Grants Pass

Our next stop was Grants Pass. I've never been there before, but have heard tons of stories about it. Dave always describes it as a very wooded and closed in place. On his mission, he felt claustrophobic while living there. I can see why after growing up in Idaho - it's open enough here to see 20 miles!

We didn't spend very much time actually in Grants Pass, but Dave wanted to for sure stop at the local drug store to get a phosphate. Phosphate's are a drink. It's really hard to explain - kind of like a sweet and tart base that gets mixed with another flavor. They had tons of different flavors to choose from. And, the best part.....they only cost 25¢.

After our little refreshment, we went for a quick stroll downtown.

All the fire hydrants were painted. Each one was different and unique.

After a quick stop downtown, we headed to Larry and Renee's house, which was the real reason for visiting Grants Pass. Dave baptized Renee on his mission and they are one of the very few people that he actually still keeps in contact with. They were very kind and let us stay in their guest house. All of the kids had tons of fun - their three kids are almost exactly the same age as our three kids. Their house is just outside of Grants Pass, but I could have sworn we were at a cabin. Forest totally surrounds their whole property. Deer continually walked through their yard. The kids had a blast! Bria and Max both asked me why we don't live in the forest.

Eugene's Saturday Market

We've been talking about taking a trip to Oregon all summer. We went back and forth. Yes - let's take the trip. Never-mind - we can't afford it. Well, maybe if we stretch our budget here....let's go in July. Nope. It'll never work. We can't make it this year. After a whole summer of that, we really thought that it wouldn't work out. But, last week, we decided it was now or never - summer is almost over - let's just go! Wednesday we decided to leave that Friday. Not very much notice, but thankfully, we go on road trips quite a lot, so we figured we could throw the trip together with no problem.

We spent the first day driving. All day. We got kind of a late start. There are always tons of errands that need to be done before going out of town. So, we didn't get to the hotel our first night until 2:30 in the morning. Our kids, of course, got their second wind and it took a few hours to calm them back down and get them to sleep. I really thought we were done for and the rest of the trip would be three tired and crying kids. But, I was way wrong! They always do well on trips, and thankfully, this one was no exception.

Day 2, we stopped in Eugene and went to the Saturday Market. Every trip we've made to Oregon, we've wanted to go, but...it is a Saturday Market and only open on Saturday, so our timing has never quite worked out. But, this time, we actually got to go!

There was live music and entertainment.

Eugene is a really interesting place. If you think the hippie movement ended with the 1980's, you are quite wrong. It never ended. It just moved to Eugene. It is a really different place, but fun to see everything.

The Saturday Market there is HUGE!!!! I thought that there were maybe 250-300 vendors, but I just had to check on the website. The map shows almost 400 spaces, which were all full when we went. That's not counting the adjacent Lane County Farmer's Market, which we didn't even walk through. The Saturday Market estimates that between 3,000 and 5,000 people visit on any given Saturday. Really crowded, but way fun.

Some of my favorite parts were:

All the tie-die! We got each of our kids their very own tie-die shirt.

The soap vendors. I think we saw 5. It was fun to see everyone's different soaps and packaging, and of course talk to them about soap!

The Tarot Card reader with one droopy eye. Pretty scary!

They had tons of cool and way professional looking crafts. They also had some very strange booths - like the prayer booth. Just go in and pray if you like.

But, really my favorite part was probably the food. They had tons of selection! You could eat almost anything you can imagine there! But, of course, the kids picked one of their very favorites - PIZZA!

Enjoying the Ride

Max has been working really hard to learn to ride his bike. He got the bike for his 3rd birthday and has really had no interest in it whatsoever. So, I am very happy that he is finally using it! He's spent hours working on his peddling technique. It's really fun to watch him. He is totally in the zone while he practices.

In other riding news.....Max asked me yesterday if he could ask his dad for a ride on the lawn mower. Dave used to let Max ride all the time when he was really little, but he's getting too big now. I thought I would have  a teary eyed little boy come back in the house and tell me that his dad told him no. Instead, I looked out the window and found this:

Look at the huge smile on Max's face.

