08.30.11
It turns out that I should've done this post BEFORE the
Cape Perpetua post. I just wanted to sneak in a little update on our
Elsa birthday butterflys. I tried writing butterflies, because I know that's proper...but I really like the way it looks as "butterflys" instead. Anyway, we had a really tight schedule with the butterflys for Elsa's birthday. We left for Utah 4 days after her birthday, and were REALLY hoping they would emerge from their chrysalises before we left. They did not. I was thinking we were either going to have to bring them with us or leave them with a friend. Ooooooops!! In the hullabaloo of packing and leaving we forgot to do either!! OH NO! I was so worried and a little bit scared to come back from Utah and see what had become of our neglected Elsa butterflys. There's just too much irony in the fact that these butterflys' purpose was to celebrate her life, and her soul living on...to come home to dead butterflys. Yep. That just would not do. I was worried.
The first thing I did after getting home was to gingerly enter the kitchen and look in the butterfly habitat, and they...were...ALIVE!!!!!!! GOOD butterflys!!!!! You pulled through for me!
after giving them a day or two to eat sugar water, we released them in our backyard...
in Elsa's little garden. (What a lucky little girl to get all this loving!)
here's Ollie checking out Elsa's garden AND pushing a chair around, as he's practicing to walk
Then we took a delightful stroll through the neighborhood woods.
Here we have a few stray moments preserved by photos from the summer, which in and of themselves are not important enough to necessitate their own post, but still significant enough for me to feel like recording them.
7/1:
We picked all of these strawberries {and more} from the backyard of our old house! It was the first year that we got a big enough harvest of fruit to make jam with. We didn't have to pay to go pick someone else's strawberries! That is the goal in our gardening...to grow enough produce every season to can for our food storage. Too bad now that our old house is FINALLY producing enough strawberries, raspberries, peaches and apples to can {after four years of working on the garden there} we had to move! I feel certain that there is a bigger and better garden in our future though!
7/26:
We enjoy the view from our new house. It's up, up above the river, and even though we're not THAT close...we can see boats from our front windows and trains passing by on the tracks right next to the river.
on this day, we spotted a tug boat pushing a barge!
20x zoom!
7/29:
Brothy {bruvie} time:
Joshua and Toby and Ollie...they all love being brothies {except when they're ANNOYING each other}. On this day, I enjoyed capturing the way that Joshua loves Oliver {and Oliver, Joshua}.
7/30: Ollie eating:
I wanted to remember how much Oliver LOVEs to eat solid foods. My other kids would not have much to do with food until after they were 1, but Ollie has enjoyed them from 6 months. Avocado, bread, yogurt, scrambled eggs, beans and brown rice, cheese, "cookies", vegetable juice, meats, and basically anything we are eating that can be gummed or mashed enough for him to swallow.
Oooo...I could just eat HIM up! He's so cute.
8/6:
Andaluz Potluck, raspberry jam:
The Andaluz Waterbirth Center is the midwife group that I have used for Elsa and Ollie. They have two birth centers, but also attend home births. Twice a year they have a potluck dinner for all the midwives and families who have been their clients. In the winter they reserve the whole children's museum for the event, and in the summer it is held at Hoyt Aboretum in the amazing, beautiful Forest Park in Portland. I love going in the summer. There is a live band, face painting, little hikes, snow cones, grilled chicken and Northwest grilled cedar plank salmon...along with all the delicious potluck food that everyone brings.
DIG THAT SCENE!
I love seeing all the cute babies and kids from year to year growing older, interacting with lots of other crunchy Portland families...babywearing, breastfeeding, cloth diapering, natural childbirthing, etc. families.
Toby and his friend Carter both wanted dragons painted on their faces! COOL!
Kaden and Toby (yes, our friends the Mansius family are also an Andaluz family)
Making raspberry jam with the berries from our old house, while cute baby watches from his high chair:
...or day 4 of our vacation:
July 22:
The Southern Oregon Coast: Cape Arago, Shore Acres & Sunset Bay!
