Our cousin Elijah drove through town on his way to northern California to visit his family. We had a quick but fun visit with him. The kids are hoping he'll come again.
It's that time of year again for soccer. A fun filled fall of soccer has started for the Donaldson kids.
Just like that summer is over and a new school year is on its way. The kids were excited and a little bit nervous this morning as they made their way to their new school. This year we decided to put all the kids into Morning Star Christian School. It is preschool through 8th grade with small class sizes. It will be wonderful not having to drive in 3 different directions for schools in the future. Can't wait to see what this school year will bring. It's going to be a great year!
I managed to get a quick picture before we left the house and a couple at school. Hunter is at that middle school age so I stood back and snapped a picture and watched him walk in the doors.
Hunter 5th grade, Noah 4th, Abbie 2nd & Preston JK
While not exactly summer weather we had a great time last night with our friends Tina and Curtis at the last summer concert date for the 2016 summer season at the Les Schwab outdoor Amphitheater. It was the tour de Compadres with Needtobreathe and Mat Kearney as headliners.
We heard the ice cream truck and Kevin who has a sweet tooth ran down stairs to catch the ice cream truck. Great way to end the summer.
I took Hunter and Noah on a day hike today as they wanted to try something longer. Hunter wants to to South Sister so I thought this might be interesting practice, plus the books said it was very unknown but beautiful. It was a lot of off trail hiking and scrambling with approx 11 miles of hiking completed and 2300 ft of vertical taking up up over 7700 ft in elevation.
The trail was pretty uneventful moving through the Pole Creek burn area for the first 2 miles with filtered views of the surrounding mountains.
From here we scrambled up further to see if we could find this supposed lake... I was not hopefully but the guide book said it was there if you just scrambled up a little more. Then Boom - as we crested the moraine it came into view.
On the way down - we followed the creek properly and what a treat. Green lush valley, bubbling stream, tasty water.
The kids and I hiked the river trail yesterday. See if you can see what we spotted right behind Noah. A baby deer!
Before Pat and Sue departed back to California we decided to take them to see Sparks lake. We have visited there many times but we never get tired of visiting.
Abbie officially turned 7 on the 20th. It was the day we got back from a week at Black Butte. Everyone was tired so we decided to celebrate the next day. We went to Redmond not far from Bend for a lovely afternoon of tea. The tea house is owned by a woman from the UK who has moved to Oregon. The tea house is called AK's Tea Room. How how fitting that was for Miss Abbie-Kate (AK). Abbie wanted it girls only and invited LuLu, Aislyn and her mom Tina, a dear family friend to come along for her birthday afternoon. Lulu even treated the girls to handmade head warmers for winter. It was a perfect way to celebrate our sweet Abbie.
