Fall is Here!!

The Fall and its harvest is upon us. We love the peppers, cabbage, blackberry jam, tomatoes and apples.  The flowers are still beautiful and have picked several big bouquets from the front garden already.

Mary picked up leaves and did crayon rubbing on them and then painted them with water colors.  

They turned out so pretty!

We went out to our favorite farm and pumpkin patch, 7 Oaks Farm

This is the farms name sake.  About a hundred years ago 7 Oaks sprouted up and formed a gigantic tree.  A few years ago it became diseased and had to be cut down.  So sad.  the stumps are still very impressive.

Twin goats feeding from Mary's hand.

A scary branch that was so beautiful against the Autumn sky.

We had a wonderful homeschool field trip to Denman Nature Reserve near Tou Vell Park.  They had an awesome nature presentation to the kids with all the furs of natural animals of Southern Oregon.

We all walked around the huge pond full of ducks, geese, and other water foul.  Rich found out that you can fish blue gill from this pond.  So we have found a fantastic fishing site not more than 10 minutes from our house!

Canadian Geese taking off from the water.

We decorated our front step with pumpkins from 7 Oaks farm and our own dried corn stalks.

Our back step

My favorite bumpy pumpkin.  I have not seen one like this before.

We hope you all have a blessed Fall Season!

The Sky is Blue Again!!

We are so happy to have blue skies again.  We have had smoke from forest fires since the middle of July.  At one point our town was listed as the worst for air quality in the nation!  Yesterday I went out and took a bunch of photos of our front flower garden.  It is so lovely this time of year and we have been enjoying it.  We get a lot of American Gold Finches coming to the feeders along with humming birds and lots of bees.  Here a few shots that I took:

Fair Favorites

We had a bunch of fun at the county fair this last week.  Rich entered his BBQ sauce and got second place.

 

Mary had so much fun seeing the birds and animals

Hand and foot!

 

Always fun to cool off with ice cream

 

Some chills and thrills on the rides

 

We won at a family team effort at the dart game and Mary got the prize!

 

Always fun getting you picture taken with the President and First Lady

 

Cooling off with some Hawaiian shave ice after lunch

Happy 4th of July

We had a beautiful holiday.  We were impressed of the upswing in patriotism in our area.  At the parade almost everyone was dressed in red, white and blue and people cheering for all the floats and having a bunch of fun.  We were blessed to have time to spend with friends and family.  Rich's dad is doing OK, he is still weak from the cancer but we are so thankful he is still with us.  Mary got to have some fun with sparklers out on our drive way.  It has been such a mild summer so far and everything in our garden is just loaded with produce.  Here is a short slide show of our day!

 

Here is the link to the video: https://youtu.be/2IVRdqQ6euI

Father's Day

We had a blessed Father's Day!  Here is a short slide show of our day.

 

 

Here is the link: https://youtu.be/b2w66uB2v18

End of the School Year

Mary finished 5th grade today.  To celebrate we went to eat at an, all you can eat, Chinese buffet.  Mary loves this place.  The food is fantastic and she loves watching the Koi Fish in the ponds by the front door.  There are many beautiful fish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 After visiting with the fish, we finished our meal with dessert!

 

Mary is just a little bit excited for her summer break and I think I am looking forward to it too!