Oregon

Here are some photos of our trip to Oregon. We loved being near family and sharing in the day to day stuff with them. Eirik had fun with his cousins. Here he is with Jake and Megan. Aren't they a bunch of blondies?

We had a great time with Kiersten and Dave at this gorgeous state park in Oregon . We love this place! And we love these two amazing people too.



I want to blow this one up for our house. What a gorgeous view-(and thanks to my new rebel, not a bad shot either. )Pat and Steve prepared this awesome Sunday dinner for us.

They served:

Delicious Roast with vegies
Pototatos and gravy
Homemade Nauvoo bread rolls with homemade strawberry freezer jam
Green Salad
Green Jello salad with sprite and pears and cream cheese topping
Homemade plum juice
Homemade blackberry pie- hand picked blackberries
Key Lime pie
ice cream

It was all so very pioneer spirit, down home garden style, meat and potatoes goodness it made me realize that I probably shouldn't shun tradition so much and maybe one of these days actually make my first roast because there is a reason it's tradition; it's delicious. It was a lovely afternoon and we were so glad Grandpa R could join us.



One of the first things Paul wanted to do when we got to Oregon was go for a walk and the first thing he did on the walk was smell the dirt and insist that I did too. Yum! Yes we love rotting soil. It's the best.

I made a Thai dinner for the family with a coconut soup that called for all kinds of ingredients that I would not have been able to get here in MI, but there was an AMAZING Asian food market just down the street from my in-laws house. I used lemongrass for the first time and many other unusual ingredients. Sorry, I didn't save the recipe. I wouldn't have been able to make it here anyway. It was a hit as was the amazing mango sticky coconut rice desert I love to make.
It was Grandma A's 90th birthday while we were there so we took her out to Sherry's restaurant and we got to look through the scrapbook that she got for her birthday that had a card from every one of her descendants and friends. It filled 90 pages! Cool gift!
Paul and I got to take our kiddos to the art festival downtown Portland on one of his days off. What an amazing festival. They are very selective about who gets to show their work so you can always expect to see a lot of amazing things.. and we did.
Two of my favorites were Jamee Linton who does great landscapes and Cheryl Gail Toh who does encaustic work. We also saw Jill Platner's jewlely line at Twist Gallery again. I have loved her work since I saw it years ago when I met her in Cozumel. She's a really cool lady and someday when I have money I think I'll buy one of her necklaces and wear it everyday forever.

These are some pics from our fun day in Portland.
We also had a good time at the OR state fair. Some punk kids vandalized the horse stalls and shot all he horses with fire extinguishers so all of the horses had gone home. Can you say drama? Eirik was devastated. But we found some carved horses that almost sufficed... almost.