Robin Hood Festival

Saturday was Sherwood's Robin Hood Festival.  I overheard a lady say this was the 59th year of the festival.  There's a sort of contest to pick Maid Marian and her court every year.  Alan was even lucky enough to be chosen (aka: forced) to be Robin Hood in the parade when he was a kid. 

I was watching my friend's two cute, little boys (A. & J.) all day so they got to come with us.  The parade was definitely the most anticipated event for Spencer.  He had never been to this parade before, but has learned from his experiences in AZ that you get lots of candy at parades.  And this parade did not disappoint.  A. and J. had never been to a parade before, but were all over the candy once it started.  I'm guessing that Spencer had at least 3 lbs. of candy in his bag when it was over.  Most of it went in the garbage after he went to bed though. :)  His favorites are the dum dum suckers. 

I wasn't brave enough to take 3 little boys to the rest of the festival by myself, so we waited until later in the afternoon when Alan was home.  I didn't get any good pictures, but we had fun.  They boys liked watching a super yo-yo performer and long-haired, Robin Hood wannabees sword fight.  We found a model train to watch, A. rode a little Ferris wheel (Spencer had no desire to try something SO adventurous), and we got balloon animals.  They were all so well behaved even though it was hot and a lot of walking.

Cheers for Robin Hood!

Crater Lake

Alan and I have been wanting to visit Crater Lake in southern Oregon since we moved here 6 years ago.  It has been one of those trips we talk about every summer, but never actually do it.  So, we didn't have an ideal weekend to go this year, but just decided to squeeze it in anyway.  It was a long drive (4.5 hours each way) for a Friday evening and Saturday, but I'm glad we went.

We drove to Eugene and stayed in hotel there on Friday night.  That was Spencer's favorite part of the trip.  He had only been to a hotel once before, but didn't remember it.  Sleeping on the floor and watching cartoons in the morning were the highlights for him.

From the information I got online, I knew much of the park was still closed due to snow, but the weather forecast was high 70's.  I still wore pants and regretted it.  It was hot.  It was weird to be so hot when there was so much snow on the ground still.

The lake itself is breathtaking.  It's an ancient volcano that has been filled with rain and snow melt - all freshwater.  And, it's over 1,900 feet deep.  It's amazingly blue, calm and clear.  We didn't actually get to go down by the water.  There's only one place you can get down to it and we ran out of time.

We did go on a hike though.  There weren't many hiking trails open since so much of the park was still closed.  A ranger recommended this hike for a 4-year-old, but I was rather glad that Spencer insisted on riding Alan's shoulders the entire way because the drop-offs were way too dangerous for a little boy.  I liked the parts where we had to hike through snow the best.  It felt so good to hold a handful and squeeze the water out.  Spencer thought it was hilarious when I threw a snowball at Alan.  We didn't make it all the way to the peak because the trail was blocked by snow.  That was ok with me though.  I was hot.  Alan definitely gets the tough man award for this one.  He really did carry Spencer on his shoulder the entire 2.5 mile 1,000 foot climb.

 

One last happy face before getting in the car to come home.  It was a long drive back.  Spencer is not a good car traveler.  He didn't even close he eyes once the entire 9 hours we were in the car.  I get sick trying to play with him in the back seat, so I drove the whole way back while Alan played.  Besides having to eat at nasty McDonald's to avoid a fight over dinner on the way home, it was a great trip.  We're so lucky to live in such a beautiful state!

4th of July

They say that summer doesn't start until after the 4th of July in Oregon.  It was true once again this year.  We started out the day with our ward's pancake breakfast at a park.  It was freezing!  We all had jackets on, but still left early because we were cold.  Spencer and Michelle were fine though because they kept warm playing on the playground.

We went swimming at the YMCA after breakfast.  I didn't get any pictures of that though.  Dad and Michelle had fun on the water slide and Spencer and I hung out in the shallow end.  It was the first time Spencer has ever really had fun swimming.  There IS hope!

Later in the evening we had Alan's parents over for a BBQ.  This was the first time we had hosted one in our lovely, little backyard and I thought everything was perfect.  The day had finally warmed up and the food was yummy.  Our lone 4th of July tradition is to make homemade ice cream every year.  We made my favorite cherry, banana nut this year and it was SO good.

After dinner, we headed to Tigard High School to watch the fireworks.  This was Spencer's first time to see fireworks and the first time Alan and I had actually gone somewhere to watch them since moving to Oregon.  Lame, I know.  There were a lot of people and some fun activities before the fireworks started.  Michelle loves all men in uniform and even gave this police officer a kiss.  She was even super brave and competed in the sack race.  She didn't win, but got a certificate for a free milkshake for participating.

