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!

Day 78

1. I enjoyed reading most of The Backyard Homestead

2. What else? Finished Ender's Game, dentist with Daniel and errands around town, spent the afternoon catching up on projects, Top Gear and pizza with Daniel in the evening.

Day 77

1. Feeding ewes and lambs. All the lambs have been born.

2. Daniel's portrait of Wilma enjoying the sunshine

3. It's Dad's birthday! Scott and Juli came over to help celebrate, along with Roger and Bev.

4. S&J also finished opening up their wedding presents.

5. A proper rum cake for his birthday.

Day 76

1. A rare sighting of me before church

2. What else? Church, of course!, basketball with the girls, Top Gear and Community Group at the Evans.

Day 75

1.-4. Jacob and I took a farm tour today. 

What else?

Visiting Amanda and the fruit stand, putting the cows back in their pasture (!), enjoying Mr & Mrs Cook over for the afternoon, tidying up and recovering from all of the wedding festivities, enjoying Andrew's amazing pork chops from the pigs!

Day 74

1. Mom and Daniel picked up the pork from the butcher

What else? Not one of my most stellar days. But, it all ended okay.

Enjoyed the boys last HOOPs basketball game. 

Day 67

Spent the morning doing chores with Uncle Rick, Tia Vero, Olivia & Lillian. We held baby chicks, saw freshly born lambs and fed the cows.

Then it was off the Mt Angel Abbey for a picnic lunch.

And the rehearsal & dinner in the evening.

For the rehearsal dinner, a couple of ladies from church volunteered to cook it! Our family did the decorations and young people from church served and cleaned up. We invited out of town guests so we had about 50 people there so it was a fantastic party!

Day 65

Today was a whirlwind of activity.

Spent the first half of the day trying to get the house wedding-weekend-ready and putting away food to feed the hordes we knew would be descending upon us.

The second half was more fun! I picked up my cousin Jennie downtown and then we spent time running errands before coming home to show her the farm and make dinner together.

So grateful for the time we got to spend together!

Day 14

1, Snow. More like cotton falling down from the sky.

2. Oh. My. Goodness. The piggies are getting so big. Today they got moved onto fresh pasture. I'd been waiting to move the sheep to a different pasture so I could move the electric fencing. You can see the pasture behind them has been thoroughly turned into mud. Which is good, because hopefully that means death to all of the thistle plants!

3. What else? Worked on Herbert (yes, little bits of progress there), caught up on emails and phone calls. Rather wasted the afternoon (in a good way), but redeemed it by a) failing to get dinner on the table in time and b) cleaning the shopping white board and organizing a dresser. Also, thankful that Scott bought stuff for dinner on Wednesday that we could use for dinner today. And fresh salsa.

Also, hoping to get caught up on blogging sometime this week. If your friend with me on FB, you'll know that the last half of December was kuh-ray-zee. 

Day 2

What else? Yesterday, on New Year's Day, we just stayed home and relaxed. It was lovely.