I think I lost a whole month!!!

Where did July go? I swear we were just in June and I just noticed that it's been over a month since I've blogged. I've got some serious catching up to do!!!

So....to make it more condensed, here's what we've been up to:

Moedl Family Reunion

At the end of June, we went to the Moedl Family Reunion. It was a blast! There were tons of activities for the kids to do....including a "fishing" pond where the kids got prizes. Bria came home with a cute headdress and Max got a Cars chalkboard.

Fireworks

Instead of celebrating the 4th of July like everyone else, we do it a little differently. Dave's family has sold fireworks in Rexburg for the last 40 years! Since we've been married, we've carried on the tradition, so every 4th of July season, we spend 10 days selling fireworks. This year, thankfully, we had a lot of help from Dave's dad and his cousin Michelle and her husband Tom.  It's harder and harder for me to go help every day with 3 kids! The kids love going in to help, though. This year, we let them earn a couple of dollars for coming in a picking up trash. They loved it!

(can you believe how tall Bria is getting?)

Visit from my uncle

After we got done selling fireworks, my Uncle came to visit and brought his cute girlfriend, Theresa, to meet us. The kids had a blast playing with them.

Working....

When do we not work?!? I'm so glad that Dave has summers off from his counseling job, but we still manage to keep pretty busy. We are right in the middle of our busy wedding season and Dave has had at least one wedding every weekend, sometimes more! Plus, he always has some other side project going. Right now he is working on a website for a summer festival in Idaho Falls called Dash and Bash. He is also designing the Idaho Health Guide. It's a book that will be released locally in the next little bit. Busy! Busy! Busy!

Jessica and I have also been keeping ourselves pretty busy with our little soap company. We got accepted to be a walk-in vendor for the Rexburg Farmer's Market on Friday nights. Because we are walk-ins, we can only be there if they have room. We've been pretty lucky so far and have been able to get in every weekend in July.  We also did a Family Fun day last weekend, and have a few other things scheduled. It's been fun getting out of the house and having something to call our own.

Logan turned 11 months!

He is getting so close to 1 year old! It's killing me how fast time is going. It has been so fun to watch him grow and develop. His personality is blossoming more and more every day! One of my new favorite things is watching how he has learned to pose for the camera. We take so may pictures of him because of how he reacts when the camera gets pulled out. Here are a few of my favorites:

Some of his highlights for this month are: He loves to wave at people, and he'll wave at pretty much everyone he sees. He also likes playing peek-a-boo. He loves anything mechanical (completely takes after his dad!). Every time I vacuum, he chases me until he can catch the vacuum. I think he might be kind of a handful as he gets bigger. He is already starting to climb up everything he can. He started with the stairs. He climbed all the way up on his first try. Now, he climbs on any and everything that is low to the ground. Thank goodness he can't reach anything higher up!

Food is becoming almost an obsession for him. He enjoys trying new food and wants to eat all by himself. So, we see a lot of this lately:

Logan has had kind of a hard month. He got three new teeth and towards the middle of the month got really sick. We had him in the emergency room two weeks ago because he was so sick! He had an eye infection, an ear infection and a bacterial infection. His poor eyes were so bad they were almost totally swollen shut and what little he could open them they were full of goop! Thankfully he is all better now!

Odds and Ends:

Some of the other things that have happened around our household...

Dave spent a couple of days at Scout Camp and was awarded a Golden Arrow for getting 4 out of the 5 arrows he shot in the two center rings.

The Ice Cream truck visited our neighborhood....which is such a rare event. It is like Christmas in July for our kids!

Our garden is doing pretty good. We have had some things do awesome and some things do terrible. Our summer started so late that I'm not sure we'll even have time to harvest some of our crops. Our lettuce is doing incredible, so if you know anyone who needs lettuce, give me a call. We can't pick it fast enough!

Other than that, we are just trying to enjoy every last minute of summer before it's all over!