Spencer didn't want to do any of the activities.  He watched from Alan's shoulders for awhile and spent the rest of the time playing card games with Grandma.

One of the best parts for me was that the announcer played some dancing music for about 30 minutes right before the fireworks started.  Alan isn't a big dancer, but Michelle and I cut up the rug.  She has some pretty awesome moves.  Thanks for being my dancing buddy Michelle!

I was afraid that Spencer would either get super grouchy or fall asleep before the fireworks actually started.  But, it's amazing how much more pleasant he is when Grandma and Grandpa are around.  He did get rather sleepy just before the show started, but woke right up and was in complete awe once they did.  He kept saying, "I love fireworks Mommy.  These are SO cool!"  It was cute how much he loved them.  The show wasn't very long or extremely impressive, but it was awesome to a 4-year-old.  We had made the mistake of parking in a full parking lot before the show and it took us 45 minutes just to get out of the parking lot afterward.  Yuck.  Spencer stayed happy until he finally informed me that he was going to take a nap and fell right to sleep in the car.

The Oregon Garden

Besides just getting to be with my family, the highlight of their visit was checking out the Oregon Garden in Silverton.  A friend told me about it a couple of months ago, but I had never even heard of it before then.  You should definitely go if you live in the area.  It's amazing!  The whole things is 80 acres and it has 21 very unique gardens.  It's huge, but they have a tram you can ride and listen to a guided tour.  

The weather was lovely while we were there and it wasn't very busy.  I think our favorite garden was the Children's Garden even though the model train that runs through it wasn't working.  :(  There were so many cool things: fun fountains, beautiful ponds with lily pads, cool vegetable gardening ideas, and nearly every flower you can imagine.  I learned a ton about different plants and got lots of landscaping ideas for my yard.  

I knew that my parents and I would love it, but we were a little worried that Spencer and Michelle would be bored.  We were wrong though!  They both loved riding the "train" and Spencer had just as much fun running around all over the place as he would have had at the zoo.  We wound up staying for nearly 5 hours and were all tired by the end so we just hopped back on the tram and took the tour again.  Sadly, Alan had to work and couldn't join us so I guess we'll just have to go back when he can. 

Staycation

Side note:  Sadly, my computer's version of windows doesn't support Blogger anymore and it's nearly impossible to blog using it.  So my blog posts for the next little while are going to be limited to when Alan's laptop is available.

 We just had the most wonderful week with my parents and youngest sister, Michelle.  They drove all the way to Oregon from Arizona to spend a week with us.  Alan, Spencer and I won't be visiting St. Johns for awhile so this was our summer vacation.  (Well, I guess not for Alan.  He had to work most of the time.)  They hadn't been able to visit us up here for over two years, so it was a lot of fun to show them our house, our town and some of our favorite things to do.  They always like to pick berries when they come.  Strawberries and raspberries were on while they were here and we picked a lot of both.  Then, Mom and I spent the afternoon making four batches of raspberry jam.  Dad also made some really good strawberry and strawberry rhubarb pie.

Spencer wanted to show Michelle his favorite park.  They had fun chasing each other and could hardly run because they were laughing so hard.

Isn't she a pretty girl?!  Almost 17.  Yikes!

Alan and his Dad directed the Run for the Roses here in Sherwood on Saturday morning.  We were thrilled to have Katelyn and Zac drive down from Seattle to run the 5k and hang out with us.  Dad, Katelyn and Zac got up super early to help Alan set up that morning.  The rest of us came later so Spencer and Michelle could run the 1k kid's race.  This is one of the few pictures Spencer cooperated for.

Katelyn and Zac did well in the 5k and Katelyn even got 1st place in her division!  Spencer and Michelle both did great in their race and were proud of themselves.  With a little encouragement, Spencer ran the entire race again.  He didn't want to hold my hand this time though. :)  We spent the rest of the morning cleaning up the race and then hung out at home and rested most of the afternoon.  I don't know how Alan does it nearly every Saturday.  Putting on a race is SO much work.  Besides all of the regular stuff you need for a race, they have amazing technology that is complicated to set up.  It's quite impressive.

Grandma LeFevre was Spencer's favorite until Katelyn showed up.  Once she was there, he didn't want to play with anyone besides her.  Thanks for being such a great aunt Kate!  Grandma was back to #1 after Kate left. 

We all visited our new temple visitor's center and walked around the temple grounds after Church on Sunday.  We didn't get anyone to take a whole group picture though, so we just have these individual family shots.

More about the rest our fabulous week to come (hopefully soon!)....