We're Heeeeere

It's been a wild couple of weeks full of company and packing and cleaning and moving and unpacking.

It's still very strange to be here, but good to be back in familiar surroundings. The house is going to be great for our family.

And we seriously have LOTS of room for company, so come and visit us soon!

We've already had our first marshmallow roast on the deck and we fed grilled hot dogs to the amazing group of people who helped us unload our moving trucks. I'm really looking forward to having people over often. It is a great house for entertaining.

I can't remember if I blogged it before and I'm too tired to look right now - we've rented and moved into the house where I grew up, lo, those gazillion years ago. This life of ours is never boring!

Muddy-Frogwater Weekend!

Saturday was a wild and fun day! We set out in the morning for the Walla Walla Balloon Stampede. Everyone was excited and looking forward to seeing a sky full of hot air balloons on a gorgeous, sunny Saturday. Sadly, when we arrived at 10:00, we learned that the balloons are launched at 6:30 AM... Ack! There was not a balloon to be seen anywhere.

Plan B was to explore the festival activities at the fairgrounds. This involved watching half an hour of country line dancing and a few minutes of belly dancing, SE Washington style... Hmmm.

After indulging in a tiny bit of "fair food," Roger was inspired!

We piled back into the van and headed south. My clever husband remembered that he had noticed LOTS of frogs when he had traveled to the little town of Milton-Freewater, Oregon, to watch a basketball game. He declared that we were on a Photo-Frog-Scavenger hunt! As it turns out, there are about 40 frogs scattered around town and we set out to find them...

A wonderful time was had by all.

Here is our crew of expert frog-spotters:

Here is a slide show of the 36 frogs we found, along with the adorable spotters.

If you're ever in far NE Oregon, I highly recommend a trip to Milton-Freewater. It's a beautiful town full of gorgeous old houses, nice parks, friendly people, and LOTS of frogs!

Zip Line

Yesterday, we had a long-awaited opportunity to ride the zip line here at the Ranch. Daniel wasn't too sure about the whole thing, but in the end, all the kids gave it a go. Considering the climb up the pole and the crazy jump off the platform, I was very proud of all of them!


Even little Andrew took a brave turn!


The kids reported that this was the scariest part... jumping off...

After watching for a while, this little character demanded a Swiss Seat of his own.

He wanted to climb "up there."
He didn't actually climb the pole and zip down, but we did clip him onto the line and let him slide back and forth a bit. He declared it "SCARY" and then was devastated when we took him down. Ah, so good to be two.


There was also lots of flower picking while waiting for a turn.

Anna enjoyed the actual daring ride the most, by far. She was crazy brave and zipped several times.

All in all, it was a GREAT time. The kids would have stayed and zipped all day long. Even the reluctant riders wanted to try again after watching for a while.

Noah zipped several times and I finally got a video, in spite of my camera's uncooperative afternoon. So much fun!

God's grace in the midst of crazy times. He is so very good!