market. The girls loved riding "the train" and it made parking much easier.

After our long day exploring Pike's Place Market, I took the girls to one of my favorite places, the fountain at the Seattle Center (near the Space Needle). When we lived in Seattle, I used to work just three blocks from the Seattle Center and spent many lunch breaks sitting on the grass near this fountain. Mira loved running around in it, although it was too big and intimidating for Annah. We were blessed with a hot, sunny day and soaked up all the sun we could get.

Although we don't eat out often, we enjoyed going out while in Seattle. At Red Robin we introduced the girls to our favorite treat, Mile High Mud Pie.

I think the girls' favorite part of our trip was the nightly swim with dad in the hotel pool.

While in Seattle, we spent a wonderful day with my dear friend Maija at her house near Alki Beach in West Seattle. I got to meet her son Marshall (with me in photo above) and I got to catch up with one of my very best friends. Maija and I met our freshman year of college, were roomates for several years and we backpacked through Europe together for thirty days before studying abroad in London together.

The girls with Grammie and Grandpa on their new front porch in Crooked River. Shane and the girls spent last weekend at their house and had a blast. I stayed home for a girls weekend with old friends from junior high.

Shane and his mom took the girls to Kan-ee-ta resort (on an Indian Reservation in Madras) to swim one day.

Here are the girls being silly, covering Grandpa with newspaper!

End of School Activities

Annah could hardly wait for her end of the year ballet recital. Here she is getting ready to go to her first performance. She did great!

Grandpa Darrel and Annah after the show.

The ballet girls line up to go on stage for their dance.

All the kids on the stage at the finale. Annah is the second from the left in the pink tutu.

Annah has her own garden, a strawberry garden, and here are the girls with the first berries.

This is Mira's wildflower garden that she made on her own. The flowers are growing fast.

Mira finished her soccer season in late May and will start back up in the fall with the Silver Falls Soccer League. She's the first girl on the left.

Here are Mira and Annah with Mira's girlscout troop. For their last meeting the troop leaders surprised the girls with a limo ride around town and to a local pizza place for a pizza party. The girls loved it!

Memorial Day Weekend Pictures

Little Annah at our Memorial Day picnic.

We've been borrowing two of these tag-along bikes and have been having fun riding around State Parks close to home. For Memorial Day we went to Champoeg State Park and rode two miles to the historic general store for ice cream!

Here is Mira with the doll that Leyah taught her how to make this past weekend. Leyah was visiting from New York. She is helping Mira make this doll entirely out of recylced materials including melted candle wax for the body park and her own hair for the hair. Mira even made the dress from an old pillow case. Mira is entering this in the Marion County Fair this July.

This weekend Mira finally learned to ride a two-wheeled bike by herself. Thanks to my sister Leyah who spent hours teaching her and running along side her. Now if only Leyah would stay for the summer and teach the girls to swim!

Backyard Homestead: Gardening on a City Sized Lot

Since we'll be spending the summer at home this year and not overseas like last summer we've been beefing up our garden in hopes of producing a bunch of food to store away for the winter months. Last year we did a lot of canning and freezing of produce from local farms and markets and this year I'm excited to grow much of it on our own despite the fact that we live on a small 7000 square foot city lot. Thanks to the concept of square foot gardening we are already having great luck. I highly recommend the book and website if you're new to gardening or have a small garden space. You can learn more about Square Foot Gardening here. The libary should also have the book and it is a great resource.


Here is our new square foot garden. I LOVE this because I can grow so much in a small space. Basically the idea is that you divide your bed into square foot sections and in each square you can grow a certain number of plants, for example four lettuces per square or nine beets or 16 carrots. Keep in mind that some of the plants like lettuce, chard and spinach keep producing throughout the summer as you cut them back and eat them so each plant can produce a lot.

Here's a list of what we have growing in our garden this year: Six Swiss chard, Six kale, 22 spinach plants, about three dozen carrots, two dozen beets, six broccoli, one zucchini plant, one yellow squash, one habanera pepper, one green bell pepper, one red bell pepper, three tomato plants, one honeydew melon, six red cabbages, ten potato plants, five tomato plants, three basil, lots of green beans and peas, three cucumber plants, a bunch of strawberries, one rhubarb, 16 white onions and about 20 red onions. Along our side fence we have several blueberry and raspberry bushes and we have two Asian pear trees. We're also growing herbs including cilantro, dill, thyme, chives, rosemary and basil.

The total cost for seeds, seedlings, soil, fertilizer and peat moss was less than $75. We have two big beds, a bunch of pots on the patio for tomatoes and herbs and are using the side flower beds to tuck in extra crops. Although not everything has worked out perfectly (we've had some plants die due to slugs and drying out) so far we're happy with the results. We're still new to gardening on this scale but thankfully we have lots of friends who are sharing their wisdom with us.

Here is the bean trellis, onions, more Swiss chard and our six brocolli plants.

Our peas are growing beautifully and are an easy crop to grow from seed. Just plant in early spring and you'll be eating fresh peas come June. We made two double rows with chicken wire between them for the pea plants to climb.

We also have nine chickens in our small backyard in this coop. We can expect about one egg per day per chicken once they start laying this summer.

And that's our little backyard homestead. Stay tuned to find out how much we actually harvest and stock away this summer from our little garden.

What's New? A Peek Into Our Busy Week.

We had a fabulous week with lots of playdates, a field trip, picnics with good friends and a great visit with my younger sister Leyah, here from New York. We even managed to get all our school work done for the week and are wrapping up our study of ancient Rome and our study on plants. Mira completed her spelling already for the year since she aced not only every word in her first and second grade spellling books but also every word in the third grade book. We're still working on math and will keep up with it over the summer.

Here are some photos from our very busy week.

Yesterday we took Leyah (in photo with girls above) to the farm where the girls and I volunteered last year so she could buy some raw sheep wool. We had a lot of fun visiting with all the animals but this goat was insitent on having her head in every photo! Leyah (an art school grad and artist in NYC) has been working with Mira all weekend on her entry for 4H in the Marion County Fair. Mira is making a doll out of recycled materials using melted candle wax for the body parts (formed in molds), a old cashmere sweater for the body and her own hair (see below) for the hair. The doll is a pioneer girl to celebrate Oregon's 150th birthday (which is the theme of the fair this year). With Leyah's instruction the doll is already looking like a masterpiece. I'll post pics once it is complete.

The Before Picture. Mira has been growing her hair out for almost two years and with the summer heat fast approaching we knew that the time had come to cut it. Mira wants to donate the hair to either locks of love or sell it and donate the proceeds to a non-profit for children. Maybe St. Jude for whom our dear friend Melinda works?

During the haircut. A 12 inch long pony tail was cut off.

The after pictures. These aren't the best photos. I'll try to take a better photo this week and repost it on the blog. Doesn't she look so much older? I'll always miss the Little House on the Praire braids but this will be so much easier to take care of.

Annah's end of the year ballet recital is coming up in a couple weeks and this past week she had her photo taken with her ballet class. Here she is (on the right) with her friend Tirzah. They loved practing their ballet twirls in the photography studio (below).

Last Wednesday we joined our Classical Conversations homeschool co-op for a chemistry field trip at Corban College. The class was very hands on and we all learned a lot about gravity, air pressure, center of mass and acid reactions. Afterwards we enjoyed a picnic with our friends from the co-op and then our friends from Gaston came over for pizza and play.

This week we also received a wonderful blessing! A beautiful piano from our friends Valerie and Dave. The girls have been "playing" songs for me all week. Mira will officially start lessons in the fall. She can't wait and I can't wait for them to play a real song!