moving...

Please check out my new blog:

Mama Wintry

I wear my sunglasses at night

at the beach

sometimes...

sometimes you just have to tape feathers to your face and body.

Building the playhouse with daddy

And the winner is...

Michelle DeMello!! Congratulations and Happy Mother's Day to all of you!

Thank you all for participating and donating to such a great cause!

Win a $50.00 Barnes and Noble Gift Card!

It's Tuesday Blog party time. I am a little late in starting, but I hope you'll take a moment decide to drop a donation here.

This blog party is in honor of my niece, Tuesday Fiona Whitt... Tuesday lost her battle with cancer last year. Her parents have created Whatchagonnado.org, to help other families who have a child with cancer. It will help provide travel, food, daily expenses and if needed, funeral arrangements... I wish that organizations such as that weren't needed... but until there is a cure, there is a tremendous need for Whatchagonnado.org...

My mom and I are donating a $50.00 gift card to Barnes and Noble! The perfect mother's day gift or gift to yourself!

So, how do you win?

Click the button to donate $1 to the Tuesday Fiona Whitt Foundation, which benefits Whatchagonnado.org.
Be sure to come back here and leave me a comment of your donation.If you would like to make one donation, instead of many individual donations, please feel free to donate however is easiest for you. If you end up donating $10, but only find 5 auctions you are interested in, you can use those additional dollars as additional entries. Be sure to enter for the other wonderful give aways that are being auctioned!

Cousins!

Aoife's Playhouse

Paul spent the weekend building Aoife a playhouse! It still needs a roof, a porch and a paint job, but we all LOVE it!!

Harvest Party in the Gorge

Every year we head up to Corbett, in the Columbia River Gorge for a big harvest party. Aoife enjoyed some corn and I enjoyed the view of the gorge on the way home!

I like to ride my tricycle, I like to ride my trike

Swifts!

OK, so these aren't very good photos, but if they were better you'd be able to see hundreds of little birds circling around and flying into a chimney. These are Vaux Swifts and every September they spend the month roosting in a chimney in a school in Portland. We went to watch and got a great show this year--several hawks were hanging out and kept swooping in for a swift. When they did, the whole group of swifts would fly off and circle around over and over. It was a great show. As Aoife kept saying, "bye bye birdies." (I think the hawks were saying that as well).

Bikes!

If you need us, we'll be out riding bikes....

Bikes!

If you need us, we'll be out riding bikes....

A new family tradition

We had so much fun mushroom hunting last year, we decided we would do it every fall. We drove out to the Mt. Hood National Forest and took a walk in the woods (a long walk) looking for mushrooms. It was a slow start--once we got about 3 miles in on a logging road, we found a box for a 40" TV, but no mushrooms. It was raining and I was determined to come home with more than wet pant legs, so we kept going, even though Aoife refused to walk in her rain boots (the only shoes we had for her), but at last we found some! We got about a basket full. That night I cooked up some delicious chanterelle and chicken sauce over pasta. It was good, but the hunt was the best part!

Canning!

A friend called a few weeks ago to say they were moving and I could come pick all the apples off their apple tree. Since the kids I watch go through a jar of applesauce a day, I figure I'd just make my own! We went crazy that night and canned pints and quarts aplenty! It was so fun and so delicious, I've been going to the farmer's markets and buying up pears to make and can pear sauce and pear butter. YUM!

Summer's End

The days are still warm (hot actually) but the nights are starting to get chilly. We harvested our corn last night. I didn't cook it long enough, so it wasn't very good--but watching Aoife shuck the corn was worth it!

What We did over Summer Vacation

OK, I realize it has been far too long since I've posted to the blog. The official end of summer is this weekend, and I realize I hadn't posted since before summer officially began. But who could find the time when we were so busy with mud-slinging, alligator wrestling, worm eating and the general shenanigans of summer? I've updated with some photos of our summer happenings. And, for what it's worth, I have every intention of being better about posting more regularly, so do check back!

playing in a small pick-up band

Did I mention my daughter is a rock star?