I am a little late posting this. A few weeks ago, we headed over the mountains to spend the weekend with some friends. I dropped Eric and the boys off at the Lake to camp and fish. Then the girls, Gabe and I headed over to the house. We had a fabouls time exploring their property. It was cloudy, which gave me some great lighting for my pics. The guys came back with lots of Salmon. They smoked most of it. We found a huge dirt pile that the children spent several hours playing in. They made a dirt slide and slid and jumped all morning. Maryann was the first to try it head first. The dirt was so soft and forgiving, they were able to do some crazy stuff with no fear of getting hurt. We ended the weekend with a BBQ after the rodeo was over. We didn’t go to the Rodeo because we found out about it last minuet and didn’t buy tickets. But we loved seeing all the “real” Cowboys come over for some yummy food and celebration.

I really enjoyed seeing Gods creation everywhere I looked.

Maryann was my sidekick the whole weekend. We had lots of fun exploring.

Our friend had a track hoe and has fun moving big rocks around his place. So the boys were delighted watching him “play”.

A fallen tree

A random yellow flower in the stream

playing in the water

Eric mowing for the BBQ

Josh’s “new hairstyle” He dumped his head in the pond and created a new style

The dirt pit

The top of Pilot Butte

MAryann running down the Butte.

My Favorite pic after the Rodeo

The sunset

So my craigslist shopping brought us to a old Bed & Breakfast out in the country. I called on it and was told that there were already a number of people interested, so Eric and I hopped in the car and drove an hour to check it out. The house is about 20 miles from where Eric will work, so a little commute for him. It’s a fun place though. A HUGE yard, 4 bed and 3 baths. (the extra baths would be SO nice) Some fruit trees, a fireplace,( I have always wanted a fireplace) a hot tub, (a nice bonus). And it sits across the street from a large orchard of cherry, apple, pear, and many more trees. It is a U-Pick farm, so lots of yummy fruits right at my fingertips! So we filled out an application and now are just waiting. I have to say I am having a really hard time not dreaming about this house right now and trusting God that He knows what is best for our family. For as much fun as it has been this summer, I am really ready to have my own house again. I’m ready to unpack and settle back into a routine again. I feel like I have been running so hard and fast for so long, that I would really like to just sit in a hot tub and soak every night. Ahhhhh…. Well, hopefully we will get word on whether or not they would like to rent to us soon. If not, I guess God has something better out there for us, I just need to find it. This hunt for a house has felt like searching for a needle in a haystack.

By the way, I am posting this from a Mc Donalds parking lot because they have free wi fi if you buy something. So Maryann is with me eating a $1.00 ice cream sundae and making a mess. She has fudge all over her. But, I am determined to get this posted!!

~Cheryl

Here are a few pics from a morning photo shoot with the boys.

A few jump shots (the boys favorite!)

Gabriel, 9 months

Maryann wanted her pic taken too

Back to the house for Breakfast. Not soon enough!!

This was an old frame we found on the farm

And my most fun to photograph these days…

This last week has been busy. Eric worked on the hive at his Dad’s shop again. It was so much larger than he had intially thought. So a few more pints of honey and… the queen! There was much cheering from the children when Eric found the queen bee. So now, we successfuly have one hive complete with a queen.

Friday, Eric took us to the Black Sheep Festival. This is a gathering of like minded people that all love sheep, spinning and knitting. It is at the fairgrounds. They all bring their best sheep to show off, and the past years worth of wool to sell to fellow spinners and knitters. Never have I seen so many spinning wheels in one place! There were signs everywhere warning of the dieases transmission from the animals to people. So I carried my hand sanitizer and we all pumped and scrubbed every few minutes. I’m sure people were laughing at me, but I think we left without any livestock disease. Or, at least I hope. The children had a fun time and I found some hand balm/lotion and hand scrubbing salts that I think are amazing. And, I did some of my third world country learned bargaining and got a great deal!

Saturday morning we headed out to a U-Pick Farm. This was a first for the children. They were most excited that they could eat strawberries as they picked. The strawberries were super sweet and delicious. And lots of them! So we picked 6 gallons of strawberries. Maryann ate everyone she picked and just put leaves in her bucket. Oh, and a ladybug! Then we headed home and spent the afternnon canning straberry jam (my favorite) and freezing strawberries.