We made an online reservation for the campground at Sunset Bay State Park, and we were really glad that we did! It is a lovely location on Oregon's South Coast, with a kid-swimming friendly beach and access to Shore Acres State Park & Cape Arago State Park {which are all very close to the campground and are all included in the camp fee}.
a lovely morning at camp
For the first time ever on our adventures, we decided to go on a ranger guided tour. It was AWESOME! Our guide was a retired history teacher from Utah, and he took us up to this WWII bunker up the road from our camp ground. He told us loads of WWII history and things that the Japanese did, which impacted primarily the west coast of the US. For example, I did not know that Japan sent thousands of weather balloons with bombs attached to them across ocean on the the jet stream. There was only one fatality in Oregon, but many of the bombs have never been found. We were told to be careful if ever hiking off trail in Oregon. And not to touch an unidentified objects found in the woods.
This four room concrete bunker housed a secret radar station. During WWII the roof had been camoflauged in dirt and bushes so it could not be seen from the air.
At some point on this hike {apparently} I accidentally switched the setting on my camera to the wrong setting, resulting in many funky pictures throughout the day {the pictures that look normal are probably from Brent's camera}. I don't know why it took me so long to realize this error, but the effect is somewhat cool:
hipstamatic ferns
Next we stopped at the sea lion view point on shell island:
20x zoom: sea lions!
shell island and fireweed
Cape Arago:
Brent's camera///////////////my camera with wrong setting
The strangest thing happened when we got to Cape Arago...we had MAJOR deja vu! We could SWEAR we had been there before! But this was our first time ever visiting this far south on the Oregon coast. Then I remembered a trip to California and up to Southern Oregon that Brent and I took less than a year after we were married, in the summer of 2000. It was my first road trip out of Utah as an adult and we drove to California and then up to Southern Oregon for a family event. We actually stopped at Cape Arago to see the tide pools there...and that was my first time seeing tide pools! EVERRRR!! Wow.
Kate and Brent at Cape Arago in June 2000! The first of many adventures...
Next we walked around at Shore Acres State Park:
Shore Acres is a lovely garden located on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The garden once belonged to a wealthy business man {timber baron, I think} who bought this property and built a summer home & garden here. After time passed, the property and garden were donated to the state. This garden is really a wonderful, marvelous place on the coast. We had no idea it was there! The only reason we stumbled upon it was because Sunset Bay happened to be the one campground on the south coast that still had openings, and like I said...Shore Acres was included in our camping fee.
bad pictures...lovely garden!
an absolutely gorgeous pond area to sit and reflect
breathtaking!
There's something about being in a garden. And then there's something about being in the woods. Now put those together and you've got a garden in the woods, and it's by the sea...and I don't believe I had experienced such a wonder of nature in my whole life.
But WAIT! As if that weren't enough, there was a rose garden. In a clearing in the woods:
Which is why I say "remember to take the time to stop and smell the roses".
Toby's favorite roses were the orange ones, of course!
I was absolutely taken by this rose. Normally I'm partial to the yellow roses, but this rose really stood out because of its size, unique color pattern and the interesting backdrop.
Some of the roses smelled absolutely sickeningly sweet...and all I could think of was Hunger Games. If you've read Hunger Games, are you a bit less partial to roses now than you were before? Especially extremely fragrant roses? I tried not to think about that too hard because I do enjoy roses.
In my meanderings, I stumbled across this little bed of roses that made me think of my Elsa. Lady Elsie May. Elsie may have been one of Elsa's nicknames. My freshman year at BYU, I stayed at a dorm named Elsie C. Carroll Hall. That was where I first got the idea for the name Elsa. Something unique, but not made up...however I preferred the name ending in an "a" instead of an "ie". Anyway, the most curious thing about this row of roses was that it was the only variety in the whole garden that had yet to bloom. Just as my little Elsie has yet to bloom. She's waiting in her corner of the garden for her turn to bloom. I really can't wait to see it happen! I am sure I will anticipate it my whole life.
After we left the garden, we went back to Sunset Bay to cook and eat dinner on the beach and enjoy the sunset. A perfect ending to a pretty much perfect day:
I adore this shot of Ollie
and the below sequence of him playing with sand and having his first official taste of sand!
yum?
perfect.
{photo-bombed by a guy who thought he had to
stand in front of everyone else to take his pictures of the sunset}
sunset over Sunset Bay...could my life be any more fulfilled?
going...going...gone.
Joshua jumping the small waves.
evening silhouette.
