Five

It's hard to believe that this tiny guy turned five this month. They've been five great years!

We celebrated in a pretty low key way this year: birthday lunch out with his bestie, a ninja cake after dinner, and a few fun outings in the days surrounding. Mostly he just played with all his new Legos.

Silly boys

We went to see the Portland Pickles play. They're a collegiate woodbat baseball team and they played really well this evening, walloping the Sacramento Stealth 11-0. Our favorite part was Dillon, the pickle mascot.

"Look, Dad, Dillon signed my glove!"

We headed east for the Dufur Threshing Bee. Gotta love a tractor parade!

Back at home, we picked apples with the baby goats' help. Our young Jonathan apple tree gave us a nice basket-full, already canned away as applesauce.

 And then there are the sunflowers...my summer pride and joy!

Five is pretty great so far. Up next, kindergarten!

The annual camp

We took to the woods last weekend for our annual Ecovillage camping trip with friends. It was an adventure just finding the site, hidden back in the woods not far from the Molalla River. We were tent camping, but I love our friend's picturesque little trailer.

The kids set up some ground rules: People can come to Ecovillage if they are our friends and nice to the animals.

 We had some much-needed river time.

Ole and Arlo goofed around and enjoyed some freedom to explore around camp, breaking trails through the brush. We spent lots of time around the campfire, and hiked the trails around our campsite.

I think we figured out it's the 18th annual Ecovillage. It was a pretty good year.

Those of us who weren't too shy to have our picture taken.