One More Week at Home

My head was spinning that next week, trying to make sure I was ready for my family reunion while getting things taken care of around the house.  I don't feel like I did a very good job of either of those things, but we survived and the reunion happened, and everyone was (is) fine.

We tried out the big Jenga game we made. Success!

    

On Sunday July 12th it was particularly hard for Jack to get ready for home church.  He got dressed most of the way but didn't want to tuck in his shirt, put on his belt, etc.  After a long, long, long battle, he was finally ready and suspected that for one reason or another we wouldn't be starting church right away, so he said he wanted to outside and see the chickens.  We said no.

Jack and Eliza had dentist appointments and Jack joined Eliza
in her movie-watching.

Do you see the foam arrow Whit is holding?  It had a tack taped to it
and when he shot it at the LEGO minifig Luke was holding dangerously close
to his face, he ended up hitting Luke in the forehead and giving him a couple of little scrapes.
But Luke did acknowledge that "that thing is hard to aim."
Also, the target was inches from Luke's face.  So there's that.

The kids completed a week of swim lessons.  Luke completed Level 3,

and Jack and Eliza are almost finished with lessons completely!

A Ninja Star

Sawyer and his family arrived a day early for our family reunion,
so we did a private kickoff at a Dippin' Dots truck.
(Actually, this was a little celebration for finishing swim lessons but don't tell Sawyer.)

One morning I was playing slave-driver by making the kids weed the flowerbeds with me.  Jack, one of my more reluctant workers, said, "When I grow up I want to have a butler so I don't have to work."  I did not ask him how he planned to pay a butler.

Eliza has been busy too!

She met two major goals in gymnastics: doing a cartwheel on beam, and getting her kip on bar.  (She said she can do a better kip but this is the only video I received from her coach.)  Her coach gave her a medal for reaching these milestones.

Eliza also passed off the piano solo she's been working on for a few months!

AND she's lost EIGHT teeth since schools got out in mid-March, and has five more that are loose.  She might be toothless when she starts 5th grade.

The Chicken Chronicles 7.11.20

The week after our Oregon trip, we knew we could no longer feign uncertainty about Bandit.  She's a he.  (If that made no sense, you might need to re-watch Mrs. Doubtfire.)  When we got back, he was crowing a lot, and instead of sounding like a cat meowing, he sounded like someone making crowing sounds through a kazoo.  Who knew chicken adolescence was so similar to people's?  Bandit was also acting more aggressive than before.  (See previous comment about chicken and human adolescence.)

One morning Eliza was outside picking raspberries with me and brought the overripe or otherwise unsuitable raspberries over to the chickens and discovered something: they LOVE raspberries.  Bandit tended to take over the raspberry offerings and get more than his fair share of the treats, but hey, he's a growing teenage boy.

Eliza also made the observation that the chickens are so used to hearing her call her chicken, Hei Hei, that when she does so, they all come over to say hello.

Home Again

It was nice to be back home and get back into our routine, which now included regular harvesting from the garden.  Luke and Jack have been playing with LEGOS like they're going out of style (much to the dismay of our bare feet) and are so obsessed with LEGO Ninjago that we rented the movie from Amazon Prime and they watched it three times in 48 hours.  Luke also brought our LEGO Ninjago book on a hike with us.

This may look like an impressively lush raspberry mini-forest,
but it's actually a bunch of average (or sub-average) bushes that have been
infiltrated - nearly overthrown - by mint.  It takes at least 15 minutes to harvest
1/2 cup or so of raspberries most days.  It's such a chore to get to the berries
that I have to get psyched every time, telling myself that it's worth it.

Whit (not pictured) was celebrating a dental milestone with ice cream
at our favorite local shop and we tagged along.

Ben de-winterized the boat and took 3/4 of the kids
out for a test run one night last week.  It worked!

"Luke, could you put the book away so we can keep hiking to the waterfall?"

We've done this hike several times and I don't think I've ever
captured this particular view before.  That second waterfall
is hard to see from the trail!

Heading back to the car from Upper Falls.

Happy French Toast!

These guys have played together SO WELL this summer.
I wish I could remember exactly what they were saying at this moment.
It was something about the sizes of their respective galaxies.

Jack and Eliza helped me with a couple of projects for the family reunion we'll be hosting soon.  Jack did some cutting and Eliza did some sanding on a set of oversized Jenga blocks we made from leftover 2x3's from our chicken coop.  Eliza also helped me practice Dutch Oven cobbler.

