Yesterday Jennifer and I took the kids (boys) berry picking at Sauvie Island.
Dude! It was hot.
I didn't stop sweating the whole time we were there.
Whew.
(maybe. just maybe. i sweat off some calories. grin.)

The farm has this cool wagon you can ride on to take you out to where the berries are.
The kids got a kick out of that.

Oh look~
here's me!
Self portrait.
I know.
I look like a dork.
Please excuse the silly hat.
And double chin.
It was hot.
And well. no excuse for the double chin.
Now, Justin.
He's just adorable all the time.
But he doesn't like being hot.

He tells me yesterday:
He wants to move to Los Angeles when he grows up and be a film director.
I wonder if he knows it gets HOT in L.A. :-)

Oh look!
Here's me and Jen.
And that adorable Jacob.

We picked marionberries, raspberries, and blueberries.
I don't know why, but this is the only berry picture I took all day.

We lunched under a pear tree. (is "lunched" a verb now, or did i just make that up?)
(okay now i'm humming the 12 days of xmas now...)

(just in case you missed it, click on the above picture. look at jacob's face.)

Favorite picture of the day:

Second favorite picture of the day:

~The sunshine that makes our day so bright~

It is awful quiet around here.

Dave and Rebecca headed south this morning.
Dean picked them up at 7:20am, and they're headed to CA for the next few days.

Granddad's funeral is on Friday at 2pm, in Clovis.
I wish I could be there so bad.
I just feel awful I can't be there to give Grandmother a hug and tell her how sorry I am for her loss.

Good Gracious!
68 years together.
Wow!

I hope I can say the same thing in 50 years.
They celebrated their 50th the year Dave and I got married.

(I hope I'm remembering the numbers correctly.)

Granddad lived a good life.
He was 91.
A retired Nazarene minister.

I'll always remember how him and Grandmother always prayed for Dave and I.

We needed it.

They are the prayer warriors I look up to.
Them and a few others I can think of right now too.

Dave and Rebecca will be back on Saturday night.
Then we are headed to the beach for a weeklong vacation with Dave's mom (flying out here from MN on Saturday.)
We all need a little R & R.

I've got lots of fun things planned to do, awesome recipes to try out on the Klan, and totally awesome craft projects for the kiddos to do.

On a side note, have you been keeping up with Dave's blog?
Five Acres of Douglas Fir
I'm too tired to make it a linky this morning.
Sorry about that.

We're signing up for the water co-op this week.
The subcontractors bids are still coming in.
Hopefully the first week of August we will get to talk to Mr. Banker.
Then, crossing fingers, we'll break ground in September.

One year after we moved to Oregon.

Wow.

It's been a long time comin'.

Brace yourselves folks.

It's gonna be a long ride.

I sure love this little guy

Justin has been our family "class clown" from the moment he came out of the womb I think.

He is constantly making us smile, and doing things that make us laugh.

There's never a dull moment around here.

He loves those special times when he can climb on top of the jungle gym and drink Creme Soda
From
A
Bottle
(is there anything better than drinking ice cold soda on the 4th of July from a bottle?!)


The contemplative look.
(don't fall, Jen!)

Peace out, Bro'.
(whew, she made it)

This is the "I'm tired, mom" look.
(mid-blink)

For some reason this pose reminds me of Yoda.
maybe i've just been watching too much Star Wars though...


I hope he grows up to be just like his daddy!



lest anyone misunderstands....

this is all in fun

they know i love them

more
than
anything
in
the
whole

WORLD

we
all
laugh
a
LOT
in
our
house!


I love you buddy!

Going on a hike

I meant to post this picture yesterday.

As it was when I took it.

Pretty cool.
Date: 7/8
Time: 9:10

Too bad our clock didn't have the year feature, or seconds.
Then it could have been:
7/8/9 (the date)
10:11:12 (the time)


The kids and I went hiking with Jen and her boys this morning at Forest Park, which is up by the Oregon Zoo. Actually we were at the Hoyt Arboretum. Really awesome trails up there, and the trees and bushes are all marked with their name.

The magnolia trees were mostly finished with their bloom cycle, but we caught this one bloom really close to our head height.
Aren't they simply magnificent?

Taking a break on the trail.

Here's my munchkins:

I don't know what kind of tree these leaves came from but the I love the pink around the edges.

Lunchtime folks!

And finally, we came across this funny plant.
I used to know what this is, but now I can't remember the name.
We came across these a long time ago, when we went to Yosemite.
Only they were red instead.
Anyone know what these are?

