Raspberry Daze

I hadn't really heard of Oregon linked to berries until I got here. But apparently, we grow berries. Lots of them. When I am driving through the countryside on the way to stores of mine, I often pass berry farms, all laden with signs advertising their u-pick "services." And by "service" of course I mean that you come to the farm, do all the work picking the berries and then pay them for the privilege. I was a bit of a skeptic. Shouldn't I be paying someone to pick the berries for me? But Amy thought the kids might get a kick out of it, so we tracked down a berry farm and headed up into the hills.

We went to Smith Berry Barn, which was so beautiful and idyllic that my cynicism was replaced by a desire to become a farmer and grow berries and raise chickens with cool hairdos, like this one:

At the farm you get a wagon and a bunch of buckets and you head off to the raspberry fields (patches? herds? I don't know) and pick to your hearts content. Then you pay $1.50 a pound. It's a steal, because you eat 3 times as many berries as you pick. Here are some things I learned about berry farming:
1. Real raspberries are HUGE

2. Some raspberry bushes don't have thorns. SCORE!

3. Blackberry bushes have A LOT of thorns, but as your hands are bleeding and in agonizing pain you can't stop picking the blackberries because they are so incredibly good and sweet. I think about 8 made it into the bucket and I ate about 412.
4. Lila can eat berries as fast as you can pick them, right out of the bucket, or your hand, or wherever she can snatch them from.

5. Amy and I could have picked berries all day.

6. The kids got bored after a while. This is, after all, the work that we pay immigrant workers less than a fair wage to do!

We lost the kids in the canes several times, and we lost our camera bag and we lost our will to not eat berries by the handful, because we never stopped eating.

I noticed the sold berry plants there as well and said to Amy, "We should buy some raspberry bushes!" And she, wisely, said, "Why? We can come here whenever we want and pick as much as we want." True dat.

After picking for a while. I hung out with the kids and fed grain to goats and chickens while Amy pilfered more buckets of berries. Lila thought the chickens and goats were awesome.

And they were pretty fantastic. The goats were cute and licked the kids hands while they fed them (gross, but charming.) And the chickens were all different and beautiful in a weird, chickeny sort of way. Here is one of the others we saw

What is that? Fur? If I ever make millions selling my novel and don't need to work, I want to go grow berries on a farm in the Oregon hillsides and raise funny looking chickens.

Was I concerned that Lila was getting licked by goats and eating the goat feed herself? Well....kinda. She's eaten worse.

We came home with quite a haul. 3 boxes of raspberries, two flower baskets, an a raspberry shake. It was great - and we will definitely be back. 

And this is what we made with it when we got home:

Fresh Raspberry Pie. Which I ate about 7/8ths of. And then my eyes turned into raspberries. And then I ate my eyes. 

Tell me again why you haven't planned a trip out here to visit us?

The Ides of June

I turned 33 last month. No, I know. You are busy, your gift is in the mail, blah blah blah. I kid, of course. I got many lovely birthday messages from people via Facebook. Thank goodness for Facebook when it comes to birthdays. Am I right? I used to have to call my siblings on their birthday and actually talk to them. Now I can just "like" the birthday wish they got from a co-worker and we're good. Ain't technology grand?


The real reason that I mention my birthday is that I really hoped Amy (or really anyone) would do one of those blog posts where they say "Little Gary turned 8 today, so here are 8 great things about Gary!" Where are the 33 great things about me, I ask? So I figured I would write it myself. Here we go:


1. I am really awesome when it comes to...


OK. I am kidding. I did toy with the idea of really doing it and making it sort of tongue in cheek and funny but also extolling my virtues. And then I thought that might be kind of lame for everyone except me. So instead I will report on the month of June.


I did celebrate a birthday. It was great. The day of my actual birthday I was in Las Vegas for a super awesome work meeting full of action plans, and bucketizing and team building and raising our bench strength and such. Fortunately, I have lovely friends living in Vegas and had a pocket of time between the final trust fall and my flight taking off to squeeze in lunch. Enter Ken and Katie Craig, of the Wind Warrior Way Craigs. Their story was that they were going to take me to some awesome french bistro that they love but it doesn't serve lunch on whatever day I was there, so instead they took me to Spanky McSomethingoranothers Breakfast and Hash House or something. I forget the name.


These are the lovely Craigs. Aren't they lovely?

This is what I ate. It involved a tower of waffles with bacon in the batter, fried chicken rosemary, syrup, joy, happiness and love.

You can see Katie's lunch behind mine. Some sort of reasonable veggie burger with goat cheese. That is part of the reason that Katie weighs 1/8th of the amount that I do. Then for dessert we shared this:

I believe the restaurant called it Snickers Bar Bread Pudding. I called it Fulfillment. 

At home we celebrated quickly, because we were leaving the next morning for our annual Utah and Bear Lake trip. There were lovely gifts (Jonah gave me a robot eraser and Noel gave me a head scratcher) and a small cake and some finishing of packing. 

The visit to Utah was grand. We were really there for our trip to Bear Lake but managed to squeeze in a visit to my parent's house for Father's day with EVERY brother and sister and in-law and niece and nephew which hardly ever happens. It was lovely, and apparently, camera free. I have no photographic evidence that this event happened, but it involved carrot cake, me falling off a chair and 1 million people in my Mom and Dad's backyard.

