A Week to remember

For the past week, Anna and I have been off galavanting in Oregon while Hubby stayed at home to keep down the fort. And quite the week we had!

First, Anna's favorite single aunt wanted to take her to the beach. There we enjoyed lots of wet sand, cold water and good company.

Anna "helped" her aunt by demolishing all the sand towers she could possibly make. If you listen hard to the video, you might just hear Anna say "Helping!" while scurrying from tower to tower.

Anna got some sand on her leg. While that might be normal for the beach, Anna did not think so and held her leg up hoping that we would clean it off for her.

After the beach became too cold to handle, we went back to Grandma's house, with a short stop at a farm stand that had a few goats, bunnies, and chickens. Anna had a lot of fun feeding the goat.

Here's our little sunflower!

After the weekend, Aunt, Anna and I went to the Portland Children's Museum, which is next to the Zoo (Can I just say I love Cultural Passes?!). There, Anna got to color, play with clay, trains and balls, "drive" an ambulance, and dig. All the while, her aunt and I were running trying to keep up with her. Well, her aunt was running; I was trying to sit down as much as possible. What a great time she had.

Digging!

Our last day there was the opening day of the County Fair and we just had to go. We had a busy day looking at all the cows, goats, sheep, poultry, llamas, and rabbits. And that was after getting cheesecakes ready to enter into the daily contest (we didn't win, but we did get in for free!). While the highlight for Anna was probably all the animals, or the ice cream, my highlight was seeing this:

This was the very first year I have ever entered anything in the fair, and I won! I entered a sourdough loaf (Thank you to the Bogardus family for the recipe and the sourdough start!) that I didn't think turned out that well, but it won. Of course, I had entered it into the sourdough section and there were only two other entries. I got to taste the other two, and mine certainly was the most sour of the group and my mother-in-law just raved about the texture (I thought it was a little lacking). To say the least, I was very proud of my accomplishment and maybe I'll be able to enter more in the future. I am getting better at making 100% whole wheat hearth bread...

So, now we are home and glad to be there. But it was a wonderful vacation!