Sidewalk Chalk Art Festival

There is an annual Sidewalk Chalk Art Festival where we live.  For the past two years we've walked around looking at all the chalk art people had drawn.  This year though, this year, we decided to participate ourselves. 

Logan, just starting his Green Ninja from Lego Ninjago fame.

 Taylor, working on her masterpiece. It will become a beautiful ballerina. 
 

The kids with their finished sidewalk square.

Several friends of ours also drew on the sidewalk that day.  Here are a few of their masterpieces. 

 Kim & Cameron's rendition of Portland, Oregon.

Amy dedicated this Curious George to her two children.

 Mikelle & Hannah's Monarch Butterfly.

And here are some others that we just thought were neat.

 Some of the sidewalk squares had park benches, trash cans, street lamp poles and other things covering parts of them.  Someone at this square made the most of her encroaching water cover.

 

Optical illusions are always fun. 

 Koi fish.

 We watched the girl working on this one.  She had a towel covering the spot that would become the umbrella and person, then she had liquid color that she was splashing down with paintbrushes.  I like how it turned out.

 For all the Terry Pratchett fans out there.

 One of Logan's favorites, Star Wars.

 This one is my very favorite though!

Can't wait for next year. 

Neahkanie Mt.

 If you want a view like this...

you've got to do a hike like this!

Look at those roots!  And yes, it was really steep.

 We recently hiked to the summit of Neahkanie Mt. as a family.  It was 2 & 1/2 miles, one way and about 1000 feet of climbing.  

 Before we got into the trees we had amazing views of the coastline. 

 The vastness of the ocean is just amazing!

 The view, breathtaking!

 I love this view too!

 

Logan did great, of course.  He's an old pro at hiking now.

  We were at little worried about Taylor, but she did awesome.  She walked the whole way.

It was a wonderful family outing.  Then we went for pizza and everybody knows pizza tastes better after a long hike.  So it was some pretty tasty pizza!

Skatepark riding

James has taken Logan hiking several times this summer.  While they were gone it gave me time to do things with Taylor like go to the splash park and watch the airplane show.  

Then James took Taylor on a picnic and I got to spend time with Logan.  We went to a local skateboard park, which also has a BMX track.  Logan loves this park, for obvious reasons. 

 

 

 

 

 How he loves to ride his bike!  He's so comfortable and at ease on it.  And he has so much fun when he's riding. 

Wolf Creek

I've gotten behind on blogging.  We've had some fun outings and I'll try to catch up and tell you all about them.

We were able to do a little hike to Wolf Creek Falls, near Glide, Oregon.  It was an enjoyable hike and a fun time with family.  
 

 The hike has a couple of bridges, always fun for kids.

It follows the creek for the most part.  There are lots of great views of the creek. 

Logan & Taylor found rocks and water, which quickly lead to throwing rocks into the water, naturally.

And then there was the 'falls' part of Wolf Creek Falls. 

 Logan is a hiking pro now.  He's been on several hikes this summer (and this one was the easiest of them all).  

The day after our Wolf Creek Falls hike we all went to Medford. 

 We met my parents at the Medford LDS Temple.  I was able to go in and help do some work for my paternal grandparents.  It was a very special time.  

 The kids were able to see the Medford Temple for the first time and visit with Nana & Papa for a little while too. 

On a completely different occasion, I took the kids to a park in Roseburg.  

The first thing Logan went for was this very tall tower with a web of ropes and lots of space to fall through.  He scrabbled to the top and was so proud of himself.  He spent most of his time on this thing and didn't fall once.  

 He even convinced Taylor it was fun.

The Umpqua River flows past the park and we were able to dip our feet in, to cool ourselves off.  It was a very hot day that day.  The kids loved this park so much.  They didn't want to leave, but it was just too hot to stay out very long. 

Hopefully tomorrow or the next day I'll post about Logan riding at the skate park.  




 

Spontaneous Trip to the Beach

One day, recently, James came home and said he was done with school for the day.  Then he suggested we go to the beach.  I said, "Sure. When?"  He said, "Right now!"  Oh, okay. 

 So we went on a little spontaneous trip to the coast.  

 It was late afternoon when we got there, so the sun was at just the wrong angle for taking pictures,   

but the water was so calm that the surfers were spending a lot of time just paddling around.

The children were brave enough to get in the cold water.

 

 We had a great afternoon at the beach.

This was a sunset at our house one evening (completely unrelated to the beach trip) that I thought was beautiful and unusual.  Too bad they never turn out as good as the real thing.  Still nice though.

I have lots of other pictures to post, so I'm going to try to post again tomorrow or the next day about our little hike to Wolf Creek Falls.