Oregon Wrap-Up

I hope you don't mind my exhaustive posts about this trip, but it really was a wonderful experience for our family and I'm so thankful we were able to do it.  Due to the composition of our group, the time constraints, and Covid, there were lots of things we didn't do that we would like to have done, which makes it really easy to dream about making another trip to the area.  Our bucket list for southeastern Oregon still includes: Crater Lake, Oregon Caves, Taylor's Sausage (Cave Junction), and the Vortex House of Mystery.  At the coast we want to go whale watching; hike Humbug Mountain; go to Kissing Rock and Myers Creek; see Indian Sands, Secret Beach, and the Cape Arago Lighthouse; explore the cave at Whaleshead Beach; and walk at least some of Natural Bridge.  We easily could have spent more time at Redwoods National Park too.

Our treehouse, the Majestree, 47 feet (and 72 stairs) high.

Some quotable quotes I didn't include in previous posts:

• "I want American junk food. (pause) I want a burrito."  - Eliza
• ("Luke, what did you think of the jetboats?") "One hundred percent fun."  - Luke
• ("Luke, what did you think of the trail ride?") "If I had $45,000 I'd pay it all to do it again."  - Luke
• "In-N-Out is actually 'in, stay in, and go out after an hour.'" - Luke

We were there at the right time for wildflowers -
and it was amazing how there were several I don't remember
ever seeing anywhere before.

I have several videos I thought I'd compile to include in this post but I just can't make that happen today.  So I'll try to edit and share those another time since the amazingness of the scenery comes across better over video.  In the meantime I'll leave you with this fun shot of the girls in front of a mural Cat spotted and requested we use as a backdrop for a 3-minute photo session.

Sunday and Monday in Oregon and Headed Home

Our last day at the treesort was Sunday.  We started off with horseback riding - a peaceful 3-mile trail ride that looped through the nearby national forest.  There weren't enough horses for all of us to be in the same group, so we split into two rides.  Sawyer, Jack, Amy, and I were in the early-morning group.  Luke, Eliza, Cat, and Ben were in the later group.  (Andy was happy to hang out with Sydney.)

Of all the things we had planned during the trip, I think this is the one the kids were most excited about!  And the well-behaved horses and beautiful scenery and great weather made for a lovely experience.

We were given a quick overview about the temperament of the horses, how to steer them, how far apart they should walk, what to do when riding up and down the miniature hills on the trail, and how the "emergency brake" works (how to get the horse to stop if he/she suddenly starts to bolt back to the barn).  I started to worry a bit that this was going to require more horsemanship than we were capable of, but I needn't worry.  The horses followed their leader perfectly and required almost no guidance (the exceptions being when they wanted to stop, and we needed to get them moving, as happend when Major met a few friends along the way; or if they got too close to each other).  I realized that these horses have walked this trail so many times that they could probably do it without a leader - or a rider - in their sleep.

Jack was so enamored with the horses from the time we arrived
on the property that he knew all of their names before we started our ride.
Here he is with Reggie.

Amy rode Zoe

I loved seeing all the wildflowers!

You can lead a horse to water,
but then you have to wait for it to drink.

My horse's name was Major.

I saw the beginning of the second group's ride as they made their way to the trail.

(photo credit: Ben)

When everyone was finished with the trail ride, we changed into (travel) Sunday clothes and entertained ourselves by making s'mores and roasting Starburst until Sydney was finished with her nap - not an unpleasant way to kill the time.  Then we had treehouse-church.

We had treehouse-church on Andy and Amy's deck, then had lunch and celebrated this girl's birthday.  She was so cute and fun and such a good sport and just happy to turn 15.  We brought her presents and our traditional sign with us from Utah, and she chose mochi from the grocery store to have as her birthday treat.

We could have spent one more night at the treesort but decided instead to get a head start on the 13-hour drive home.  Here are a few more shots from Sunday before we left:

The tricky thing about breaking up our drive was that there wasn't a great way to do it.  The direct route back to Utah went through hundreds of miles of tiny towns without decent hotels, so we could either just drive 2-3 hours and not get much of a head start, or we could drive 9 hours and arrive very late that night.  After a lot of deliberation, we decided to caravan with Andy's family and crash at their house for the night.  It added an hour or two to our drive but in the end we felt like it broke up the drive in a way that made sense.  There was an added bonus of suffering through construction traffic with their family - commiserating over walkie-talkie.

She got the munchies.
After approximately 3 minutes of driving.

Mt. Shasta

Smooth sailing the whole way.

As the day unfolded and the traffic added up, Cat's birthday dinner was delayed until 9:30pm.
Thank goodness we found an In-N-Out Burger for her!

We arrived at Andy's after midnight, with five sleeping kids in the van (Sawyer having jumped in with us somewhere along I-5).  We slept great on various beds and couches in the house.  We made a pancakes and eggs breakfast, the kids had a little time to play and watch some TV, and we started heading for Utah at about 10am.  The drive was pretty smooth and we didn't make a long stop until dinner in Wendover, where we had Burger King at a playground and the kids appreciated getting to run around for a little while.  We got home at about 10apm to find a clean house with a fun sign and candy from Whit, and flowers from Suz.

It was a great trip, but we were all glad to be home!