Mushroom Villagers

Spelunking in Central OR:

After 3 hours we didn’t find any Morels, but kids are still happy:

Catching up with our horse friends:

Feed, bathed and now happily relaxing in the sun:

We hope you had a great 4th of July as well!

Wonder where I’ve been? Here’s the rundown:
- Wedding in Seattle, beautiful
- Week at Black Butte Ranch in Central Oregon, aaaah
- My 35th Birthday, along with baby sis Liz- on the same day
- Mother’s Day, I cleaned
- Step-sis’ Baby Shower, lovely
- Dad’s 62nd Birthday, hot
- Chris’ and BIL’s Birthday, busy
- 2 hours of tennis lessons every Saturday for the boys, pure entertainment!
- More typing work, argh
- Nailing notes on my guitar and now moving on to chords, ouch
- Not one sewing project started or completed! (Well, one- I made a cozy for a glass ikea stein for my dad’s b-day. He’s a fanatic boiling-hot-water drinker. Not much of a project and no picture to post so there you go.)

- And lastly, Memorial Day Morel hunting on Mt. Hood- found nothing, but LBMs (little brown mushrooms for you non-shroomers).

Here’s some shots from our day up in the mountains:

Things that are making me happy lately:

New Marriage

New shoes

(These are Naot Gardenia Shoes in Toffee)

New Sunglasses

New Morels

New Baby Geese

New bike trails we have yet to explore!

Yep, there’s still a TON of it up here on the Ranch. We arrived Friday night and the boys spent most of the day Saturday working on a bigger and better snow fort than last time.

The new and improved fort was started after a mini one was made for Ms. O:

The best thing about it was that it was close to the house:

Yes, that’s the door there so I was able to keep a close eye on her without having to brave the cold myself. The snow has been up here a while so it’s pretty hard on top and hurts when you fall. Ms. O actually stayed out there for longer than I thought she would.

Chris and Augie slept in their fort last night and made it all the way through until morning!

It’s Eddie’s turn tonight, but I’m not sure he’ll last. He’s still afraid of the dark so it may be a short night in the fort.

Today we’re also heading to Sisters for some groceries and of course, the Stitchin Post. I CAN”T wait. I’m raking my brain trying to think of what to buy…

Recently, we drove out to the Gorge to some of our favorite spots with an old college friend. It’s about an hours drive, but we’re entertained most of the way by the kids screaming “waterfall!” every time one is spotted. In Gorge, this means the car was not a quite one by any means.

The first stop was, of course, Multnomah Falls, but then we went to our next favorite, Oneonta Falls:

It was very cold and everything was wet from some recent snow, but it was gorgeous.

We didn’t make it up the canyon to see the actual Falls because of log debris and high water which the kids couldn’t maneuver, but everyone still had fun.

The last stop was Crown Point which is just about the windiest spot in the Gorge:

Augie and his little 40 pound body could barely stand without being pushed over by the wind. And he loved every minute of it!

I’m happy to report that we made it. The kids made a fast recovery so by Saturday we were able to head up to the mountains and cut our tree.

After a couple hours of playing and looking, we found our perfect “Charlie Brown” tree:

We really wanted a noble this year, but found a nice fir tree instead. I think it’s magnificent- and so is the man carrying it.

At first, Ms O wasn’t sure of all the white stuff and kept asking me to wipe the snow off of her mittens. But, after a few more falls in it and watching her brothers roll around in it, she decided that snow was fun after all. Here’s her *huge* smile to show it:

I love love love this little girl!

We put the tree up in our living room last night and the boys really enjoyed decorating it with all the “kid” ornaments. (The other ornaments do not go on the tree until Christmas Break starts and the daycare children aren’t here.)

So now all the lights are up, the tree is up and our house is filled with excitement. I love Christmas!

I don’t have much to share because my kids are sick throwing up, diarrhea and fevers. It seems to be non-stop with something these days. Poor kids. We were supposed to make our trek up to Mt Hood for our annual Christmas tree hunt, but it looks like we may have to delay it. The kids will be bummed as they were looking forward to lots of snow balls, forts and hot coco. But I’m going to give them lots of TLC and hopefully we’ll all be back to *normal* by Monday.

I did want to thank SewMamaSew and all you ladies for stopping by the last couple days. They’ve not only highlighted my CD Poket, but also my Eddie Cap AND baby slippers! I’ve had a wonderful time reading all your comments. Wow- thanks for all the kindness! It’s kept me sane with all the handmade gift making going on. I ordered some fabric from the store the other day and couldn’t be more pleased. It came quickly, nicely packed to keep out any rain (we’ve been dunked with it recently) and I love my little button! I ordered this, this and this. I LOVE them all and are saving them for some very special projects after the holidays are over. (I just saw that the gnomes are out of stock again! I’m glad I got my order in so if you want some and you see it in stock, buy it. And buy ALOT. It’s simply the softest, most luscious fabric out there.)

So back to my kiddos I go and hopefully I’ll be back with some crafty goodness in a couple days.

Have a great weekend!

We love the beach around here. Any chance we get, which is not as often anymore, we all head down for a day or two of play. Last month, we headed down for the weekend hauling all three kids and a new tent:

I wasn’t too excited to be “tenting it” with all three kids in October, but there was a great low tide (perfect for razor clamming) and no rain in the forecast. What more can you ask for?! We were even planing on a quick stop on the way back for some coastal Chanterelles.

The first day clamming was a total bust, (again) and so Saturday was spent riding bikes and cooking over the camp fire. After those activities were exhausted, we noticed that there was a Ranger Show about mushrooms in the afternoon. We were all tentative about attending since the shows are known to be rather lame and aimed at kids mostly. But, being avid mushroomers, we HAD to check it out… And thank goodness did because look at what was discovered:

PORCINI’s EVERYWHERE! People were roaming campsites and coming out with grocery bags full of these beauties. We knew that there were some boletes around, but KING boletes and right on the camp-grounds- whoa! Most of Sunday was spent searching for these and we were able to bring home several pounds.

So overall, we had a wonderful trip and will now be making our October trip a permanent yearly event. Oh, and we did get some time to play on the beach:

And get dirrrrty:

The Oregon Coast is truly amazing!

So our visitors will be leaving us soon. I can’t believe 3 weeks have passed since their arrival. We’ve been busy, but have had so much fun! I know my kids will miss the daily chaos of 9 in our house and will miss their cousins terribly.

We’ve been all over Portland enjoying the sights. We HAD to go to the Zoo one more time and were treated to the “long loop” of the train ride.

We were also able to show them one of our favorite fall time treats- watching thousands of Swifts funnel down a school chimney in NW Portland.

There was a huge crowd gathered for this yearly event and we were not disappointed. It was a great evening filled with fried chicken, cardboard sledding, and bird watching.
And today, Chris wanted to go mushroom hunting, but was only able to convince my boys to go along with him. They were able to find the first Chanterelles of the Fall.

There will be much more mushroom hunting to come, but we have plenty of time to do that. There’s only two more days with our guests and we plan on enjoying every minute of it.

We’ll miss you Uncle Hill, Auntie Fini, Kadin and Amai!!!

This week has been jam-packed! We started off catching 21 trout at a Fish farm out in Sandy. Almost all the grandkids were there and Papa (my daddy) loved helping each grandchild catch about 3 fish each.

Even Ms O got into it by helping carry all the essentials.

Next was a trip downtown:

And of course, Kadin wouldn’t let us go without a couple rides on MAX:

And to finish, we ate a huge sushi dinner and ended the day with a bowl of ice-cream: