River Cabin Retreat With Friends

Last week we spent a couple days right on the Little North Fork River at a Thetford Lodge with good friends. We spent two nights and three days exploring the river, hiking, eating and playing games. We had nine adults and ten kids - it was crazy but we had a great time!

The cabin sat right above this spot on the river and the kids had a great time swimming in this beautiful swimming hole.

One of our GeoCashing adventures led us to this cave. Bears???

The kids open the GeoCash capsule. They found little toy treasures inside.

Shane and Keith washing dishes.

The women preparing a picnic for our day of hiking, GeoCashing and swimming.

4th of July Camping Trip

We just got back from five great days at the Oregon Coast (outside our favorite coast town, Manzanita) for our annual family camping trip with both sides of our family. This year some friends of ours also happened to be camping at the same campground with their four children and we all had a lot of fun together.

A misty morning at our campsite.

A visit to the infamous Flamingo Jim's.

We spent an afternoon crabbing with Grandpa Darell in the bay. The girls loved catching the crabs but didn't care too much for eating them.

Waiting for the parade in Manzanita. We set up our chairs at 7 am and almost all the spots on the entire street were already reserved!

The girls with one of their favorite uncles, Dale.

Root beer floats for dessert on the 4th!

Making the trek up the short hill to the beach to watch the fireworks.

Waiting around the campfire for the fireworks to start.

Annah and her friend Ruby exploring the sand dunes at dusk on the 4th of July.

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!