The 4th of July

Thought I'd share a few photos from the 4th of July.

We went over to Jen's house in the afternoon.

My dad was home for the weekend.
Yay!!!!

Haven't seen him in 5 or 6 weeks.

We took the kids to play at the park for a couple of hours.

Then went back to Jen's house to bbq.

I had made some country style pork ribs in the crock pot the day before, then put them in the frig. So basically Dave heated them up on the grill and slapped some bbq sauce on them. I also brought Brats, Pea Salad, and Carrot Salad. Some of the other dishes were potato salad, baked beans, chips and dips, and lots of beer and soda.

Then it was time to set off some fireworks.
Here we are sitting in Jen's front yard.
More fireworks.
(sorry about the blurriness)

Justin on his perch.

Jen, Jacob, and Rachael.

And finally, a couple shots of everyone doing sparklers.

Hope everyone is having a good week!

Deals this week

So I went to the grocery store last night after dinner, because last week's ads were expiring and I wanted to use my coupons to get some more free stuff. Here's what I came away with.

Purex Liquid Laundry Detergent
Kraft Mac and cheese (4 boxes)
Kelloggs Frosted Flakes
Kelloggs Raisin Bran
Kraft Pasta Salad (from a box)
Kraft Miracle Whip
Capri Sun (one box)
Simply Limeade
Heinz Ketchup

Total Spent: $ 9.70
Total Saved (with coupons and in store deals): $27.47
Percent Saved: 74%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(took my bag to my vehicle, then went back into the store for the next round of coupons)
(the store will only let you use a certain number of double coupons at a time, so I pay for one set of purchases, then come back to use the next set of coupons)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Montreal Steak Seasoning
Lea Perrins Worcestire Sauce
5 - 12 pks of Coke
Dannon Yogurt (2 - 6 pks)
Buitoni Angel Hair Pasta (fresh pasta, not dried)

Total Spent: $22.71
Total Saved: $28.99
Percent Saved: 44%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All in all it was a good shopping trip.
I had to get a few things we recently ran out of (ketchup, worcestire sauce); those items were not on sale, however I did have coupons for them, so they ended up making my final bill a tad higher than I was planning on. But overall, I'm pleased with the average savings of the day:
59%

Finally, some pictures to post

Okay, I finally off-loaded my camera and have a few pictures to post from last week.

The first few are from strawberry picking last Thursday.

Jen, Jacob, Josiah and Justin
on the way to pick zee yummy strawberries

Yup, that's them again.

Yup, them are strawberries.
Betcha didn't guess that did ya?
LOL

Isn't this picture adorable?
Jacob always is touching Justin's leg.
It's so cute!
He adores his cousin I think.
And that ham, Josiah!
What a good berry picker he is.


Okay, some explanation about this next picture.
I recently signed up for an organic produce delivery service.
You can pick the size of box of produce you want.
I got a fairly large box.
Probably more than I needed.

Fruit: Pluots (purple things on the left), apricots, nectarines, peaches, apples, bananas, strawberries
Vegs: Sugar Snap Peas, potatoes, Fresh Ginger (right above the apricots), asparagus, corn on the cob, lettuce, spinach, celery, carrots
The only thing we can't figure out what it is, is those long stringy things in the upper left corner. I think they are onions, but I'm not sure.

There is also a whitish package between the bananas and carrots.
Do you see it?
I also ordered a pound of coffee beans from the Portland Roasting Company.
We are very pleased with the delivery so far.

I made a corn/potato chowder the other day that was super yummy.
Tonight I'm making two veg dishes with the snap peas, and the spinach.
I will roast the asparagus with tomorrow nights meal.

My next delivery is this coming Thursday.
So I gotta get through with this stuff by Wednesday.

I'm not exactly sure what to do with the fresh ginger.
Any ideas out there??????


Oh, I forgot to tell you, with all the strawberries we picked on Thursday, I was able to make 5 pints of freezer strawberry jam on Saturday. It is so yummy!
I made some homemade buttermilk biscuits (more on that in a bit) last night.
And the jam on the biscuits was absolutely delicious.

Re: the biscuits
My goal in life (right now) is to figure out how to make light and fluffy biscuits.
Oh, and they have to taste good too.
Obviously there must be "some" fool-proof recipe out there.
I just can't find it right now.
I've tried many, many recipes during the past few months.
And, invariably, there is always something not quite right about them
So, if you have a foolproof biscuit recipe out there, please share it with me.
I'm begging you!

:-)