Summer is my Favorite

During the Winter, I thought we'd spend Summer camping out and fixing up the house.  Of course the universe laughed at my plans.  It's ended up as a rough Spring time with some unhappy and hard changes, but ones that were ultimately the most healthy for these sweet kids and myself.  We've moved in with a dear friend and her teenage sons until we can find our own place.  I am so grateful for supportive friends in this time of transition.  And I'm so happy that Summer is back in action!  The sunshine and flowers are powerful medicine for the soul.

I've added an additional job to my schedule and started the Summer semester back at school.  So this summer isn't exactly going as I had planned with nights spent camping in the woods and lazy days in the garden.  However, we are squeezing in Summer fun when we can!

Our housemates and I discovered a new river spot at the place Clay works.  He works for a tube & boat rental business.  At the place they put tubers in the river, there is a fun spot with  bar, grills and games. 

We had it all to ourselves on a Monday night!

My list of jobs now consists of: cleaning vacation rentals a couple times a week, working in a church nursery, on a food truck at breweries on the weekends and most recently as a CNA at the rehab hospital during the week.  That plus two classes at the college makes me glad for any breaks and time spent with the kids!

Blossom was thrilled to get to the water.  She had some good mud therapy!  Hopefully we'll find much more time to get outside this Summer.  I promise I'll keep trying to find the time to update the blog.  Sending love out there and grateful for all the love we get back <3 br="">

7 Year Old Birthday Interview

We've got a 7 year old in the house!  Blossom had a Halloween themed birthday party this year.  We wore costumes, played Halloween Charades, made slime, ate cheesecake and enjoyed the day with lots of friends.  Here's Blossom's 7 Year Old Birthday Interview...

Winter 2018

Winter has been long and cold and gray this year, but we're doing a pretty good job keeping our spirits up!  I've kept busy with going back to college and B has been busy working on two houses.  We kept our old house as an AirBnB rental and moved into a fixer-upper house down the road.  We had used the 4th bedroom there as storage during our trip last Summer.  We cleaned it out and scrubbed it down.  B painted it and furnished it with a king-size bed.  Hopefully this will help the AirBnB be even more desirable in the future!

He's also been busy fixing up our current house.  He built Clay his own bedroom that basically combined 3 closets and it gave his room and our living room a neat rounded wall.  He also spruced up the kitchen and bedrooms, and has done massive amounts of (seemingly never-ending) yard work.

Blossom always has projects to do.  She's been spending the past few days crafting unique valentine's cards for kids from the homeschool co-op.  We'll go to a card exchange party on Valentine's Day.

She's now making plans for her Halloween themed birthday party next month!

Love to all ~ hope you're staying warm!

Halloween Greeting 2017

The kids worked hard on their costumes this year!  Blossom made a peacock costume and Reed was Agent Pleakley as part of a Lilo & Stitch group costume.
Here's my creative kids:

Here's Reed's whole crew before they headed out:

A Colorado Ending to the Big Trip

Looks like I never finished up posting about our big trip!  There were some hiccups in our plan, but we made it back all in one piece and can't wait for another adventure.

On our way home from Oregon, we decided to spend a few days in Colorado.  Immediately when we crossed the Colorado state line, the darn transmission in the van broke ... again!  Yes, the new one :(  We had the van towed to Durango.  We didn't know this at first, but in the end it took 3.5 weeks to fix because of the warranty.  We made the best of our time and rented a car and camped around the state.

First, we visited my beautiful old stomping grounds of Durango.  We met up with friends and took a great day trip up to Silverton.

 

The hike was long and steep and little Blossom was a trooper and went right along with it!  We were even rewarded with a double rainbow on our way out!

After Durango, we camped in Pagosa Springs for a couple days, enjoying the hikes and hot springs.

Next, we headed up to Bobby's old stomping grounds of Nederland, just over the mountain from Boulder.  It was fun meeting all his old friends and exploring the sweet little town.

We were so excited (and a little freaked out) that a mama and baby moose decided to join us while we kayaked one morning

After a couple days in Nederland, we crossed the Rockies and went into the Western Slope of Colorado to a tiny town called Crawford.  An old friend of mine lived there and it was fantastic catching up with him and exploring this little gem of a town.  It was adjacent to an amazing National Park called Black Canyon of the Gunnison.  Very cool corner of the earth!

From Crawford, we headed South back to Durango.  Our van was not quite ready yet (that's really the story of those 3.5 weeks!), so we went back to Pagosa for a little more camping.  We spent some time tubing on the river and Blossom made her own creature comforts in the campground.

We finally got the van back and headed straight home!  Only days away from started classes for nursing, I was pretty anxious to get home.  It was a good way to get some real closure on our trip.  Though in hindsight, if I had known the repair would have taken so long, I would have honestly just rented a uhaul and towed the van back to Asheville for repairs.  I did love our Colorado leg of the trip though!

 

Portland and the Home of Giant Berries

Heading north from Silver Falls quickly brought us back into Portland.  It was the first place we stopped in Oregon, and we were ready to get more time with some good friends here.  This time in Portland, we were not feeling like we needed to do "big city stuff", because we'd already done it two months ago.
We got to explore a little more like locals.  Friends took us berry picking on Sauvie Island. 

I thought I'd seen some berries before, but I was so wrong!  The variety of berries that Oregon produces is just amazing!  Holding these gigantic boysen berries made me feel like a scene out of James and the Giant Peach.

After our baskets and bellies were full, we headed further up the island for some beach time on the Columbia River.

Seems like Blossom is a true beach girl at heart.  She at least did her best to thoroughly soak in her last days in Oregon.

The next morning, we all woke up to the smell of berry pies coming out of the oven!  I am not ashamed to say that I ate pistachios and warm berry pie for dinner tonight.  No regrets.

We are sad to be leaving these friends and amazing Portland hosts.  We are also sad that it is our last night in Oregon.  Time to head home.  Not straight home, mind you... but a nearly 3,000 miles of driving awaits us, so we're reluctantly going to get started.
Loved Oregon so much.  It's definitely secured a place in our hearts.

We need a break!

All this vacationing has worn us out!  After Rainbow Gathering, OCF and a little meltdown from a 6 year old, we decided some down time was needed.  Back to the woods we headed...

We grabbed a camp spot on the river, at the trailhead to Bagby Hot Springs.  Not quite as magical as Cougar, but a perfect way to relax and clean up a bit, too! 

 The hike in to the hot springs was 1.5 miles and so beautiful!

 Blossom quickly made a campsite friend, and as they played all day, Bobby slept and I finished my Tom Robbins book (such a fun book, but a very slow read - it took me about 6 weeks to get through!).  It was the break we all needed to unwind.

After a couple nights at Bagby, we trekked about an hour West to Silver Falls State Park.  We camped here for 2 more nights and explored the beautiful waterfalls that are all such short hikes from one another.

Blossom and I were both enamored with all the wildflowers here.

She even took to drawing imaginary pictures of them as we walked the trails.

Blossom sure was a trooper, even though she didn't feel like one every day.  So much to see at this park left her sometimes feeling like she was all done with hiking!  But she kept finding new fun discoveries around each corner that helped her continue on.

This was such a lovely park!  It was also very crowded with other Summer travelers, and a good transition back to the road.