Racing off to the strawberries fields

Picking strawberry leaves

Everyone picking

My everyday life these days consists mostly of laundry, keeping up with 6 children on 15 acres (that’s not mine), and visiting with Grandma who is almost 90. I have really enjoyed the time I spend with her. We talk about her life long ago, children (both hers and mine) and what to cook for dinner. She still goes swimming a few days a week, is up before me and feeding my starving children a hot breakfast of pancakes, and catching every sale at the local grocery store. She amazes me. And her humor with Grandpa has brought me many laughs.

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Eric got his license this last week. So he will be seeing his first patient on thursday. He’s very excited. Now we just have to figure out what we are going to do about moving there. We are currently living about an hour and half from where he will be working, so that makes for a very long commute. The children and I have tagged along one day each week over the last month. We have explored and played getting to know the area that will be our new home while Eric is busy at the practice getting everything lined up to begin work this next week. Yesterday, I spent the morning looking at a few houses that were for rent. Outcome- nothing that would work. One house was large enough, but had no closets and was too much for such an odd house. Another would have worked from the inside, but there was no yard. And then there was this one that had 150 acres and was absolutely beautiful with a huge stocked pond and a creek, but the house was smaller than the one we lived in CA. And again, it seemed over priced for the little bit of house that we would have. Especially since I have no plans to plant any fields of wheat on all those acres. And that’s about all that I have got around to looking at so far. Checking out Craigslist tonight.

This last week was sweet with honey. Literally. Eric’s dad has had a hive of bees living in the walls of his shop for over 3 years. Eric asked him when we were here this spring if he could try and remove the hive. His hope was to save the hive so that he could have his own bees. He had his first hive when he was 12. His first honey harvest was about a year later. He studied up on bees. Learned all about them. He spent the next 7 years working on his hives. Building new ones. Selling some honey, but giving most of it away. Then, he joined the ARMY and had to leave all the bees behind. No bees in boot camp! So the bees all died.

For as long as I have known Eric, he has talked about having bees again. He loves bees. Loves building the hive. Feeding them to get them established. Monitoring them so they have enough room in the hive. Protecting them from other insects that will eat them. Disease and mites that will kill them. And all the animals out there that love bees and honey. Like skunks.

Now his desire to have bees has changed a little. Before it was mostly just for fun. A hobby. Now, it’s more for our family. We use a lot of honey. Our children love it. And it costs a whole lot of money. Raw organic honey (which is great for asthma and allergies-both of which we have) is about $50 a gallon. So, if we can have our own bees, working and making honey for us, then we can eat a lot of honey and hopefully keep the asthma and allergies from flaring up too much.

So early Friday morning, Eric was covered from head to toe to protect him from the bees. He started by tearing off the siding of the shop. He would stop every few minutes and mist them with sugar water to keep the bees busy eating and not thinking about stinging him. It was long slow procedure. After removing about 3 feet of siding, he began to extract the honeycomb dripping with honey. Some honeycomb was put into the new hives and the rest was put into a bucket to extract the honey later. His goal was to find the queen bee. After 4 hours, 10 bee stings, and about 4 gallons of honey, he called it a day. He’s not sure if he got the queen bee. Never saw her. Just hoping that she made it into the new hive alive. If so, then the bees will make their new home in his new hives. If not… then we either buy a queen bee (never thought we’d be buying a queen!) or find another hive to remove. Eric said it will be about 6 weeks before he knows whether the queen survived.

the bees before…

Setting up

suiting up

smoking the bees

watching from the car

removong the honeycomb

watching from a distance!

That afternoon and all the next day was spent filtering the honey. It was a very messy project. We ran the honey through different strainers to the point that it looked like what you would buy in a store. It was full of bees and honeycomb/wax when we started. When we finally finished, we had 11 quarts and 8 pints!

All done

the honey unfiltered

dripping in honey


this was funny, he is playing with a stick, but it looks like he is smoking a cigar! Made me laugh!

Some interesting facts about Bees…

-All honey is made by the female worker bees
-There is one queen that lays all the eggs and has life expectancy of 2-6 years
-All other bees live 12 weeks – 6 months
-It takes 7 pounds of honey to make one pound of wax.
-A hive in Oregon needs 40 pounds honey to make it through a winter
- One bee makes about 1/4 tsp of honey during it’s life

And the finished product

“Cheryl, WAKE UP!!!! The Cows are out!!!”

“huh, what??”

“The cows, they are in the orchard. Get up, we need to get them out!!! Quick, put on your shoes and meet me out there”

“Cows?? Oh, the cows. Right now??”

“Get up Cheryl, right now!!!”

This is what I woke up to this morning. The cows had somehow unlatched two fences and were grazing in Grandpa’s orchard. A big no-no. Grandpa gets pretty mad at those cows when this happens. And the child who assisted with not correctly latching the gate. But this time, there was no child involved. Eric had been the last one out of that field and knew that the gate had correctly been latched.

So how does one go about getting cows from one field to the other? Well, now that I am an expert at the subject let me fill you in. First husband closes gates to funnel them in one direction. Then, wife is given a very long board and told to stand guard of the gate and not let them thru when they come charging at her. Wife does this while rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Still in her pj’s. Husband also gets long board and begins rounding up cows in the orchard, herding them toward the gate. All the while making funny sounds wife has never heard him make before. All of a sudden, wife sees 8 cows charging at her (or the gate that she is guarding). Big board in hand ready to do whatever it is you do with a big board and 8 cows charging, wife stands guard. One cow decided he really doesn’t want to leave orchard and turns around to dart past husband back to apple trees. But husband, ever so fast, uses long board to shoo him back with other cows. Who are now walking through fence back to their pasture. Husband locks gate. Time to get dressed and start my day.

~Cheryl

Grandpa planting corn

The garden and farmhouse

Squirrel watching me take pictures of him

Eric and his graduation gift from his Dad- Black Powder Rifle

Laura and a snake she found

Another one of her snakes.

Michael helping out Daddy

How we do work around here…moving the swing set

We’ve been here a week now. Already, the trip up here seems like it was months ago. I guess that’s what happens when you are stressed beyond all reason. You want to just forget about it and go on as if if didn’t even happen. But it did. And this is what happened…

We woke up early Monday morning. Eric’s graduation was Sunday evening. I came down with the flu about 4 hours before graduation started. Stomach cramps, vomiting, yup, the whole nine yards. And I was last to get it. Between all 10 of the cousins that were present for grad, most of them had gotten it. It seemed rather mild, 12-24 hours. At first I thought it was just from eating a huge Cinnabon roll and drinking a soda for lunch. That’s enough sugar to make just about anyone sick. But after about an hour, I was rolled up in a ball sleeping. I’m not really sure what all happened that afternoon. I am so thankful for our family that was there to dress my children and get them all ready for and to graduation. I had worked so hard to have everything perfect for that afternoon, but would have never even made it if it hadn’t been for everybody helping out. I ended up taking a phenegren from a previous round of flu so I wouldn’t be puking during the middle of graduation. Side effect, being so tried and drowsy I don’t even remember half of what went on. Oh, and my eyes were closed in almost every picture afterwards.

After graduation was over, everyone (24 people) headed back to our house to celebrate with Eric. I curled up in the corner of my empty living room and passed out. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning eric woke me up. Everyone had left and he wanted to move me out to the motor home. Our plan had been to leave at 4:30 the next morning to Oregon. His Dad would be driving our van towing the trailer and Eric would drive the motor home. We were behind schedule because of me being sick. So after a few hours of last minute packing and cleaning we were finally ready to get on the road. We stood in a circle and prayed for safety for our trip. Then after hugs, everyone parted ways. Ken (Eric’s Dad) climbed into our van with Ben, his Mom took Laura, and Eric and I got in the motor home with the other children.

We were only on the freeway one minuet and I heard Eric say in a voice filled with terror…”Oh, Dad, OH, DAD!!!”. I spun around and looked out the back window to see the trailer fish tailing one second and the next the van was sideways on the freeway headed for the concrete medium. There was black smoke pouring out from the rear wheels on our van and also from the semi’s that were desperately trying to stop from smashing into our van and trailer. This moment is forever burned in my memory. I screamed out to God. Not just a prayer, but more like a Mother who is desperate to help a child, but is completely helpless. All I could think about was that Ken and Ben were in that van. I never once thought about all my worldly possessions exploding all over the freeway. Or the trailer that the boys loved so much. Or even our van. In those split seconds, it was only for the lives that were being thrown around an eight lane freeway like a spinning top. Eric was pulling over and in doing so, put the horrific scene behind us around a bend. I continued to cry out to God. Eric jumped out of our motor home and ran back down the freeway to find them. He called me a few minutes later and said they were safe. They were parked on the side of the freeway as if they had needed to pull over without a single injury. (Well, our bumper has some nice big dents on each side from the fish tailing- a good visual reminder of the miracle God gave us) Nobody is really sure what happened. Ken and Benjamin can’t remember exactly what happened, and Eric and I lost sight of them as they were headed for the other side of the freeway. No other vehicle ever pulled over. So, what do I think? Definitely a miracle. Somehow, with 4 lanes of traffic right during rush hour barreling towards them, while they were headed for the other side of the freeway, I think God just lifted them up. Put them safely over on the side of the freeway. Just like that. No one actual saw it happen, but then, I didn’t need to, to believe it was God.

So we took the very next exit and headed to a big parking lot to evaluate the situation. Why had it happened and how to fix it. It was figured out pretty easily. Someone (no child will own up to it) had undone the trailer breaks. And the weight was not distributed correctly. So after an hour of rearranging some stuff, trailer breaks connected, checked and rechecked, we were back on our way. Same drivers in the same vehicles. Only this time, all our nerves were severely frayed. It seemed as if the trailer was still fish tailing too much to be considered safe and Ken felt like after what had happened, he was just to stressed to drive the van anymore. So he and Eric swapped out. Eric’s brother and his family had met up with us in the parking lot, so Steve (his brother) joined Eric in the van. About an hour later, after many phone calls back and forth and lots of white knuckles form those of us falling the trailer, Eric asked that we drive up ahead and meet him at the truck stop. He was driving much slower than the rest of traffic, but felt like he had control over everything. So we did. And just after we passed, the rear wheel on the trailer blew. Not just went flat, but blew to shreds. So Eric and Steve had to unpack some of the trailer to get to the spare (which thankfully was a full size spare) right there on the side on the freeway with cars flying by. So, new tire on, they started on their way again. This time, the trailer seemed to finally be tracking correctly. So, after meeting up with us at the truck stop, we started on our way again.

The next 25 hours were uneventful. Slow, hot, (no AC in the motor home) and still stressed out from the start of our trip, we trucked on. This drive normally takes us 15 hours in a car, 20 hours if we are towing or driving the motor home. Total time this trip…31 hours. Our last excitement was about an hour from Grandpa’s house. We were coming out of the mountains and the van breaks over heated. It happened right next to a beautiful field. So we unloaded all the children and went exploring for an hour. It was a nice break from the hot motor home. The children found all kinds of treasures. A centipede, flowers, moss, and lots of sticks. Papa gave the children a quick lesson on the different species of Oak trees. Then, we loaded up one last time to finish the journey home.

Eric and his Dad discussing hot brakes.

Science lessons with Papa

We all made it in one piece. All 16 of us. No accidents. 31 hours. And one Miracle.

It’s been a fun week. The children have explored just about every square inch of Great Grandpa and Great Grandma’s farm. They found a bird with a broken wing and tried to nurse it back to health. ( It didn’t make it.) They found that if you hit the roof of the barn, it explodes with bats. They befriended Patches, the cat who now thinks she is part of the family. Oh, and lots of snakes and salamanders and squirrels. They have brought me hundreds of little flowers that grow in the fields and the boys are currently trying to figure out how to build a loft in the barn (about 15 feet off the ground).

We pitched tents for the boys to sleep in and have pretty much taken over the little field in front of the orchard. The girls are sleeping upstairs in the house and Eric and I have the motorhome to ourselves. (Well, not really…Gabe and Maryann keep joining us.)

Our Summer Home

What I wake up to in the morning…

The driveway the boys have been riding bikes on everyday

My back window view

Another view

Making friends with the horses

Barn down the road

impromptu photo shoot behind the barn

And many more pictures and stories to come soon…
~Cheryl