County Fair

Today was another beautiful day weather wise and fun wise.  This is our summer of local fun for Mary rather than a long trip.  We sold her swing set and wagon and had a nice cash pot for our fair money.  This first picture I think shows how much Mary loves the farm animals.  I think the pictures speak for themselves.  Tomorrow we will go  on the rides.  The one Mary wants to try first is the Ferris Wheel.  She is so excited as she has not ridden one before.

 

Playin' the Blues

Mary loves playin' the Blues on the piano.  She had so much fun playing this for me the other day!

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Beautiful Monarch Butterflies

Mary has been having some summer fun with raising Monarch Butterflies.  A friend showed us where to find them along the road on wild Milkweed.  We have Milkweed in our garden that I planted several years back hoping to attract some Monarchs and maybe get them to lay eggs.  No luck so far, they just have visited the flowers for the nectar.  Any way we set up our insect cage and put lots of fresh Milkweed in there from our garden and those caterpillars went to town.  Such a wonderful experience for Mary to see them up close and see them shed their final skin to form a chrysalis.  It was my first time too to see it in real life.  I think this might be a summer activity we will do again.  I found the cutest little song about the development of a butterfly and made a slide show with the pictures and video we took.

 

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Happy 4th of July

We had fun celebrating the 4th!

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Big Red

This is my big red begonia on our front step.  I have had it about 8 years now.  It dies down each winter and I keep it in our greenhouse through the winter to keep it from freezing.  The is year it has come back bigger than ever.  It is amazing how plants die down, rest and come back with such glory!

 

Canadian Bacon

Rich made some wonderful Canadian Bacon lightly flavored with sage. He used fresh sage from our herb garden. He used it on our sourdough bread and melted cheese over it. The Canadian bacon was very tender and easily eaten on the sandwich.  We get the pork sirloin roast at Costco.  The Canadian Bacon is so much fresher and better for you and cheaper too!  Here is the link to the recipe he used.

http://www.mortonsalt.com/for-your-home/culinary-salts/recipes/38/canadian-bacon/

If have any questions on how to fix it after you have cured it, just leave me a comment and we will get back to you.

Jacksonville

We are doing local things and day trips this summer with Mary.  In April we went to the coast and the Redwoods.  Today we went to Jacksonville for a local history day.  It was another beautiful day.  We shopped in the morning.  There is a great cooking store out there with so many wonderful cooking gadgets.  We all three had a ball looking at all the stuff.  Rich found a 6 egg poacher pan.  He has been wanting one for the longest time.  So we got it for him for Father's Day.  Next we took the trolly car ride and tour around town that lasted about an hour.  After the ride we did a little souvenir shopping for Mary and then we had lunch at the Bella Union in their outdoor patio.  After lunch we headed home.  We so enjoyed the beautiful gardens and flowers all over town.  We are so blessed to have such a great little historic town in our own back yard.

 

Here is a slide show of our day: 

 

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Birthday Party

 We were invited to a birthday party out in the country.  A little girl in Mary's dance class invited us.  Her little brother was turning 2 and her mom put on an amazing party with a Knight and sword fight theme.  They live on a small farm and Mary had so much fun visiting with the animals.  She also made the little birthday boy a dinosaur card.  She drew it all free hand.  He loved it.  Here are some shots of the party and a video clip of one of the sword fights.  The kids got to look at the armor and even take a few swings at the guys if they wanted to.

 

Silly Girl