At the end of each year the students are award character and academic awards.
We are so proud of our kiddos!
Abbie went to her first feis (dance competition) for Irish dancing this weekend in Portland. Jennifer and Olivia flew in and got to watch Abbie dance. Abbie placed 13th, 4th and 3rd on Saturday and 1st place on Sunday.
It was so fun watching Abbie dance and getting to see so many Irish dancers in one place. After the competition we went into the city and had a fun time all being together.
Hunter's end of year middle school trip was to the Oregon coast this year. As with last years trip to Boise, I volunteered as part of the chaperone/driving squad. It was a fun trip with great weather on the first day and decent weather the second two. The kids got to go in the ocean, visit a marine science center, take a boat around Newport Harbor to see the sea life, ride an old railway line with peddle based systems and sand-board on some sand dunes. Great group bonding for grades 5-8. Here are a few pics and a video of hunter on the sand-board.
Happy birthday to the greatest guy we know. So glad we get to call him ours.
We celebrated by having dinner out and Kevin finishing the day working in his garden.
We haven't had a vegetable garden since we lived in Boise, so now that we had some space, I thought it would be fun to have one here at the new house. Few challenges - ground is rocky, soil is like sand, short growing season and their are a lot of animals that would love some soft leafy greens - especially deer. In February I started researching and doing some planning. The idea was that when we did our landscaping in the back, I would get the team to scrape an area and bring an irrigation line down to the area when they put the rest of the irrigation system in. My inspiration for the garden was here. Beautiful but unfortunately no plans so I had to make up my own plans just by looking at the pictures. I also used the farmers almanac online garden planner tool just to see how it might look.
The garden would be a set of raised beds, with a 5-6 foot wooden fence around it. The back landscaping went in late march, so I ordered the wood and set to work. The biggest challenge was getting the base level. its funny how the ground feels pretty level until you actually start to measure it. The west side (right side in most of the photos) was at least 10 inches lower which meant getting a load of gravel dropped in the driveway and a lot of hauling gravel in a wheelbarrow down to bring it up somewhat. Additionally... like a lot of plans, they seem right until you get started so due to large boulders messing up post placement and other challenges I had to make a number of changes and concessions as I went along. Here is a series of photos of the build process.
Here is the finished product. Ultimately I think it turned out pretty nice and we look forward to growing some fresh veggies for years to come! The only thing left to do is install the drip irrigation system. Abbie and PJ helps plant as well... for now we are hose watering it until the irrigation is running... hopefully in next couple days.
The summer solstice is still a few weeks away but with the calendar turn to June, and some beautiful weather this weekend, we will call this the formal kick off to summer in central Oregon. Kelly was gone on girls weekend so it was the rest of the crew making the best of it! Campfire in the backyard Friday night and a day at Scout lake on Saturday. Ending of Saturday evening with a glorious sunset off the back porch.
Deer are normal to have around here, but over the past few months a pair of peacocks seems to have made a 6 house block in our neighborhood their home.
Last summer, we did our front landscaping near the end of June. We focused here as that was the first thing people saw when they came up to the house. This spring I wanted to get our sides and back done a little earlier so we could enjoy the yard through the entire summer.
Here is a 'before' video from about 2.5 weeks ago.
Here is the 'after' video from today. They finished Friday and spend the day today putting some rocks along edges where it was steep to prevent erosion.
Abbie spent St. Paddy's day performing at many retirement homes in Bend and ending the day at a pub in town. It was a fun day for Abbie and all the dancers.
A few weeks ago LuLu and Papa were visiting and were able to attend Grandparent's Day at school. They took some funny pictures and had a great morning.
