International Roses

Saturday morning rolled around earlier than I thought it should have…we started off the day with a little berry picking on Sauvie Island.  We were hoping to let the kids do a little swimming, but it wasn’t quite as safe to go swimming there as we had assumed, with drop-offs and such.

I think we picked about 5 pints of strawberries and 1 pint of raspberries.  We were about a week early on the raspberries and so we really had to look for those. Lunch time crept up on us and after a quick trip to the grocery store we hiked up to see the International Rose Gardens.  This is actually the testing site for new varieties of roses….and it was everything you might think it would be. 

While we enjoyed our lunch my brother told us how last weekend he and a friend had come up and picked up rose petals that had dropped to the ground and “graphed” them into other roses.  Jessie thought this was a fabulous idea and concocted several new rose varieties on the spot.

Here is one of the coolest roses I saw, but then again we were here with children and probably only saw a 1/4 of the gardens.

Here you can see the neat little rows all the roses were planted in.

We lost Ken and Spencer for a while and you’ll never guess where we found them… On some of the roses they trim off all the branches except one and let it grow into a “trunk” to make a rose tree.  You can see that this one is taller than me, which isn’t real impressive, I know, but pretty cool all the same.

These are a variety of single layer roses…so beautiful! And last of all us under the arch of roses. Next we went to a 3-D photography shop that had a free display for the day.  It was quite entertaining for the kids to look though a bunch of 3-D books and try and reach out and touch the pictures that looked so real.

They also let us watch an 8-minute 3-D nature movie. I’ve never been to a 3-D movie and I was impressed at how well it worked.

Next we relaxed at a nearby park while the kids played on the toys and then ended up throwing around a frisbee for a while.

Our last stop of the day was for Sushi.  (Aunt Chris - Portland has a Sushi-go-Round too!)  We got to ride the electric street car to get there and Spencer didn’t want to get off.  We reassured him that we would get to ride in it again when we were done with dinner. Now when the kids found out we were going to sushi, Mark was all excited to try something new and Jessie was totally grossed out and was sure we were all going to get sick.  As it turns out Mark got in one bite of rice and cucumber rolled in seaweed and nearly got sick, and boy could I relate to him after my first bite too.  Jessie didn’t try that one but actually really like the tuna/shrimp rolled up in rice with egg around the outside to hold it together.  She even asked for seconds!!

Mostly the kids loved the chop sticks an we are now the proud owners of four new pairs of chopsticks.  Mark has tried to eat both lunch and dinner with them.  We gave quick hugs to Uncle Mark before running to catch the street car back to our van.  Unfortunately in the quickness we forgot to ask the easiest way to get back on the freeway.  We drove around for only an hour until we saw a police lady and could ask for some directions.  The really silly part was that we had a map and knew exactly where we were, but all the onramps we could find were headed in the wrong direction!  What a totally CRAZY city layout!!

When we finally got home we BBQ’ed for the those who didn’t fill-up on sushi.... that meant everyone had at least one burger!

A Waterfall, or two, or three…

Friday morning we headed off to Multnomah Falls to do a little hiking.  The first stop was Vista House; it had a great view.  This was the viewpoint Spencer took.

Next we drove down to Latourell  Falls (don’t ask me how to pronounce that!).Abbie and Spencer  running up the trail.  At Vista House one of the park rangers gave each of the kids a round “I love Oregon” sticker and we put them on their backs so it would be easy to recognize them from the back. 

The thing that I thought was the most interesting on the trail was that the tree branches had moss growing on them.

Some of them were totally covered in moss! We found a few cool fallen logs.  You just had to be careful were you sat down so you didn’t take to much fallen log with you when you stood up. :-0 There were some fun flowers to take pictures of too.

This is the second waterfall.  It was downhill to get to this one.  I think I prefer hiking up to the waterfalls and enjoying the downhill on the way back to the car. This one is Bridal Veil, which must be a popular waterfall name because we have one in Provo with the same name.

The girls and Spencer and I climbed up onto the big rock out in the stream. There was a look out deck  built just above the rock.  To get onto the rock we had to step over this really nasty slug that someone had stepped on….yuck!

Here you can see the deck in the left side of this picture.

My three sillies…This stump was about as tall as Mark and Ken lifted the kids up so they could sit on top of it.

We started up another trail, Angel’s Rest, but didn’t come upon the waterfall soon enough for the kids, so we turned around.  Abbie was dying to take a picture and found these pretty leaves to capture on film.We spent a little more time hiking than we had planned and so we called Mark, my brother, to come up and join us.  He meet us on the way back down the “unwaterfall” trail. And then we went on to Wahkenna Falls.

Spencer is quite often the King of our house and despite Ken’s best efforts the King enjoyed many rides from his subjects tired of his whining.Copying Spencer’s viewing techniques from the morning I got this picture. The kids didn’t remember Multnomah Falls and so we just hiked up to the bridge there. The last waterfall we saw was actually an attempt to find an on-ramp to the freeway.  But Jessie really liked this one – Horsetail Falls.

