happyflamily

As a little treat the day before Father’s Day, I got to take my two girls out for a day of fun without Becky tagging along. We had a blast. Sadly, I didn’t get any pictures of the three of us, but here are some of the pictures I took of the girls.

We started at the cabin where the girls found lots of wild salmon berries to eat. I wasn’t sure they’d like them, as I’ve always looked at salmon berries are something of an acquired taste, but both the girls took to them immediately and had fun foraging for them. This seems to be a good year for salmon berries so there were lots to find

The cabin is getting a bit overgrown since we don’t get there very much these days. This is the main trail, which usually doesn’t have anything growing in it.

The girls had helped me pack a picnic the night before and we had a good lunch on the front deck. The mosquitos looked fierce, but didn’t seem to bite us and the girls didn’t even seem to notice them.

Lillie found navigating the tall grass and blackberries to be hard, but Sophie had a lot of fun exploring and really wanted Lillie to go off on an expedition with her. Lillie wasn’t having any of it though, so we went through the meadow and down to the creek, but didn’t ever get very far from the Cabin.

After the cabin we headed to the beach (the South jetty, near Florence) for the rest of the afternoon. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the central Oregon coast, it is sparsely populated and even on a day in June we were able to have a beach to ourselves. Sophie loved running down the dunes, then we set up on the beach and built a sand castle

Our sand castle (not quite finished):

Eventually the girls got tired of the sand (and the cold wind that was blowing) so we headed in to Florence to explore the harbor and get some clam chowder at Mo’s.

It was a wonderful day for me and I feel lucky to have such fun girls to play with.

Lillie woke up early this morning and spent some time working in her notebook. Here is the picture of our family she produced! This may not look like much, but for a 2-year old we think it is pretty special. She put eyes and hands on everyone and even wrote her name at the top.

We had a long stretch of gorgeous summer weather here, but then got some early summer storms. Thunderstorms aren’t too common here, so the girls went outside to enjoy them (Note that the umbrellas only went up after the lightning had stopped)

We added two little kittens to our family earlier this week. James thought he might bring us some kittens from the cat that lives in his favorite hangout in Italy, but customs proved to be too much of an obstacle so we just adopted some from craigslist while he was in town.

Sweet Dee is the gray one and is a girl, and  Coco is the black and white one and is a boy. They were born May 2nd, so are still pretty tiny little things, but they are adorable and lots of fun to play with. 

Lillie and Sophie are both having a blast with the cats, and despite what it looks like in the picture below, are doing a pretty good job of not hassling them too much. It helps that Sophie is still a little bit afraid of them, so isn’t as eager to pick them up as we expected. That probably won’t last, but for now the kittens are settling in well.

I’m sure we’ll post more pictures soon, but so far we’re spending our time playing with the kitties rather than taking pictures of them

We went to the Mount Pisgah wildflower show with my friend Amy and her family. We bought tomato plants, watched the hippies and enjoyed the sun.

Lillie, Aubrey and Sophie making butterflies from old magazines…

Totally cute…

They had a 400 year old tree section. You draw a date out of the bowl and try to find the tree ring that corresponds with that year. Practical application for dendrochronology.

                                 Lillie

Sophie, Mommy, Poulo

               Aubrey