Then, we were off to Bear Lake. It has become an annual tradition and was delightful. Jonah loves the water, and Noel loves to play miniature golf on a real ghetto course at the resort we stay at. 

In fact, the first morning we were there, Noel woke up at 6am and screamed and cried until 10am when the golf course opened because he didn't want to wait. So thereafter, it was a morning tradition. 

We spent most of the days at the lake, and even though the water temperature was approximately 33 degrees, Jonah spent most of his time in it. 

Because the water level was higher than it has been in years past, there was a shallow section of the lake about 10 feet wide. It was much warmer than the lake, but as shallow stagnant water often is, it was funky and murky and probably full of urine. So this is how Jonah spent the day:

Lila spent her days modeling fabulous casual wear and beach apparel and eating sand. 

We did manage to get in a "fishing trip" while we were there where I got bitten by about 147 mosquitoes and a bug the size of a half-dollar attached itself to Lila's cheek. 

The boys got a kick out of it. And Jonah even caught a fish. And I caught malaria. 

We had a ball, as we always do. 

So June ended, full of ides. 

Just a year ago. . .

On the occasion of documenting Lila's birthday, I'm going to try not to gush. After all, she can be what we like to call the "devil baby." She has a piercing, high-pitched scream that she likes to use frequently, sometimes for no reason at all. She's a pretty awful traveler, and helped make our flight home from SLC a couple of weeks ago our worst flight ever. And she goes through this house like a tornado, creating a path of destruction from which we spend all day trying to recover.

But today, while watching Elmo's world, she hopped off her baby easy-chair, walked over to the cupboard, opened it, pulled out the box of Fruit Loops, walked back to her chair, hopped back up, and proceeded to finish her show eating some sugar cereal straight from the box. This demonstrates her most dangerous trait. Her ability to make me smile amidst all of her calculated naughtiness.

But I can try all day to make her sound less than perfect. The truth is, I'm madly in love with this child. As a mother, I find myself imagining God's intention when he sends you a particular child at a particular time. With Jonah, I know he was sent to me to challenge me. He makes me think, and he makes me work hard. I find myself constantly figuring out ways to keep this brilliant, imaginative, energetic boy motivated, engaged and busy. Noel was sent to me to teach me tolerance, sensitivity and patience. He's taught me how both to give and receive huge amounts of unconditional love. Lila, I believe, was sent to me simply because God loves me. She is my reminder that, whether I think I deserve it or not, God loves me enough to send me an enormous hug. . .a huge ball of sunshine in human form.

On May 18th, my sunshine turned 1. Let's be honest: unless you're Tori Spelling, you'd have to be crazy to spend any significant amount of time, energy or money on a child's 1st birthday. It's really for the parents, right? So here's Lila's anti-climactic 1st birthday synopsis.

Josh made her some ice cream cone cupcakes. It was a brilliant idea, actually. Sure, she loves ice cream cones, but that strange yet compulsory tradition of allowing a 1 year old to gorge herself on her own birthday cake was so much easier and cleaner! Here she is doing it two-handed. She's nothing if not efficient!

And she enjoyed opening some presents, even if this picture doesn't make it look like it. She got all of the one year old requisites: an activity table, a baby stoller, a stuffed Elmo, some books, etc. The boys got her a ball and hammer toy that they've always wanted! They would've been thrilled that she enjoyed their gift so much, if they wouldn't have been so busy fighting over it.

That was it. Big whoop, right? But here are some fun and interesting facts about Lila on her 1st birthday.

1) She's such a daddy's girl. Since my boys were so attached to their dad, I thought I'd get the girl. Wrong. She literally won't let me hold her if her dad's in the room. He doesn't even try to pretend like he doesn't love it.

2) She's a thrill-seeker. She's a billion times more adventurous than the boys which, let's be honest, isn't saying much. She loves speed. She loves noise. She loves anything you want to throw at her. It's led to more than a few problems. Like the time she was screaming from the top of the McDonald's playland.

Here she is on a ride with her (probably more nervous than her) brother:

3) She's determined. She just wants to get it done, so please don't get in her way. Like when she was learning to walk and insisted on pushing the stoller. . .

. . .with her super-relaxed (a wee bit lazy) 4 year old brother inside.

4) She loves meerkats! No really. . .she does really, really love animals, but isn't this picture hysterical?!? (Other than the being stuck in a 30 minute torrential rainstorm on the other end of the zoo?)

5) She's OBSESSED with Elmo. And I mean obsessed. She has a certain sound she makes when she sees him or wants to see him. I don't get what it is with kids and Elmo.

6) Thanks to the Internet vote, her name is perfect for her. It allows us to call her anything with Lls and a vowel. Mostly Lulu. Sometimes Lu. Lala. Occasionally Lila. And while we love her middle name (Adele), I can count on one hand the times we've used it. We usually call her Lila Jean, or Lila Louise, both of which are pretty heinous, but just roll off of the tongue so well!

7) She's a ham. She loves to make people laugh, especially her brothers. I'll admit, we are a bit of an easy audience. She basically has to look at us and we laugh. The boys think she's adorable and we have to agree.

We love you, Lila! Thanks for bringing us so much joy for 1 whole year! Please don't become evil when you're 13!

Love,

Mom and Dad

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