After dinner at Apple Bee’s we walked over to a park near Charles and Ann’s house, where we are staying, for a little game of croquet.  It was getting quite late at this point but after all of the kingly treatment Spencer received and a little nap on the drive home he was wired.  After the croquet game, in which Ken clobbered the rest of us, we went home for ice cream.

Charles, Ann, Ken, Uncle Mark and I stayed up to play a game of Five Crowns and had a great evening…. oh, until Ken had to quit the game and go lay down with Spencer to help him go to sleep.

Driving and more driving…

The kids were super good in the car.  We listened to 4 books on tape, worked on stitching and the hat loom, sang some songs, looked for the alphabet letters and snacked (on mostly healthy stuff), drew pictures, etc… Once we got half way across Oregon we stopped at this lookout point to stretch our legs.  It was super windy. Then we watch Mary Poppins on the laptop, parts of it were hard to see with the sun coming in the windows of the van, but the kids didn’t complain.

This was one of the views by the Columbia River.  Do you love Mount Hood in the distance?   That mountain is so tall compared to everything else around here that you can almost always see it.  Some parts of the road were lined so thickly with trees that we were walled in by green on both sides.

Father’s Day and beyond

To celebrate Father’s Day the kids helped me decorate this pillowcase with all the fun and great things we could think of about their dad.  We wrote with crayons and then covered it with wax paper and ironed it.  It was a lot of fun to do and Ken really enjoyed it too.  Yea!!

We had dinner with Ken’s family in the evening.  Homemade mac and cheese with home bottled green beans, and scones for dessert.  Here are our happy scone friers.

Jessie told me that now that she knows how to make scones she’d like some every time I make bread…

Abbie has been counting down the days until the first day of summer, which happened to be on Father’s Day.  Since she’s been so excited for it to actually be summer we decided to celebrate the first day of summer with corn on the cob from one of the roadside stands. However, since the first day of summer fell on a Sunday we opted for the next best thing…celebrating the second day of summer with corn on the cob from the roadside stands.  And my was it good! To go with the corn on the cob I made a batch of Ranch Bread and of course Jessie wanted to make some of it into scones.  So I saved 6 pieces and we fried them up.  If you’re ever feeling like you’ve missed out on a few calories during the day, give us a call and Jessie will happily volunteer my services to make you some Ranch Bread Scones.  And who knows…maybe you’ll want to open a scone shop too, just like Jessie does.

Mark learned to ride his bike no-handed.  He asked me to take a picture of him and a little poem my dad always repeated to us as kids came to mind… ok, I guess one really couldn’t call this a poem…more like a saying.  “Look mom, no hands; look mom, no feet; look mom, no teeth!”Abbie also wanted to feel noticed and so she showed me how she could ride with only one hand.

Stitching, a new bike helmet, and a museum…

Jessie, Mark and Abbie all finished the first step of the summer reading program at the library and got a coupon for French fries at Carl’s Jr.  The fries were very tasty, but this is definitely not my favorite place to eat.

Jessie is working on a stitching project for Father’s Day (it’s almost done) -- a pillowcase with stars across the end and “dad” on it.  After watching Jessie, Abbie decided that she wanted to do some stitching too.  So she drew a cute little turtle and I traced it on to a square of material for her. 

She is doing a fabulous job!  I’m totally impressed and it’s been so fun “helping” her, even though it’s more just watching because she wants to do it all by herself. I’m sure I’ll have more pictures as she works on it, so stay tuned. Spencer got a new helmet this week and I think I put it on, complete with elbow and knee pads, and then took them all back off at least five times on Friday.  A friend told us about the Peteetneet School/Museum down in Payson and so we went for a visit.  Each of the different rooms has a different theme.  The first one was a history of Payson with old pictures, toys, clothes, weapons, etc.  The next one we went in was an old school room.  The kids found some cool puppets, a huge yo-yo and the school bell.  There was also a code of conduct list for women teachers… oh my, oh my….  It had things like: they had to wear at least 2 petticoats; they couldn’t hang out at the ice cream parlor;  they couldn’t be married, or dating anyone; they couldn’t ride in a buggy with an male unless it was their brother or father; they couldn’t leave town unless they had permission from the school board… and on and on.  I don’t know how they got anybody to be a teacher.

They are also having a quilt show there and the quilts are amazing.  I took this picture of Spencer before we found out that you couldn’t take any pictures of the quilts…but I’m going to share it with you anyways because Spencer is actually looking at the camera and smiling all in the same picture.  And who knows it may be good advertising for them if you like the quilts and go to  see them.

Upstairs the kids like the room with old technology.  There were old cameras, record players, phones, etc.  The old switch board was the favorite of the whole day.  The kids plugged and unplugged the cords over and over. They have some pretty fountains outside and a playground.

While we were there someone was having a birthday party and had brought a sheet of plastic probably 100 meters long and stretched it out down the long hill at the school.  The kids were dying to go play in the water.  Instead they entertained themselves on the swings and played tag on the playground.

I had to lay on the ground on my back to get this picture of Abbie.  Mark kept pushing her until she was going high enough to only get blue sky and puffy clouds in the back ground.  Love it.