We are proud owners of a minivan!!

As of today we are the proud owners of a 1999 Green Dodge Caravan!! Hooray!!
After 5 years of payments we finally own our van; we recieved the title in the mail today.
I suppose it can start falling apart now...

Happy Arbor Week

While National Arbor Day is not until the end of the month, next week is Oregon's Arbor Week. To celebrate we went out to Shevlin Park to help plant Ponderosa pine trees. It was a beautiful day to do it too. We were out there for about 2 hours and we figure we planted 20-25 trees. Every year they plant trees in this area that was damaged by fire in 1990. We will now have our very own grove of trees in about 30 years!

First start out with a 2 year old Ponderosa pine sapling and a basket to keep the deer out

Then dig a hole (Abby INSISTED on digging hers with her tiny trowel, even though I had a big shovel.)

Put the sapling in at the right depth and refill the hole

Pat it in really good

Tada! Here are the kids sitting in what will be shade in their grove of trees they planted. Check back in 30 years for a picture with trees and shade.

p.s. Thanks to Suelynn for the batteries for my camera so I could take more than 2 pictures.

p.p.s. Of course we knew someone here... this is Bend!

p.p.p.s. If you live locally they are doing this again Thurs. and Fri. 3-5:30, and Sat 9-1

Overplayed

I don't know how many of you listen to pop radio, but I thought this spoof our local radio station did of "Hey there Delilah" was funny. For some reason in order to get the audio to play you have to click on "Pop Out Player" to hear it. Enjoy!

p.s. I think I might be a radio dj groupie :-0

Denied

Yesterday afternoon I stood in a line a quarter mile long for an hour and a half to go see Pres. Clinton. Can you believe he came out to our lowly little city? I thought it was pretty cool that he came.. but not cool enough to get there at 3pm when they opened the high school campus for people to start lining up. I got to the line around 4:45. Luckily since this is a small town I saw one of Brad's colleagues and we were able to chat to pass the time. They started slowly filtering people in around 5:30. It was looking so promising, I was getting closer and closer to the door.... then, at 6:10, about 25 feet from the door, they closed them!!! I couldn't believe I had got so close only to be DENIED!

Fiber Market Day

Spring Break- Day 7 (Sat. March 29)

No, not that kind of fiber....

Saturday we went to the High Desert Fiber Market Day in Prineville. It was really cool. Outside they had a little "petting zoo" with sheep, llamas and alpacas, and inside people were selling all kinds of wool from various animals in various stages of production. There was wool from different types of sheep, alpacas and llamas. Some of it was shorn and just dumped in a lawn bag, others were washed, others had been combed out, or felted, or spun and or knitted etc.

The girls are checking out Abby's unwashed wool (Abby was the name of the sheep)

There were classes throughout the day. Unfortunately we didn't get there until 2:30 and it ended at 4, so we only got to go to one class. The class we went to was called "Drop spinning." You can see how to do it here. It is how they spun wool before the spinning wheel! Above Samantha and Abby are practicing using the drop spindle with commercial yarn.Here is Elise with a drop spindle learning how to do it with real wool (no, she didn't spin all that yarn on there)

We enjoyed it so much we bought a spindle and some wool and are trying our hand at it at home. So when you come visit be sure to ask me to pull out the spindle and we'll give it a try.

I had told the kids that we would take them to Pappy's Pizza during Spring Break and as spring break was coming to a close we made our way over to Pappy's for supper. The Pappy's in Bend is pretty smelly and nasty, so we went to the Pappy's in Redmond. While still a little stinky from all the kids' stinky socks, shoes and sweaty bodies, the play structure was great, and they even had a "referee" keeping track of the kids. Check out this big slide! Take your typical McDs playland and multiply it by 2.5 times. Pretty fun and good pizza too.

To Splash or not to Splash?

Spring Vacation- Day 7 (Friday March 28)

Friday morning we were supposed to go to a pool called "Splash" in Eugene with some friends. We decided to bail on them though when we discovered it had snowed 10 inches over the pass that night and they were expecting another 9-12" during the day.

To console the kiddies we splashed around our indoor pool here in Bend with the same friends and a couple more. The pool was crazy busy, but the kids didn't seem to mind as they were there for THREE HOURS!! Brad was pretty water logged after about 2, stuck it out for 2 1/2, but couldn't take any more and got out. We met some friends afterwards at McDonald's for ice cream cones and my children were introduced to the "Free mini cone." I don't know if we'll ever get out of McD's again without them mooching mini cones.

Other BIG news was that Trader Joes opened!! Yea! A couple girlfriends and I carpooled over there Friday night at 8:00. The store was pretty picked over by the time we got there though. We asked one of the guys there about restocking and he told us they had a truck full of stock waiting outside to be unloaded as soon as the store opened. I got some of my favorite simmer sauces. I especially love the Marsala! Their Boursin cheese is a lot cheaper there, as is their Kerry Irish butter. I am anxious to try a bunch of their products.

Do you have a favorite Trader Joe product I should try?

New Look

Spring Vacation- Day 6 (March 27) Thursday was our recovery day, so we spent the day sleeping in, getting odd jobs done and running around. For me this included a trip to pick up my new glasses!! I don't need much of a prescription, but it is nice to have them for driving and being able to see the street signs before it is too late.