Day 109

1. Took the Bolt Bus to Seattle for a weekend trip to see Rebekah!

2. Rebekah's backyard. It's tidy, little wild and overgrown, and perfect.

Day 83

Sunday afternoon, after church we all took an outing to Benham falls. We even got to see a couple of crazy kayakers go down! Then it was back to the house for dinner and to watch Life of Pi.

Day 81 (Part 2)

1. Hanging out at the house with Dad.

2. Going to Old Mill with Susan and Mom

3. My favorite store in Prineville. One day I'll actually go in!

4. The best Chinese restaurant in Oregon. We drive to ridiculous lengths to get here. And we've now shown up enough that they know us!

Day 82 (Part 1)

Spent the morning hiking up Pilot Butte. Obviously we wore the boys out. But us girls were full of energy! Then it was off to Looney Bean Coffee.

Day 81

1. Admiring the snowy peaks while driving along the gorge

2. A park in Hood River

3. Winter wheat? and sagebrush

4. Stopping in Madras to watch the biggest fire I've ever seen. Sad but fascinating.

What else? Today we drove to Bend to visit our friends the Ayers. Because of snow on the pass, we turned a three hour drive into a four hour drive by coming around by the gorge. We then stopped enough times that we turned the four hour drive into an almost six hour drive. Sigh. But we made it!

Packing up

I'm in California right now. Visiting friends in preparation for a wedding...

Yesterday in a fit of why don't we have any of our flowers inside, I went a picked some bouquets (neverminding the fact that they'll die while I'm gone) and then I picked a HUGE sunflower to put in my room. I am sure it helped with my packing. (If I could've found my phone, I would be posting a picture of it. But I have no clue where my phone went which is very odd. I know it's in the house and I'm starting to wonder if it got scooped up into the garbage. Argh.)

I have a love/hate relationship with packing. I love the challenge of it (And yes, I pronounce that in my head as Inspector Clouseau does with a mangled french accent, "SHALLANGE!)"  yet sometimes my brain feels like it might explode with all of the options that I overthink.

I consider the perfect packing job to consist of an outfit for every situation that I'm likely to come across and for each item to have been worn once (depends on the item, that is). In my mind, the perfect packing job can be achieved. But it does take practice and it involves learning over time what works best for you.

Over the years, I've learned that the one item I can't live without is the denim skirt. No matter what. One time I forgot that rule and spent the whole trip wishing I'd bought it. I also always pack a swim suit, cause you never know when you might end up in a hotel and it would be a crime to miss out on a perfectly good swimming pool.

So yup, back to California. It's warm here and there are fresh tomatoes and peaches. I love visiting, but I definitely enjoy coming back to Oregon! And now I'm watching Cheers (season one) which so far is pretty funny...

Puttering & Tasmania

This afternoon mostly consisted mostly of puttering outside. I'm into puttering right now. The word (I like saying it) and the action. Usually I'm faster than puttering, but with my shoulders and neck still recovering from moving hay, I'm puttering.  Today I focused on fixing some panels on the hot tub so it can get stained and sanding the back door so it can get painted. I've been itching to get to these projects for the last two weeks but it wouldn't stop raining long enough! The word puttering never fails to remind me of Patrick McManuses chapter on puttering.

This evening some awesome guys from our church came and helped prep the yard for The Party. Pretty nice of them. I swear our life revolves around the garden until The Party so it's a relief to have extra help. :)

I think I'm kind of digging this random items style of writing.

I came accros this website today about Tasmania Parks (picture from website). After looking at it and Wikipedia I now want to visit Tasmania. I love how the photo above says, "Winter Wonders - Rug up and step outside!" English never fails to amuse me.

I also clicked for the first time on a Pandora ad. Of all things, for these. I've never paid much attention to rings... they always seem to look the same, but these actually looked like they took some serious skillz.

And I discovered one of my new favorite all time blogs. It's called Scouting NY. I've always thought that location scouting for movies sounded intriguing but after reading this blog I think it's moved into my top five of favorite jobs. Number one being Queen. Haha, not really.  Basically scouting sounds kind of like being a real estate agent but you don't have the pressure to sell anything. I also love New York City so it's a double plus.