Wednesday & Thursday

WEDNESDAY:
Wednesday day is sort of a blur... We did some stuff until 3:30 when we headed for Grants Pass to catch the Jet Boat Excursion. We have been on the boats a few times and have loved it every time. We were excited to take Mom and Dad on them. Like always we had to wait in the heat to get loaded onto the boats. The line conditions and other circumstances weren't ideal and made me worry about how much fun the trip was going to be, but, in the end we had a giant blast of fun.

The line to get loaded.

This is one of the boats so you can get an idea of what it is like.

We all shared a row.

This is a bridge that you go under at the beginning of the ride.

Along the Rogue you can find all sorts of wild life. We saw a Bald Eagle sitting in a tree off shore. We saw its nest. We saw a bunch of Great Blue Herons, a few otters, and several osprey and osprey nests.
In this picture we are entering the shady cover of Hellgate. There were a few movies filmed at this location along the Rogue, one of which was The River Wild.
After going through Hellgate canyon, the boat takes you up to this extra-large pavilion for a delicious meal featuring: a relish tray, corn bread and biscuits with jam, a delicious tossed salad with a tasty honey mustard dressing. For the main course they bring out a plateful of barbecue chicken and barbecue ribs, country ranch potatoes, and steamed-crisp veggies. Following the meal, they bring out warm berry cobbler topped with homemade whipped cream.

These are the plates piled with barbecued ribs and chicken. They were quite tasty and that is coming from a non-barbecue enthusiast.

The setting for this restaurant is so neat. It is set up on this nice shaded, grassy hill, where the deer and the wild turkeys roam.

In this picture Spencer is feeding the deer a bread stick.

In this picture Luke is feeding the deer Cheerios.

Loading back up.

Grandparents and grand kids

Here is our family.

The boat in front of ours takes off. On the boat ride they stop and show us neat things, but they also do some pretty fun spins. Everyone gets wet and everyone has a good time whether it is liquor-induced or from the sheer fun of the ride.

THURSDAY:

6:00 AM a baby sitter showed up to watch the kids so Mom, Dad, Spencer, and I could go to the church pear farm and pick pears. The harvest time is in August. It is an intense couple of weeks as pear coordinators try to get all of the pears picked before they start ripening. Members from all over the valley and up to Roseburg are asked to put in hours of picking. I think it is fun, especially when you get to pick from a tree with lots of big pears. Somehow it is a rewarding task. After putting in some hours we were pretty wiped though. We pretty much crashed for the rest of the day. We did make one outing back to Seven Oaks Farm for some more corn. Dad wanted to have an all-you-can-eat corn pig out. It IS good corn. Benjamin tried to sink his teeth (he has two new ones) into half an ear.

Spencer and I had a hankering for some carrot cake. My pig-out was more of a carrot cake pig-out than a corn pig-out.

After dinner we went outside so the kids could drive the car and so Spencer could try out his bike now that it has training wheels on it.
Without training wheels.

Spencer riding his bike and Luke driving Benjamin around.

Grandma helps direct Luke.Benjamin enjoys the ride.
Grandpa holds Benjamin.

The men and boy folk enjoying our "front yard".

Ah, this picture is me sitting on the problematic chair. This chair broke a few weeks back and Spencer has been thinking up a solution ever since. While we had our company Spencer and Dad worked on the solution. It is fixed, but it is a fix that needs constant adjustment. Poor chair. Thanks Spencer and Dad for your engineering minds. You are king riggers.
The grandparents and the grand kids.

The whole lot of us. We LOVED having Grandma and Grandpa/Mom and Dad come visit us. We hope they enjoyed it as much as we did. Come again soon!