Gracie visits Bend

Gracie visited us in Bend when Grammy Karen was in Oregon.

1st Bike Race

Z did her first bike race Friday night. There was a kids race at the Cascade Cycling Classic. They divided the kids up into age groups and by boys & girls. Zoe came in 2nd place in her race. She was extremely excited about the race...

Zoe turns 4

We went to Boise for the weekend to visit Nels and Willam. This is at a park by their house. It's always fun visiting the Martin's in Boise...

Uncle Matt Graduates!

We had a great weekend with all of the family in Oregon.

Zoo with Gracie

We met up with Bridget and Gracie at the Zoo in Portland. They'll be headed to Central Oregon for the 4th of July, so we'll get to see them again soon.

Busy Weekend...

We had an action-packed weekend. Yesterday morning we went to a mountain bike race, where we got roped into volunteering because they were a little short. Then we went to the pool. The local pool has a new outdoor kids pool with waterslides and plenty of other fun stuff.

Today we started by walking the Heaven Can Wait Run/Walk. Then we went canoeing at Hosmer Lake. We finished the day off at the pool again.

Silly Girl

Sometimes you just need to get naked and splash in a puddle.

Memorial Day Camping...

We went camping for a couple nights over this weekend. We also visited the fish hatchery on the Metolius River.

Treasure Hunting -- aka Geocaching

I took Zoe geocaching last week for the first time. Basically, people hide a box somewhere and then post the coordinates and a little discription at www.geocaching.com Using a GPS, you hunt down the box and if you like something that is inside, you can take it, as long as you leave something. It's usually full of little nick-nacks.

We call it Treasure Hunting. I don't know why I didn't think of doing this before, but we've done a few in the last week, and it's pretty fun...

Here is a picture from the first one.

Fun at the park

Yesterday we went to the park after school. This is where Zoe's birthday party was last year. She loves to reinact parts of her party. It's pretty funny...

Test Drive

Here we are on a Wednesday afternoon outing. This is the Deschutes River, it runs through Bend. That's Remi & her dad Gordon.

Earth Day Parade

Every year for Earth Day, there is a parade for kids. They all dress up and walk through the streets downtown. This year Zoe was a "butterfly princess." It was a bit cold that day and it threatened to rain, but it was still a fun day.

Today we went to the High Desert Museum. Our main goal was to create a costume for next weekends Earth Day Parade. The museum offered workshops for kids to make costumes. Unfortunately, the only thing related was a mask to color, but that didn't stop us from having a pretty good time. Another project they offered was making a rainstick, and we ended up making a pretty neat one.

The highlight was seeing the owl, that you can see in this picture. This is a barn owl, and he was very interested in Zoe's jacket. He wouldn't take his eyes off her. They also had a river otter, a fox, some fish, snakes, a bald eagle, a golden eagle, a falcon, a hawk, and a horned owl.

I haven't been there in years, and I think this is Zoe's second trip, but it was fun. It was a good mix of projects and seeing animals.

Baths

Papa -- "Zoe, tell me what you like about taking baths."

Zoe -- "Papa, I'm not gonna talk right now because I'm watching a movie. I'll talk to you when it's over. And I have a little headache."

Papa -- "What else?"

Zoe -- "Remember? I said I wasn't going to talk because I have a little headache."